This was Max Shulman's first "adult" comedy. Maybe you saw the movie starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and Joan Collins?

When the army decides to build a missile base near an upscale Connecticut commuter town passions flare, in and out of the bedroom, and then all hell breaks loose!

This book is absolutely hilarious and may be Shulman's best novel. It skewers the 50's: the Marlon Brando/Elvis worshipping teenagers, and their martini guzzling keep-up-with-the Joneses parents, and barbeques the military-complex too.

The sex may be a little much for young kids, but I loved reading it when I was 14.

A must-read. Part of our cultural heritage!

I adore this compilation of "Dobie" stories, as well as its companion compilation, _I Was a Teen-Age Dwarf_. Narrated in the first person, _Many Loves_ chronicles various romances in Dobie's life. The thing is, each vignette features a different Dobie! A very changeable guy, he is! Shulman captures very well th hyperbole of the memoir, and the selectivity of recollection! You won't find funnier books anywhere... Murphy's Law is alive, well, and prominently-featured in these books! Dobie sitcom fans may be a bit confused at first, but there's no mistaking it...the 'true' Dobie's definitely there!

I happened upon one of these Dobie Gillis pieces in an older anthology, and enjoyed it so much that I immediately purchased this volume. Despite the fact that many of these stories are over fifty years old, the campus boy-chases-girl situations are still fresh, and Shulman's swift-moving prose is punctuated with hilarious dry wit and bright comical twists. These are well-crafted short stories, some of the best examples of this genre I've yet come across.

TEACHERS -- It would seem to me that this material would be ideal core curriculum for 7th-10th grade English Lit. students -- Why it isn't being taught at this time is a great mystery.

Max Shulman's Dobie Gillis is a young man on the make who remains as funny today as he did when he was created back in the 1950s. The genius of Shulman resides in the cleverness of the situations and matchless beauty of the writing. The apparent simplicity of his prose -- every sentence a perfect thread in a perfect piece of cloth -- is actually a form of high art, unequalled by all with the exception of SJ Perlman and Woody Allen. Read it and weep (from too much laughing!)

Not Charles Dickens by any stretch of the imagination! Shulman's characterizations, through the eyes of the main character, Maurice, are priceless. Coupled with Maurice's commentary, the book reads like one long story told over a beer by your best friend while you sit in the back of a bar somewhere. Maurice offers no apologies for his behavior, so the ribald antics and observations are completely justifiable to him - which is exactly what makes the book so funny - especially when he gets caught up side the head by how life can play out.

This book is a riot! I've read it about 4 times and still kill myself laughing! I love the way Max Shulman gets a laugh in. It's so unexpected. Read this book! It's a hoot!!!

This is a hilarious semi-autographical book and right up there with "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" and "Rally Round The Flag Boys" among Max Shulman's best works. I especially enjoyed the ridiculously funny love poems written for Maurice by his brittle-bone diseased cousin "Crip".

When I was in high school I was a big fan of the writer Max Shulman. He published "Barefoot Boy With Cheek" in 1943 when he was in his early twenties, a new graduate of the University of Minnesota. ("The University of Minnesota is, of coure, wholly imaginary.") There he had earned a reputation as the editor of "Ski-U-Mah," the campus humor magazine. He published a half dozen novels, two of which became musical comedies on Broadway, while two others became television series and movies. He is probably best known for "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis," which became a successful TV series, and "The Tender Trap," a movie starring Debbie Reynolds.

I recently came across a well-worn copy of "Barefoot Boy---" in a used-book store and read it again. It's an outrageous satire of college life, a story of the hilarious freshman year of Asa Hearthrug at the (imaginary) University of Minnesota.

"St. Paul and Minneapolis extend from the Mississippi River like the legs on a pair of trousers. Where they join is the University of Minnesota."

Asa is promptly registered into a liberal arts program in order to become a "well rounded-out personality," and is then recruited into the Alpha Cholera fraternity, where he emotionally joins in singing the frat song:

"Stand, good men, take off your hat
To Alpha Cholera, our swell frat.
In our midst you'll find no rat,
And don't let anyone tell you that."

He soon meets Yetta Samovar, and is promptly recruited into the Minnesota Chapter of the Subversive Elements League, where he emotionally joins in singing:

"Workers, workers,
Don't be shirkers,
There's a job we have to do.
Flee your prison,
Collectivism
Is the thing for you to do."

Back at Alpha Cholera he gets invited to a sorority song-title party at Beta Thigh, which he attends as "Tea for Two," with a silver tea service balanced on his head. His date, arranged by his frat brother, is the beautiful Noblesse Oblige, whose song title costume includes a smudge pot attached to her navel. "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," of course!

Asa becomes torn between Noblesse, the fraternity, and the Belongers, or Yetta, the Subversives, and the Unbelongers.

He loses his bid as the dark horse candidate for the student council, flunks all his classes, and returns to his home at Whistlestop and his girlfriend Lodestone La Toole.

Each chapter of the book is preceded by a penetrating quotation in French or Latin, like the one I chose as the title for this review.

An appreciation, or at least a tolerance, for silliness and absurdity is the minimum requirement to enjoy this outrageous satire of college life. I will highly recommend the book to those with that appreciation or tolerance.

You may or may not be aware of this characteristic of Minnesota Scandinavians: We LOVE to make fun of ourselves!

I first read this book in high school (in the mid '50's). I still haven't stopped laughing when I think about it. I want my h/s son to read it, since he's thinking about going to college soon. I think Asa's adventures would help him. Or, have I misspelled "Asa's name." I sure hope not. It's a great book, really, and are Shulman's others.

At the suggestion of my father, who read the book while in the AirCorp in WWII, I decided to read this book. I believe it to be one of the funniest books I have ever read! It is a timeless classic about a small town boy and his transition into college life. It covers all the problems that freshman face: going to see an advisor for suggestions on classes, the courses themselves, the attempt to make friends, the different type of people one meets on a university campus, and the homesickness one feels for their family and an old love. This book is a well written comedy that you will not be able to put down!

I read this book with my 13 year old daughter. Out loud. She did all the female parts. I did all the male parts. She'd already read most of Max Shulman's books. Sure this one was a little adult. But I'm sure I was more embarrassed than she was!

Then we watched the movie. It's kind of strange watching a movie for the first time when you already know every line before the actors say them!

Anyway, I wouldn't rate this as Shulman's or Smith's best work. I've been told that they didn't get along that well. But it's still worth reading.

Sexist or not, period piece or not, "Tender Trap" is still a lot of fun to read. Max Shulman's work was always about the battle between the sexes, and as that battlefield changed, some of his stuff, inevitably, got left behind enemy lines (That metaphor doesn't actually work, but you know what I mean). Robert Smith also wrote one of my favorite childhood books, "Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing." And I think he and his wife did "The Great Big Messy Book," which was an absolute delight. Hey, Smith Junior-- drop me a note at bigeye@drexel.edu to tell me if I'm right about that.

It's wonderful to see the work of my father, Robert Paul Smith, still in print, and apparently still well-liked.

Obviously, I'm not going to give it less than five stars, but, personally, I see "The Tender Trap" as a kind of period piece, which in 1999 seems as embarrassingly sexist as a Rock Hudson/Doris Day movie. And although it is a well-constructed play, I am surprised that others see it as having more substance than, say, a really first-rate television sitcom...

The movie version is available in video cassette, and, to the best of my recollection (hey, I was eight years old at the time) reasonably faithful to the stage version. With, of course, the addition of the wonderful Sammy Cahn title song, which has probably done as much as anything to keep the play's memory alive.

I would be interested in having the previous reviewer contact me. (I have to wonder whether it's one of Max Shulman's kids...)

"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Four shots ripped into my groin and I was off on the greatest adventure of my life!"

Yes that's actually the first line of this insanely funny novel. The second line being "But first let me tell you a little about myself." And then you have to wade through a hilarious series of increasingly convoluted flashbacks that take up most of the book before he finally gets back to the four groin shots and the great adventure.

This was the last of what I call Shulman's four "zany" novels - the first three being "Barefoot Boy With Cheek", "The Feather Merchants" and "The Zebra Derby". In these early novels Shulman cared little about conventional narrative and exposition. They were carefree flights of fancy that weren't bound by ordinary rules. (In "The Zebra Derby" 24 different male characters are all named "Max".)

But by "Sleep Til Noon" Shulman was starting to settle down (just a little) and tell a real story.

In this case its the story of a young idealistic lawyer who would like nothing more than to actually help people, but he's so ridiculously incompetent that he might as well be trying to hurt them! First time I read it I was on a flight and I burst out laughing so hard that the person next to me asked what I was reading. Turned out he was a judge who had also read it and enjoyed it greatly!

I highly recommend "Sleep Til Noon". It came just before Shulman wrote his masterpiece "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis". "Sleep Til Noon" is in many ways, a warmup for "Dobie" and some of its characters and situations eventually made their way onto the "Dobie" tv series.

Max Shulman skewers the unholy alliance that existed between the television and tobacco industries during the mid 1960's and, as if that weren't enough, paints it all against the backdrop of the civil rights movement and desegregation in the South. Oh and of course there's a healthy ration of hilarious sex for all involved. I wouldn't call this Shulman's best novel. I'd reserve that praise for "Rally Round The Flag Boys" or "Potatoes Are Cheaper".
But "Anyone Got A Match" is still a great read after you've finished the others.