Outdoor Life magazine columnist Patrick McManus has been compared to Mark Twain. Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing demonstrates that he isn't, but McManus will suffice until the next Twain comes along. In this book, the outdoorsman extraordinaire is doing what he does best--telling fish stories, getting into scrapes with buddies, occasionally waxing philosophical, but grousing just as often. Sometimes he even ventures out of the wilderness and into mainstream humor. McManus is easily the equal of Dave Barry or any other contemporary humorist, for that matter: When I think of all the times a Stupidity Alarm could have saved me from committing a Stupidity ... Here's one instance that comes to mind.
My children: "Daddy, please buy us a horse! Please, please, please, please!"
Me: "Well, kids, I guess a horse wouldn't be all that much trouble."
Stupidity Alarm: WHOOOOP! WHOOOOP! WHOOOOP!
The cowboy who sold me the horse said it loved children. That was true. But as I belatedly discovered, it hated adults. He covers well-worn territory, sure. But McManus is a pro who tells stories well, so Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing is always diverting. And when he tells stories about his boyhood, a note of wistfulness and pathos creeps in that is definitely agreeable. This volume is a fine effort by an experienced woodsman/wordsman.


From Library Journal
In this collection of tales, McManus, one of America's most prominent humorists, frequently returns both in place (the backcountry Northwest) and time (his childhood) to some of his most fertile ground. There are echoes of Mark Twain as he tells of a boy's pursuit of the dream fish, the perils of growing a beard, and the allure of hunting the wily avid (as in, "He is an avid hunter"). Populated by characters such as Retch Sweeney and Rancid Crabtree, this is hardly New Yorker stuff, but to McManus fans the less so the better. Recommended for libraries whose patrons like their humor country fried and well done.-?Jim G. Burns, Ottumwa P.L., IowaCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
WARNING: If you listen while driving, this may evoke frightened stares and evasive maneuvers from other drivers alarmed by your hilarity. Pat and Eddie are reminiscent of Tom and Huck in these delightful vignettes of American boyhood. Beaver's wry tones and varying dialects bring each character to life. Musical interludes set the tone for each adventure, and some are enhanced by sound effects. B.L.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
There are, we know, regular woodland verities: the cry of a loon across a lake, the bellow of an elk on a starlit mountain, and various other calls of nature. Add to the list of recurrent natural events the humorous essays of McManus (How I Got This Way, 1994, etc.), the resident clown/scholar of Outdoor Life. McManus is ably supported in his less-than-credible buffoonery and outdoor adventures by a long-running stock company of rubes, including Rancid Crabtree, Eddie Muldoon, and Retch Sweeney. His droll essays remain generally entertaining and slick, though there are some signs of immoderate literary heavy-lifting in his 13th collection. Mountain man Crabtree's hillbilly dialect seems to be thickening sufficiently to double for the vaudeville patois of Dogpatch. There are times when McManus's comic descriptions of hunting and fishing pratfalls seem forced. Readers may be surprised by the more wistful tone of some of the recent tales by our hayseed Hemingway. There is, for example, a sweet elegy on angling for the dream fish. The elegiac tone is most evident in McManus's reveries of his idyllic (if disaster-prone) childhood during the Depression. Judging by the recollections included here, one may reasonably surmise that his childhood resembled that of the ``Little Rascals,'' including a scrappy gang of friends and a nubile teacher with dimpled knees. Only rarely does Pat let a fact get in the way of his musings. One occasion: He was once hired as a university English instructor. That, he hastens to reassure us before we begin to take him too seriously, was ``solely on the basis that I smoked a pipe.'' It may be that after another dozen or so books like this, old Pat's cow won't milk any more. Meanwhile, more huntin' and fishin' country humor for old fans and new urban owners of utility vehicles. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
Detroit Free Press McManus is today's most gifted outdoor humorist.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Like Twain - or more contemporary humorists Dave Barry and Garrison Keillor - McManus shares the belief that life's eternal verities exist primarily to be overturned. In McManus's world, all steaks should be chicken-fried, strong coffee is drunk by the light of a campfire, and fishing trips consist of men acting like boys and boys behaving like the small animals we've always assumed they were. And like Twain, Barry, and Keillor, McManus writes extremely funny stories of adventure and its consequences. Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing is the tenth hilarious collection of his adventures, wry observations, and curmudgeonly calls for bigger and bigger fish stories (don't even think about calling them lies). This time around, the renowned columnist takes on everything from an Idaho crime wave to his friend Dolph's atomic-powered huckleberry picker to the uncertain joys of standing waist-deep in icy water, watching the fish go by.

SYNOPSIS

Humorous tales from trout country about everything from using the kid next door for fishing-boat ballast to the fast-disappearing opportunities for a good old-fashioned grouse hunt.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Few have extracted more humor from the out-of-doors than McManus (The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw), who here presents his 13th collection of columns, most of them reprinted from Outdoor Life. His humor recalls Thurber's dictum about scenes of chaos and confusion that are remembered in moments of calm. There are wild tales of an injured associate strapped to a stretcher whose carriers took to the trees when a grizzly appeared; a July 4th when the young McManus dropped an outsize but unlit firecracker down his stepfather's waders; his brother-in-law's electric huckleberry-picking machine that came to grief at a critical juncture; and his uncle's beard, which got caught in the belt of the rather proper town librarian as she was leaving the movies. Also included are parodies of the private-eye genre and a profusion of pithy one-liners, such as "Eighty-seven percent of all conversations between friends are based on shared ignorance.... That's the reason so many friendships last a lifetime." With laughs throughout, this is a dandy anthology. (Oct.)

Library Journal

More McManus humorboosted by a 21-city author tour.

AudioFile - Bonnie L. Worcester

WARNING: If you listen while driving, this may evoke frightened stares and evasive maneuvers from other drivers alarmed by your hilarity. Pat and Eddie are reminiscent of Tom and Huck in these delightful vignettes of American boyhood. Beaver￯﾿ﾽs wry tones and varying dialects bring each character to life. Musical interludes set the tone for each adventure, and some are enhanced by sound effects. B.L.W. ￯﾿ﾽAudioFile, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

There are, we know, regular woodland verities: the cry of a loon across a lake, the bellow of an elk on a starlit mountain, and various other calls of nature. Add to the list of recurrent natural events the humorous essays of McManus (How I Got This Way, 1994, etc.), the resident clown/scholar of Outdoor Life.

McManus is ably supported in his less-than-credible buffoonery and outdoor adventures by a long-running stock company of rubes, including Rancid Crabtree, Eddie Muldoon, and Retch Sweeney. His droll essays remain generally entertaining and slick, though there are some signs of immoderate literary heavy-lifting in his 13th collection. Mountain man Crabtree's hillbilly dialect seems to be thickening sufficiently to double for the vaudeville patois of Dogpatch. There are times when McManus's comic descriptions of hunting and fishing pratfalls seem forced. Readers may be surprised by the more wistful tone of some of the recent tales by our hayseed Hemingway. There is, for example, a sweet elegy on angling for the dream fish. The elegiac tone is most evident in McManus's reveries of his idyllic (if disaster-prone) childhood during the Depression. Judging by the recollections included here, one may reasonably surmise that his childhood resembled that of the "Little Rascals," including a scrappy gang of friends and a nubile teacher with dimpled knees. Only rarely does Pat let a fact get in the way of his musings. One occasion: He was once hired as a university English instructor. That, he hastens to reassure us before we begin to take him too seriously, was "solely on the basis that I smoked a pipe."

It may be that after another dozen or so books like this, old Pat's cow won't milk any more. Meanwhile, more huntin' and fishin' country humor for old fans and new urban owners of utility vehicles.