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
The New York Times Everybody should read Patrick McManus.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Describing Patrick McManus as an outdoor humorist is like saying Mark Twain wrote books about small boys.

The Atlantic Patrick McManus is a treasure.


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


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


Book Description
Patrick McManus believes that life's eternal truths exist solely for the purpose of being overturned and proved incorrect. In McManus's world, nothing is what it should be. 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. Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing is a hilarious collection from one of the greatest contemporary humorists: Dave Barry or Garrison Keillor with a twist of Mark Twain. In these adventures, McManus offers wry observations about small-town life and curmudgeonly insists on bigger and bigger fish stories.


About the Author
Patrick F. Mcmanus has written fourteen books and two plays. There are nearly two million copies of his books in print, including They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?, The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw, and A Fine and Pleasant Misery. He divides his time between Spokane, Washington, and the wilds of Idaho.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Boy Sometimes I'd take the boy fishing. He was not my boy but somebody else's, and that was good, his appetite and the cost of food being what they were. Mostly, I used him to hold down the bow of my canoe, instead of the bags of lead shot I usually employed for that purpose. He was smarter than the lead shot but not so much you would notice. "I wonder what causes the tides," he said once. "The moon," I told him. "The moon!" he cried, doubling over with laughter. "You expect me to believe that? You must think I'm stupid!" I treated myself to a thoughtful pause. "The earth is round," I said. "So?" he said. "Everybody knows that." "Just checking," I said. The boy was about sixteen that year, the year I used him for lead shot. Whenever he ran out of money, which was often, he would come over to my cabin on the river and work for me. Mostly, I would have him dig holes in the ground. When you own a cabin on a river, you always have need for lots of holes in the ground. I enjoyed listening to him complain about the pay, because then I knew I wasn't paying him too much. I prefer to err on the side of not enough, because it is wrong to spoil youngsters by paying them too much. Whenever he complained about the pay, I would tell him about my first job. I was fourteen and worked for a farmer all one summer digging holes in the ground. The farmer was so cruel and sadistic that he had probably once been a commandant in charge of a slave labor camp. But I was the only one who suspected his previous employment. Everyone else thought he was a fair and decent and good-hearted man. But they didn't dig holes for him. "Vork! Vork!" the farmer would scream at me. About once a week I would get mad and resign my position. Then the farmer would come and tell my mother what a fine worker I was and that he wanted me back to dig more holes. He told her that my work habits had improved greatly under his supervision, and now my pace was such that he could often detect movement with the naked eye. So Mom would make me go back to digging holes. "Vork! Vork!" the farmer would scream. By the end of summer, I hadn't earned quite enough money to buy my first deer rifle. The farmer gave me a bonus to make up the difference! I was astounded. Furthermore, I became the only person he would let hunt deer on his property, because I had been such a good and loyal worker and also because there were no deer there. "So," I said to the boy, "do you see the moral to this story?" "No," he said. "It's a boring story and I don't want to hear it ever again." "Vork! Vork!" I shouted at him. Sometimes, when the fishing was good, I would go out in the canoe almost every morning. I would get up very early and rush down to the river still buttoning my shirt, but the boy would be there already, waiting. I suspected he slept in the canoe, just so I couldn't slip away without him. We would paddle off to fish the channels that flowed between the islands where the river merged with the lake. As we paddled along we would exchange our theories about the purpose of human life. My theory was that the purpose of life was to perfect ourselves through learning and discipline in order to fulfill our cosmic responsibilities as part of the self-consciousness of the universe. He thought the purpose of human life was for him to buy a car. At the beginning of summer, the boy knew nothing about fishing, but by July he knew everything and had begun to advise me. "That fly you're tying on is too big," he'd say. "Better go to a sixteen. And switch to a black gnat." "How do you know all this?" I said. "It's easy," he said. "I think like a fish." "I can't argue with that," I said. He enjoyed teasing me, because now he almost always caught more fish than I did. I would chuckle good-naturedly, swack the water just so with the paddle, and soak him to the skin. The boy had a talent for getting on my nerves. I could remember how peaceful it had once been, when I was a solitary paddler, slipping quietly along the channels between the islands, doing everything just right, becoming one with nature and the mosquitoes and deerflies. But now the boy was always there, yakking, advising me on fishing technique, philosophizing about cars, complaining about the lunch I'd brought along and the pay he was getting for digging holes. And then one morning he wasn't waiting for me at the canoe. He didn't come the next morning either. Or the following week. It was a relief. I was glad to be rid of him. Having nothing else to do, I asked around about him the next time I was in town. Most folks had no idea who he was, but the lady who runs the grocery said she thought he lived out on such-and-such road. Still having nothing else to do, I drove out the road and found an ancient mobile home approaching terminal depreciation, under some scraggly pines. No one was home. A man stood watching me over a nearby fence. "They's gone," he said. "Just packed up and left one day. Headed for Oklahoma. I'm from Oklahoma myself." "Oklahoma," I said. "Any fishing there?" "Good fishin'." "I'm glad to hear it." I went out fishing the next morning but it wasn't the same. A boy works a whole lot better than bags of lead shot for holding down the bow of a canoe, no question about it. About a week later, another boy showed up at my cabin, apparently having heard I was short a boy. He was a redheaded kid with glasses that kept slipping down his freckled nose. "I hear you got some work here," he said. "I do," I said. "What's the pay?" I told him. He managed to stifle any hint of elation. "What's the work?" "I got all these holes I need filled up." "I guess I can do that." He watched me for a moment, pushing his glasses back up his freckled nose. "What you doin' there to your canoe?" "Nothing much," I said. "Just removing some bags of lead shot from the bow." Copyright © 1997 by Patrick F. McManus

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.