[.ca] Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (ISBN 0771099843)

Amazon.ca:
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is one of Canada's classic works of literature, and perhaps its most complex work of satire. A series of linked stories chronicling life in the fictional community of Mariposa--modelled on Orillia, Ontario--Sunshine Sketches gently mocks Canadian small-town life in a manner that is as dead-on as it is humourous. Whether describing the sinking of the town's ship, the Mariposa Belle, in a few feet of water in "The Marine Excursion of the Knights of Pythias" or giving an account of an old-fashioned courting that ends disastrously in "The Foreordained Attachment of Zena Pepperleigh and Peter Pupkin," Leacock's ridiculously earnest narrator presents a community torn between a desire for modernity and a nostalgia for a simpler past. The result is an absurd romp through both our social and literary values. But Sunshine Sketches is also a highly political book, one that demonstrates Leacock's background as an economist and embodies many social and cultural anxieties still felt in Canada today. The stories reveal an unease about everything from the excesses of capitalism to Canada's identity, and a dark note of pessimism underlies much of the book's humour. While the narrator of Sunshine Sketches is unconcerned about the future of his community, Leacock was clearly worried about the direction Canadian society was taking, and at times the book seems eerily prophetic of today's globalized, American-dominated Canada. Above all, Sunshine Sketches is a damn good read. It's one of those rare books that manage to seamlessly combine social criticism with good storytelling. Like the town of Mariposa itself, Sunshine Sketches is timeless. --Peter Darbyshire

Amazon.ca Canadian Essential:
Comedy is hard, and writing comedy that lasts is even harder, as the list of largely forgotten winners of the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour will tell you (Pardon My Parka, anyone?). Which is why the continued popularity for nearly a century of Leacock's own Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is so remarkable. What has made it last is less Leacock's famously genial humour than his underlying satirical edge: his affection for his characters is matched by his unease at the unforgiving, materialist world they struggle against.

It Soothes the Soul:
There is at least one author who may remind you of Stephen Leacock, namely Garrison Keillor of Lake Wobegon fame, but Leacock should be recognized as the ultimate master of quaint, bucolic humor. Leacock, who died in 1944, became arguably the most prominent Canadian humorist of his day (and probably of all time). What is ironic about that claim is that Leacock worked for most of his life as a professor of economics. We do not usually equate economics with humor, preferring to think of that profession as one of bow ties and supply and demand charts. Throw that presumption out the window and pick up a copy of "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town," Leacock's best known work available through the New Canadian Library series. For me, one of the funniest sections of the book was the introduction written by Leacock, where he gives you some background about himself and his profession. This short piece of writing quickly gives you an idea of the type of humor you will find in the actual sketches: a very sly, very quiet and clever type of humor that often takes a while to sink in. Leacock does not rely on rim shot jokes or manic posturing in his writings. Instead, he creates the fictional Canadian town of Mariposa and populates it with small town archetypes that are wonders to behold. All of the characters are hilarious in their own way: Mr. Smith, the proprietor of the local hotel and bar, full of schemes to earn money while trying to get his liquor license back. Then there is Jefferson Thorpe, the barber involved in financial schemes that may put him on the level of the Morgans and the Rockefellers. The Reverend Mr. Drone presides over the local Church of England in Mariposa, a man who reads Greek as easy as can be but laments his lack of knowledge about logarithms and balancing the financial books of the church. Peter Pupkin, the teller at the local bank, has a secret he wants no one to know about, but which eventually comes out while he is courting the daughter of the town judge. All of these characters, and several others, interact throughout the sketches. Leacock has the ability to turn a story, to make it take a crazy, unexpected twist even when you are looking for such a maneuver. That he accomplishes this in stories that rarely run longer than twenty pages is certainly a sign of great talent. By the time you reach the end of the book, you know these people as though you lived in the town yourself, and you know what makes them tick. Despite all of the crazy antics in Mariposa, Leacock never lets the reader lose sight of the fact that these are basically good people living good lives. There seems to be a lot of feeling for the citizens of Mariposa on the part of Leacock, which comes to a head in the final sketch in the collection, "L'Envoi. The Train to Mariposa," where he recounts traveling back to the town after being away for years, with all of the attendant emotions that brings as recognizable landmarks come into view and the traveler realizes that his little town is the same as when he left it years before. I suspect there is a historical importance to "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town." These writings first appeared in 1912, a time when many people living in the bigger Canadian cities still remembered life in a small town. In addition to the humorous aspects of the book, the author includes many descriptive passages concerning the atmosphere and layout of Mariposa, something instantly recognizable to anyone who grew up in such a place. Nostalgia for the simpler life of the small town probably played a significant role in the book's success. I look forward to reading more Stephen Leacock. While much of the humor in the book is not belly laugh funny, it does provide one with a deep satisfaction of reading clever humor from an author who knows how to tickle the funny bone. You do not need to be Canadian to enjoy this wonderful book.

funniest book i've ever read:
no hype. i couldn't stop laughing as i was reading this. and i mean laughing out loud. in a cafe. with everyone staring at me. but i didn't care. and i couldn't help it if i did. it's just too hilarious.

the funniest book i've ever read:
Like the heading says, this is the funniest book I've ever read. Leacock was a comic genius and this is his best work. Buy it, read it, love it.

Wonderful satire on small town life:
This 1912 work uses sketches about the residents of a small Ontario lake town. The tone is mock-boosterish, giving rise to some sly comic moments. This is a wonderful parody of that can-do mentality that seems to infect us in North America. The work anticipates Lake Woebegone by some years, but has a distinctly Canadian feel. We've seen lots of works take mythical townspeople one by one, but I can think of few that do it as well and as simply as this one. This is a must read.

An endearing portrait of Oriliia -- my home town:
Perhaps the finest comment about Stephen Leacock in the last half century is that "he is a Will Rogers for the 90's." Rogers, of course, is one of the most beloved of American humorists -- he was killed in 1935 when his plane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska. Leacock died on March 28, 1944. Like Rogers, he had been Canada's favorite humorist for decades. Sunshine Sketches is about Orillia, Ontario, Canada, where Leacock had his summer home on Brewery Bay (he once wrote, "I have known that name, the old Brewery Bay, to make people feel thirsty by correspondence as far away as Nevada.") His home is now maintained as a historic site by the town of Orillia. I lived there for almost 30 years, and the people of Orillia are still much the same as Leacock portrayed them in 1912. These stories about various personalities in town were printed in the local newspaper in the 1910 - 1912 era, before being compiled into this book which established Leacock's literary fame. The people portrayed really lived, though some are composites; the events are of a kindly humorist looking at the foibles of small town life. Once they came out in book form and soared to national popularity, everyone in town figured the rest of the country was laughing at them because of Leacock's book and he was royally hated in Orillia to the end of his life. Gradually, and this took decades, Orillians came to recognize that genius had walked amongst them for several decades. (It's hard to recognize genius when your own ego is so inflated.) Orillia now awards the annual "Leacock Medal for Humor" -- Canada's top literary prize for the best book of humour for the preceding year. Leacock died when I was six, but I did know his son, who still lived in town. I delivered papers to the editor of the "Newspacket," Leacock's name for the Orillia Packet and Times (where I worked) and the rival Newsletter. The Packet had the same editor in the 1940's as when Leacock wrote about him in 1910. But the book is more than Orillia; it is a wonderfully kind and humorous description of life in many small towns. The American artist Norman Rockwell painted the same kinds of scenes; it is the type of idyllic urban life so many of us keep longing to find again in our hectic urban world. Leacock realized the book was universal in its description of small towns, and in the preface he wrote "Mariposa is not a real town. On the contrary, it is about seventy or eighty of them. You may find them all the way from Lake Superior to the sea, with the same square streets and the same maple trees and the same churches and hotels, and everywhere the sunshine of the land of hope." True enough, which gives this book continuing appeal nearly a century after it was written. All great writing is about topics you know, and as a longtime resident Leacock knew Orillia well. As for Leacock himself, he wrote, "I was born at Swanmoor, Hants., England, on Dec. 30, 1869. I am not aware that there was any particular conjunction of the planets at the time, but should think it extremely likely." He says of his education, "I survived until I took the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1903. The meaning of this degree is that the recipient of instruction is examined for the last time in his life, and is pronounced completely full. After this, no new ideas can be imparted to him." In reviewing Charles Dickens' works in 1934, Leacock wrote what could well be his own epitaph: "Transitory popularity is not proof of genius. But permanent popularity is." The fact his writings are still current illustrates the nature of his writing. In contrast to the sometimes sardonic humor of modern times, Sunshine Sketches reflects Leacock's idea that "the essence of humor is human kindness." Or, in the same vein, "Humor may be defined as the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life, and the artistic expression thereof." Granted, this book is not what he recognized to have widespread appeal to modern readers. In his own words, "There are only two subjects that appeal nowadays to the general public, murder and sex; and, for people of culture, sex-murder." Yet, anyone reading this will remember scenes from it for much longer than anything from a murder mystery. In today's world, where newspapers almost daily track Prime Minister Tony Blair's dash to the political right, Leacock wrote, "Socialism won't work except in Heaven where they don't need it and in Hell where they already have it." He described his own home as follows, "I have a large country house -- a sort of farm which I carry on as a hobby . . . . Ten years ago the deficit on my farm was about a hundred dollars; but by well-designed capital expenditure and by greater attention to details, I have got it into the thousands." Sounds familiar to today's farm policies ? It's what I mean by this being a timeless work. Leacock himself noted, when talking about good literature, "Personally, I would sooner have written 'Alice in Wonderland' than the whole of the 'Encyclopedia Britannica'." This is his 'Alice' and it well deserves to be favorably compared to Lewis Carroll's work. By all measures, it is still the finest Canadian book ever written.