The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis

By Max Shulman

A collection of short stories featuring the many incarnations of Dobie Gillis, a young college fellow with money problems and girl problems who, finagle though he may, usually ends up paying the price of his own stupidity. A really funny trip back to 1940s and 1950s middle America and still amusing decades later.

Rally Round the Flag, Boys!

By Max Shulman

Is it a good thing or a bad thing that the U.S. Army wants to install a missile base on the outskirts of Putnam's Landing, Connecticut, a commuter community near New York City? Of course, there are those for and against. But young Lieut. Guido DiMaggio manages to sweet talk the locals, and, in short order, Putnam's Landing has a missile base. But that doesn't mean everything is all peachy-keen, especially when the soldiers start making time with the local maidens, putting their teenage rivals collective noses completely out of joint. Trouble is brewing and tempers are flaring and the Fourth of July is shaping up to be even more "explosive" than usual.

Although it is nominally about the conflict between the locals and the military, much of the story is taken up with Harry Bannerman and his wife, Grace. Grace is an enthusiastic participant in all things civic, while Harry is yearning for the good old days back in NYC before the arrival of the kids and the house and all the responsibilities he so much resents. His resentment and immaturity lead him into and ill-advised affair with a man-hungry local housewife who is looking for a new hubby to replace the current one.
Also featured are the aforementioned DiMaggio, who is enamored of a local girl, Maggie, a young school teacher who has recently been fired for teaching her second graders about sex, with helpful illustrations.
Parts of the story were mildly amusing and the big Fourth of July debacle at the of the story was really funny, but overall it really didn't appeal to me much.

Potatoes Are Cheaper

By Max Shulman

It's 1936, the heart of the Depression, and two young men, Morris Katz and his cousin have hit on a way out of poverty to a better life. They'll enroll in college and find rich, homely Jewish girls and woo them and marry them.
They get the necessary cash together for the first semester and they are off and running. Morris hits upon the only daughter of a local theater magnate, wooing her with poetry written by his cousin Crip. But then the girlfriend sends the poem into the college literary magazine and it is a big hit with the editor, a gorgeous gentile girl, Bridget, who Morris falls for hard. Now he has to choose between money and security and love and happiness, with everyone in his family pulling for money and security, while his heart and loins are pulling for love and happiness. He better make the right choice because his whole future depends on it. And even if he does marry the gentile, he tells himself, "Of course she [his mother] might topple over dead when I told her about Bridget, but that didn't seem too likely. Jewish mothers do very little actual dying from shicksas. A lot of hemorrhaging, of course. But actual dying is seldom."

This was a very funny and entertaining novel. Morris and his various family members are all amusing as are his two prospective brides. Eventually, Morris makes his choice and it turns out to be the best one and the story ends happily, dilemma solved. And it was a lot of fun getting there, for sure.