Word: hlehhana
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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This book is a light fantastic case his tory of the hlehhana epidemic which swept Manhattan in an unnamed year, made everybody uninhibited and hence happy. It is also the history of unsmiling Jim Rowan, Acting Commissioner of New York's Department of City Planning, who had to cope with the public and private consequences of the euphoric disaster...
Doctors diagnosed this "mass psychoneurosis" as the result of a Caribbean malady, hlehhana, "the happy or laughing disease." Its symptoms were happiness, "ridiculous self-confidence," irresponsibility...
Humming in a Helmet. At this point, Acting Commissioner of City Planning Jim Rowan returned from lobbying in Washington. Rowan had reason to be grim. His beautiful actress wife, Niobe, had contracted hlehhana and had left him. She also left a note: "I feel perfectly humming and I haven't had anything. Not a drop. So I'm going right out to do all the other things I've always wanted to do, and God knows when I'll be back. The ice cream is in the oven...
...then Rowan had caught hlehhana himself, had made love to four women, including his secretary. A cold wave cooled him off, along with Niobe and everybody else...
...doubt Author McHugh hopes that his readers will contract hlehhana from reading I Am Thinking of My Darling. Old McHugh hands may well laugh themselves sick. Others may surprise Author McHugh by developing a stubborn immunity to the laughing virus the longer they are exposed to this somewhat overlabored fantasy...
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