Word: kerr
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Jean Kerr...
Author Jean Kerr emerged as a popular humorist in the late 1950s, when the U.S. was in thrall to togetherness, Doris Day's celluloid virginity and the beckoning greensward of suburbia. Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1957) and two later collections of essays treated these and other national preoccupations comically but gently. She did not topple idols but admired them from a safe distance. Her pose was that of the indefatigable but bumbling striver, chirping away about her supposed inability to stage a dinner party, cope with preternaturally wisecracking children or conform to the feminine image conveyed...
Only six new essays are included in this collection of vintage Kerr, and they are very much of a mellow piece with her earlier work. A few things have changed. Her children have grown up, so she discusses the many ways in which they fail as visitors: "Your A-l house guest does not usually bring along his dirty laundry." She has more time on her hands, so she has been able to acquire and then kick an addiction to TV soap operas: "In my experience, the only thing you can quit cold turkey is cold turkey." She notes...
...early ones serve as painless reminders of the way we were before women's lib, the sexual revolution, Viet Nam and Watergate. But Kerr's later work is disquieting because it goes on as if none of these things had happened. A little malice, at least, now seems to be the order...
...Kerr...