Seize The Night Life Of The Gods Authored By Thorne Smith Depicted In Paper Copy

it's not that I ddin't enjoy this book, On the contrary, the plot is originalat least I've never encountered it beforethe characters well developed and the conlcusion logical.
The style is reminiscent of The Great Gatsbyindeed they're contemporariesso don't bother picking this book up if you didn't enjoy its predecessor.
All told, I prefer this book to The Great Gatsby because it has more of a storyline and doesn't tend to ramble on when there's nothing left to say.
Fantastic, it provides chuckles, giggles and out in the open laughter, Well written, witty without being either too dry or too earthy, Intelligent without being snobbish. Smith is the American answer to Oscar Wilde, So what would happen if you could turn statues into living, breathing people And what if those statues were Venus, Diana, Perseus with Medusa's head, Apollo, Mercury, Hebe and Neptune

You guessed it a very bizarre story.


This is the first book I have read written by Thorne Smith first published in, However, as a kid I remember watching the TV series 'Topper" and Smith was the creator of Topper, Google Topper for more info,

Night Life is a rather wild ride starting off with our scientist/hero Hunter Hawk blowing up his lab and discovering a way to turn things into stone and back again.
From there Hawk meets some for lack of a better term leprechauns,
Hawk and this female leprechaun become intimate and she shows him how to turn statues in living people,

A hop, skip and a jump later they are bring to life the statues of these Roman Gods see above Smith used the Roman names rather than their Greek names.
And then the fun really begins,

Toward the end of the book is a courtroom scene that reminded me of the Ghostbuster's scene in court.
Did they get the idea from Smith It really seems so,

I read that they made a movie of the book back inthere is one existing copy in the UCLA libraries.
I wonder if we'll ever get to see that on

This was a slightly strange book to read not really a full blow comedy, but with some sections that are funny and silly good funny and good silly and some that are just so strange and weird.


I was entertained,

This book took me forever to get through, but I think that's more my fault that its, It was pretty funny in the Wodehouse vein, but slightly less wit and quite a bit more, . . deviancy with some LOL moments, which I always appreciate, This book I just adored, about the time I was inth grade, The humor was 'adult' and it is clever and imaginative and still has much to recommend it, Anth grader, it seems,is scandalized almost exactly as much by louche behaviour and sexual licentiousness as the anticipated reader in thes was, seemingly.


Rereading this one was a bit disappointing, It plays a bit like as bedroom comedywhich makes alot of sensebut my tastes have changed long ago, and what seemed daring and smart and clever atseems tired and quaint and dated to my adults eyes.


Still, a very clever and funny book, and one I am surprised was never adapted for the screen like Topper and Turnabout.
It would have fared very well, and I have imagined which golden age actors might have made a good Poseidon or Bacchus.
I can almost see the RKO picture header, . . a film by George Cuckor or Howard Hawks, Reasons for picking it up: Saw it on a random favorites list on GoodReads, thought it would be fun to read.


Where did I get it from: Purchased it on Amazon for the Kindle, If you choose to read the book you can read it directly from the GoodReads website for free,


What this book is about:

What happens when a scientist discovers how to turn living material into stone and back again at will and decides to bring the Greek Gods to life.


My opinion:

Originally written in thes published in 'by Thorne Smith, I was uncertain if it would hold my attention long enough to finish.
I was pleasantly surprised by this novel, The language wasn't stale. Even though there are clear references to the time period it was written instepins,Emperors,bathtub hooch, the book could have easily been written in this decade.


Smith's quick witted dialogue is really refreshing, There is never a moment where a character doesn't say what they are thinking, Unless they happen to be related to Mr, Hawke.

There is quite a bit of leadup half the book at least to the arrival of the Greek Gods, but once they are introduced things pick up at an exponential rate.
There is just enough time to enjoy meeting them and the antics that ensue before things come to an end.


If you are looking for a quick, lighthearted, and funny read I would recommend picking this up, I read this because Thorne Smith has been compared to one of my favorite writers, P, G. Wodehouse. When I began reading The Night Life of the Gods I didn't know anything about the writer, but my dad remembered having read Topper.
He didn't remember if he had liked it or not though because nearly half a century had passed,

I'll say this for The Night Life of the Gods: it begins well enough with a comic "mad scientist" scene.


The scientist succeeds in what he had been working on, and has to celebrate his grand victory, He does it very thoroughly, he basically goes on a bender, and the story slowly gets stuck on a single idea.
There is drinking, then there is looking for more booze, booze found, hurrah, then there is more drinking, and then there is drinking with Greek gods who have come alive, and then.
. . Well, you get the point, It's pretty much non stop drinking from start to finish,

It's all supposed to be very funny, but it just didn't work for me, I think I may have read it at the wrong time, There was a time when I watched a lot of party movies where people drink a lot a beer, drive bikes into houses, jump of roofs into the pool, and so on.
At a time I thought those movies were very funny and if I had read The Night Life of the Gods at that time I might have enjoyed it immensely, but that phase had passed when I read this novel so I can't say I liked it.


It has one, or two interesting ideas, the occasional funny line, but Thorne Smith isn't Wodehouse, Far from it. Finishing it felt like waking up with a hang over after having been to a very bad party, Well almost. Thorne Smith's rapidfire dialogue, brilliant sense of the absurd, and literary aplomb put him in the same category as the beloved P.
G. Wodehouse. The Night Life of the Gods, the madcap story of a scientist who instigates a nocturnal spree with the Greek gods, is arguably his most sparkling comedic achievement.


Hunter Hawk has a knack for annoying his ultra respectable relatives, He likes to experiment and he particularly likes to experiment with explosives, His garagecumlaboratory is a veritable minefield, replete with evilsmelling clouds of vapor through which various bits of wreckage and mysteriously bubbling test tubes are occasionally visible.


With the help of Megaera, a fetching ninehundredyearold lady leprechaun he meets one night in the woods, he masters the art if not the timing of transforming statues into people.
And when he practices his new witchery in the stately halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, setting Bacchus, Mercury, Neptune, Diana, Hebe, Apollo, and Perseus loose on the unsuspecting citizenry of Prohibitionera New York, the stage is set for Thorne Smith at his most devilish and delightful.
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I must admit, I knew very little about Thorne Smith before I picked this one up as a second hand penguin book.
It is an oddity and Thorne Smith is much better known in America, He wrote semiscience fiction/fantasy novels, His best known creation is Topper, a much more wellknown novel and a ghost story, Smith is a comic novelist, and has been compared to P G Wodehouse, He died inand this one was published inI think,
This offering is set in and around New York, It concerns Hunter Hawk a middle aged and eccentric inventor, He is plagued by his sister, brotherinlaw and nephew who disapprove of him, but likes his niece, He invents a small portable device that can turn living things into stone and vice versa, After some fun with his family he meets a leprechaun and his daughter, He strikes up a relationship with the daughter a mereyears old, They journey to New York with Hunters niece and her boyfriend after some unfortunate incidents at a party,
In a museum Hunter has the bright idea of bringing to life some statues of Greek gods, He chooses Diana, Hebe, Venus, Bacchus, Mercury, Neptune, Perseus and Apollo, A series of adventures follows which mainly involve lots of alcohol, fighting, sex not explicit, fish and casual shoplifting and pickpocketing.
A series of what might be described as high jinks follows,
This isnt P G Wodehouse and isnt really that funny, The plot has enough holes to steer a supertanker through, Its formulaic and some good ideas are badly used, I think my/year old self may have enjoyed this more, It is essentially farce and comic book and very much of its time, One of Thorne Smith's better outings, When a scientist pairs up with a witch with the ability to bring statues to life, chaos ensues, The two decide it would be a good idea to bring the statues of the gods at the Metropolitan Museum to life.
But the gods, it turns out, are too human by half they immediately start to cavort, bicker, drink, and carry on in a spree of epic proportions.
The word "romp" could easily have been invented just to describe this sort of book,

I wonder whether the fairly innocuous Disney comedies of the fifties/sixties such as "The AbsentMinded Professor" were patterned on this sort of comic predecessor.
Probably not, but that same spirit of befuddlement in the face of mounting chaos and delight at everything going topseyturvey is definitely there in both.
And, needless to say, everything always works out in the end, The firstpages getit's just a bunch of meanless meandering, saved only by witty dialogue but the rest of the book gets a solidstars.
So I'll settle in the middle and rate it aoverall,

The first part of the book deals with an eccentric inventor, his stuffy extended family, neighborly disputes and leprechaunlike creatures seriously.
I was mindnumbingly bored until the ancient gods amp goddesses came to life in earlys New York City, Mercury/Hermes my favorite god was especially amusing with his sassy personality and stickyfingered kleptomania, The dialogue is a winner throughout, filled with naughty double entendres amp witty puns, . . it reads like the script of a topnotchs screwball comedy, As far as plot, there really isn't one it's just a series of various midadventures the gods amp goddesses and their human friends find themselves in when they're not swilling bathtub gin.


If you're a fan of Greek/Roman mythology and interested in reading a take on the gods amp goddesses in modern times, I would recommend reading Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips.
One of the few books I can read every few years and it is always makes me laugh, Thorne Smith wrote this book inand it is a classic, If you are in the mood for light reading that will make you smile this is the book for you.
In Night Life of the Gods, by Thorne Smith, we meet Hunter Hawk, wealthy eccentric scientist ins America, who, after numerous explosions, manages to invent an "atomic ray" that turns living beings into statues, and a second ray that restores them to their original state.
He meets Megaera, theyearold descendent of one of the ancient Furies and daughter of one of the last living leprechauns, and she has the magic to turn statues into living beings.
Together, the two are invincible, especially when they get to New York City, where there are museums full of statues of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, waiting to come back to life.
This is a reread from a gazillion years ago, and I must say it holds up well, Thorne Smith is a humourist in the same vein as James Thurber indeed, the two were friends, and his wordplay and sarcastic commentary about life under Prohibition is still very, very funny.
Mind you, I'm not sure that any human being or deity, for that matter could actually survive the amount of alcohol his characters constantly imbibe, but given that it's a fantasy anyway, why not indulge Also in its favour is the fact that the female characters, while generally indolent, are by no means subordinate to the men in fact, both genders are given nontraditional personality aspects.
It's true that the only nonwhite characters are waiters in a restaurant, and there is one cringeworthy passage of one of them speaking to another, but there isn't the kind of pervasive racism one might expect from the era.
Interestingly, I found this in a Kindle version that includes nine count 'em,! novels by Thorne Smith, perhaps his whole output, for a mere US. whereas the Kindle version of this book by itself was over US,. If you're interested in American humour from thes ands, and you have a Kindle, this is an absolute bargain.
Recommended! This was a fun read but not nearly as funny or crazy as a P, G. Wodehouse book. Still a good read though and some scenes are hilarious: Hands down, this man is the funniest writer I have ever had the privilege of reading.
My dad had his books, I was bored in school, I would have a Thorne Smith book open behind whatever text book I was supposed to be looking at, and I would get busted every time because I could not keep myself from bursting into laughter.
Math is NOT funny. I have a first edition Thorne SmithBagger, somewhere aroundyears old, It is held together with duct tape, but still very readable and precious, Look for Skin and Bones, Some scenes just popped into me head, and I almost started laughing, Thenovel The Night Life of the Gods, by Thorne Smith, opens with a bangliterally, Once again, Hunter Hawk, a brilliant and madcap scientist, creates an explosion in his laboratorycontinuing his predilection to rattle and annoy his family.
Only his niece, Daffy, who loves and admires her uncle, takes an interest in his mysterious experiments, the latest of which permits him to turn flesh into stone.
Various high jinx ensure as Hawk indulges his desire to annoy his family and acquaintances by turning various bits of them into stone.
Soon, however, Hawk meets Meg, the mischievous daughter of a leprechaun, Meg, although she has been alive for quite some time, has maintained a youthful charm and incurs the wrath of Hawk's family with her scandalous behavior.


Meg and Hawk spend some time tormenting their high society

acquaintances, but soon turn to a more exciting plan.
Though Hawk can turn flesh into stone, Meg can turn stone into flesh: these two scoundrels turn their attention to the ancient statues in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, bringing the title's “gods” to life.
Uproar and mayhem result, with Neptune terrifying fishmongers and Venus chasing after any men she can find, The gods, along with Hawk and Meg, consume prodigious amounts of cocktails though this is Prohibitionera New York City, they manage to exist in two states: intoxicated and hungover.
Smith's prose has the effervescent quality of Dorothy Sayers's mystery novels, with a similar emphasis on dry wit and contemporary colloquialismsbut Smith's protagonists are thoroughly American, even the ancient gods themselves.


Occasionally, the text of the novel takes on a slightly pretentious, overlyarch tone that makes readers feel like they are on the outside of an inside joke.
Though Smith can be quite funny, the times of feeling excluded from the prose prevents full investment in the events of the story.


For readers looking for a light, airy novel, The Night Life of the Gods will fit the bill.
Its manic humor and shenanigans will please any fan ofs fiction, .