Pleasure of My Company, The/ Unabridged

Rating:
Summary: funny and likeable, though truly pathetic character
Review: I was really rooting for this guy who struggled with maneuvering his way through life, relationships, and everything else. Steve Martin has a great sense of humor, and he captured a lot of the hilarity that goes along with mental issues. If you can't laugh, you'll cry. This book is not terribly memorable in the long run, but it was very enjoyable. A nice, light read for a rainy day.

Rating:
Summary: From ham-handedness to finess
Review: When Steve Martin made the film, The Jerk, in 1979, I was hoping for a series of sequels, The Jerk II, Return of the Jerk, The Jerk Strikes Again, etc.His heavy-handed, goofy humor appealed to me at the time as real "escapist" stuff. Little did I realize the growth potential of his talent, exemplified best by his emergence as a writer. The Pleasure of My Company is a first rate example of this. The Amazon.com review descibes it best, "..this elegant little fiction that verges on the profound and poetic."Daniel is "Mr. Everyman" in so many ways, full of human foibles, brimming over with self-doubts, hangups, wonderment over his role on the planet Earth. As weird as Daniel seems in an overall context, there are so many parts of him with which one can identify. At times we all share the pessimism--that total ring of pessimism, like the resident who depresses property prices wherever he goes. We all find the American Dream--like homeownership, a cuddly feeling of security--violated at various times, in and out, throughout our lives. We all go through periods in life when we are looking under the door mat and seat cushions to find where we might have inadvertently dropped our car keys. Heap all of these intermittant idiosyncrasies together, and we are all Daniel, Jr. It's not only the light touch, but the human touch that make for so much joy in reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Entertaining
Review: This book was so thoroughly enjoyable and uplifting that it made me hug myself. Martin's tale of Daniel Pecan Cambridge is one that we can all relate too. Although, we might not all have obsessive compulsive disorder, we do all have daily struggles that prevent us from reaching happiness. Cambridge's ability to overcome his struggles and achieve at least some form of happiness was so uplifting. Martin's wit is also evident throughout the novel, and entertains us with Cambridge's disorders. The funny thing is that Cambridge would probably laugh at his disorders along with us. He knows they are absurd, but is helpless to stop them. Excellent book and wonderfully funny and entertaining to read.