How to Do Things Right: The Revelations of a Fussy Man

I first read L. Rust Hills when a friend loaned me his original little book (which is the first of this trilogy). His essays on such subjects as how to conduct a perfect dinner party, how to eat an ice cream cone, and so on are classics. This is not a book to be studied or pored through, but rather one to be picked up and enjoyed in small chunks. But what about the other two books in the trilogy, here bound together? How To Be Good is not a book of humor, although it is written with humorous charm. It's a serious book about how to have morality in an immoral, or at least amoral, world. How To Retire At 41 starts out as a humorous look at how to adjust to retirement, and turns into a self-revelatory autobiography. Useful to start with and then affecting. It's a surprise to have the trilogy together, but if you take each part in its own way (humor, morality, essay on life adjustment) it's really a gem. Incidentally, I have several times lent my copy of How To Retire At 41 to friends contemplating retirement (or struggling with it) because it's very good in that regard. And I love the way it deals with, and dismisses, the question of finances in just a few sentences at the beginning! For my vote, an excellent book to enjoy and to lend out. (Darn, who did I last lend my copy to???)

These highly comic essays start with simple instruction--how to eat an ice cream cone, how to fold a map--and move swiftly to more complex issues. In "How Not to Drink and Smoke So Much," for example, you can commiserate with Hills about the beloved 'tuddy' and learn from his early experiments in cutting down. Hills' aptitude for ingenious acronyms is displayed throughout the book. The essays become progressively more revealing--as when he describes a midlife breakdown in all its schizophrenic absurdity--and more seriously philosophical. His ideas about "undoing America," Montaigne, and about the desirability of eccentric traits are humorous, but they have a distinctly profound underside. I give this book to all my coolest friends.

Thought folks might find this of interest...I work at the Game Show Network, and while reviewing an old To Tell The Truth episode from 1972, I came across Mr. Hills as one of the contestants. Kitty Carlisle and Alan Alda picked him out of the lineup as the "real L. Rust Hills," and so did I. He just had the demeanor of a very witty and charismatic man, and after viewing the show, I was struck with the idea of checking out his work. Peggy Cass said he didn't look fussy, that he looked like "an unmade bed." He was actually dressed very stylishly, and he also looked somewhat like George Segal, which is neither here nor there, but interesting to me. Probably the only contestant on all the To Tell The Truth episodes I've seen who came out with his hands in his pockets. Now that's a guy who's definitely sure of himself, fussy or not.