Some Instructions to My Wife: Concerning the Upkeep of the House and Marriage, and to My Son and Daughter Concerning the Conduct of Their Childhood

From Putting Things Away to The Marriage Almanac (not to mention the pedantic Index, in itself a comic wonder), Stanley Crawford gives the married, the unmarried, and the formerly married a classic satire on all the sanctimonious marriage manuals ever produced. Starting with the complete title, Some Instructions to My Wife Concerning the Upkeep of the House and Marriage, and to My Son and Daughter Concerning the Conduct of Their Childhood, a boorish narrator sets down some seventy-three pieces of advice to his wife, young son, and two-year-old daughter, intended to foster and maintain domestic tranquility in an age of anxiety. Taken literally, our neo-Victorian head of the house is a male chauvinist pig of sorts, but what reader would deny that the sources of Crawford's satire run deep in the American grain?

Author: Stanley Crawford
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Published: 11/01/1985
Pages: 178
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.57lbs
Size: 8.53h x 5.53w x 0.57d
ISBN: 9780916583156

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 05/15/1996 pg. 87
Publishers Weekly 02/12/1996

About the Author

Stanley Crawford is a writer whose work displays a deep understanding of the complex enterprise of being human. His first novel, the dark satire?"GASCOYNE," ?appeared in 1966. Crawford's second novel, ?"Travel Notes (From Here To There) "appeared in 1967.?"Log of The S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine"?was first published by Knopf in 1972. Unfortunately, the book fell out of print and for a time was revived by the University of New Mexico press.