Perfect Behavior

Description

If you prefer sarcastic,dry and dark humor,if you find satire,be it subtle or more,to be entertaining,you will certainly enjoy Donald Ogden Stewart’s Perfect Behavior.The book is a parody of etiquette that is hilariously witty and strikingly pertinent at the same time-though some of the forms of social interaction described and mocked at in the book have certainly become obsolete by now,the humor you find in it is timeless.

The book covers a vast inventory of social situations from courtship and the first expressions of love to engagements,weddings,the etiquette of travels,proper behavior at the opera and at the theater.He also talks about how to behave at a sports event,how to formulate correspondence properly and how to behave at balls and dinners,so the book pretty much covers all possible forms of social interaction-and all these in the typical,sarcastic,hilariously funny way that characterizes Stewart’s style and his view of life.

The author,Donald Ogden Stewart is best known as a comedy and melodrama writer and also as a screenwriter. The Yale University graduate became successful instantly after he published his first writing in 1920,A Parody Outline of History,which was every bit what the title promised, a parody of H. G. Wells’ The Outline of History. He soon became interested in the theater and a few years later he was already a recognized playwright.

Later on, he started adapting his own writing to film and in Hollywood he worked as a screenwriter, too, adapting the works of others to the big screen. Some of the films he wrote the screenplay for became huge box-office successes and, in 1940, Stewart won the Academy Award for what is his most notable work, The Philadelphia Story. The political turmoil of the McCarthy era affected Stewart’ life, too – his wife was a communist activist and Stewart was blacklisted in 1951, which led to the couple’s emigration to England in 1952. They lived in London where Stewart died in 1980.
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