Archy & Mehitabel

My neighbor Dave told me about this book and asked me to pick it up if I found it anywhere. I found it online for 1$. I do not use Amazon like regular people and will only buy from sellers — used books is 99% of my use of Amazon. I love it because this one is from a library in Michigan– it’s fun to recover what might end up in a landfill. Makes me feel better about being a human.

Anyway, Archy is a cockroach and Mehitabel is a cat as you can see from the cover of the book. The book is written as a series of poems with a number of plots. Archy’s philosophy is one such plot– why are butterflies more revered than cockroaches? Another is Mehitabel’s general character– she has kittens constantly but says she just wants to be an artist. The book is from 1916, so I’m not going to say it’s anti-feminist, but the portrayal of the female being leaves something to be desired…she’s a whore cat. There, I said it.

I suspended my disbelief since neighbor Dave asked me to read it, and given the time period it is from, I was able to persevere and quite frankly found many fun gems inside. I am just going to paste a photos here and you can take what you like and leave the rest! This brought me to 1,588 pages total, leaving me with 430 pages left to complete the task at hand! I can see the finish line…

Let me know what you think of A&M– maybe some of you have heard of this silly book?!