{"id":3039,"date":"2014-09-02T10:20:39","date_gmt":"2014-09-02T17:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/?p=3039"},"modified":"2014-09-02T10:19:57","modified_gmt":"2014-09-02T17:19:57","slug":"happiness-is-widely-copied","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/2014\/09\/happiness-is-widely-copied\/","title":{"rendered":"Happiness Is Widely Copied"},"content":{"rendered":"
WARNING: This piece does include an announcement of something I’ve just published.<\/h6>\n

Back when the Peanuts gift book\u00a0Happiness is a Warm Puppy<\/em> was published in 1962, it was huge. Not in size, it’s just about five and a half inches square, but in impact. This little thing spent forty-five weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, and as best as I have been able to tell, it shaped the modern gift book market. Because success breeds imitation. And success breeds mocking as well. Combine those two factors and you had a whole mini-industry of Happiness is a Warm Parody<\/i> books from various publishers. Books like\u00a0Sadness is a back view<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0Happiness is a Dry Martini<\/em> (that last one by long-time Tonight Show host Johnny Carson) were hitting the shelves, often copying the size, layout, and odd use of color of the original. \"IMG_0559\"<\/a>Humorous book publisher Kanrom Inc.,<\/a> founded by stand-up comedian Jackie Kannon and printing guy Alexander Roman, took their shot with both barrels. In 1963, they launched two such parodies, both coming from a dark-version-of-the-Playboy-philosophy angle, where marriage is a mistake and sex-with-anyone-but-you-wife is the goal.\u00a0Happiness is a Rat Fink<\/em>\u00a0is the take on the upside (“Rat Fink” is a Jackie Kannon term; his own stand-up site was The Rat Fink Room, he later published\u00a0Rat Fink Magazine<\/em>) and\u00a0Unhappiness is a Dead Dog<\/em> was the downside. The two books have different people writing the text, different artists drawing the pictures (replete with topless cartoon gals), but they are linked not just by the tone, but which actually have a couple “call backs”, jokes in the second book that are purposely echoing jokes in the first.<\/p>\n

\"HappinessColorSample\"<\/a>
A few of the cartoons seem to be direct references to items in Happiness is a\u00a0Warm Puppy<\/em>; this one echoes an entry in that book where happiness is having thirty-five cents to go to the movies with all the trimmings.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And I saw these matched books, and said “hey, they should be under a single cover”… so I’m going ahead and doing it. As of now, these out-of-print-for-decades books are available as a single volume, with the rather obvious title of\u00a0Happiness is a Rat Fink and Unhappiness is a Dirty Dog.<\/em> Now, I’m not going to try to convince you that these are great works. They’re interesting \u00a0looks at a certain mood of the moment. The artists do bring their own styles rather than trying faux-Schulz.\u00a0Rat Fink<\/em> illustrator\u00a0Ken Rinciari was an illustrator for folks like the\u00a0New York Times<\/em> and the\u00a0New York Review of Books<\/em>.\u00a0George Botich, who did the ink-and-wash work for\u00a0Dirty Dog<\/em>, still enjoys success as an oil painter.<\/p>\n

\"unhappinessBWsample\"<\/a>
This is as racy an image as I’ll allow on the blog. Sorry.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is not an ideal reprint. For technical reasons, I had to increase the size somewhat, to six inches square. And to keep the price reasonable, the one-color-print-on-one-color-paper look of the original has been replaced with black, white, and shades of gray, with imperfect reproduction. I’m not giving this book my strong endorsement, but if you want it, it lists for a mere $7.99, and you can order it now<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"HappyAndUnhappy\"<\/a>By the way, if you’re reading this and are related to Alexander Roman or are otherwise linked to Kanrom, please drop me a line!<\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WARNING: This piece does include an announcement of something I’ve just published. Back when the Peanuts gift book\u00a0Happiness is a Warm Puppy was published in 1962, it was huge. Not in size, it’s just about five and a half inches square, but in impact. This little thing spent forty-five weeks … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","filesize_raw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classic-finds","category-new-releases","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3039\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}