How to Raise Your I.Q. By Eating Gifted Children
Paperback: 220 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0595002366
From the Publisher
Lewis Burke Frumkes, one of America’s very best satirists, sharpens his pen on the fads, fears, and fashions of the urban landscape. Here are 49 hilarious ways to cope with them. Explore the benefits of aerobic typing. Wile a friend with “Exotic Gifts from Harry and Larry” including “Road Imperial Valium—America’s Favorite Tranquilizer—Only Better.” Take charge of your next meeting with Frumkes’s “New Rules of Order,” which include Blurting, Interrupting, and Bullwhipping. Jump in the saddle and rope a roach—apartment style. And, of course, raise your I.Q. with a delicious “Gifted Child Fricassee.”
From the Author
People always ask me whether I got this idea from Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” and in fact while I may have read Swift’s essay in high school or college, I actually came up with the idea while I was doing a cover story on intelligence for Town & Country Magazine. In the course of my research I came across a study of Planarium worms (sand worms) which suggested that when one worm eats its friend it acquires the learning traits of the friend. The next thing I knew out popped my essay “How To Raise Your I.Q. By Eating Gifted Children,” which caused quite a commotion. When I proposed a humor collection to Tim McGinnis an editor at the old McGraw-Hill Trade Division who liked my work we decided to use the I.Q. essay as the title of the book. Nine out of ten bookstores buyers chuckled when they heard the title but the tenth would say “That’s disgusting, I wouldn’t have a book like that in my store.” When it was finally published I had the misfortune of appearing in the same McGraw-Hill catalogue and month, October, as Erma Bombeck who was McGraw-Hill’s biggest selling writer. They published 800,000 of Erma’s book, and 15,000 of mine. It was an inauspicious beginning though my title was selected as best book title ever in Robert Byrne’s own best-selling book “The 687 Best Things Ever Said.” It also established me as a humor writer to reckon with.
