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| Author Lloyd Alexander with one of his cats. |
One hundred years ago this month, my all-time favorite
author was born. I’m not saying Lloyd
Alexander was truly the best author in the world, only that that’s been my
decided opinion ever since I was in the third grade. My teacher read the
Chronicles of Prydain to us at the excruciatingly slow rate of one short,
perfect chapter per day, emblazoning his words and artistry upon my mind. I’d
ponder the daily chapters and couldn’t bear to miss a day of school. Lloyd Alexander was born the 30th
of January in 1924, leaving not only an array of award-winning fantasy novels
but also his prior nonfiction works—sprinkled with tongue-in-cheek,
self-effacing humor, always polished. Here I am reviewing an early work entitled
Park Avenue Vet (1962).
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Author Sophia Alexander with
Lloyd Alexander's Park Avenue Vet (1962) |
For this year of Lloyd’s 100th birthday, I am at
last reading the four remaining books that I’ve never gotten around to reading (or
didn’t finish, in one case). I do believe three of the four are now out of
print. I collected these volumes long ago but never felt drawn to them, in
particular, tending to instead go back to my favorites time and again. This
first was written in collusion with Dr. Louis J. Camuti, a veterinarian who at
the time (1962) had already been making house calls exclusively for cats for
forty long years.
Dr. Camuti certainly lucked into getting Lloyd Alexander to
work with him on his cat tales. Lloyd had
already written My Five Tigers, a charming book about the stray cats who
adopted Lloyd and his wife, Janine. Park Avenue Vet did not turn out to
be quite so delightful as its predecessor, for all that Lloyd’s style pervades
the writing. It starts out well enough
and is full of interesting cat anecdotes from beginning to end—cute enough that
I contemplated trying to order another copy for my cat-loving daughter. Soon, however,
one realizes that although Dr. Camuti has a certain understanding about cat
sociology and a decided affection for cats, he’s not particularly broad-minded
and is nowhere near the intellect that Lloyd is. It seems obvious in the
passages where Camuti insisted on keeping something in the book, as it’s suddenly
less tasteful and falls flat, as if even Lloyd simply couldn’t muster the charm
to make it flow as well as the rest of the writing. After all, it can be literally
impossible to transform puffed-up insularity into ‘charming’. Besides, I do
believe Lloyd himself was in some way offended by the
old-fashioned perspective. Camuti comes off as a pompous,
name-dropping know-it-all, and this happens increasingly towards the end of the
book. Camuti co-authored another book a
few years later, but he had to use another author to polish it for him, as by
that time Lloyd Alexander was working on his more successful fantasy novels
(Newberry Award-winning!)—but also, I suspect that Lloyd Alexander had already had
more than enough of Dr. Louis J. Camuti in the writing of Park Avenue Vet.
Still, for all that, it’s not the absolute worst (so far) of
Lloyd Alexander’s books. That dubious soubriquet goes to another commissioned
biographical work: August Bondi: Border Hawk, so dull as to seem to be
written by someone else, quite devoid of Lloyd’s trademark wit. It’s truly as if Lloyd Alexander were pinned
down and forced to write lines! Mind
you, I read that book well over a decade ago, and I’m almost curious enough to
give it another go, to see if it really was that bad. But clearly I don’t recommend it.
My all-time favorite Lloyd Alexander work is Janine Is
French, which is about his beloved Parisian wife and is utter charm from
beginning to end. I’m quite sorry it’s out of print. For most people, and definitely for the
underage crowd, The Chronicles of Prydain is where to begin. These five novels
are inspired by Welsh legend. Not only does Lloyd’s wit and polished style enchant
the reader, but his characters wrestle with ethics and lofty ideals about
truthfulness and finding their purpose; these come through in his novels in a
way that his nonfiction anecdotes simply don’t do.
Park Avenue Vet may not inspire the reader with
idealism, but it will make the reader love cats all the more. Even
non-cat-lovers will find themselves enchanted with felines, at least for a
while. As for the devoted and
now-disparaged cat veterinarian, Dr. Camuti—I’m sure I’d have enjoyed meeting
him and hearing his stories first-hand.
He loved cats very much and never stopped attending them. He continued to
work as a cat vet until he dropped dead at the age of eighty-seven, on his way
to a house call. Now that’s devotion.
