Title: Quickies Too
Author: Don P. Marquess
Publisher: XlibrisUS
ISBN: 978-1669876083
Pages: 142
Genre: Memoirs/Humor
Reviewed by: David Allen

Read Book Review

There are many ways to define, to narrate, to track a life: humor and good feeling, warmth and conviviality, as in author Don P. Marquess’ Quickies Too, are definitely the way to go.

Marquess writes from the admirable though sometimes daunting aerie of looking back.

Looking back at a life extraordinarily well lived. At age eighty-two, Marquess writes with the alacrity and expansive hindsight of a true citizen of the world. Lucky readers get to meet Marquess in full bloom: Marquess as a successful brick manufacturer, as a photographer, as a musician. This man is in love with life and it shows on every page.

For example: the writer’s enthusiasm and love of baseball — a lifelong passion for the St. Louis Cardinals, in his case — is positively infectious. We are with Marquess when he photographs Mark McGwire’s legendary 70th home run. The author marked the occasion by producing 70 autographed photographic prints of the illustrious baseball. Throughout, the writing is breezy, conversational; akin to the chatty dugout talk during an exciting World Series game.

The stories in this volume are practically edible! They are like Krispy Kreme donuts – they go down fast, one after the other, in rapid chortle-filled succession, including the author’s childhood in Missouri; early wonder-filled junkets in the pages of encyclopedias; the onus of being born left-handed; the sheer miracle of owning one share of Berkshire Hathaway stock; poker games infamous and long; encounters with tornadoes and the awesome beauty of nature, including the Hawaiian Islands and the author’s beloved dogs.

There is a long-standing tradition of memoir-by-anecdote. Comparisons with Damon Runyon and P.G. Wodehouse is fair. A similarly hilarious volume, My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist, also comes to mind. (Boswell’s Samuel Johnson being perhaps the forerunner of this very delicious trope.)

My favorite chapter is Chapter 40, ‘Some People Can’t Tell A Joke.’ Read an excerpt and weep! A man was sitting on an airplane next to a very well-dressed elderly lady, and as the sun caught the ring on her finger the reflection of it was almost blinding. The man kept looking at the incredible diamond and just had to ask about it. He said, “Ma’am, I am a jeweler in Manhattan and I have never seen such an incredible diamond, it looks almost as big as the Hope Diamond.” She says, “Yes, it is almost the same size, it is the Klopman Diamond, but like the Hope Diamond, it carries a curse.” The jeweler says, “A curse? What is the curse?” She says “Mr. Klopman.”

The stories in Quickies Too have a tenderness and wistfulness entirely in keeping with the author’s stated mission: to charm the reader with the best and brightest moments of a life well lived and worth remembering.