Archy and Mehitabel

Marquis’ columns star two unlikely, charming characters.

Archy is a free-verse poet reincarnated as a sardonic, philosophical cockroach who often wonders who he will be next. “…a dog, or bird or will I sink lower and go into the carcass of a poison spider or a politician?”

Mehitabel, a sassy, hedonistic alley cat, prowling Shinbone Alley in New York City, is on her ninth life.

One may have to be of a certain age to know about these guys. Or perhaps you are familiar, because Marquis’ books about Archy and Mehitabel have never gone out of print. Either way, his body of work is worth enjoying. Nor - a caveat here - is this for children, per se. Its innocent title betrays some very adult ideas and commentary. I recommend The Annotated Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel with an updated introduction by E.B. White.

My mom and dad (newspaper people, wouldn’t ya know) introduced me to Archy and Mehitabel long ago. My folks spoke with great affection and appreciation for the humor, satire, and sometimes incisive commentary served up by lowly feline and arthropod pals.

Archy and Mehitabel travel the streets of New York during the day in the 1920s and appear indoors at The Sun office of author/columnist Don Marquis to chronicle their tales after the boss is gone for the night. Archy jumps and hops with his little cockroach body and head on the typewriter keys to communicate his latest thoughts. And because he can’t press the Shift key and a letter key simultaneously, all his missives are in lowercase and almost always sans punctuation. He always entreats the boss (Marquis) to leave him a fresh page in the typewriter every night.

Mehitabel is charming, with a bent for carefree, irreverent adventure. She has seen many lives, and imparts her perspectives on the current times, societal norms and values in the 1920s, “a time of Prohibition, unemployment, unionization, barriers of class and race, isolationism, and war.” She is a brazen, sassy feline whose motto is always “Toujours gai, kid, toujours gai” and claims to have once been the regal and tempestuous Cleopatra. Now, she lives an alley cat’s life, possesses a very suspect morality, an irreverent mouth, and denounces motherhood, yet continues to bring home litters of kittens. She also gives voice to Marquis’ practice of inhabiting bars and tippling to bon vivant excess.

By the way, there’s an actual Facebook page devoted to Marquis, and just by reading about it, you are declared a de facto member of the Don Marquis Prohibition and Double Scotch Society. Fans still meet—at a bar in New York, of course. I had no idea there existed an Archyfest until I stumbled over it on social media. That’s one for Facebook on the positive side.

Seeing Marquis’ writing on a surface level would be a mistake. There is so much more.

Archy reminds us that he has a unique view of the world “from underneath,” he says. As the tiniest bug from the lowest places, he is gifted with some of the highest insights into the often overlooked aspects of life and humanity. “His views would be very different, just like Tom and Huck’s views would’ve been, were they not on a lower rung in society,” White reminds us.

Archy types up a note to Marquis, the boss, about a spider who lives in Marquis’ locker and a couple of cockroach friends and a friendly rat who all gather round a lightning bug, urging him to flash and flash. They affectionately nickname him broadway (lower case of course). The ultimate fate of the bug, however, is untoward. If we are to get this message, it’s not unlike human predators who toy with beauty and then kill it for sport. Marquis is a literary magician who can convey quirky humor and alarming darkness in the same breath.

Archy observes, “The more I see of human nature, the less I know whether to despise it for being so easily gulled or so ready to gull.” Then he says that when someone tells a lie eight times, they actually start to believe it themselves. Sound familiar?

Archy tells the boss about an adventure on the wing of the Wright Brothers airplane, as the wind rushes by him “like a church scandal going through a little village.” Oh, sweet mother of Elvis, it’s perfect.

Archy tells a tale about a fly-swatter (newly invented, believe it or not) and says it all happened so fast that “when the mania for swatting grips a man he forgets pity.”

Indeed, Marquis’ artful, rye satire and use of clever repartee gives us a whimsical yet poignant view of the human condition. As Philip Roth says, “Satire is moral outrage transformed into comic art.”

The timeless wisdom of a cockroach and an alley cat reminds us that it's okay to see things differently, to question the status quo, and to embrace the quirks and complexities that make us human. We would all do well to remember that.

Let us all raise a belated glass to Don Marquis, his beloved Archy, and Mehitabel. I'm sorry I procrastinated in writing this column about a pretty great writer and his cohorts. As Archy would say, “Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.”