How to Tell your Friends from the Apes

If your friends are like mine, then there is no difficulty in this matter. If your friends are like other people I’ve met though, it is a bit trickier. The book by Will Cuppy that shares its title with this post is in every respect just like his other books. The humor is dry and witty and pertains entirely to natural history, sex and academics 1. “How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes”2 was actually the first book in Cuppy’s animal series. His only previous book was “How to be a Hermit.”3 Cuppy’s books, which also include “How to Attract the Wombat” and “How to Become Extinct”4 actually have nothing to do with the how to’s of their titles but are rather collections of humorous sketches about animals. As often as not, the qualities attributed to the animal under investigation are identical to somebody that the author was familiar with. When looked at solely in terms of personality, it is perhaps too difficult to distinguish vast hordes of human beings from simian5 counterparts.

1. Though seldom to any two of the three naturally coincide
2. Originally published in 1931. Cuppy worked as a book reviewer and managed to convince a few of his book reviewer friends that the public aught to purchase and possibly even read his books.
3. A book that finally convince me that I was indeed a natural hermit.
4. “The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody” was published posthumously and was given a title by somebody who was apparently ignorant of Cuppy’s other works.
5. or avian or reptilian or piscian or even molluscan