Donald Robert Perry Marquis

Donald Robert Perry Marquis (1878-1937) was an American humorist, journalist, poet, and columnist best known as Don Marquis. His major works include the Archy and Mehitabel sketches, Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers, The Old Soak, and many newspaper columns. Donald Robert Perry Marquis matters because he turned daily journalism into durable comic literature. Archy, a free-verse cockroach who types by jumping on keys, and Mehitabel, an alley cat with grand memories, gave Marquis a way to satirize modern life, literary fashion, work, optimism, and pretension. His humor is light on the surface but often melancholy beneath it. Marquis's quotes endure because they catch middle age, business manners, pessimism, happiness, and social vanity in quick comic reversals that still feel modern. His comic timing still makes ordinary disappointment feel oddly companionable.

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