Peter De Vries: About

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From our Databases

Peter De Vries, Writer, Is Dead; New Yorker Contributor Was 83 By PACE, ERIC (1993). New York Times, Sep 29, 1993, B8. ProQuest.

Peter De Vries—The First Thirty Years A Bibliography, 1934-1964 By BOWDEN, E. T. (1965). Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 6, 545–570. JSTOR.

Peter De Vries: The Case for Comic Seriousness By Challenger, C., & Challender, C. (1974). Studies in American Humor, 1(1), 40–51. JSTOR.

An Interview with Peter De Vries By Davis, D. M., & De Vries, P. (1967). College English, 28(7), 524–528. JSTOR.

The Off-Kilter Universe of Novelist Peter de Vries, Back in Print: "The Tunnel of Love" and "Reuben, Reuben" -- Two Comic Novels, Nearly Forgotten, That Shouldn't Be By Frank, J. (2015). Washington Post, 03-26-2015, Bookworld. ProQuest.

Comic Novelist Revels in Sly Wit But Also Finds Darker Side By Frank, J. (2015, Mar 27). The Washington Post. ProQuest.

A “Studies In The Novel” Interview: An Interview In New York with Peter De Vries By De Vries, P., & Sale, R. B. (1969). Studies in the Novel, 1(3), 364–369. JSTOR.

From The Collection

Who was Peter De Vries?

Peter De Vries is responsible for contributing to the cultural vernacular such witticisms as "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be" and "Deep down, he's shallow." He was, according to Kingsley Amis, "the funniest serious writer to be found on either side of the Atlantic." “Quick with quips so droll and witty, so penetrating and precise that you almost don’t feel them piercing your pretensions, Peter De Vries was perhaps America’s best comic novelist not named Mark Twain. . .” (Sam McManis, Sacramento Bee).

His achievement seemed best appreciated by his fellow writers. Harper Lee, naming the great American writers, said, “Peter De Vries . . . is the Evelyn Waugh of our time". Anthony Burgess called De Vries “surely one of the great prose virtuosos of modern America.” Peter De Vries was a radio actor in the 1930s, and editor for Poetry magazine from 1938 to 1944. During World War II he served in the U.S. Marines attaining the rank of Captain, and was seconded to the O.S.S., predecessor to the CIA.

He joined the staff of The New Yorker magazine at the insistence of James Thurber and worked there from 1944 to 1987. A prolific writer, De Vries wrote short stories, reviews, poetry, essays, a play, novellas, and twenty-three novels, several of which were made into films.

De Vries met his wife, Katinka Loeser, while at Poetry magazine. They married and moved to Westport, Connecticut, where they raised 4 children. The death of his 10-year-old daughter Emily from leukemia inspired The Blood of the Lamb, the most poignant and the most autobiographical of De Vries's novels.

In Westport, De Vries formed a lifelong friendship with the young J. D. Salinger, who later described the writing process as "opening a vein and bleeding onto the page." The two writers clearly "understood each other very well” (son Derek De Vries in "The Return of Peter De Vries", Westport Magazine, April 2006). De Vries received an honorary degree in 1979 from Susquehanna University, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May 1983.

His books were sadly out of print by the time of his death. After the New Yorker published a critical reappraisal of De Vries’ work however (“Few writers have understood literary comedy as well as De Vries, and few comic novelists have had his grasp of tragedy”), The University of Chicago Press began reissuing his works in 2005, starting with The Blood of the Lamb and Slouching Toward Kalamazoo. Continue reading from Goodreads

Additional Online Sources

Peter De Vries (Poetry Foundation)

Peter De Vries (Encyclopedia Britannica)

Peter De Vries, Writer, Is Dead; New Yorker Contributor Was 83 (NY Times)

Riches of Embarassment (The New Yorker)

Peter De Vries (Encyclopedia.com)

Peter De Vries Collection, 1910-1996 (The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)