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Ring W. Lardner's comic narrator treats turning 35 as both a crisis and a joke, delivering a mock-serious guide to middle age filled with slang, self-mockery, and sharp observations about masculinity. He riffs on age, marriage, children, hair loss, drinking, and the absurdity of people acting as if 35 is ancient, while also teasing his own name, vanity, and social awkwardness. As he invents "research" about mortality and domestic life, he argues that marriage and middle age somehow make a man safer, steadier, and nearly death-proof. Beneath the jokes, the book traces a real shift: youth's restless freedom gives way to the comforts and responsibilities of settled life. Home becomes less a prison than a refuge of good food, ease, and familiar routines, even as the narrator winces at the small humiliations of no longer being seen as young. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.
