From Publishers Weekly
The life of the man who is fondly remembered for his verse "Candy/Is dandy/ But liquor/Is quicker" was often anything but dandy, according to his assiduous biographer. Ogden Nash's (1902–1971) genteel Southern heritage and one year at Harvard (due to his father's financial reverses) provided him with literary aspirations that led him to fear his jaunty, pun-filled, gently satiric verse was not real poetry. Even after acclaim greeted his frequent publication in the New Yorker, finances forced him to leave his beloved (and temperamental) wife and two daughters to go on the road as a lecturer and performer, where he often suffered bouts of intestinal illness and depression. His yearning for a career in musical theater was briefly (if memorably) fulfilled when he provided the lyrics for Kurt Weill's classic "Speak Low." Gratification came from unexpected sources, however, including a lifelong friendship with S.J. Perelman and the praise of W.H. Auden. Parker, a retired lawyer writing with the Nash family's cooperation, provides numerous examples of Nash's distinctive poetry, his wit underscored by gentle social commentary, antic wordplay and rhyme and meter that seemed random but was meticulously composed. Parker's is a useful, highly readable biography of one of America's best-loved poets. Photos. 12 b&w photos not seen by PW. (Apr. 29) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Ivy League dropout Ogden Nash (1902-71) went into publishing when being literary still opened doors. He gravitated to the five-year-old New Yorker. Briefly on staff, he contributed to the magazine until the end of his life; roughly a third of his thousand-plus poems debuted in it. More than his waggish prosody, his trademark was his sensibility as a literate, mannerly man bemused by modern life. His art was a matter of "wry acceptance" of the predicament of living in a world made enormously perilous by human exertions. He earned his family's living in the comfort he had known since childhood--well appointed and attended by servants--with his poetry, which lucratively included a hit musical and engendered radio and TV appearances, recordings, and lecture tours. He had to work diligently, but he was broadly, durably popular. Parker's appreciative biography, whose only fault is sometimes proceeding as if merely embellishing Nash's appointment books, strongly suggests one big reason for that popularity: Nash was a decent, lovable person. Now for a complete poems--Library of America, are you listening? Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Billy Collins
...How well-timed is Parker's examination of...Ogden Nash, who refused to hide his joyful wit behind...'heavy verse.'

Mark Russell, political satirist
Parker’s superb biography of Nash is the book I would rather find in a hotel drawer than the Gideon Bible.

X. J. Kennedy
Nash was a man without enemies; Douglas M. Parker’s captivating biography should win him legions of new friends.

Dana Gioia
...Intelligent, informative, and engaging new biography fills a significant scholarly need.... It is long overdue in the telling.

Publishers Weekly
Parker’s is a useful, highly readable biography of one of America’s best-loved poets.

Bloomberg.com
Well-researched.

Brad Leithauser, Wall Street Journal
Admirably concise.

Melanie Lauwers, Cape Cod Times
Explores the complex person behind the deceptively simple verse.

Book Description
For years, readers have longed for a biography to match Nash's charm, wit, and good nature; now we have it in Douglas Parker's absorbing and delightful life of the poet.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Ogden Nash grew up in Savannah, Georgia, and Rye, New York, dropped out of Harvard after his freshman year, and went to work as an editor with Doubleday in New York. When he began publishing humorous poems in The New Yorker, and later when he worked at the magazine, he became part of the fabled literary circle that included E.B. and Katherine White, Dorothy Parker, Harold Ross, and S.J. Perelman. He went on to publish more than two dozen books of verse as well as screenplays, lyrics and scripts for the theater, children's stories, and essays." Mr. Parker, who has had exclusive access to Nash family letters and diaries, and permission to quote liberally from them and from Nash's poems, has written a biography of the poet who reveled in whimsy and wordplay, but who was applauded by his more serious contemporaries.

FROM THE CRITICS

Bloomberg.com

Well-researched.

Publishers Weekly

The life of the man who is fondly remembered for his verse "Candy/Is dandy/ But liquor/Is quicker" was often anything but dandy, according to his assiduous biographer. Ogden Nash's (1902-1971) genteel Southern heritage and one year at Harvard (due to his father's financial reverses) provided him with literary aspirations that led him to fear his jaunty, pun-filled, gently satiric verse was not real poetry. Even after acclaim greeted his frequent publication in the New Yorker, finances forced him to leave his beloved (and temperamental) wife and two daughters to go on the road as a lecturer and performer, where he often suffered bouts of intestinal illness and depression. His yearning for a career in musical theater was briefly (if memorably) fulfilled when he provided the lyrics for Kurt Weill's classic "Speak Low." Gratification came from unexpected sources, however, including a lifelong friendship with S.J. Perelman and the praise of W.H. Auden. Parker, a retired lawyer writing with the Nash family's cooperation, provides numerous examples of Nash's distinctive poetry, his wit underscored by gentle social commentary, antic wordplay and rhyme and meter that seemed random but was meticulously composed. Parker's is a useful, highly readable biography of one of America's best-loved poets. Photos. 12 b&w photos not seen by PW. (Apr. 29) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An authorized, entirely sympathetic account of the wildly popular humorist poet who composed as facilely for the New Yorker as for Hollywood and Hallmark Cards. In his day (1902-71), Nash was America's most prominent purveyor of snappy rhyming verse. Enjoying a fairly privileged childhood in Rye, N.Y., and in Savannah, Ga., where his father ran a prosperous business, he attended private school and then Harvard for a year, dropping out to make his way to New York. He worked at various publishing houses during the Depression, and his poems began to appear regularly in the Saturday Evening Post. His long association with the New Yorker began under Harold Ross and continued until his [Nash's] death; "the restorative Nashian couplet or clarifying stanza" (as Roger Angell described it) attracted just the sort of readership the magazine wanted. Still, Nash struggled to make a living, keep wife Frances in comfort, and raise two daughters, both of whom became talented writer/illustrators. He worked briefly in Hollywood as a screenwriter (without credit) on The Wizard of Oz, and he had some success as a Broadway lyricist, most notably for Kurt Weill's One Touch of Venus in 1942. But exhausting reading circuits were more lucrative, though they ruined his health. The tireless Nash also wrote children's books and made frequent appearances on such TV shows as Masquerade Party. Retired lawyer and neophyte biographer Parker's cheery work presents Nash's life as straightforward and blameless-much like his poetry, which gently satirizes family issues, politics, and human foibles. But the author's lack of training in literary history means that his account somewhat scants the ideas and currents that buoyedNash. Perhaps, in the end, a light poet doesn't lend himself to psychoanalysis. The ample quotations from Nash's poetry are certainly a pleasure. Proficiently recognizes and restores an important American voice.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

...Intelligent, informative, and engaging new biography fills a significant scholarly need ...It is a story long overdue in the telling. — Dana Gioia

...How well-timed is Douglas Parker's examination of...Ogden Nash, who refused to hide his joyful wit behind...'heavy verse.' — Billy Collins

Mark Russell

Parker's superb biography of Nash is the book I would rather find in a hotel drawer than the Gideon Bible.  — political satirist