Potatoes Are Cheaper

A Jewish freshman searches for love and money at the University of Minnesota in this raucous satire from the author of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis It's the middle of the Great Depression and Morris Katz and his cousin Albert are broke. The self-declared "best humpers in St. Paul," they haven't quite figured out how to make their talents pay. But that's all about to change when they head off to college on a mission from Morris's mother to find rich, unattractive Jewish girls to marry. The boys arrive on campus armed with a secret weapon: the poetry of Morris's cousin Crip, a stay-at-home genius who sublimates his sex drive into song. Within a day, Morris is courting Celeste Zimmerman, the frumpy heir to a movie theater franchise. But then an Irish Catholic beauty falls under the spell of Crip's verse and goes gaga over Morris. She thinks he's a Jewish-Communist revolutionary poet, and who is he to tell her otherwise? But is it happiness Morris truly wants, or money? And what will Mama Katz say?

About the Author :
Max Shulman (1919-1988) was an American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and short story writer best known as the author of Rally Round the Flag, Boys! (1957), The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1951), and the popular television series of the same name. The son of Russian immigrants, Shulman was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and attended the University of Minnesota, where he wrote a celebrated column for the campus newspaper and edited the humor magazine. His bestselling debut novel, Barefoot Boy with Cheek (1943), was followed by two books written while he served in the Army during World War II: The Feather Merchants (1944) and The Zebra Derby (1946). The Tender Trap (1954), a Broadway play cowritten with Robert Paul Smith, was adapted into a movie starring Frank Sinatra and Debbie Reynolds. His acclaimed novel Rally Round the Flag, Boys! became a film starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Shulman's other books include Sleep till Noon (1950), a hilarious reinvention of the rags-to-riches tale; I Was a Teenage Dwarf (1959), which chronicles the further adventures of Dobie Gillis; Anyone Got a Match? (1964), a prescient satire of the tobacco, television, and food industries; and Potatoes Are Cheaper (1971), the tale of a romantic Jewish college student in depression-era St. Paul. His movies include The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (with Debbie Reynolds and Bob Fosse) and House Calls (with Walter Mathau and Glenda Jackson). One of America's premier humorists, he greatly influenced the comedy of Woody Allen and Bob Newhart, among many others.

Review :
Praise for Max Shulman "The first person I ever laughed at while reading was Max Shulman." --Woody Allen "Students of humor [should] brainwash themselves with the best expressions of the art by reading . . . Max Shulman." --Steve Allen "Ribald, outrageous, careening humor that was no respecter of boundaries." --Los Angeles Times "Shulman was a satirist with a sunny disposition. . . . A Woody Allen without neuroses." --Richard Corliss "Wry, cynical, intelligent, irreverent--nothing is sacred on Shulman's campus." --Elinor Lipman "Shulman is a brilliant satirist. His extraordinary word choice is the core of his humor. Often the bitter core." --Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "A combination of artists shaped my sense of humor: Robert Benchley with the printed word. Max Shulman and James Thurber." --Bob Newhart "Funny and frantic . . . Very wise and sharp satire." --Ed Grant, Media Funhouse