Wallace Irwin, "The Teddysee"
Wallace Irwin was a brilliant, erudite young writer of the early 1900s, who got kicked out of college for writing and publishing satirical verses about the dean and the professors. That might have been the best thing that could have happened to launch his career. In the next decade or so, he produced a flood of comic verse that appeared in popular magazines, as well as book form. This little volume, "The Teddysee," was a parody of of Homer's classic "Odyssey," but the mock-hero was our former President, Theodore Roosevelt, who at the time was still very much in the news, and was still, as always, a figure of controversy. Irwin had great fun satirizing TR's big-game hunting, his unsolicited advice to foreign heads of state, and his take-no-prisoners battles with corruption and Big Business.
The book is rather short, since Irwin apparently ran past a deadline, or got off on some other enticing idea, or simply lost interest in the middle of the story. Still, it's a fun read for anyone with a nodding interest in American history.
Irwin went on to write many novels, right through the 1940s, including a unique historical whodunit, "The Julius Caesar Mystery." He was a witty poet and and a very entertaining writer, and, although his works sometimes reflect the outmoded social attitudes of his day, he is still a good read.
