Who Wrote the Beaver Papers (Yet Again)?

Ok, we’re going to do one more Beaver Papers 2 quiz. Here’s the deal, in case you’re new in town: about 30 years ago, Will Jacobs and I wrote a book called The Beaver Papers, in which we posited what the results might have been if 25 great authors had written episodes of the old sitcom, Leave It to Beaver. This year, something possessed us to write a sequel to it, which has just been published by Atomic Drop Press (and is available from Amazon in Kindle and paperback). We had tons of fun writing it and are excited to have it out there.
      Below are excerpts from five of the 25 parodies in The Beaver Papers 2. After that comes a list of six authors and titles. Your job is to see if you can match each of the five excerpts to one of those authors. (Actually, your job is to buy the book. But we’re hoping this tricks you into it!)

1. As they climb back into the car, June whispers, “Ward, I’m worried that your uncle’s stories may be a bad influence on the boys.” “Oh, now, June,” he says, “I’m sure he’s run out of tall tales by now.” But as soon as they drive off, Uncle Billy says, “Did I tell you boys about the time a bull gored a lady right in the heart? Killed her deader than a mackerel. It happened near here. Folks used to say that bull was really Christ.” “Uncle Billy, please!” Ward hollers, but Wally quickly puts in, “Aw, gee, dad. Don’t go ape on Uncle Billy. I want to hear more about the bull that’s really Christ.” “Me too!” Beaver shrills.

2. June opens the door and smiles that the pot roast is ready, but his eyes fix absurdly on the pearls against the rodlike bones of her neck, snowballs of glamor trying to hide the winter trees of her age, and he wonders if he’ll eat the pot roast because his wife made it or if he made her his wife because he likes pot roast. As he follows her toward the kitchen he feels himself topple into the idea, as moist as it is desiccated, that maybe what’s missing is what his marriage had in the beginning, whatever that may have been.

3. Beaver counts six of them. Feeling the curved recessed grip of the Glatz beste Zwillengabel in the palm of his hand, and carefully taking into account his elevated position, he takes aim and slings off a shot that shatters Blanco’s sternum. He aims again, but just before he cuts loose the remaining four gang members whip their bikes around and speed back the way they’d come, leaving a slack-jawed Lumpy alone in the middle of the street. “Up here,” Beaver calls. Lumpy looks up and his eyes goggle as he spots him inside the giant soup bowl.

4. On the way out of the school, Beaver sees Judy Hensler. He doesn’t know why he wants to talk to her, because she’s a boring, phoney girl, but the thing about girls is that when you feel crumby you can fall half in love with one for no reason, even the boring, phoney ones, because that’s just how it is with girls. But when he says he wants to talk, and she asks why and he says for no reason, she tells him he’d better give her five dollars first, and he calls her a crumby pain in the ass, and she punches him in the stomach.

5. After school that day, Beaver asks June how best to survive an atomic blast in the house. June cheerfully points out all the various tables in the house and explains that all Beaver has to do in the event of a searing, blinding flash of light is to duck under any one of them and cover his head and neck with his arms. She goes on to say, “I can stop the bleeding from every part of your body except your throat, Beaver, so make sure you cover up! Of course, your hands and arms might incur hideous radiation burns, but they won’t necessarily be life threatening.” Reassured, Beaver grins broadly.

So who wrote what?

A. J. D. Salinger, The Beaver in the Rye
B. Henry Miller, Tropic of Beaver
C. John Updike, Beaver, Run
D. Elmore Leonard, Beaver Is Coming
E. U. S. Office of Civil Defense, Duck and Cleaver
F. Flannery O’Connor, A Good Beaver Is Hard to Find

Who Wrote the Beaver Papers 2?

When I posted a quiz last month based on The Beaver Papers 2, the new humor book Will Jacobs have just had published, it was a unanimous hit! I liked it, Will Jacobs liked it, our publisher at Atomic Drop Press liked it, and not one person wrote in to disagree! With that kind of universal acclaim, how could we not do it again?

      Just in case you’ve forgotten, the new book, available from Amazon or straight from the publisher, is the very-long-awaited sequel to our “cult classic,” The Beaver Papers (recently released in a 30th Anniversary Edition).
      Below are excerpts from five of the 25 parodies in the new book, each positing what an episode of the classic sitcom Leave It to Beaver would have been like if written by a world-renowned author. Your job is to find a match for each from the list at the end!

1. It’s not that she feels unhappy, June thinks as she goes through the motions of vacuuming the floors and giving the boys hunks of milk as they barge in after school. It’s that she feels nothing. She wonders what real people feel. Then she wonders if real people even exist. Everyone around her looks like such a two-dimensional stereotype. The world seems to be entirely in shades of gray, and she begins to think that even the laughter she hears whenever one of her boys says something cute is only a tape recording played on cue.

2. Beaver has a hard time paying attention in school that day as he can’t stop thinking about Miss Landers being a Ganymedean slime mold. But at last he’s able to shake off the preoccupation. So what if she’s a particularly hideous alien life form, he tells himself. Since she’s able to project the image of a pretty young school teacher and rarely sends him to Mrs. Rayburn’s office, it doesn’t really make any difference.

3. Ward has seen Larry Mondello countless times before and felt nothing for him but a vague distaste, but until now he has never seen him wearing only swimming trunks. Awash in the vast, pale sweep of Larry’s flesh, the abandoned voluptuousness of his sheer corpulence, Ward is surprised to find himself strangely transfixed. He tells himself that he must surely be appreciating Larry at an aesthetic level. He wonders if Larry is the Platonic ideal of something and wishes he had studied more classical philosophy along with the Greek mythology.

4. Well, sir, I immediately went into my act, fiddling with my cap, making sure my shirt was buttoned to the throat, flashing my buck-toothed grin. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, I always say. I’d worked dang hard on my perfect-child routine, and I knew there’d be trouble if the old bum had seen through it. As it turned out, though, he just wanted to tell me some of his musty old stories. Gus could lay on the corn as thick as I could. The only difference was, he meant it.

5. Beaver rushes away and is accosted by Eddie Haskell. Eddie cackles and makes a long speech about how, with Ward Cleaver gone, he’ll be free to give Beaver the business whenever he feels like it. But in the process he reveals how his concept of giving the business is built on moral cowardice and a fear of the rationality which is the foundation of man’s existence.


A.  Thomas Mann, Death in Mayfield
B.  Jim Thompson, The Beaver inside Me
C.  Sylvia Plath, The Beaver Jar
D.  Ayn Rand, Cleaver Shrugged
E.  Flannery O’Connor, A Good Beaver Is Hard to Find
F.  Philip K. Dick, Do Beavers Dream of Electric Creeps?