The Autobiography of Methuselah

What if the longest-lived man in history sat down to write his memoir? Not in hieroglyphics or stone tablets, but in English, because as Methuselah archly notes, French and German haven't been invented yet. This is the delicious premise of John Kendrick Bangs' 1909 comic masterpiece, in which the biblical Methuselah takes up his pen at age 965 to set the record straight about his famous ancestors, his problem son Noah, and the sheer absurdity of outliving nearly everyone you love. The humor operates on multiple levels: Bangs pokes fun at the conventions of autobiography itself, lets Methuselah comment wryly on human nature from the unique vantage of nearly a millennium, and invents absurdly specific details about prehistoric family life. Adam and Eve become hilariously ordinary grandparents. The Flood becomes "that damp business with the Ark." It's gentle irreverence, the kind that treats sacred texts as material for tickled mockery rather than attack. For readers who enjoy Mark Twain's humor or the comic novels of the Edwardian era.