THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF EPHRAIM TUTT

The ingenuous and ingenious Tutt, central figure of so many short stories, and favorite of a large audience, is Boswelled by his creator. Authenticating an imaginary figure in a nice idea, and it is typical Tutt-Tutt material. He relates Eph's Vermont upbringing (with Coolidge's father a friend of his father), his college years at Harvard, then Harvard Law, his first horse and buggy law practice in upper New York, then on to New York City with Tammany, public office and private practice. There are convincing bite about his chance encounters, the nooks and crannies of the law, his dog, his never quite fulfilled hobby of fishing, his observations on judges, witnesses, juries, the obsolescencies and artificialities of the law -- and how he came to be fictionized. A certain dry geniality, along with the real facts behind the fiction, with actual cases, biographical documentation and so on makes this a natural for its market.