Books in Brief: Nuts

Nuts, by Gahan Wilson (Marek, 94 pp., $8.95; paperback $4.95). Consider The Kid as hero. Not the saucy sprite regularly dished up by Hollywood, but a Real Kid, who does dumb things, and who is not precocious, foul-mouthed, or otherwise impossibly snappy. Or, as Jean Shepherd wrote in In God We Trust, All Others, Pay Cash, “Life, when you’re a Male kid, is what the Grownups are doing. The Adult world seems to be some kind of secret society that has its own passwords, handclasps, and countersigns. The thing is to get In.” All this by way of announcing Gahan Wilson’s latest book, a collection of the Nuts comic strips he does for National Lampoon. Here we have the continuing, normal, Leave-It-to-Beaveresque adventures of The Kid. No name; just The Kid, although his dog’s name is Waldo. Nuts is about all the hopes and fears and nightmares of childhood, and why you’re glad not to be a kid any more. As Wilson writes, “Those of you who remember how great it was to be a little kid, gang, don’t remember how it was to be a little kid.” There is The Kid, an ogre smothered in layers of clothing, looking like a tiny Chicago hood, battling in a world of surprise rules, first funerals, summer camp, unbelievably bad report cards, sickness, moronic friends, and comics like Lieutenant Slamo and the Ace Brigade. The Kid resorts to last-minute prayers to God, and occasional fantastic dreams of a Death Ray, as in “Watch out! The kid’s got a Death Ray!” So much for nostalgia. No wonder The Kid says, “I can hardly wait to be a grownup.” The book, by the way, is dedicated “to all of us.”