A mid-fifties collection of New Yorker cartoons by Charles Addams, patriarch and eponym of the Addams Family. The family in these cartoons is much more familiar to watchers of the TV show that in earlier cartoons. In fact, one of the last in the book shows them sitting down together by the TV, to watch "the story of a family that might be your next-door neighbors, and of their everyday life among everyday people" which had me dashing to look up dates to see if these still predated the TV show. (They do.) All the cartoons in this book are wonderfully morbidly funny, many of them of the sort where you stare for a few seconds thinking "I don't get it" -- and then you notice the tentacle. ( )

first edition