The Night Life of the Gods

The Night Life of the Gods, published in 1931, is Thorne Smith at his most inventively absurd. Hunter Dorvington, a wealthy inventor, discovers how to petrify living people and animate statues. With the help of a mischievous leprechaun's daughter, he brings the gods and goddesses of a museum's Roman gallery to life and takes them on a bender through 1930s Manhattan. Neptune in a speakeasy, Mercury picking pockets, Bacchus doing what Bacchus does — Smith uses the collision of ancient divinity and modern America to generate comedy that is both hilariously low and surprisingly literate.