CUPPY, WILLIAM JACOB: 1884-
William Jacob Cuppy was born in Auburn, Ind., on Aug. 23, 1884, the son of Thomas Jefferson Cuppy and Mary Frances Stahl Cuppy.
"In spite of our funny name," says Mr. Cuppy, "the Cuppys were of some consequence as pioneers of Whitley County, Ind. My paternal grandfather, Abram Cuppy, died as long ago as 1847, while serving as state senator at Indianapolis . I was named after my uncle, Captain William Henry Cuppy, of the 44th Indiana Infantry, who died in 1862, having been wounded at Fort Donelson. We all came originally from South Carolina–French Huguenot stock.
"My happiest childhood days were spent at the Cuppy farm near South Whitley, Ind., where my widowed grandmother was the rallying point of G.A.R. activities, and where the small Will acquired his first knowledge of the birds, the flowers, and other annoying aspects of animate nature. It was there, too, that I went thru a threshing machine by mistake.
"My mother was straight Pennsylvania Dutch, and a school teacher to boot. I am very proud of my Pennsylvania Dutch strain. I think that is the best way to feel about it. Anyway, mother had most of the family sense. She was a singer of great talent, and I used to pump the organ while she sang in the choir in the Presbyterian Church in Auburn–a circumstance that finally led to my membership in the Guild of Former Pipe Organ Pumpers. By the way, my sister played the organ. When necessary, I substituted for either of them, my little brother pumping at such times.
"I attended the Auburn High School, graduating in 1902. I was out of school a good deal, having what passed for recurrent attacks of appendicitis; I now think that this was merely my way of attracting attention and getting out of work. Nevertheless, to my lasting regret, I was considered bright enough to skip the eighth grade, so that I missed all tuition in grammar, punctuation, and that sort of thing. As a result, I have always been wobbly in such matters.
"I entered the University of Chicago in 1902 and was graduated therefrom in 1907, with the degree of Ph.B …
"The rest of my academic career is quite incredible. Deciding, after graduation, that I knew nothing whatever about anything, I hung about the campus for the next seven years, taking courses in practically everything, with or without credit, as the spirit moved me. For three mortal years I studied the Elizabethan prose writers in the graduate English library, and at one time had almost completed a doctor's thesis on the subject. One day I decided that all that would never do, so I cut the thesis in half, took the degree of Master of Arts in English and hopped a train for New York .
"So you see, I am really rather an erudite person. I try not to let it show in my writing. It isn't everybody that spends twelve years in college–and then writes the sort of thing I do!
"My first experience in authorship was equally fantastic. A publisher asked me to write a book of University of Chicago college stories, and I did. After purchasing and reading all the books of college stories available, I almost immediately produced a sizeable volume entitled Maroon Tales, as much like the others as possible but worse … Mercifully, most of the first edition was drowned in a flood which visited the cellar of the university press shortly thereafter.
"That was in 1909. My next book, How to Be a Hermit, appeared in 1929, just twenty years later. I used the twenty years between my first and my second book in trying to achieve the first faint glimmerings of how to write English …
"I do a little magazine writing. Most of How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes was first published in the NEW YORKER.
"For some years I have conducted a weekly column called Mystery and Adventure in 'Books', the literary supplement of the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE. That is by no means because I prefer detective stories and Westerns to other books–it just happened so. Occasionally, I also review real, or honest-to-goodness books."
Will Cuppy is unmarried, maintains an apartment in New York , but spends most of his time, the year around, in a "shack" on one of the sandy reefs off the south shore of Long Island, where he develops the recipes that led the Library of Congress to classify his book of humor, How to Be a Hermit, under "culinary arts" …
Condensed from Authors Today and Yesterday.
- Maroon Tales. Chicago, 1910.
- page: 81[View Page 81]
- How to Be a Hermit. New York,
1929.
- How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes. New
York, 1931.
- How to Become Extinct. New York,
1941.
