ABSTRACT
In twenty-three novels and two collections of short pieces, Peter De Vries has established himself, according to Kingsley Amis, as the "funniest serious writer to be found on either side of the Atlantic". He was born on February 27, 1910 to Dutch immigrant parents in Chicago, Illinois, De Vries was raised in the Calvinistic Dutch Reformed Church. He has said that because of the ethnic and religious "insularity" of his childhood he still feels "somewhat like a foreigner". De Vries's childhood centered on the church. He attended church three times each Sunday, and he was not allowed to do "anything much that was secular, even on weekdays". His father, Joost become more religious and melancholic, while his mother, Henrietta, turned from the church. In October 1943, he married Katinka Loeser, a short story writer and a contributor to Poetry.
