"This interesting, well-written volume is recommended for larger cartooning and disabled collections."
--Booklist, American Library Association

Alfred Gerald Caplin, who was born in 1909 and who died seventy years later, was in his prime perhaps the most successful writer of his time. His words were read every single day by literally millions of Americans. And although he wrote less than 50,000 words a year, he was certainly one of the best-paid writers in the business. Better known as Al Capp, this was the creator of Li'l Abner, the most popular comic strip of the 1930s, '40s and '50s.

Not only was Al Capp a popular writer-he was a good writer. His talent for satire and parody is perhaps unequaled in the history of American popular culture. Through the medium of his comic strip, he gave to our vocabulary several words and phrases that most Americans understand, even Americans who are too young to remember reading Li'l Abner with their Wheaties; words like "Dogpatch," "Shmoo," "Daisy Mae," "General Bullmoose," and "Sadie Hawkins Day." Never one to shy from controversy, Capp hit hard with both right and left fists; he began his career as a liberal, and by the end of his life and career he was an outspoken and outrageous critic of the counter-culture and the Anti-War Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Al Capp is a well-known name, and his creation, Li'l Abner, is even more well known. What is not so well know is what John Updike calls "the central fact of Al Capp's story": Al Capp had only one leg. And it is the theme of one-leggedness that dominates Capp's newly-published collection of autobiographical essays, My Well-Balanced Life on a Wooden Leg.

It is often claimed that cartoonists tend to draw self-portraits when they create their characters. It is true that Li'l Abner was a naive bumpkin; Capp was a cynical sophisticate. Perhaps more important, Li'l Abner was a long-legged spokesman for the very picture of "physical ability"; whereas Capp was a one-legged spokesman for the physically disabled. He made no secret of his one-leggedness; in fact he wrote about it often, and in 1946 he created a pamphlet to be distributed by the Red Cross to thousands of amputee veterans of World War II. The pamphlet, a cartoon autobiography, which is reproduced in part in My Well-Balanced Life on a Wooden Leg, encouraged young amputees to feel good about themselves, to feel capable and to realize that they have a right to a normal life in society.

A subtheme of My Well-Balanced Life on a Wooden Leg is Capp's memories of teen-age lust, made all the more poignant because of his handicap. The fact that Li'l Abner used his two strong legs to run away from women every year on Sadie Hawkin's Day is ironic: Al Capp recounts in his memoirs how during his teen-age years he perceived his one-leggedness as the only impediment to his chasing after girls. But what he lacked in physical prowess, Capp more than made up for in wit, and the accounts of his scheming and pining in pursuit of the opposite sex are hilarious.

Readers interested in other aspects of Al Capp's life- his background, his cartooning career, his family life, and his international celebrity-will not be disappointed. Even the younger readers who never knew Capp on a daily basis will enjoy the cleverness of his story-telling wit. And for those readers who have any interest in the disabled community, My Well-Balanced Life on a Wooden Leg is a must.

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