The Best of Modern Humor

Fülszöveg

Here, freshly picked by a brilliant connoisseur (and
practitioner) of humor, are the finest, funniest writ-
ings of everyone who makes us laugh today—from
Thurber to Woody Allen, from Benchley to Joseph
Heller, from Leacock (Stephen) to Lebowitz (Fran)
the names (they're all on the front of the jacket) tell
the story!
Mordecai Richler, whose own writings have so
happily enriched our store of comedy, is the man
behind the collection. He has read just about every
page of American and English prose of recent vintage
that is (or pretends to be) funny. And he has admitted
to these exclusive precincts only the cream of the
cream, the best of the best. The result is the first major
anthology of modern humor in years: stories, short
plays, letters, excerpts from novels, humorous writ-
ings of every variety, kindred only in their power to
make us laugh.
Here, in top form, are Donald Barthelme, Nora
Ephron, Peter De Vries____Here is life reflected in a
funhouse... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Here, freshly picked by a brilliant connoisseur (and
practitioner) of humor, are the finest, funniest writ-
ings of everyone who makes us laugh today—from
Thurber to Woody Allen, from Benchley to Joseph
Heller, from Leacock (Stephen) to Lebowitz (Fran)
the names (they're all on the front of the jacket) tell
the story!
Mordecai Richler, whose own writings have so
happily enriched our store of comedy, is the man
behind the collection. He has read just about every
page of American and English prose of recent vintage
that is (or pretends to be) funny. And he has admitted
to these exclusive precincts only the cream of the
cream, the best of the best. The result is the first major
anthology of modern humor in years: stories, short
plays, letters, excerpts from novels, humorous writ-
ings of every variety, kindred only in their power to
make us laugh.
Here, in top form, are Donald Barthelme, Nora
Ephron, Peter De Vries____Here is life reflected in a
funhouse looking-glass (by George S. Kaufman in "If
Men Played Cards As Women Do") art imitating
art (from Perelman's hilariously hardboiled "Fare-
well, My Lovely Appetizer" to E. B. White s parody of
Hemingway, "Across the Street and Into the Grill")
truth funnier than fiction (from Groucho Marx's
increasingly riotous correspondence with some im-
possibly literal-minded lawyers to Truman Capotes
tour of Upper East Side apartments in the company of
a Manhattan cleaning lady)____Here are doting
daddies (including Damon Runyons babysitting
safecracker), Jewish mothers (and Dan Green-
burgs guidelines for how to be one), colorful cops (as
recalled by Mencken), rising young executives of an
alarming new breed (Tom Wolfe's "The Mid-Atlantic
Man") the most hilarious dream ever recorded,
Thomas Meehan's "Yma Dream" surprises from
Wodehouse and Waugh____Here are affairs of the
heart (John Cheever s "The Chaste Clarissa") as well
as slightly more carnal affairs (some confessions of
Philip Roths Portnoy) .humor with a social con-
science (Russell Bakers horribly funny "Bomb
Math") and society satirically observed (Cyra McFad-
den on a Marin County wedding)____Here are great
read-alouds (from Eudora Weltys single funniest
story, "Why I Live at the PO.," to an exercise in
Eisenhowerese by Oliver Jensen)____
Here, in sum, is the best of modern humor—a
book that brings together those rare bursts of comic
genius, those explosions of wit and verbal inventive-
ness, those salvos of undiluted laughter that rise like
Roman candles above the rest. This huge—and
hugely entertaining—volume is certain to stand as
the collection of modern humor for years to come.
*
Mordecai Richler is the author of such memorable
comic novels as The Apprenticeship of Duddy
Kravitz, StickYour Neck Out, Cocksure, St. Urbains
Horseman, and Joshua Then and Now. He lives in
Montreal, where he was born and brought up, and to
which he returned a few years ago, after two decades
in London, with his wife and their two daughters and
three sons. Vissza