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From: gmf@uvacs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Re: light, humorous books
Message-ID: <1286@uvacs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-May-84 01:24:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: uvacs.1286
Posted: Mon May  7 01:24:35 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 8-May-84 03:30:29 EDT
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About Robert Benchley, Thorne Smith and the like:

I am old enough to have read some of Benchley's stuff when it first came
out.  I collected a lot of it about 8 or 10 years ago, and read it with
pleasure.  It does seem dated now, though.  Perhaps I've read it too many
times.  The same, alas, goes for Stephen Leacock, the Canadian humorist
and political economist.  Groucho Marx once said that he got some of his
best ideas from Leacock.  Thorne Smith I found quite disappointing when
I returned to him about 10 years ago, probably because he doesn't seem as
risque as he did when I read him in the 1930's and 1940's.  A writer
of the same era whose stuff has stood up well is Will Cuppy, who was a
biologist as well as humorist.  A lot of the humor in his books is based
on biology and anthropology.  He also wrote some other kinds of things
in the old "Saturday Evening Post" magazine.  There is an article in
this month's Atlantic Monthly poking fun at contemporary academic literary
criticism which is rather in the style of Cuppy.

I find some of the humorists who wrote even earlier still worth reading,
although a little harder to find at book fairs.  One of my favorites
is Peter Finley Dunne ("Mr. Dooley"), who was sort of the Art Buchwald
of his time.  Also George Ade, and Ambrose Bierce (who also wrote some
horror stories).  And of course, Mark Twain.

It would be nice to think that as "Mr. Dooley" is to me, so Benchley
would be to someone younger.  If anyone reads Benchley for the first time
in the near future, I'd like to hear what they think of him (or of Will
Cuppy, Thorne Smith, "Mr. Dooley", etc.)  I'd say something about
Cabell in honor of his relative on the net, but what I've read of him
doesn't stick in my mind.  I've always thought of Cabell as more a
writer of fantasy, done in a subtly humorous way, rather than as a
humorous essayist like Benchley or Leacock (or Buchwald).

     Gordon Fisher