The Best of Modern Humor

by Mordecai Richler (Editor)

Here, freshly picked from a brilliant connoisseur (and practitioner) of humor, are the finest, funniest writings 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 !

Genres: Humor, Short Stories, Anthologies, Fiction, Canada

542 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Working-class Jewish background based novels, which include The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) and Saint Urbain's Horseman (1971), of Canadian writer Mordecai Richler.

People best know Barney's Version (1997) among works of this author, screenwriter, and essayist; people shortlisted his novel Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989) for the Man Booker Prize in 1990. He was also well known for the Jacob Two-two stories of children.

A scrap yard dealer reared this son on street in the mile end area of Montréal. He learned Yiddish and English and graduated from Baron Byng High School. Richler enrolled in Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) to study English but dropped before completing his degree.

Years later, Leah Rosenberg, mother of Richler, published an autobiography, The Errand Runner: Memoirs of a Rabbi's Daughter (1981), which discusses birth and upbringing of Mordecai and the sometime difficult relationship.

Richler, intent on following in the footsteps of many of a previous "lost generation" of literary exiles of the 1920s from the United States, moved to Paris at age of 19 years in 1950.

Richler returned to Montréal in 1952, worked briefly at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and then moved to London in 1954. He, living in London meanwhile, published seven of his ten novels as well as considerable journalism.

Worrying "about being so long away from the roots of my discontent", Richler returned to Montréal in 1972. He wrote repeatedly about the Jewish community of Montréal and especially portraying his former neighborhood in multiple novels.

In England in 1954, Richler married Catherine Boudreau, a French-Canadian divorcée nine years his senior. On the eve of their wedding, he met Florence Wood Mann, a young married woman, who smited him.

Some years later, Richler and Mann divorced and married each other. He adopted Daniel Mann, her son. The couple had five children together: Daniel, Jacob, Noah, Martha and Emma. These events inspired his novel Barney's Version.

Richler died of cancer.

Reviews

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a rather strange collection of over sixty stories and magazine pieces published between 1916 (a Ring Lardner story) and 1982 (work by Garrison Keillor, Bruce McCall, John Mortimer and Calvin Trillin). By author birthdate (which is the order chosen to include the writings) it ranges from Stephen Leacock (born 1869) to Ian Frazier (born 1951). It includes works by well-known authors and humorists such as Stephen Leacock, H. L. Mencken, Damon Runyon, P.G. Wodehouse, Ring Lardner, Marianne Moore, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, Groucho Marx, J. B. Morton (Beachcomber), James Thurber, E. B. White, Evelyn Waugh, S. J. Perelman, Eudora Welty, Peter De Vries, Flann O´Brien (Myles na Gopaleen), John Cheever, Saul Bellow, Jessica Mitford, Kingsley Amis, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Joseph Heller, Jean Kerr, Truman Capote, Thomas Berger, Art Buchwald, V. S. Naipaul, Tom Wolfe, Philip Roth, Woody Allen and Nora Ephron. However, I agree with with other Goodread reviewers in that it is a very disappointing collection in spite of an excellent forward written by the book´s editor Mordecai Richler. Many of the stories now appear hopelessly dated, but the worst thing about the collection is the number of works that simply fall flat, or at most manage to raise a fleeting and wan smile. It may be true that one person´s funny or ingenious is another person´s sad or even outrage or disgust, but I do wonder why this collection, as a whole, fails so miserably.

Many of the stories in the collection are parodies and some topics have probably been ridiculed to death (hippy back-to-nature communes for example). The success of parodies depend a great deal on knowledge of who or what is being parodied. and many of the satiricized originals (Eisenhower´s discoursive style for example) have faded out of public recognition -so unless the model somehow represents a type, as in A.J. Liebling´s highly effective report on the populist demagoguery of three-time Louisana governor Earl Long (Nothing but a little pissant), the humor may simply have faded away. The book includes parodies or satires on authors or topics such as Shakespeare (Maurice Baring´s King Lear´s Daughter), romances (Stephen Leacock´s Gertrude the governess or simple seventeen and Frank Sullivan´s The Cliché Expert testifies on Love), opera plots (Robert Benchley´s Opera synopses), Hemingway (E. B. White´s Across the street and into the grill), Raymond Chandler (S. J. Perelman´s Farewell, my lovely appetizer), William Faulkner (Peter de Vries´Requiem for a noun or Intruder in the dust and Kenneth Tynan´s Just plain folks), Francoise Sagan (Jean Kerr´s Toujours Tristesse), government bureacratese (Art Buchwald´s Saving paper), magazine interviews of bestseller authors (Wilfrid Sheed´s Four hacks), Eisenhower (Oliver Jensen´s The Gettysburg Address in Eisenhowerese), psychoanalysis (Marshall Brickman: The analytical napkin, popular pre-1950 magazines (Bruce McCall´s Mad-like illustrated Popular Workbench, Jewish mothers (Dan Greenburg´s How to be a Jewish Mother and even Human Rights manifestos (Garrison Keillor´s Shy Rights: Why not pretty soon?).

Surprisingly, it seems to me that Richler picked pretty much the worst of Leacock, Ring Lardner, George S. Kaufman, Marianne Moore, George S. Kaufman, Beachcomber and Evelyn Waugh, amongst others. John Cheever is represented by his cruel and mean-spirited The Chaste Clarissa, while the humor in some other stories can only be described as snickering, sophomoronic humor (John Mortimer´s Clinging to the wreckage), while other selections, such as Stanley Elkin´s Bernie Elkin story of a stalking are so obsessive, gross and devoid of humor as to be positively disturbing.

I recommend you search for the better stories elsewhere and steer clear of this very disappointing book.


Very funny... Five stars (2 selections)
-Groucho Marx: Letters to Warner Brothers -a Marx Brothers classic
-Woody Allen: The Kugelmass episode, his written forerunner of films such as Play it again Sam, The Purple Rose of Cairo and Midnight in Paris, in which the line between reality and fiction temporarily blurs.

Funny... Four stars (7 selections)
-Russell Baker: Bomb math, a savagely ironic, almost swiftean take on fomer JFK Defense Secretary Robert McNamara-like attitudes to planning war.
-Thomas Wolfe: The mid-Atlantic man
-Terry Southern: I am Mike Hammer, a very funny, tongue in cheek interview with Micky Spillane when he played his hard-boiled detective character, Mike Hammer, in the 1963 film The Girl Hunters.
-A.J. Liebling: Nothing but a little pissant
-Kingsley Amis: Another goddam Englishman
-Dan Greenberg: How to be a Jewish mother
-Art Buchwald: Saving paper

OK... Three stars (11 selections)
-J. B. Morton (Beachcomber): The intrusions of Captain Foulenough
-Flann O´Brien (Myles na Gopaleen): Keats and Chapman, which are simply some very elaborate and strained puns.
-Joseph Heller: Gold´s stepmother
-Eudora Welty: Why I live at the P.O.
-Saul Bellow: Excerpt from To Jerusalem and back
-Bruce Jay Friedman: The lonely guy´s apartment
-Wilfrid Sheed: Four hacks.
-V. S. Naipaul: The Mechanical Genius
-Marshall Brickman: The analytical napkin
-Garrison Keillor: Shy Rights: Why not pretty soon?
-Stephen Leacock: Gertrude the governess or simple seventeen

Faint smiles... Two stars (23 selections)
-Maurice Baring: King Lear´s Daughter
-Frank Sullivan: The Cliché Expert testifies on Love)
-Robert Benchley: Opera synopses -it seemed funnier to me the first time I read it...
-James Thurber: The breaking up of the Winships
-Damon Runyon: Butch minds the baby, dated but still readable.
-Donald Barthelme: Game
-Thomas Berger: Chef Reinhart
-Nora Ephron: A few words about breasts
-Jessica Mitford: Emigration
-P. G. Wodehouse: Ukridge´s accident syndicate
-Wolcott Gibbs: Time... Fortune... Life... Luce
-Stella Gibson: Excerpt from Cold Comfort Farm
-S. J. Perelman: Farewell, my lovely appetizer
-Leo Rosten: Mr. K*a*p*l*a*n, the comparative and the superlative
-Peter de Vries: Requiem for a noun or Intruder in the dust
-Oliver Jensen: The Gettysburg Address in Eisenhowerese -judging from this parody, I suspect Eisenhower might have been a pioneer in mealy-mouthed, politically correct language innovations.
-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: Report on the Barnhouse effect
-Jean Kerr: Toujours Tristesse
-Truman Capote: A day´s work
-Thomas Meehan: Yma dream
-Bruce McCall: Popular Workbench
-Calvin Trillin: Dinner at the De La Rentas´
-Alan Coren: Long ago and far away

Not funny... One star (21 selections)
-Ring Lardner: The Busher´s Honeymoon
-Marianne Moore: Correspondence with David Wallace
-Evelyn Waugh: Winner takes all
-Beryl Bainbridge: Dinner at Binny´s
-Cyra McFadden: Hip wedding on Mount Tam
-Ian Frazier: Dating your Mom
-H. L. Mencken: Recollections of Notable Cops
-George S. Kaufman: If men played cards as women do
-E. B. White: Across the street and into the grill
-Kenneth Tynan: Just plain folks
-Max Apple: The oranging of America
-Roy Blount Jr.: Trash no more
-Veronica Geng: My Mao
-Lynn Caraganis: America´s Cup ´83: The Sherpa Challenge
-Lisa Alther: The Commune
-John Mortimer: Clinging to the wreckage
-Fran Lebowitz: Notes on "Trick"
-Alexander Theroux: Mrs. Proby gets hers
-Philip Roth: Whacking off
-John Cheever: The Chaste Clarissa
-Stanley Elkin: Bernie Perk

[David]

I read this first about 40 years ago. Looking for something relatively light-hearted for late at night, I pulled it off the shelf a month ago ... and to my surprise as I worked through its various forms and styles, I found maybe a third to a half of it not very funny ... what I seemed to see on this second reading was an awful lot of 'punching down,' a sense that the subject was 'humorous' mostly because the author felt, and positioned the reader so that the reader was at least intended to feel, superior to the subject... there was a lot of laughing at; not so much laughing with ... several pieces I felt were very sad; nothing to laugh about in the situation of those characters at all ... satire still tends to work better, not least of which because satire was never intended to be fair ... somehow something that makes fun of government incompetence still strikes me as funny, whereas something that makes fun of people suffering through poverty or people struggling with sexuality, or people afraid of dying, or people afraid of each other (especially over social causes) doesn't really make me laugh much at all ...

[René · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you love teenagers clichés with sick stories of racism, sexism, dysfunctional families, or just plain foolish stories going nowhere, this book is for you ! Unfortunately, the only humor in the whole book is part of the title - I may have smiled lightly twice at the most, but nothing else came out of this sometimes painful book.

[Arunkumar Mahadevan Pillai · Rating 1 out of 5]

If this is modern humour, then I want no part of it.
Few stories are anything but a drag, maybe a couple made me crack a grin.

It took me an insane amount of time to get through this book. I usually finish books in a couple of days! This book was mostly so boring that I had to force myself to read a few pages occasionally.

[George Ilsley · Rating 1 out of 5]

An almost consistently unappealing collection. Some of the pieces are now dated, and others are hard to imagine were ever funny. This collection is enough to make a reader wonder if Mordecai Richler even had a sense of humor.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I remember correctly, this is the collection that introduced me to the writings of PG Wodehouse, and for that, I will be forever grateful and award it three stars. But sadly, as many other reviews point out, there are few real laughs to be had in this book. Humour doesn't date well, and some of the stories in this collection (published in the 80's admittedly) are simply too old now to be funny.

[Leslie Holm · Rating 5 out of 5]

All the best of the old humorists (I love that word, it conveys so much more than comic or comedian) are represented - Mencken, Runyon, Lardner . . . special favorites, Thurber and Buchwald. If you never read any these marvelous funny folk, you have missed some of the best story telling in the world.

[April Sanders · Rating 3 out of 5]

The collection of stories is very clever but not particularly humorous.

[behsforensics]

Cutting is for A Few Words About Breasts
By Nora Ephron

[Helene · Rating 1 out of 5]

guess I'm not into modern humor. The intro by the editor said that one criteria for inclusion was that the story had to make him laugh. I read perhaps a dozen of the collection and didn't laugh once. So, why bother? There are too many books on my to-read list.