Thursday, December 28, 2006
The wooliness of people's beings
I'm sure I just found this funny because I know nothing about the hipster scene in New York. But it reminded me a little of some of the satires of life in New York that I used to read when I was a kid, and thought were funny even though I was, y'know, a 10-year-old from Tulsa.
The one I remember off the top of my head is "Diary of a New York Lady," by Dorothy Parker. The narrator keeps saying things like "Every time I look at my fingernails I could just SPIT. DAMN Miss Rose." (I'm not sure that's an exact quote, because I'm too lazy to go into the other room and find the book and look it up.) It was in the incomparable Encyclopedia of Modern American Humor, edited by Bennett Cerf. My grandparents had this 1954 colossus of comedy, this leviathan of levity, this HUGE honkin' hardback, in their bookshelf, and every summer when I went to visit I would spend a couple of hours every day sitting in a big green recliner eating Eskimo Pies and giggling over my favorites--Dorothy Parker, Ogden Nash, Robert Benchley, Anita Loos, whoever wrote Please Don't Eat the Daisies--even though I'm certain I didn't get half of what I read.
So apparently, finding things funny even though I don't understand them is a lifelong pattern. I don't know; maybe this little piece is really not funny at all. I'm about 98% sure that "Diary of a New York Lady" is, though.
The one I remember off the top of my head is "Diary of a New York Lady," by Dorothy Parker. The narrator keeps saying things like "Every time I look at my fingernails I could just SPIT. DAMN Miss Rose." (I'm not sure that's an exact quote, because I'm too lazy to go into the other room and find the book and look it up.) It was in the incomparable Encyclopedia of Modern American Humor, edited by Bennett Cerf. My grandparents had this 1954 colossus of comedy, this leviathan of levity, this HUGE honkin' hardback, in their bookshelf, and every summer when I went to visit I would spend a couple of hours every day sitting in a big green recliner eating Eskimo Pies and giggling over my favorites--Dorothy Parker, Ogden Nash, Robert Benchley, Anita Loos, whoever wrote Please Don't Eat the Daisies--even though I'm certain I didn't get half of what I read.
So apparently, finding things funny even though I don't understand them is a lifelong pattern. I don't know; maybe this little piece is really not funny at all. I'm about 98% sure that "Diary of a New York Lady" is, though.
permalink posted by The Vintage Reader @ 11:23 PM 
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