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Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from the New Yorker

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Overview

When Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, he described it as a "comic weekly." And although it has become much more than that, it has remained true in its irreverent heart to the founder's description, publishing the most illustrious literary humorists of the modern era-among them Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Groucho Marx, George S. Kaufman, James Thurber, S. J. Perelman, Peter De Vries, Mike Nichols, Marshall Brickman, Woody Allen, Donald Barthelme, Calvin Trillin, George W. S. Trow, Veronica Geng, Garrison Keillor, Ian Frazier, Roy Blount, Jr., Bruce McCall, Steve Martin, Christopher Buckley, and Paul Rudnick. This anthology gathers together, for the first time, the funniest work of more than seventy New Yorker contributors. Parodists take on not only writers like Hemingway and Kerouac, but TV documentaries, Italian cinema, and etiquette books. (Enough have been published, Robert Benchley maintains, "that there should be no danger of toppling over forward into the wrong soup, or getting into arguments as to which elbow belongs on which arm.")

Editorial Reviews

Remnick, New Yorker editor since 1999, and Finder, the magazine's editorial director, recommend taking this book in small doses. However, New Yorker humor is not for everyone. Do not read this book if you suffer from an irony deficiency, or if you are currently taking any form of remedial English. Also, do not read this book if you are allergic to E.B. White, Robert Benchley, S.J. Perelman, Dorothy Parker, Woody Allen, Veronica Geng, Steve Martin, or Jack Handey. Side effects include the urge to do literary research (to track down the targets of spoofs) and the discovery of some very funny writers who may be unknown to you. To learn more about the type of material contained in this book, consult Judith Yaross Lee's Defining New Yorker Humor (LJ 2/1/00). Ask your librarian if Fierce Pajamas is right for you. Available by prescription at public and academic libraries. Susan M. Colowick, North Olympic Lib. Syst., Port Angeles, WA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Henry Finder

No bio available for Henry Finder.

Bio of David Remnick

David Remnick was born on October 29, 1958 in Hackensack, N.J. and educated at Princeton University. He began his career at the Washington Post in 1982. In 1992, he became a staff writer for the New Yorker. Remnick's book, Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire, won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize in General Non-Fiction. The work deals with the last days of the Soviet Union, which Remnick witnessed firsthand as foreign correspondent to Moscow from the Washington Post. Remnick is the author of other works including The Devil Problem (And Other True Stories) published in 1996 and Resurrection: The Struggle for a New Russia in 1997. His most recent work, King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero, was published in 1998. David Remnick is married to Esther Fein, a reporter. They have two children, Alexander and Noah. 030

Customer Reviews

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Additional Info

Imprint

Random House

Filesize

1.22 MB

Number of Pages

528

eBook ISBN

9781588360670

Excerpt from: Fierce Pajamas by Henry Finder

SPOOFS
WOLCOTT GIBBS
DEATH IN THE RUMBLE SEAT WITH THE USUAL APOLOGIES TO ERNEST HEMINGWAY,
WHO MUST BE PRETTY SICK OF THIS SORT OF THING
Most people don't like the pedestrian part, and it is best not to look at that if you can help it. But if you can't help seeing them, long-legged and their faces white, and then the shock and the car lifting up a little on one side, then it is best to think of it as something very unimportant but beautiful and necessary artistically. It is unimportant because the people who are pedestrians are not very important, and if they were not being cogido by automobiles it would just be something else. And it is beautiful and necessary because, without the possibility of somebody getting cogido, driving a car would be just like anything else. It would be like reading --Thanatopsis,-- which is neither beautiful nor necessary, but hogwash. If you drive a car, and don't like the pedestrian part, then you are one of two kinds of people. Either you haven't very much vitality and you ought to do something about it, or else you are yellow and there is nothing to be done about it at all.

If you don't know anything about driving cars you are apt to think a driver is good just because he goes fast. This may be very exciting at first, but afterwards there is a bad taste in the mouth and the feeling of dishonesty. Ann Bender, the American, drove as fast on the Merrick Road as anybody I have ever seen, but when cars came the other way she always worked out of their terrain and over in the ditch so that you never had the hard, clean feeling of danger, but only bumping up and down in the ditch, and sometimes hitting your head on the top of the car. Good drivers go fast too, but it is always down the middle of the road, so that cars coming the other way are dominated, and have to go in the ditch themselves. There are a great many ways of getting the effect of danger, such as staying in the middle of the road till the last minute and then swerving out of the pure line, but they are all tricks, and afterwards you know they were tricks, and there is nothing left but disgust.

The cook: I am a little tired of cars, sir. Do you know any stories?

I know a great many stories, but I?m not sure that they're suitable.

The cook: The hell with that.

Then I will tell you the story about God and Adam and naming the animals. You see, God was very tired after he got through making the world. He felt good about it, but he was tired so he asked Adam if he'd mind thinking up names for the animals.

"What animals?" Adam said.

"Those," God said.

"Do they have to have names?" Adam said.

"You've got a name, haven?t you?" God said.

I could see?

The cook: How do you get into this?