Word: humored
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Horror Beneath Humor. These summaries help explain why publisher after publisher turned down Author Purdy's collection of short stories. Privately printed last year by two of his friends, the stories found few readers but avid ones. Poets Marianne Moore and Dame Edith Sitwell praised them. Aging (77) Novelist Carl Van Vechten was so impressed that he presented a collection of James Purdy's papers to the Yale library. After British publication last summer, a moderately daring U.S. firm, New Directions, finally took on the Purdy product. On the whole it was worth...
...best humorous writing turns on a man's well-intentioned efforts to accomplish something-from assembling a do-it-yourself barbecue pit to catching a taxi in a downpour-and the fun lies in his frustration. Purdy uses much the same theme, but his purpose is to reveal the horror underlying the humor. The father who gets kicked in the groin has been trying to make up to his small son for his orphaned state. The husband and wife who belabor each other seem right off the burlesque stage, but the story's aim is to expose...
...skillfully builds up the tense situation of Rufus trying to select a cap that will not offend his Aunt's tastes, and yet satisfy his own preference for gaudy colors. She is equally concerned about not intimidating him in the choice, and the result is a scene of touching humor...
Thresky, sacred ibis of a local "humor" magazine, has returned to his perch atop the Lampoon building. The footloose golden bird reappeared upon the Cambridge scene early yesterday morning and issued an immediate statement describing his travels...
...imagination. In this kind of life, the storytellers became the soul's best physicians; drawing on their tradition, later writers such as Russia's Sholom Aleichem created a whole literature in which pain and happiness, the worldly and the supernatural come together under a canopy of wry humor. Two books, written by exiles from Eastern Europe, have much of Aleichem's rewarding piety...