Word: humoristic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Make a Difference. Bel Kaufman knows firsthand how a kid can get lost in a classroom. A granddaughter of Humorist Sholom Aleichem ("the Yiddish Mark Twain"), she was born in Berlin, lived until twelve in Russia, where her father practiced medicine and her mother wrote short stories. Her family then moved to The Bronx, where she was thrown into first grade with six-year-olds and learned English "by osmosis." She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Hunter College, earned an M.A. in 18th century literature from Columbia, taught in every type of New York City high school, from those...
There has been nothing as good since." If Twain affected serious writers, he affected humorists even more. His timing as a public speaker is still being imitated by stand-up comedians. His wry one-line sermons ("Man is the Only Animal that blushes. Or needs to") have influenced every prose humorist who followed...
...problems of satire is that, to many humorists, the world itself is a large balloon full of wind, a satire on itself. "The world is getting so crazy you just have to laugh," says Art Buchwald, who lists some recent examples of self-satire: Lyndon Johnson showing his scar, Premier Ky and his wife in their Captain and Mrs. Midnight flight suits, the Ecumenical Council debating whether the Jews really killed Christ. There is surprisingly little political satire of Lyndon Johnson. The reason, believes Playwright-Director George Abbott, is that "humor is exaggeration, and President Johnson is his own exaggeration...
Perhaps the American humorist may yet lead himself out of the dark by re-examining his own craft. "The one specific remedy for vanity is laughter," wrote Philosopher Henri Bergson, "and the one failing that is essentially laughable is vanity." Is it only society that is laughable today? Or is it the humorists themselves, too proud or fearful or full of disdain to fulfill their function? That function is to be society's mocking bird, not its vulture. What the U.S. can always use is something that everyone has in him but only a true humorist can bring...
...called Sympathetic Stain, and were totally hangdog about their calling. "I've lived four years of my life in fear," one of them is supposed to have said, "and I'll live the rest of it in shame." Author Corey Ford, who is best known as a humorist (The Horse of Another Color, Never Say Diet), has conscientiously researched his story about the origins of U.S. espionage. His thoroughness is laudable. But the Culper Ring just did not do enough spying to fill a book...