Word: humors
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Herbert's quiet, amused humor is beyond words refreshing to senses somewhat worn by the boisterous and often raucous jesting of our native humorists. There is much that provokes a smile in these "Rays of Moonshine", and there is no less frequent cause for unrestrained laughter. The book as a whole is peculiarly satisfying. Its contents are imbued with that understanding of the eternal child lurking in every man of any sensitiveness--that understanding which drew from Carlyle the penetrating remark, "Laughter means sympathy". Such laughter Mr. Herbert awakens, such sympathy--sympathy with the human being so situated...
...difficult to select extracts from his various articles as the humor is so closely woven into the whole of each. His struggles with a typewriter--which by the way is "Ami et a mijge imean a midgt, made of alumium."--renders one helpless with mirth; while his essays on The Grasshopper, The Art of Poetry, and About Bathrooms, are inimitable. Their humor is somewhat more restrained than that of A Criminal Type, from which we quoted above, as also is that of Reading Without Tears: but perhaps for this very reason they are even more delightful and valuable. For impertinent...
...thing reviewed. The Lampoon review seems only to consider the jokes and the verse of the issue, neglecting entirely the drawing, the editorials, the general make-up of the sheet, etc. In reviewing (sic) the jokes Mr. Code un-burdons himself of the old Clemens theorem of surprise in humor; yet he forgets that there is no surprise in the oldest and most honored joke in the language. His platitude of rime polishing the point of humorous verse is apropos but not of sufficient moment as constructive criticism. Indeed there can be little constructive criticism in a reviewer who merely...
Some of the material in the Lampoon is silly enough to be laughed at by a person drunk enough. It is fairly easy to be foolish, but it is the hardest thing in the world to be a clever Fool. Both wit and humor require intelligence, wit chiefly in the manner of presenting an idea, humor in the sympathetic study of life's absurdities. Satire, another form of art that makes its points by emphasis on the absurd, depends also for its force chiefly on the intelligence behind the ridicule. For satire is a form of criticism and as criticism...
Germany is trying comedy. Threats, cajolery, and opera bouffe tactics having failed, she will prove her sincerity by tickling the Allies into good humor and assuring the world of her childlike simplicity. Taking French leave of a German prison is drollery itself. And the notion of a reward should bring a roar of laughter from those who know Germany's financial state. "Laugh and the world laughs with you" is still a live adage across the Rhine. It will be interesting to see whether the convict-clown will be finally discovered playfully torpedoing canal barges in the proposed trans-Alpine...