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

439 Pages·2001·1.63 MB·English

by  Finder Henry

FIERCE
PAJAMAS
AN ANTHOLOGY OF HUMOR WRITING
FROM THE NEW YORKER
EDITED BY DAVID REMNICK
AND HENRY FINDER
RANDOM HOUSE | NEW YORK
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
SPOOFS
Death in the Rumble Seat / Wolcott Gibbs
Dusk in Fierce Pajamas / E. B. White
Across the Street and into the Grill / E. B. White
On the Sidewalk / John Updike
Save My Seat / Mike Nichols
Hassidic Tales, With a Guide to Their Interpretation by the Noted Scholar /
Woody Allen
The Ultimate Diary / Howard Moss
The Analytic Napkin / Marshall Brickman
Who’s Who in the Cast / Marshall Brickman
Health Department Lists Restaurant Violations / Daniel Menaker
The Delts of Venus / Charles McGrath
Notes from the Edge Conference / Roy Blount, Jr.
LGA-ORD / Ian Frazier
Love Trouble Is My Business / Veronica Geng
In the New Canada, Living Is a Way of Life / Bruce McCall
Corrections / Calvin Trillin
Stardate 12:00 12:00 12:00 / Christopher Buckley
Glengarry Glen Plaid / Frank Cammuso and Hart Seely
Gum / Scott Gutterman
What We Talk About When We Talk About Doughnuts / Michael Gerber and
Jonathan Schwarz
Teen Times / Paul Rudnick
THE FRENZY OF RENOWN
Press Agents I Have Known / Groucho Marx
The Greatest Man in the World / James Thurber
The Interview / James Thurber
Let’s Hear It for a Beautiful Guy / Bruce Jay Friedman
The King of Jazz / Donald Barthelme
My Mao / Veronica Geng
Our Side of the Story / Veronica Geng
Do You Know Me? / George W. S. Trow
Gandhi at the Bat / Chet Williamson
Igor Stravinsky: The Selected Phone Calls / Ian Frazier
We Are Still Married / Garrison Keillor
Meeting Famous People / Garrison Keillor
Yo, Poe / Frank Gannon
My Life: A Series of Privately Funded Performance-Art Pieces / Susan Orlean
The A-List E-List / David Brooks
THE WAR BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN
Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife / James Thurber
A Couple of Hamburgers / James Thurber
Forever Panting / Peter De Vries
The Kugelmass Episode / Woody Allen
Partners / Veronica Geng
My Married Life: The Whole Truth Thus Far / Mark Singer
Life Without Leann / Larry Doyle
Zeus the Lutheran / Garrison Keillor
The Very Comical Lament of Pyramus and Thisbe / Susan Sontag
Off-Ramp / Polly Frost
Blown Away / Lisa Walker
Here’s a Really Great Idea / David Owen
THE WRITING LIFE
A Short Autobiography / F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Cliché Expert Takes the Stand / Frank Sullivan
The Cliché Expert Tells All / Frank Sullivan
How to Achieve Success as a Writer / Ruth Suckow
The Rather Difficult Case of Mr. K A P L A N / Leonard Q. Ross
The Notebooks of James Thurber / James Thurber
Are We Losing the Novel Race? / Michael J. Arlen
Roland Magruder, Freelance Writer / Calvin Trillin
Contemporary Writers VI: An Interview with Grip Sands / Philip Hamburger
In the Dough / Roger Angell
Selections from the Allen Notebooks / Woody Allen
I Cover Carter / George W. S. Trow
Notes on My Conversations / Polly Frost
Writing Is Easy! / Steve Martin
Drivel / Steve Martin
Emily Dickinson, Jerk of Amherst / Andy Borowitz
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED
The People Who Had the House Before / Robert Benchley
The Catastrophe / William Shawn
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty / James Thurber
I Am Not Now, Nor Have I Ever Been, a Matrix of Lean Meat / S. J. Perelman
Eine Kleine Mothmusik / S. J. Perelman
Monomania, You and Me Is Quits / S. J. Perelman
Pnin / Vladimir Nabokov
Annoy Kaufman, Inc. / George S. Kaufman
The Last Repository / H. F. Ellis
YMA Dream / Thomas Meehan
Ainmosni / Roger Angell
The High Ground, or Look, Ma, I’m Explicating / Peter De Vries
Apartment 6-A: After the Fall / Ian Frazier
Spill / George W. S. Trow
Hearing from Wayne / Bill Franzen
Stunned / Jack Handey
He Didn’t Go to Canada / Garrison Keillor
Post-Euphoria / Veronica Geng
Keith Richards’ Desert-Island Disks / Noah Baumbach
WORDS OF ADVICE
How to Be Obscene / Upton Sinclair
Filling That Hiatus / Robert Benchley
It’s Fun to Be Fooled . . . It’s More Fun to Know / Robert Benchley
Why We Laugh—or Do We? / Robert Benchley
Insert Flap “A” and Throw Away / S. J. Perelman
How to Eat an Ice-Cream Cone / L. Rust Hills
Teaching Poetry Writing to Singles / Veronica Geng
Dating Your Mom / Ian Frazier
A Reading List for Young Writers / Ian Frazier
How I Write My Songs / Donald Barthelme
Save Our Bus Herds! / Cathleen Schine
Three Great Meals / William White
Read This First / Bruce McCall
Take It from Me / Nancy Franklin
Changes in the Memory After Fifty / Steve Martin
The Hundred Greatest Books That I’ve Read / Steve Martin
Reintroducing Me to My Habitat / Jack Handey
Thank You for Stopping / Jack Handey
Homework: A Parent’s Guide / Christopher Buckley
What Happened to My Money? / David Owen
RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS
On Taxi Drivers / Alexander Woollcott
Father Isn’t Much Help / Clarence Day
The Night the Ghost Got In / James Thurber
Ring Out, Wild Bells / Wolcott Gibbs
The Ballet Visits the Splendide’s Magician / Ludwig Bemelmans
Cloudland Revisited: Why, Doctor, What Big Green Eyes You Have! / S. J.
Perelman
Thoughts on Radio-Televese / John Lardner
The Musical Husbands / Adam Gopnik
Listening to Bourbon / Louis Menand
Look Back in Hunger / Anthony Lane
Tennis Personalities / Martin Amis
Car Talk / John Updike
VERSE
Critic / E. B. White
Song to Be Disregarded / E. B. White
To a Perfumed Lady at the Concert / E. B. White
Song of the Queen Bee / E. B. White
Rhyme of an Involuntary Violet / Dorothy Parker
Fulfilment / Dorothy Parker
Bohemia / Dorothy Parker
Mother’s Home Again! / Don Marquis
Melancholy Reflections After a Lost Argument / Phyllis McGinley
The Seven Ages of a Newspaper Subscriber / Phyllis McGinley
Incident in the Afternoon / Phyllis McGinley
Procrastination Is All of the Time / Ogden Nash
To My Valentine / Ogden Nash
So That’s Who I Remind Me Of / Ogden Nash
Compliments of a Friend / Ogden Nash
The Invitation Says from Five to Seven / Ogden Nash
Theme and Variation / Peter De Vries
People / W. H. Auden
Six Poets in Search of a Lawyer / Donald Hall
The Naked and the Nude / Robert Graves
12 O’Clock News / Elizabeth Bishop
Christmas in Qatar / Calvin Trillin
Duet, with Muffled Brake Drums / John Updike
Ocular Hypertension / John Updike
Endnotes
Notes on Contributors
About the Editors
Copyright