Customer Reviews

Leo Rosten's Carnival of Wit: From Aristotle to Woody Allen

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was looking for a joke book for a friend and found this. It's organized by subject, and has pithy, profound, and hilarious quotes by everyone from Napoleon through Mark Twain (of course), and from Hindu proverbs to Woody Allen. Both my husband and I loved it, and we're getting more as gifts.

This is a very nice collection of quotations. It's fairly comprehensive and organized topically--though it could benefit from an index of authors. I added over 100 of its entries to my quote collection. Many are humorous, and a great many have wisdom and significance. Some of my favorites are:

p. 53: One beautiful morning, El Greco sat in a room with the curtains tightly drawn. Invited to go out for a walk, El Greco said, "No, the sunlight would disturb the light that is shining within me."
p. 181: Flattery is all right if you don't inhale. Adlai Stevenson
p. 186: Wise men talk because they have something to say, fools because they have to say something. Plato
p. 258: Journalism: a profession whose business is to explain to others what it personally does not understand. Lord Northcliffe
p. 279: The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true. James Branch Cabell
p. 328: In America, the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefit of their inexperience. Oscar Wilde
p. 341: Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything. Charles Kuralt
p. 344: There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program: your tax dollars will go farther. Wernher von Braun
p. 406: Hangover: The Wrath of Grapes. Dorothy Parker
p. 439: The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage. Mark Russell
p. 505: They told me that the fish...were cold-blooded and felt no pain. But they were not fish who told me. Heywood Broun
p. 508: I have made this long letter because I haven't the time to make it shorter. Blaise Pascal

I haven't read the whole book, just seen a lot of the quotes on this online newsletter I get. I would also like to say that reading the other 2 reviews here cracked me up. Obviously, the one from Indiana was not as educated as the one from Colarado. Perhaps he/she didn't understand some of the quotes. I personally agree with the one from Colarado. The quotes are very funny and witty. Leo Rosten wrote quite a few of them himself. Hope you enjoy!

A fun grab-bag of quotes, not especially rigorously sourced or verified. Rosten quotes himself more than is seemly, but "He that tooteth not his own horn, the same shall go untootethed." A fine souvenir of the mensch who popularized Yiddish culture in America. Hours of fun & sharing guaranteed.

I have been very happy with this purchase. It serves my needs nicely. I always have a reference handy for birthdays,anniversaries and any other type of special occassion cards.

As far as a book on wit goes,this is as good as they get.What I liked best was that this book was by someone who spent his life as a fan,observer,practitioner and most of all a student of humor.This book consists almost entirely of very short pieces of wit;often referred to as one-liners.Rosten has done a good job of explaining all the various forms of 'short' wit;such as,malapropisms,neologisms,epigrams,images,observations,gags,sparkling descriptions ,soleolecisms,wisecracks,typos,transpositions,and so forth.A lot of the comments he makes are as good as the jokes he has included.Make no mistake about it,Rosten was Jewish and he weighs the book heavily with Jewish humor.I was surprised that he did not include anything by Myron Cohen as he was one of my favorites;although I'm not positive and could have missed any.This book is almost an encyclopedia of wit and extremely well arranged in about 300 categories.However,the book would have benefited with an index by 'author'.He addressed the problem of attributions,but I still felt that it would improve the book and is usually done in most books of this type.Maybe he had more fun hanging out with Dorothy Parker than preparing indexes,and for that who could blame him?
We have all heard of the line "He was a legend in his own mind" I think Rosten was a bit of "A wit in his own mind" .I think he quoted himself more than anyone else and that includes the likes of Twain,Wilde,Fields,etc. While a lot of his quotes seemed lacking when sandwiched between the masters ;he had a really good one with "If a picture is worth a thousand words,please paint me the Gettysburg Address" -one of the best!

Don't buy it, you'll be sorry!