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

by David Remnick (Editor), Henry Finder (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
Remnick, New Yorker editor since 1999, and Finder, the magazine's editorial director, recommend taking this book in small doses. However, New Yorker humor is not for everyone. Do not read this book if you suffer from an irony deficiency, or if you are currently taking any form of remedial English. Also, do not read this book if you are allergic to E.B. White, Robert Benchley, S.J. Perelman, Dorothy Parker, Woody Allen, Veronica Geng, Steve Martin, or Jack Handey. Side effects include the urge to do literary research (to track down the targets of spoofs) and the discovery of some very funny writers who may be unknown to you. To learn more about the type of material contained in this book, consult Judith Yaross Lee's Defining New Yorker Humor (LJ 2/1/00). Ask your librarian if Fierce Pajamas is right for you. Available by prescription at public and academic libraries. Susan M. Colowick, North Olympic Lib. Syst., Port Angeles, WA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review
?A complete delight from beginning to end.? ?The New York Times

?Classic humor writing from a fantasy slumber party of writers.? ?Vanity Fair

?Quite simply among the greatest stuff like this ever written . . . There is comic brilliance in these pages. . . . [Fierce Pajamas] is more than worth your time, your money and the potential damage to your funny bone.? ?The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

?The New Yorker?s fine anthology of humor writing can inspire us to collectively bemoan the scarcity of a certain kind of printed comedy: the subtle and sophisticated type." ?Newsday


From the Trade Paperback edition. -- Review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (November 20, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375504753
• ISBN-13: 978-0375504754
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #675,647 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rich Source of Literary and Political Drollery for All Moods, November 24, 2001

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

This book is a perfect gift for all fans of The New Yorker!

If you are like me, The New Yorker's cartoons draw your attention first. Then, you'll look for quips in verse. You'll scan your favorite features. Next, you'll scan the table of contents for your favorite writers. Finally, you will read articles on subjects of interest.

In all cases, you can expect to be surprised with wit . . . even in the midst of "serious" articles on "serious" subjects.

Unless you have read every issue of The New Yorker over the past 75 plus years, undoubtedly you've missed some wonderful humor in the form of prose and poetry. This anthology lets you quickly access the works that have "stood the test of time" to still produce a laugh now for both editor, David Remnick, and editorial director, Henry Finder.

Over 70 contributors are represented, many by more than one piece.

You are cautioned that "humor is often diluted by concentration" so that you should sample this collection over time in small doses, like medicine.

The works are loosely organized into Spoofs, the Frenzy of Renown, the War between Men and Women, the Writing Life, a Funny Thing Happened, Words of Advice, Recollections and Reflections, and Verse.

The works vary a lot in how quickly they will reach your funny bone. Some will release many laughs, while others are basically one joke that will raise not too much more than a smile. After you have finished all of the offerings to the altar of humor, you may wish to create your own index of which works match best with which moods and times when you read.

I usually prefer compact works suffused with quick humor. Here are my favorites in the collection:

E.B. White, "Duck in Fierce Pajamas" which begins with "Ravaged by pink eye, I lay for a week scarce caring whether I lived or died." and "Critic"

Marshall Brickman, "The Analytic Napkin"

Ian Frazier, "LGA - ORD" which begins with "Grey bleak final afternoon ladies and gentlemen . . . ."

Groucho Marx, "Press Agents I Have Known"

Chet Williamson, "Gandhi at the Bat"

F. Scott Fitzgerald, "A Short Autobiography"

Frank Sullivan, "The Cliché Expert Takes the Stand" and "The Cliché Expert Tells All"

Ruth Suckow, "How to Achieve Success as a Writer"

Michael J. Arlen, "Are We Losing the Novel Race?"

Woody Allen, "Selections from the Allen Notebooks"

Peter De Vries, "The High Ground, or Look, Ma, I'm Explicating"

Robert Benchley, "Why We Laugh -- Or Do We?"

Steve Martin, "Changes in the Memory after Fifty"

Clarence Day, "Father Isn't Much Help"

S.J. Perelman, "Cloudland Revisited"

Martin Amis, "Tennis Personalities"

John Updike, "Car Talk"

Dorothy Parker, "Rhyme of an Involuntary Violet"

Ogden Nash, "Procrastination Is All the Time"

Robert Graves, "The Naked and the Nude"

Communing with these wonderful writers will also encourage you to read more of their work, and the works of those they spoof. What could be finer?

I hope that the editors consider producing a second volume that includes serious works which contain humorous asides and interludes.

Look on the bright side of every "overly serious" subject. In that way, you can avoid the "deadly dullness" stall!

52 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Head-Funny, but not Gut-Funny, March 13, 2002

By	Mike Stone (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

The prose here sparkles. Purple, in the best sense of the world. Ideas are bandied about left and right like badminton birdies. Themes are covered copiously. Wit and wisdom are abundant, brought out whenever the author needs it, like a samurai does with his sword. The pieces are all triumphs of economy, setting up their propositions and then quickly cutting to the punchline(s) before the reader becomes bored. Writing of this magnitude, especially when collected from such a fine variety of sources in one collection, is to be treasured and preserved. The superlatives for this book are immeasurable... except that it's not funny.

Oh, it's funny, alright. Just not the right kind of funny. "That was clever," you might say to yourself, after a romp through one of Garrison Keillor's prose pieces. "I wonder if I should chortle now? I think I shall... Chortle!" Or: "Look, mum: alliteration! How ingenious. I marvel at the textbook examples of Comedy found herein." It's humour of the head, as you can see, but rarely humour from the gut. The kind that causes an unexpected snort, embarrassing you in a room full of stranger. Or, the kind that promises a swift trip up the nasal passages for the mouthful of milk you just gulped. This is the kind of visceral humour that I expected. Alas, I did not get it.

Let me show you what I mean, by giving some examples of Head-Funny (not Gut-Funny) pieces: Polly Frost's 'Notes on My Conversations', in which the author imagines herself as a professional conversationalist; Thomas Meehan's 'Yma Dream', in which the author must disastrously introduce a series of guests at a party he is throwing (example: "Ilya, Ira, here's Yma, Ava, Oona. Ilya, Ira -- Ona, Ida, Abba, Ugo, Aga." You get the idea); Roger Angell's 'Ainmosni', in which the author devises a simple plan for curing insomnia: playing with well-known palindromes! ("A woman, a plan, a canal: Panamowa"); Bill Franzen's 'Hearing From Wayne', in which Wayne sends a postcard to Bill... from the afterlife. Don't get me wrong: I enjoyed all these pieces. Immensely. But the promised laughs didn't materialize. Instead, I got pieces that made me think, that made me ponder, that made me contemplate. But laugh? No. Not out loud, anyway (and frankly, an out-loud laugh is the only kind that counts).

I will admit, though, that there were isolated moments of gut-busting. Chet Williamson's 'Gandhi at the Bat', in which the The Mahatma pinch-hits for Red Ruffing. "C'mon, Moe!" Babe Ruth pleads. "Show 'em the old pepper!" To which Gandhi replies: "I will try, Mr. Baby!" Jack Handey's 'Stunned' is a surreal account of a man and his telescope, through which he has discovered conclusive evidence of life outside our own solar system (or has he?). Noah Baumbach's 'Keith Richards' Desert-Island Disks' takes said list, published in Pulse magazine, and imagines what would happen if Keef actually ended up on the island with only these disks (hint: he gets sick of "Tutti Frutti" pretty quickly). Anthony Lane's 'Looking Back in Hunger' is a wonderfully vitriolic look at cookbooks, and how they mess with our minds. Martin Amis' 'Tennis Personalities' proves in two scant pages why I think he is the only perfect writer working today (regular readers of this space will already know I think this way). And in the book's final section we get some perfectly precise verse, most notably from E.B. White, Dorothy Parker, and Ogden Nash.

In his introduction, David Remnick (or is it Henry Finder?) points out that "you might be ill-advised to read this book straight through" because, and here he quotes Russell Baker, "humour is funny when it sneaks up on you and takes you by surprise." Having come to the end of this anthology, I suspect they're right. Expectations can sometimes sap energy. Calling something "An Anthology of Humour Writing" might just wring the humour out of it. But I hope that the examples I've given above indicate that when the collection isn't funny, and it's rarely gut-bustingly funny, it is still highly worthwhile.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply the best of the best, November 25, 2002

By	WILLIAM BRAZNELL "braznell" (Larkspur, CA United States) - See all my reviews

If I were teaching a course in 20th Century American Humor, "Fierce Pajamas" would be my textbook. It is simply the best collection of the best short pieces by the best humor writers of our times--Robert Benchley, James Thurber, E. B. White, Dorothy Parker, S. J. Perelman, Groucho Marks, Steve Martin, Veronica Geng, Woody Allen, Ogden Nash, Martin Amis, John Updike, Mike Nichols, Garrison Keillor, Clarence Day, Frank "The Cliche Expert" Sullivan, Leonard (alias Mr. K*A*P*L*A*N) Ross--what more could one want? (Since you ask, dozens of other fine writers are represented in this unique collection.) Okay,there's not a single Abbott and Costello or Martin and Lewis routine in the whole book. But you knew that. This is wit,satire,irony--humor with an edge--not goofball slapstick. But anyone who can't get a belly laugh out of Steve Martin's "Changes in the Memory After Fifty", Ian Frazer's "Dating Your Mom", or David Owen's timely "What Happened to My Money?" should have his pulse checked. I've been sipping this rare, bubbly vintage for a month or so and am about to go back for seconds. Not only am I recommending it to my friends, I'm impoverishing myself sending copies to everyone I care about! Have a sip yourself.