The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose: From William Caxton to P.G.Wodehouse - A Conducted Tour (Oxford Books of Prose) -

This book of humorous snippets is at least selected by Frank Muir, which makes a change from John Carey. Frank Muir is an elegant and extremely witty and ingenious virtuoso of the English himself, but I still have to wonder what the possible purpose can be of a farrago of miscellaneous excerpts from different authors. I could have understood collecting a nosegay of the witticisms of some particular writer or of some specific school of writing, but this lengthy tome takes in Smollett, Goldsmith, Poe, Jerome K Jerome, Dylan Thomas, Evelyn Waugh and Beryl Bainbridge, to name but a few. The most astonishing absentee is Oscar Wilde, but some of Bernard Shaw’s musical, theatrical and artistic reviews are here. I welcome those thoroughly, as I do the excerpt from a review by Macaulay, but where, I wonder, is A E Housman, whose excoriations of his fellow scholars surpass either of them not only in forcefulness but for sheer hilarity. Otherwise the roll-call of the humorous includes many who are predictable, in no adverse sense. I would certainly have expected to find Dorothy Parker, H L Mencken and Mark Twain, for instance, and so I do. Not all the items chosen are from specific authors – the satirical magazine Private Eye is represented, partly by Auberon Waugh under his own name but also by the spoof diaries and letters of the prime ministerial spouses Mrs Wilson and Mr Thatcher, which are anonymous and may be co-operative efforts. Certain other press series are officially under nicknames, but we all know that Beachcomber in the Daily Express was J B Morton, and that Myles Na Gopaleen of the Irish Times is Brian O Nuallain (aka O’Nolan). The authorship of the Peter Simple column in the Daily Telegraph changed from Colin Welch to Michael Wharton, and not to its advantage in general, but the excerpts here are actually the funniest things that I spotted in the whole book, and I imagine they are the work of the former. His maverick right-wing politics are not my own, but I used to find his stuff irresistible. Other contributors are not household names, possibly not even in their own households, but I would certainly have expected such eminent men of letters as Muir himself and the syndics of the Oxford University Press to have known among them that Humphry Berkeley spelt his first name thus and not ‘Humphrey’.

In general don’t expect to roll in too many aisles. This is an anthology of good-quality humorous prose, not a book of gag-lines and one-liners. You may spot here and there, as I did, the occasional piece that is to your particular liking, whether a treasured recollection or even, if we are lucky, something new to us. I was never much of an enthusiast for Punch in general (except when it was edited by Muggeridge) nor of Basil Boothroyd in particular, but I applaud heartily his scathing comments on the programme-notes of a classical concert he attended, and the poke in the eye he administers not so much to Beethoven himself as to his hagiographers who have done so much to distort people’s view of music in general. This was a lucky find – I do not pretend to have read the whole massive book nor do I ever propose to do so, nor indeed can I imagine who ever will. I still fail completely to envisage the readership of a work like this, and I would guess its future belongs mainly on the shelves of the more traditionally-minded libraries and in the hands of browsers in second-hand bookshops searching for curiosities.

Alas, Muir probably had no option but to contribute a preface devoted to the doomed enterprise of trying to define and categorise humour. I find such stuff virtually unreadable, but for all I know it may have value to earnest students of Eng Lit and their instructors, if that is any word for them. I hope they paid Muir well for it, because if they were going to set about such a fatuous project as this in the first place they were lucky to have him. It is all good quality, I make no bones about that. I make a whole ossiary of bones about putting out such a ridiculous publication in the first place, but making allowance for personal prejudice and individual temperament I can, and perhaps ought to, award it four stars.

This book could change your life (9/9 people found this helpful)

First, it is great to browse through, spending five minutes with some obscure 17th c. author, and the next five with Thurber or Saki.

Secondly, there are at least ten books which I read after having read an extract of them in this compendium - most of whom I would never have heard of otherwise.

Frank Muir has chosen the extracts very carefully, and he guides you through the story behind each author and extract in a very informative way. Even though he clearly values puns and wordplay over all other forms of literary humour, the collection is in evenly balanced - from the surrealist formalism of Perelman to the charming narrative of some preRaphaelite's granddaughter, everything is represented here.

The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose: From William Caxton to P.G.Wodehouse - A Conducted Tour (Oxford Books of Prose)

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CUI BONO? (9/12 people found this helpful)

This book could change your life (9/9 people found this helpful)

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