"Americana ""With „ Smile"
STEINBERG, JULIEN
Americana With a Smile A Treasury of American Folk Humor. Ed. by James N. Tidewell. Crown. 620 pp. $5.00. In selecting material for this book, Mr. Tidewell set up two conditions for entry. The...
...Some bits, however, are no more Reviewed by Julien Steinberg Editor, "Verdict of Three Decades'' : than clever ways of learning alien information...
...Here you will find, cheek by jowl, Sandburg's able blending of the sayings of the street into something that amazingly resembles a poem, Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First...
...Tidewell, a man of sober good sense, has not worried unduly about whether this item or that really constitutes "folk" anything...
...This, to be sure, was more of a hope than a requirement, but it does save the reader from a barrage from the once-popular school that depended almost solely on misspellings for its comic effect...
...Others mock words and simultaneously serve as a boost to the kids' prowess in learning them...
...A cin and a natty / A skinny and a fatty / That's the way • to spell Cincinnati...
...Resentment of teacher, that ringer from the adult world who gives them orders, defending oneself against taunts, and boasts about the future, would seem to inspire most of the stuff that kids select from the verbal treasures left by those who used to sit in their seats...
...A private notion of mine would seem to be substantiated by the contents of this book, namely that "folk" never write humor or anything else...
...Teacher, Teacher/I declare/I see Mary's underwear...
...In actuality, this book—like almost all "folk" packages—is a meal, appetizing in this case, made out of dishes served up by writers who once were better known than they are today, by entirely forgotten writers whose comments have been so widely plagiarized that we delude ourselves into thinking that the populace somehow wrote their stuff, plus fairly recent wits who have no need to apologize to their predecessors about the quality of their fun-making...
...The long spiel is a superbly constructed narrative, with almost Homeric overtones, in which non-seqniturs and brilliant il-logic are blended into one of the most hypnotizing sales talks imaginable...
...The first was that the selection had to be funny today...
...One marvelous bit of Americana, which tends to show how much was lost when the free-wheeling pitchman of yesterday was replaced bv the conman-mit-conscience ulcer-breeding Madison Avenue types of today, is the mid-19th-century pitchman's sermon about his "magical, radical, tragical, erasive soap...
...His clear emphasis is on stuff worth reading, and he ranges through time, picking at will from a larder perhaps richer in wit, humor, wisecracks, tall stories than that of any other nation...
...We wish him many more happy books...
...which will read like "folklore" in two more decades, I assure you), Will Rogers's musings on the wacky lyrics in our songs, Goldwynisms, stuff about the "original" Arkansaw Traveler, very funny poker stories, and much unexpected whatnot...
...One rich, but easily overlooked, lode tapped by Mr...
...Tidewell consists of the kids' rhymes, jokes and riddles that are to be heard generation after generation in the corridors of every American elementary school...
...You are a peach / If we cantaloupe / Lettuce marry / Weed make a swell pear...
...Methinks that many of the oldtime customers bought the product not out of a sense of belief, but as a way of thanking the pitchman for his incomparable entertainment...
...Tidewell, an academician with a sense of humor, has labored like a mountain and we are glad that he has produced mirth instead of a mouse...
...Set down on paper, one sees that they aren't merely jingles and bits of il-Iogic, but magic words of childhood that range from evening-the-score types of incantations to capsuling of the lessons that life is teaching...
...The second requirement was that the pieces be "folk humor," a test that the editor immediately and happily violated by formulating a definition so broad that everything he wanted to include qualified: "humor from any source which has been enjoyed, talked about, and retold by the American people...
...Some make a father of a pre-school-age daughter —like the reviewer—worry a little...
Vol. 40 • February 1957 • No. 5
