Hello and Goodbye, H*y*m*a*n
HANDLIN, OSCAR
Hello and Goodbye, H*y*m*a*n The Return of H*y*m*a*n k*a*p*l*a*n. By Leo Rosten. Harper. 292 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by Oscar Handlin Professor of American History, Harvard University; Author,...
...The Kaplan of 20 years ago gave a new dimension to the ethnic stereotype...
...I remember still that issue of the New Yorker in which Mr...
...Furthermore, in the year when the New Yorker articles first appeared, the Black Legion and the Christian Front were still strong, capable of attracting thousands of adherents by the denial of the heritage of American diversity...
...He is still a student and the cast of characters that surrounds him is still familiar...
...Kaplan and his readers were asserting their own superiority by showing the emptiness of the pretensions of the society around them...
...Yet, on rereading, the Kaplan of our youth still seems today a figure of greater comic dignity than his successor...
...Rastus and Hiram—the figures of fun through whom American society recognized the variety of human types which it included...
...But on the whole, the stories drag and the play on words lacks the punch it had in Mr...
...Both Kaplans are located in a long line of ethnic stereotypes which for a century have been a sign to the accommodation of various ethnic groups to the New World...
...But the transformation of Hyman Kaplan is part of the price that we have paid for it...
...No doubt we are all older and more stolid than we once were and less easily moved to laughter...
...On the vaudeville stage and in the popular literature in which they most often appeared, they were treated with condescension...
...True, this was a superiority blemished by the fact that it was not recognized and not accepted, but it was thereby ironic and hence the source of the humor...
...Now, Mr...
...The placid comforts of our own decade are indeed an improvement...
...The situation is entirely different now...
...Perhaps that accounts for the subtle changes in the characters of the new book...
...Eagerly we awaited each of his subsequent encounters and victories over the English language and the American way of life...
...At the end it is he who has the stars in his name and Mr...
...Parkhill, in the hilarious investigation of a "big department...
...They are the visible kin of Pat and Mike, Tony and Hans...
...Of course, all this was written in the depths of a depression while the United States still reeled under the shock of a disaster that raised troubling questions about the validity of its ideals...
...Yet the effect of his ignorance and his misuse of words was to demonstrate his superiority over both the language and the teacher who embodied it...
...Nobody really hates anybody anymore...
...He was the same recognizably comic figure entangled in mispronunciation and misunderstanding...
...we know that he came from a good school and that beneath his stern exterior there beats a heart of gold...
...And in defeat Mr...
...Kaplan was wrong and Mr...
...But Mr...
...Look," these knockabout characters seemed to say, "how far we are from the upstanding honorable men that real Americans are...
...The writing shows occasional flashes of wit, an ingenious use of language and an ear attuned to the peculiarities of speech of the East European Jew...
...Parkhill is now the ultimate victor...
...Even when the attitude toward them was kindly and free of hostility, it embodied an ironic mockery of their inferiority and their inability to conform to the standards accepted by society...
...Parkhill and the society he represented...
...We fail to laugh because there is but slight humor in a noisy nuisance...
...In this milieu, Mr...
...Kaplan first appeared in all his star-studded glory to lead his fellow students of the American Night Preparatory School for Adults and his teacher, Mr...
...And by a twisted irony, the groups that were being mocked accepted the stereotype as readily as most other Americans did...
...Parkhill, for instance, is no longer the simple foil he was earlier...
...Kaplan's first incarnation...
...He continues to assert himself simply to satisfy the demands of his own ego...
...I feel no nostalgia for the conditions that produced the grievance-laden generation of the 1930s...
...And Rosten, who now writes for Hollywood and is consulting editor of Look, is certainly a far cry from the unemployed graduate student he was in the 1930s...
...Kaplan is back...
...Kaplan is left without stars, without colors...
...Yet the result is not as funny as it was 20 years ago...
...Kaplan is simply a boisterous boob who is not well-mannered enough to know the rules of the society...
...We are all employed and all enjoy automatic increments...
...Author, "Boston's Immigrants" TWENTY YEARS AGO, we all laughed with Hyman Kaplan...
...He has a background and an identity...
...Parkhill was right by the standards sustained by Mr...
...Indeed, Mr...
...Kaplan ultimately triumphed by the superiority of his logic over the accepted logic and by the fact that the standards of the school and the society of the time were themselves delusive...
...we are all good Americans, increasingly looking and acting alike...
Vol. 42 • December 1959 • No. 46
