The Home Front:
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn American Humor and Edmund Love Last October 31, I wrote in these columns that there is less fun and frolic in American letters now than there was 30 or 40...
...The Army is really the epitomy of cut-and-dried conventionalism...
...He is a fine, serious writer with humorous wrappings—which is quite a different thing...
...And in the end, of course, it is these rule-breakers, these liars, thieves and loners who turn out to be the heroes...
...When he wasn't fighting, he was marching...
...To the clay I die," writes Love, "I shall always carry in my heart the image of the average infantry soldier...
...They sleep in odd places—subways, skyscrapers, fire escapes—but their freedom compensates for their occasional inconvenience...
...He has a blessed gift for illuminating his discussions of public affairs with lively interlacings of fun...
...In the good old days, said I, we had many really gifted comic writers, and though I acknowledged that some of our television and radio writers are occasionally funny, I suggested their achievements merely parallel those of Pat and Mike in the vanished days of vaudeville...
...But he is not a humorist...
...But the best answer of all came from one who very politely disagreed...
...There are few ladies among the actual bums, but their advent frequently causes disturbances among the males...
...This world of ours is rapidly growing more routine, more cut-anddried, more according to the book...
...Yet even this beaten, busy infantry soldier lived his own life within the Army, whenever he had time...
...And historian Love was there to record his individuality, his heroism and his humor...
...When a strong-willed guy signs up, the result is likely to be heroism rather than humor...
...During the war he was an officer in the History Division of the Pacific campaign and he would have every excuse for writing in unwieldy officialese...
...Love writes seriously and, I suppose, accurately about military affairs...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn American Humor and Edmund Love Last October 31, I wrote in these columns that there is less fun and frolic in American letters now than there was 30 or 40 years ago...
...When our author entitled one of his volumes War Is a Private Affair, what he meant was that in spite of all the rules and all the officers, a lot of what goes on is strictly personal and individual...
...More than once I said to myself: "This chap is not so far from the manner and quality of James Thurber...
...Many of them are enormously clever...
...Naturally, some sections of society furnish richer harvests for this sort of reaper than others...
...Now I have before me the three lively books of sketches by Edmund G. Love and I cannot think of an adequate apology for having overlooked the talents of this gifted writer...
...He was always afraid and always courageous...
...He was always tired and dirty and hungry...
...To prove her point the young lady sent along Robert Bendiner's White House Fever and three books by Edmund G. Love...
...But his characters are all men who are inevitably against the officers and the rules...
...I was not maintaining, of course, that the American people lack humor...
...Most readers were inclined to agree...
...These bums are not real no-goods...
...All I was saying was that their humor seldom bursts forth in the form of literature in book or magazine...
...His usual manner is rather restrained...
...In fact, I am glad to report, he never seems to be working over-hard for a humorous effect...
...When he wasn't marching he was digging...
...Naturally such a comprehensive charge brought me some replies...
...But every now and then one of the tales will lead you into such a grotesque situation that you inevitably burst into laughter...
...He is not exclusively funny...
...Love tells each tale in deep soberness...
...That would be tantamount to accusing them of lack of patriotism or honesty...
...But Love, apparently, has sworn an oath to select for description and distinction those few individuals who go their own way and cut their life's pattern according to their own tastes...
...The city is more formal than the country, the Army is more rigidly ruled than civil life and big organizations are more tightly tied to tradition than little ones...
...Now Bob Bendiner is one of the smartest chaps in this country...
...It is a lively place, this world of the unorthodox, misplaced and suit-yourself wanderers...
...Part of what has happened," she wrote, "is that the old-time humorists have gone but new ones are taking their places, and there is something to be said for having their talents recognized before the new humorists have become old humorists...
...Subways are for Sleeping is almost exclusively about New York bums...
...Once in a while his sketches will throw the author into a serious mood, but more often than not they are funny...
...but the man knows how to be cool without being obtuse...
...Over at Harcourt, Brace and Company they have a public relations girl who is ready to take up an argument at the drop of a book review...
...As the free-lancers circulate from Union Square to Pennsylvania Station and from bar-room to race track, every imaginable thing happens to them...
Vol. 44 • March 1961 • No. 11
