No Further Forward

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 778, 18 June 1954, Page 10

No Further Forward

N our day of research and analysis the most unKikely topics are subjected to scientific observation and comment. Such treatment may have quaint and amusing results. For example, certain portions of the Kinsey Report are in their Own way as amusing as would be a solid archaeological report on the Paleolithic culture of the fairies of Great Britain. On the other hand, if the subject of the research is itself humour, as in Professor Joseph Jones’s 3YC talks on Modern American Humorists, then it may be neither humorous, nor, at least in its lower flights, relevant. To be sure,

the existence of humour throws a light upon man’s estate, and his sense of the fitness of things, and it is the absence of the latter, plus their otherwise close resemblance to us, which makes us think that monkeys are funny. I have, however, found so far no time-shattering intuitions cOncerning man or even modern American man emerging from Professor Jones’s talks. He has told me a little I did not know about the New Yorker, has touched on Perelman and, I think, mentioned Thurber; and all I am tempted to say, descending even lower than Dorothy Parker’s "A Girl’s best friend is her mutter," is that I am no Thurber forward than before.

Westcliff