[UPDATED 6/7/10:
Sometime in the past couple of weeks this book went from Full View to Snippet View on Google Books, which is why the pictures no longer make sense. Lesson for me: save the images next time so they can't change out from under me.
So anyway, this post no longer makes sense. Sorry!]
When I was a kid I had a library discard copy of this 1945 joke book:
Later in life I would encounter Bennett Cerf every now and then in the form of an anthology or an introduction. Little by little his anthologies, long out of print, are vanishing from libraries. I remember without pleasure his oddly condescending introduction to the old Portable Dorothy Parker--presumably he didn't realize when he wrote it which of them would be better remembered. He's far from forgotten, but he's certainly fading out at a reasonable clip--how many more years before he's familiar only to scholars, erased from the world of ordinary reading? Since I encountered this book so young, though, he'll always seem a little bit exciting to me, sophisticated and faraway.
Anyway, here's my favorite joke, not just in this book, but in the
world:
Outstanding.
There were a few jokes I didn't understand. As the years wore on every now and then it would suddenly dawn on me what another one meant. When I came across it today and started reading through, most of them were obvious (generally mild sex jokes that were beyond me when I was eight). Some weren't so easy. This one I found absolutely baffling as a child, and finally understand (though it took me a couple of minutes even now):
Maybe you're cleverer than me and you're already laughing, but if not....
SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER
She thinks he's the iceman. In the days of iceboxes, the iceman was the guy who brought you the ice that kept everything cold--he was also the guy you slept with, the way in later years you would sleep with the milkman, and today you would sleep with, I don't know, the pool guy.
This next one, though, I still don't understand. I just have no clue. I don't even know how to start investigating.
Am I missing something obvious?
It's kind of nice. Childhood mysteries generally evaporate--sweet for a few of them to remain baffling.
