tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post4241398198730541721..comments2024-03-28T19:56:32.848-05:00Comments on Anecdotal Evidence: `The Corn Tastes Different Where It Grows'Patrick Kurphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08436175583386298032noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post-17798212780936569212014-11-08T14:57:38.879-06:002014-11-08T14:57:38.879-06:00Some of the pleasure in Rabelais comes from the ra...Some of the pleasure in Rabelais comes from the rain of delirious inventiveness he pours on us. He takes such delight in it.Subbuteohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11263202102536057266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post-21305169136445031112014-11-06T05:25:45.790-06:002014-11-06T05:25:45.790-06:00A good deal of Mark Twain's humor now lies dea...A good deal of Mark Twain's humor now lies dead on the page, but far from all. My father was fond of the woman in the early pages of <i>Roughing It</i> who "rained the nine parts of speech for forty days and forty nights", and I agree with his judgment. Most of what still lives in his humor is not in the elaborately built up jokes, but in observations evidently taken from life, as with the woman on the stagecoach. I could say the same for Perelman, who is at his best with the lunacy of Hollywood. <br /><br />Rabelais is like Chaucer and Aristophanes, so remote that chiefly the farce survives. But I should say that in all cases, the farce does survive. There is a letter from Henry Adams to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who had just written a biography of Emerson, enumerating some of Emerson's judgments that Adams found odd. Of them I remember there is no music in Shelley; Egypt does not interest me; and there is no humor in Aristophanes.<br /><br />(As for Ed Smith, I had two Uncle Johns, two Aunt Marys, and two Aunt Sues, though apart from the Marys one of each pair was by marriage.Georgehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com