The Best of modern humor

Gertrude the Governess : or simple seventeen / Stephen Leacock --

King Lear's daughter / Maurice Baring --

Recollections of notable cops / H. L. Mencken --

Ukridge's accident syndicate / P. G. Wodehouse --

The Busher's honeymoon (excerpt from "You know me, Al") / Ring Lardner --

Correspondence with Davis Wallace / Marianne Moore --

Opera synopses / Robert Benchley --

If men played cards as women do / George S. Kaufman --

Letters to Warner Brothers and Gummo Marx / Groucho Marx --

The cliche expert testifies on love / Frank Sullivan --

The intrusions of Captain Foulenough / J. B. Morton (Beachcomber) --

The breaking up of the Winships / James Thurber --

Across the street and into the grill / E. B. White --

Time...Fortune...Life...Luce / Wolcott Gibbs --

excerpt from Cold Comfort Farm / Stella Gibbons --

Winner takes all / Evelyn Waugh --

"Nothing but a little pissant" (excerpt from "The Earl of Louisiana") / A. J. Liebling --

Farewell, my lovely appetizer / S. J. Perelman --

Mr. K*A*P*L*A*N, the comparative, and the superlative (excerpt from "The education of Hyman Kaplan") / Leo Rosten --

Why I live at the P.O. / Eudora Welty --

Requiem for a noun, or intruder in the dusk / Peter de Vries --

Keats and Chapman / Flann O'Brien (Myles na Gopaleen) --

The chast Clarissa / John Cheever --

The Gettysburg Address in Eisenhowerese / Oliver Jensen --

excerpt from To Jerusalem and back / Saul Bellow --

Emigration (excerpt from "Daughters and rebels") / Jessica Mitford --

Another goddam Englishman (excerpt from "One fat Englishman") / Kingsley Amis --

Report on the Barnhouse effect / Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. --

Gold's stepmother (excerpt from "Good as Gold") / Joseph Heller --

excerpt from Clinging to the wreckage / John Mortimer --

Toujours Tristesse / Jean Kerr --

A day's work / Truman Capote --

I am Mike Hammer / Terry Southern --

Chef Reinhart (excerpt from "Reinhart's women") / Thomas Berger --

Bomb math / Russell Baker --

Saving paper / Art Buchwald --

Just plain folks / Kenneth Tynan --

YMA dream / Thomas Meehan --

Bernie Perk (excerpt from The Dick Gibson Show) / Stanley Elkin --

The lonely guy's apartment / Bruce Jay Friedman --

Four hacks / Wilfrid Sheed --

Game / Donald Barthelme --

The mechanical genius / V. S. Naipaul --

The mid-Atlantic man / Tom Wolfe --

Whacking off (excerpt from Portnoy's Complaint) / Philip Roth --

Dinner at Binny's (excerpt from Injury Time) / Beryl Bainbridge --

The Kugelmass episode / Woody Allen --

Popular workbench / Bruce McCall --

Dinner at the De La Rentas' / Calvin Trillin --

How to be a Jewish mother / Dan Greenburg --

Hip wedding on Mount Tam (excerpt from The Serial) / Cyra McFadden --

Long ago and far away / Alan Coren --

The analytic napkin / Marshall Brickman --

Mrs. Proby gets hers (excerpt from Three Wogs) / Alexander Theroux --

A few words about breasts / Nora Ephron --

The oranging of America / Max Apple --

Trash no more / Roy Blount, Jr. --

My Moa / Veronica Geng --

Shy rights : why not pretty soon? / Garrison Keillor --

The commune (excerpt from Kinflicks) / Lisa Alther --

America's Cup '83 : the Sherpa challenge / Lynn Caraganis --

Notes on "trick" / Fran Lebowitz --

Dating your Mom / Ian Frazier.