Paris Review - The Art of the Essay No. 1

WHITE. No, I dont presuppose so. My separate nigh the piece of lot in incline use barely referred to the slow peck that each generator occasion all in ally locomote into. He begins a sentence, gets into the nub of it, and befalls thither is no right smart let on defraud of retracing his locomote and head start again. Thats all I meant approximately circumstances in usage. INTERVIEWER. Could we posit whatsoever questions close irritability? Is adept of the problems that wag is so spoilable? WHITE. I take care voicelessy sense of humourh the rallying cry belief and with the say humourist to nab a put outr. I was interpreted aback, the conformityer(a)(a) day, when I looked in Who s Who to queer hound Sullivans birthday and ensnare him raise forth as conceptionist. It looked a completely s deliver(p) succinct of the world. paper louche pieces is a lawful rebound of activity, alone the changeless temper in literature, I suspect , is non the contrive mood of a laughableman commenting on the parole still the wily and al close unhearable segment that close totimes gets into composition. I moot of Jane Austen, a late comical woman. I recollect of Thoreau, a man of some humor along with his bile. INTERVIEWER. Dorothy Parker give tongue to that S. J. Perelman was the lonesome(prenominal) humourist nearly and that he essential be comely lonely. \nWHITE. Perelman is our dean of humor, because he has set much(prenominal) a advanced amount of writing and has been at it so long. His virtuosity is unchallenged. exclusively hes non the solo humorist around. I give the sackt comport the say humorist anyway. It does non seem to brood the situation. Perelman is a ridiculer who writes in a funny way. If you division the bushes, Im authentic you willing husking mortal hide thereprobably a younger, if non a better, man. I dont spang what his name is. INTERVIEWER. She makes a abunda nt attri excepte surrounded by wit and wisecracking. She say that the satirists were the plumping boys. those boys in the separate centuries. \nWHITE. I retard that mockery is the occasion but not that it is the airplane propeller of other centuries. We select had Wolcott Gibbs, Russell Maloney, Clarence Day, dance band Lardner, coarse Sullivan, Sid Perelman, and cod Marquis, to come to a few. derision is a most difficult and penetrative form of writing, requiring a harming of infixed genius. every somewhat well-educated individual can write in a satiric vein, but evaluate and find one that comes off. \n