First Person Singular

Anyone who can force an unexpected chuckle out of us this spring is to be blessed. Which is to say that Stephen Leacock’sMy Remarkable Uncle (Dodd Mead, $2.50) is a godsend. Humorists are said to lose their flavor in the course of time, and had this Canadian — I mean Stephen, not his uncle — been less ruddy, less resilient to the push of events, we should have forgotten long before this the joy to be found in his friendly sentences with their laughable and always unexpected parentheses. Begin this new book by watching Leacock’s sentence structure: here is some of the clearest and most supple prose of our time. See how he lets the emphasis fall on this innocent-appearing verb; see how he smuggles in his aside, the friendly nudge of recognition, so that you read half for the fun of what is said and half for the pleasure of being in Leacock’s intimacy. Leacock created this style of his more than thirty years ago. It has been enriched — not made lean — by the years.

Digests of books are always indigestible. I am content to give you a few glimpses of My Remarkable Uncle. It begins with a character sketch of the humorist’s uncle, ‘E. P.,’ surely as laughable a humbug as ever bluffed his way into print. But this is no buffoonery: this is the smiling, warm-hearted writing of the Sunshine Sketches years ago. And in the same vein are those reminiscent papers blended of nostalgia and a grin, in which the author recalls his family’s kitchen, his old school, and the panorama of his threescore and ten. Giddier and with more fooling are his prewar distillations on Fishing, Christmas, Book Titles, and Cricket for Americans — in these ‘ the humor of willful imbecility’ lives forever; sterner and with more feeling are the tributes to Dickens, the British Soldier, and England. Would Leacock have written so well and so variously without the goading of this war? Don’t ask. Take what you have got and be thankful.

Humor of a different sort and with a nostalgic undertone invites you to a book which, despite its lugubrious title, is must reading for anyone who has ever lived in France — or wanted to. I mean The Last Time I Saw Paris by Elliot Paul (Random House, $2.75). Since I have been speaking of style, let’s examine the skillful way in which Mr. Paul gets his effects. His paragraphs are more elaborate than those of Mr. Leacock. Their beauty lies in a descriptive power which is not only unerring but so suggestive that, as you read the words, your mind flashes back to places and people which you yourself have seen in Paris. The descriptions have a nice ironic edge: the words fit the people as when, in describing the Bal St. Séverin, he says ‘the dancers, each couple of whom seemed to have achieved a sort of plastic unity’; and finally the incident is built up with a pyramid of details which give the page a liveliness and identity quite delightful. The author did not pursue the élite. He found his friends in the rue de la Huchette — little people who lived in a little street in hot rooms redolent of garlic and good food.

Mr. Paul had his first taste of Bohemia in his native Boston and, liking it, went in the early twenties to Paris, where for eighteen years he lived the life of a Left-Banker, learning the language, loving the food, the wine, the people — learning to fit himself into French clothes (very tight), and then into French intimacies. He did this without much money but with enormous enjoyment. Gusto runs through this book from start to finish — gusto, drollery, a piling on of detail as in Rabelais, and above all a touching affection for the city which gave him so much.

Sherwood Anderson’s Memoirs (Scribners, $3.75) are in the strictest sense the literary remains of a man who was beloved and honored in his time. We stand too close to have any clear judgment of his size. His reminiscences, while they have been capably edited, are so loose-knit, so diffuse, that one hesitates to criticize them for shortcomings which the author would have corrected had he lived. Accept the book, then, as the source material of the autobiography of a man who was open-handed, egotistical, candid to the point of embarrassment, humorless in his writing, yet humble and deeply responsive to the simple life. To open this book is to open a desk drawer crammed with an author’s notes. Here, jumbled together and defying integration, are the forces and episodes which made Anderson the man he was — episodes which he has dramatized more effectively in his short stories. The best part of the book is that which tells of Anderson’s youth in the small town. Here the picture is most appealing, of a boy naïf, blundering, curious, and so eager for experience. I like also those chapters in which you see the ambitious writer struggling so desperately to master his medium and be himself. But I cannot avoid the conclusion that the parts of this book are more meaningful than the sum.

EDWARD WEEKS