Though our era is awash in comedy, literary humor has dwindled in recent years.
Comedy Central now updates our taste for political satire with every turn of the 24-hour news cycle. The current generation of stand-up artists has satiated our appetite for the transgressive by taking -- unwittingly, of course -- their art back to its origins in ancient Greece, where some classicists believe comic drama originated in folk hymns to the phallus. It's not the sort of audience likely to spend a few quiet moments, let alone hours, with Twain, Thurber, Waugh or Wodehouse.
Indeed, if there were a federal registry for endangered literary genres, humor surely would be on it, a prose equivalent of the black-footed ferret.
All of this makes Ian Frazier a kind of rara avis and his new collection of essays, "Lamentations of the Father," as welcome as another sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker. As a longtime staff writer for the New Yorker, the author has enjoyed the protection of what amounts to one of literary humor's protected habitats, and he's made the most of it. No one writing in this genre today hits the mark with anything like Frazier's frequency. The measure of his success is the number of pieces you'll want to read aloud to others -- partly to share the pleasure, partly to explain why you've been making all those strangling noises. What distinguishes literary humor from other forms of contemporary comedy is that, in most instances, you can share it with those around you, even if one of the listeners can't get into a PG-13 film on his own.
This is Frazier's third collection of humorous essays, and this one takes its title from a piece that has been ricocheting around the e-mail universe ever since it was published. In it, the author adopts the tone of Deuteronomy to explicate a set of rules familiar to any parent:
"Of the beasts of the field, and of the fishes of the sea and of all foods that are acceptable in my sight you may eat, but not in the living room. Of the hoofed animals, broiled or ground into burgers you may eat, but not in the living room."
Famous names
In "Kisses All Around," Frazier indulges a conceit familiar to anybody who works with words -- the written air kiss administered to the acquaintance who has sent you something you're too busy to read. Thus Pope Leo X's secretary assures Martin Luther that the pontiff means to get to his "Ninety-Five Theses" as soon as his schedule lightens: "It's on the table next to his bed, and he will certainly get to it soon." Felix Faure, president of the Third Republic, congratulates Emile Zola on "J'Accuse," the title of his new "war yarn." The Ayatollah Khomeini promises Salman Rushdie he'll get to "The Satanic Verses" as soon as he can and signs off, "Death to Bush or whoever, and kisses all around."
