I’m hoping to get some suggestions of humorists and satirists from the '50s and '60s (and I’ll even take the '70s!). I recently finished Peter Devries’s “Without a Stitch in Time,” which left me wanting more. I’m a big fan of Dawn Powell’s New York novels, Mary McCarthy, Randall Jarrell’s “Pictures from an Institution,” and New Yorker-style writing in general. Thank you!
Well, there’s Jules Feiffer’s collections of cartoons for a starter…
Oh yes, I have his collection “The Explainers” and even got him to sign it! But I’m hoping to find essays and stories rather than cartoons.
Paul Krassner!
You’re probably looking for something more highbrow, but old issues of Mad magazine are available online. It’s definitely satire, and the 1950s issues are very much of their time.
Mad Magazine is great!
Any particular title you’d recommend?
He may not be exactly what you’re looking for, but one of the most prolific humorists of the 1960s was Jean Shepherd, as a writer and radio personality. People know him best from “A Christmas Story,” which was adapted from a collection of his stories reflecting on his childhood in the 1940s, but many of his writings (in Playboy and other magazines) and radio broadcasts were topical to the 1960s. Shepherd held court nightly on New York’s WOR for years, and many of his broadcasts are available online.
I would also put in a vote for MAD, which greatly shaped my sense of humor, along with Ernie Kovacs and the great satirical recordings of Stan Freberg.
I’ve been meaning to take a look at Jean Shepherd, thanks! A Christmas Story is still one of the top-three funniest movies ever!
Max Shulman may be best known as the creator of Dobie Gillis and the TV show based on the character. He started his writing career in the late 40s and continued into the 50s and 60s with satire based on the post-war college dating scene and middle class culture in short stories and novels that were turned into several movies in addition to the well known TV show.
All of them. My first was How I became a Yippie Conspirstor in Ten Easy Years.
Ooh yeah, this sounds very much like what I’m looking for, thank you!
Art Buchwald, Mort Sahl, Mike Nichols and Elaine May.
Of course, no list is complete without Lenny Bruce.
Harvard Lampoon did great satire that went beyond the local magazine.
Besides the wonderful Bored of the Ring, they also did a spot-on satire of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels (they even packaged it as a signet paperback, with the titles other JMS B*ND novels), Alligator. And they did a Playboy parody, too.
No love for Steve Allen? I was shocked when I heard he’d died after a fender-bender 20-odd years ago. I thought he was going to be around forever.
I’ll give his collection “Schmock-Schmock” a try!
Erma Bombeck (something my mother loved)
Allan Sherman (taught me about summer camp and King Louie)
Vaughn Meader (a career cut drastically short by an assassin’s bullet)
Allan Sherman had The Rape of the APE (American Puritan Ethic).
In the 50s and 60s The New Yorker had articles by an up-and-coming guy named Woody Allen, along with Morris Bishop, Peter DeVries, Wolcott Gibbs, Geoffrey T. Hellman [Talk of the Town], film critic Pauline Kael, John O’Hara (short stories), Calvin Trillin, and E. B. White.
Then there’s Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe.
What, no love for Tom Lehrer? Granted, his ouevre was songs, but for humor and gentle satire he can’t be beat, IMHO.
If you sample nothing else of his, you MUST check out his “Vatican Rag.” Every time I listen to it I have get up and dance around cackling.
Al Capp (Lil’ Abner)
Walt Kelly (Pogo)
Kurt Vonnegut (he wrote some of his best books in the 60s)
Joseph Heller
Stan Freberg