THE HOME BOOK OF IRISH HUMOR

Another earnest, greedily acquisitive attempt to capture for devotees the warmth, humanity and delicious wit of a glorious folk humor. Wisely recognizing that true ethnic humor has its base in the peculiar character of the society and history that shaped it, the editor has included many lively and rich sketches of Irish and American-Irish turmoils by the greats--from Swift to Sullivan. Brief prefaces suggest the wellsprings of Irish humor--the pubs, Irish Bulls (""bloopers""), politics, the era of Irish unity in Ireland, etc. However these are merely handy catch-alls for a series of fine pieces (mainly lit'ry) but anecdotes and pleasantries are for the most part, tame and timid in the telling, surrounded by a bland celebrity-column prose--the prose that de-Irishes. (One hilarious James Michael Curley anecdote is buried in a pedestrian capsule biography.) In part, a pleasant, light miscellany, but for the rest--someone has watered the whiskey.