The 50 Funniest American Writers*: An Anthology of Humor from Mark Twain to The Onion

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The 50 Funniest American Writers*: An Anthology of Humor from Mark Twain to The Onion
by Andy Borowitz

About The 50 Funniest American Writers*: An Anthology of Humor from Mark Twain to The Onion

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About The 50 Funniest American Writers*: An Anthology of Humor from Mark Twain to The Onion

Ever wondered who makes a very funny person laugh? Wonder no more. Brought together in this Library of America collection are America's fifty funniest writers-according to acclaimed writer and comedian Andy Borowitz.

Reaching back to Mark Twain and forward to contemporary masters such as David Sedaris, Roy Blount Jr., Ian Frazier, Bernie Mac, Wanda Sykes, and George Saunders, The 50 Funniest American Writers* is an exclusive Who's Who of the very best American comic writing. Here are Thurber and Perelman, Lenny Bruce and Bruce Jay Friedman, Garrison Keillor and Dave Barry and Veronica Geng, plus hilarious lesser known pieces from The New Yorker, Esquire, The Atlantic, National Lampoon, Salon, and The Onion.

Find out who "one of the funniest people in America" (CBS Sunday Morning) reads when he needs a laugh.

> Andy Borowitz on the challenge of selecting the 50 funniest American writers

Excerpt - read below or on separate pages

Table of Contents	Read Hide
Introduction, Andy Borowitz Mark Twain A Presidential Candidate George Ade The Lecture Tickets That Were Bought but Never Used O. Henry The Ransom of Red Chief Sinclair Lewis from Babbitt Anita Loos from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Ring Lardner On Conversation H. L. Mencken Imperial Purple James Thurber More Alarms at Night Dorothy Parker The Waltz S. J. Perelman Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer Langston Hughes Simple Prays a Prayer Frank Sullivan The Night the Old Nostalgia Burned Down E. B. White Across the Street and into the Grill Peter De Vries The House of Mirth Terry Southern from The Magic Christian Lenny Bruce from How to Talk Dirty and Influence People Tom Wolfe The Secret Vice Jean Shepherd The Counterfeit Secret Circle Member Gets the Message, or The Asp Strikes Again Hunter S. Thompson The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved Woody Allen A Look at Organized Crime Bruce Jay Friedman The Tax Man Philip Roth Letters to Einstein Nora Ephron A Few Words about Breasts Henry Beard, Michael O’Donoghue, George W. S. Trow Our White Heritage Fran Lebowitz Better Read Than Dead: A Revised Opinion Charles Portis Your Action Line Donald Barthelme In the Morning Post Veronica Geng Curb Carter Policy Discord Effort Threat John Hughes Vacation ’58 Mark O’Donnell The Laws of Cartoon Motion Garrison Keillor The Tip-Top Club Bruce McCall Rolled in Rare Bohemian Onyx, Then Vulcanized by Hand Molly Ivins Tough as Bob War and Other Stuff Calvin Trillin Corrections Dave Barry Tips for Women: How to Have a Relationship with a Guy The Onion Clinton Deploys Vowels to Bosnia Susan Orlean Shiftless Little Loafers Roy Blount Jr. Gothic Baseball George Carlin If I Were in Charge of the Networks Ian Frazier Laws Concerning Food and Drink; Household Principles; Lamentations of the Father David Rakoff The Writer’s Life Bernie Mac from I Ain’t Scared of You David Sedaris Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie? Wanda Sykes It’s So Hard Jack Handey What I’d Say to the Martians David Owen Your Three Wishes: F.A.Q. George Saunders Ask the Optimist! Jenny Allen Awake Sloane Crosley The Pony Problem Larry Wilmore If Not an Apology, at Least a “My Bad”
A Presidential Candidate by Mark Twain	Read Hide
I have pretty much made up my mind to run for President. What the country wants is a candidate who cannot be injured by investigation of his past history, so that the enemies of the party will be unable to rake up anything against him that nobody ever heard of before. If you know the worst about a candidate, to begin with, every attempt to spring things on him will be checkmated. Now I am going to enter the field with an open record. I am going to own up in advance to all the wickedness I have done, and if any Congressional committee is disposed to prowl around my biography in the hope of discovering any dark and deadly deed that I have secreted, why—let it prowl. In the first place, I admit that I treed a rheumatic grandfather of mine in the winter of 1850. He was old and inexpert in climbing trees, but with the heartless brutality that is characteristic of me I ran him out of the front door in his nightshirt at the point of a shotgun, and caused him to bowl up a maple tree, where he remained all night, while I emptied shot into his legs. I did this because he snored. I will do it again if I ever have another grandfather. I am as inhuman now as I was in 1850. I candidly acknowledge that I ran away at the battle of Gettysburg. My friends have tried to smooth over this fact by asserting that I did so for the purpose of imitating Washington, who went into the woods at Valley Forge for the purpose of saying his prayers. It was a miserable subterfuge. I struck out in a straight line for the Tropic of Cancer because I was scared. I wanted my country saved, but I preferred to have somebody else save it. I entertain that preference yet. If the bubble reputation can be obtained only at the cannon’s mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty. If it is loaded my immortal and inflexible purpose is to get over the fence and go home. My invariable practice in war has been to bring out of every fight two-thirds more men than when I went in. This seems to me to be Napoleonic in its grandeur. My financial views are of the most decided character, but they are not likely, perhaps, to increase my popularity with the advocates of inflation. I do not insist upon the special supremacy of rag money or hard money. The great fundamental principle of my life is to take any kind I can get. The rumor that I buried a dead aunt under my grapevine was correct. The vine needed fertilizing, my aunt had to be buried, and I dedicated her to this high purpose. Does that unfit me for the Presidency? The Constitution of our country does not say so. No other citizen was ever considered unworthy of this office because he enriched his grapevines with his dead relatives. Why should I be selected as the first victim of an absurd prejudice? I admit also that I am not a friend of the poor man. I regard the poor man, in his present condition, as so much wasted raw material. Cut up and properly canned, he might be made useful to fatten the natives of the cannibal islands and to improve our export trade with that region. I shall recommend legislation upon the subject in my first message. My campaign cry will be: “Desiccate the poor workingman; stuff him into sausages.” These are about the worst parts of my record. On them I come before the country. If my country don’t want me, I will go back again. But I recommend myself as a safe man—a man who starts from the basis of total depravity and proposes to be fiendish to the last. [1879] ----------------------------------------- Mark Twain’s “A Presidential Candidate,” from The 50 Funniest American Writers: An Anthology of Humor from Mark Twain to* The Onion *According to Andy Borowitz (The Library of America, 2011). Used with permission.