III
48
PARTISAN REVIEW
inadequacy may be comic. Presented objectively, it yields a mild kind
of pathos, verging towards-but skillfully kept just this side of the
sentimental.
The
New rorker
is the last of the great family journals. Its
inhibitions stretch from sex to the class struggle. It can be read aloud
in mixed company without calling a blush to the cheek of the most
virtuous banker. The subjects of its profiles, especially if they are
wealthy and powerful, are treated deferentially. This summer Presi-
dent Gifford of the American Telephone
&
Telegraph Company was
presented to the readers of the
New r orker
in three instalments quiver-
ing with sympathy. The muck raked up last winter by Congressional
investigators is delicately ignored, and Mr. Gifford is depicted as an
intelligent, modest, rather pathetic person, distressed by his eminence
and anxious only to live democratically among his fellow citizens. In
the deodorized pages of the
New r orker,
the 1917 revolution becomes
"this violent phase of Russian experience," and diabetics are "those
dieters who can't abide sugar." The magazine's inhibitions may have
a neurotic as well as a social basis. According to
Fortune,
Harold Ross,
who founded the
New r orker
and has always dominated its editorial
policies, lives in constant terror of earthquakes, crossing streets, and
physical assault. His editorial prudishness is legendary. Arno's once-
famous Whoops Sisters had to be sobered up because they shocked
him. The other editors are also interesting psychoanalytically. One is
a hypochondriac, another can't bring him.,elf to open his morning
mail, and so on. One editor suffered from amnesia and ulcers of the
stomach until his salary wa., raised. The Freudian approach would
also have something to say about Thurber and Sullivan, both of
whom find in humor an escape from neurotic symptoms.
Bergson calls laughter "a social gesture." Considered thus, it is
a response to the contrast between the comic object and a generally
accepted norm. In societies that are flourishing and hence united-
suc:h as produced Aristophanes, Moliere, and the other classic humor-
ists-the validity of the social norm is unchallenged. It is enough
merely to point out a departure from it to get a humorous effect.
Laughter is thus a defense of the social order, like the police force,
and humor tends to be satirical. But in decadent societies, when all
values are called into question, a more complex procedure is necessary.
The
New r orker' s
humor is a criticism of the social norm as well as of
the comic object. Typically, it establishes a relationship between a
rational observer and an irrational person or phenomenon-so far the
classic formula. But the observer is ineffectual, and the comic object
is not only irrational but also overpowering, so that for all his per-
