Robert Day (6) (1900–1985)

As I rove the world for The Reader's Digest, I am invariably asked two questions: ""Do you write those funny things at the bottom of the page which I always read first?"" To which I reply unhappily that my job, alas, is writing these long pieces so that the little ones can be separated. The other question is: ""Could you fix it so I could get my copy of the Digest a few days ahead of anybody else in town?"" Then I hear that familiar heartbreaking tale: How that funny story they had just read in the new Digest was greeted with deafening silence when they told it at the Rotary lunch or the dinner table, because everyone present had already read it in his copy.
I have always assured these frustrated Fred Allens that if only they would wait a few months the same quips would be fresh and unfamiliar again. And now this stunning collection comes along to prove it. Here is a mad, glad harvest of sock jokes and pithy sayings, old saws with new teeth and naughty favourites restyled in Shocking Pink. Here you will find the now immortal story of the distracted lady who said, ""I'm sure I had two when I came here""; and my favourite, about the man who played one note continuously on his one-stringed fiddle and, when his wife complained that other players had four strings and moved their fingers up and down, replied, ""They're looking for the place, but I've found it.""
If this book isn't funny, what's funny?… (mais)