UNITED STATES—Now with the Moby Dick of space-hogs gone (the catcher’s mitt Eames chair), I turn my downsizing gaze to smaller fry, books. That likeliest candidate for removal from the Grady library: In One Era and Out the Other, by a humorist celebrated in his time and now vanished from memory.
He belonged to a generation of humorists (by definition someone who gets the giggles, not belly laughs), occupied by the likes of Mort Sahl and Jack Paar. Unlike them, Sam Levenson dwelled more in daytime TV: think Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas. Every comedian has a straight man, and Levenson’s was American society through Watergate, the sexual revolution. A very gentle kind of humor, marinated in nostalgia. He was big enough as a speaker, radio personality, contributor to Readers Digest and game-show panelist to warrant a Modern Library selection of Levenson’s writings.
Born in Brooklyn in 1911, died in Brooklyn August 27, 1980, born to an immigrant Jewish family who left the Soviet Empire for better shores. They were marinated in yiddish, which has a word for everything, including Sam’s brand of humor, heimish, a homespun humor that purveys gentle comfort and Jewish cultural flavor.
On his Mama and Papa, “When words no longer sufficed to express the depth of their anger they flew into a great silence, during which the children were used as messengers.”
“Tell your father it’s time to eat.”
“Papa, Mama says it’s time to eat.”
“Tell your mother I’m not talking.”
“Mama, Papa says he’s not talking.”
“So, tell him ‘Thank you’!”
“Tell her she’s welcome.”
Ah, the joys of functionally dysfunctional family. Levenson’s holds a prism to old school film romance versus the graphic trend of the seventies; The classic formula for a three-act play used to be:
Act I: He wants to, she doesn’t.
Act II: She wants to, he doesn’t.
ACT III: They both want to, so they drop the curtain, and the audience politely goes home. “Exit” was the only four-letter word permitted.
Levenson elaborates; Fig leaves were placed over the two most vulnerable parts of his body, the ears and eyes. “Speak no” was added to “Hear no, see no” . . . “My parents had never heard of Freud. In our building was one Fried, one Freund, and two Friedmans, but not one Freud.”
Clearly, the Brooklyn humorist took the side of frugality, a virtue all the more neglected 50 years after we wrote; (Mama) “put everything to work: a little castor oil would make anything go faster—clocks, fans, drills or kids, a few drops of castor oil in a steam iron, and you could press a shirt and cure a cough at the same time; the cotton packing from pill bottles was good for an earache… warm laundry water was good for pouring out the window onto those noisy kids.”
In this volume, fifty years ago, Levenson even forewarned these very AI-mesmerized times; “We have created machines in our own image. They are so human that they behave like human beings—mean, irritable, lazy, stubborn, spiteful, wasteful, even neurotic and psychotic.”
Maybe here the solution will be to look truth in the face, kvetch all you want and remember to season it with some laughter, which makes all the boo boos hurt a little less. Here’s to the memory of this humanist funnyman who always carried a heavy backpack laden with a dimension of morality and ethics and immeasurable love for all life’s used-to-be’s.
And here’s the real punchline; my resolve to retire this book from my bookshelf is in full retreat.
Grady is the Wizard of Fiction
