Bill Nye (2)Recensioni

This collection of Nye's humorous essays was assembled by him and published following his death from meningitis. As such, these are his last writings, and hold up surprisingly well for material written over 120 years ago. Though Nye's early writings, like Twain, were often set in the west, by this point, the essays range over tales of the west, being stuck with worthless land in Minnesota, taking trips up and down the East coast, panning the attempts of a popular actor of the time to do serious theater ("During his extraordinary histrionic career he gave his individual and amazing renditions of Hamlet, Phidias, Shylock, Othello, and Richelieu. I think I liked his Hamlet best, and yet it was a pleasure to see him in anything wherein he killed himself.'). The title essay is a prime example of his work, as he extols the virtues of renting a room at the Ludlow Street Jail ("... there is a sense of absolute security when one goes to sleep here that can't be felt at a popular hotel, where burglars secrete themselves in the wardrobe during the day and steal one's pantaloons and contents at night.... Here the burglars go to bed at the hour that the rest of us do."

Nye's humor is only occasionally too topical to be understood now. Hence it has lasted better than similar collections, such as Will Rogers' Literary Digest. Other obstacles to the modern reader, such as dialect humor (which he defends in an appended essay honoring James Whitcomb Riley, his partner on the talk circuit) and racial stereotyping, while not completely absent, are extremely limited. Nye, like Robert Benchley, excelled mixing silliness and self-deprecation, rarely hostile, with the exception of the actor mentioned above.

Recommended to fans of American humor.

Old Book, 1891, short, humorous columns on various subjects. 504 pages

3 stars for Nye, 0 for Riley. In their day, both were very popular but James Whitcomb Riley, "the Hoosier poet," was way more famous for way longer. Today, his poems, many in a made-up midwest dialect, are pretty unreadable, whereas Nye's essays are still amusing and wide-ranging. "Wit and Humor" appears to be a re-issuing of Nye and Riley's "Railway Guide," a title as deliberately misleading as Benchle's collection "David Copperfield." Surprisingly for the times in which it was written, only one essay suffers from serious stereotyping. If you liked Twain's Roughing It or various essays, give Nye a try.

I started reading this because I thought it was a history of the US by Bill Nye, the Science Guy. Only to find out that there was a comic writer of some hundred years ago or more also named Bill Nye (not the Science Guy). I kept reading it because it was a populist history of the US and I thought it would be interesting to see if there were many differences I could tell in how historical events (up to 1895 or so) had been perceived then vs. now. Obviously, many differences but what I found the most interesting (in a disturbing way) was to be reminded how ok it was in 1900 to be very overtly racist. The writing was racist enough, but the illustrations were over the top racist. Amazing to see how far we've come (although still a long way to go) - but just staggering what passed for ok in 1900.

The text is amusing and clever. Harold did not merely die at the battle of Hastings, he "abandoned the fight in order to investigate the surprises of a future state."

On William the Conquerer:
"William's death was one of the most attractive features of his reign."

On the common people:
"The common people were cheerily permitted the use of what atmosphere they needed for breathing purposes, on their solemn promise to return it, and at the close of life... they might contribute to the fertility of the royal vegetable garden."

On serfdom:
"A serf was required to be at hand night or day when the baron needed some one to kick."

The illustrations are masterpieces of comic art; I bought this book for the pictures. The facts and dates are valid and the chronology and major characters are real, but don't take this book too seriously. There are so many characters it is hard to tell them apart. A royal blur of Edwards, Henrys, Williams, etc., over 1,500 years of British history, from Julius Caesar to Henry VIII. Not recommended for serious scholars, but fun if you are in the mood.

This book had some very amusing moments but could not sustain those highlights and was generally merely tedious. To be fair, it was originally published in 1896 to a readership that has not had ready access to humorous recastings of history in the style of Monty Python or Mel Brooks.½