A Big Bowl Of Punch : A Heady Potpourri Of Cartoons, Prose And Verse From England's Famous Humorous Weekly PDF
Preview A Big Bowl Of Punch : A Heady Potpourri Of Cartoons, Prose And Verse From England's Famous Humorous Weekly
Anglo‐American relations must grow cozier from Mr. Cole's shrewd demonstration that Punch is funny for Americans. Of course, exception should be taken to a few attempts to be funny about us.
Putting those gaffes aside, there is delightful fooling from the first cartoon onward. That one, by Gerald Scarfe, reveals that when Napoleon began the freezing march back from burning Moscow a soldier trotted out of line to build a cheerfully abominable snowman. The first story, by Patrick Ryan, illustrates why it is a mistake to give coffee to a somnolent drunk, the author being stretched on a pub floor by a right bolo to the chin as he considers the point.
Scarfe and Ryan set the pace for Punch artists, story‐tellers and poets—all of them with a fast foot but under wraps.
However, the enigmas of their English still appear. Ryan has an old prize fighter say of his career: “I fecht ’em all.” No one but a native of the British Isles could even hear an Englishman say such a word, and only a British journal would print it. Is this the language we have jointly fecht to preserve?
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