Sunday, May 3, 2015

This Way, Miss

It is hard to imagine Louis CK owning the country's largest collection of books on a subject, or Jim Gaffigan being a friend of Philip Glass. But George Jessel owned an enormous library on world religions (and read much else besides), and Jessel knew George Gershwin and scores of others (Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Harry Truman, John Barrymore) who were not simply "personalities." In This Way, Miss, published in 1955 and framed as an offering to his 13-year-old daughter, Jessel ranges over issues great and small: close calls in airplanes, McCarthyism, theology, the newly born state of Israel, fellow entertainers, opera.

Today an intellect is something to be hidden, if it exists at all. A comedian must never make the audience feel dumb. Jim Gaffigan wrote a book called Dad Is Fat.

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