For some time now the well of American humour has been drying up. Benchley is dead, Perelman stale, Dorothy Parker no longer seems to favour us; only the cartoonists and one minor poet flow on happily. In his last book, Ogden Nash achieved at least one poem that seems likely to outlast the dust covers, A Carol for Children. The title poem of his new collection, The Private Dining Room, is certainly another. It ranks with the best of Betjeman in charming dexterity. The rhymes, though unexpected, have none of the coyness and artifice that often flaw this writer's work: only too tempting to read out loud, it is a sure-fire anthology piece one will always be glad to come across. The rest of the verses are much more uneven, some long build-ups to a pun, which don't bear much rereading, others, brilliant little epigrams such as Hi-ho The Ambulance-O…. The picture Nash presents of himself is the traditional one of an American humorist, incompetent, well-read, out of touch with the loud commercialism of modern life, a chick-pecked rooster on an asphalt run. It is, naturally, a very likeable figure which emerges, the spirit of The New Yorker: amateur nonconformity by a satirist whose targets, if not very dangerous, are usually squarely hit. At times it is possible to wish he were a little more adventurous, less fuddyduddy. But he obviously recognises his own limitations, and within them continues to supply us with the best light verse now being published. (p. 534)
Frank Hauser, "The Funnies," in The New Statesman & Nation (© 1953 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co. Ltd.), Vol. XLVI, No. 1182, October 31, 1953, pp. 534, 536.∗
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