We know that God has a sense of humor, said de Maupassant, from the manner he has chosen for us to reproduce ourselves. This view of copulation as undignified and absurd is the theme of [My Uncle Oswald], a short, snappy burlesque of sex novels and sex. (p. 37)

[The] joke is not in the intrinsic brilliance of Dahl's dialogue, but in our matching his premise with our knowledge of his famous victims. When—sometimes in mid-sentence—intellect is overtaken by embarrassing necessity, we have the schoolboy pleasure of seeing great men, in Ben Hecht's phrase, caught with their polemics down. This formula reaches its most magnificent simplicity in Yasmin's advice to a genius who tries to figure out what is happening to him: "Mr. Einstein, relax."

Dahl's style is a sort of comic-strip version of Frank Harris. Oswald and Yasmin speak in modern, staccato rhythms, yet much of...