Death in the Rumble Seat / Wolcott Gibbs
Dusk in Fierce Pajamas / E. B. White
Across the Street and into the Grill / E. B. White
On the Sidewalk /John Updike
Save My Seat / Mike Nichols
Hassidic Tales, With a Guide to Their Interpretation
by the Noted Scholar / Woody Allen
The Ultimate Diary / Howard Moss
The Analytic Napkin / Marshall Brickman
Who's Who in the Cast / MarshallBrickman
Health Department Lists Restaurant Violations /
Daniel Menaker
The Delts of Venus / Charles McGrath
Notes from the Edge Conference / Roy Blount, Jr.



LGA-ORD / Ian Frazier
Love Trouble Is My Business / Veronica Geng
In the New Canada, Living Is a Way of Life / Bruce McCall
Corrections / Calvin Trillin
Stardate 12:00 12:00 12:00 / Christopher Buckley
Glengarry Glen Plaid / Frank Cammuso and Hart Seely
Gum / Scott Gutterman
What We Talk About When We Talk About Doughnuts /
Michael Gerber andJonathan Schwarz
Teen Times / PaulRudnick

THE FRENZY OF RENOWN

Press Agents I Have Known / Groucho Marx
The Greatest Man in the World /James Thurber
The Interview /James Thurber
Let's Hear It for a Beautiful Guy / Bruce Jay Friedman
The King of Jazz / Donald Barthelme
My Mao / Veronica Geng
Our Side of the Story / Veronica Geng
Do You Know Me? / George W. S. Trow
Gandhi at the Bat / Chet Williamson
Igor Stravinsky: The Selected Phone Calls / Ian Frazier
We Are Still Married / Garrison Keillor
Meeting Famous People / Garrison Keillor
Yo, Poe / Frank Gannon
My Life: A Series of Privately Funded
Performance-Art Pieces / Susan Orlean
The A-List E-List / David Brooks



THE WAR BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife / James Thurber
A Couple of Hamburgers /James Thurber
Forever Panting / Peter De Vries
The Kugelmass Episode / Woody Allen
Partners / Veronica Geng
My Married Life: The Whole Truth Thus Far / Mark Singer
Life Without Leann / Larry Doyle
Zeus the Lutheran / Garrison Keillor
The Very Comical Lament of Pyramus and Thisbe /
Susan Sontag
Off-Ramp / Polly Frost
Blown Away / Lisa Walker
Here's a Really Great Idea / David Owen


THE WRITING LIFE

A Short Autobiography / F Scott Fitzgerald
The Cliche Expert Takes the Stand / Frank Sullivan
The Cliche Expert Tells All / Frank Sullivan
How to Achieve Success as a Writer / Ruth Suckow
The Rather Difficult Case of Mr. K*A*P*L*A*N /
Leonard Q. Ross
The Notebooks of James Thurber James Thurber
Are We Losing the Novel Race? / MichaelJ. Arlen
Roland Magruder, Freelance Writer / Calvin Trillin
Contemporary Writers VI: An Interview with Grip Sands /
Philip Hamburger




In the Dough / RogerAngell
Selections from the Allen Notebooks / WoodyAllen
I Cover Carter / George W S. Trow
Notes on My Conversations / Polly Frost
Writing Is Easy! / Steve Martin
Drivel / Steve Martin
Emily Dickinson, Jerk of Amherst /Andy Borowitz

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED

The People Who Had the House Before / Robert Benchley
The Catastrophe / William Shawn
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty /James Thurber
I Am Not Now, Nor Have I Ever Been,
a Matrix of Lean Meat / S. J Perelman
Eine Kleine Mothmusik / S.J. Perelman
Monomania, You and Me Is Quits / S.J. Perelman
Pnin / Vladimir Nabokov
Annoy Kaufman, Inc. / George S. Kaufman
The Last Repository / H. F Ellis
Yma Dream / Thomas Meehan
Ainmosni / RogerAngell
The High Ground, or Look, Ma, I'm Explicating /
Peter De Vries
Apartment 6-A: After the Fall / Ian Frazier
Spill / George W S. Trow
Hearing from Wayne / Bill Franzen
Stunned /Jack Handey



He Didn't Go to Canada / Garrison Keillor
Post-Euphoria / Veronica Geng
Keith Richards' Desert-Island Disks / Noah Baumbach


WORDS OF ADVICE

How to Be Obscene / Upton Sinclair
Filling That Hiatus / Robert Benchley
It's Fun to Be Fooled ... It's More Fun to Know /
Robert Benchley
Why We Laugh-or Do We? / Robert Benchley
Insert Flap "A" and Throw Away / S.J. Perelman
How to Eat an Ice-Cream Cone / L. Rust Hills
Teaching Poetry Writing to Singles / Veronica Geng
Dating Your Mom / Ian Frazier
A Reading List for Young Writers / Ian Frazier
How I Write My Songs / DonaldBarthelme
Save Our Bus Herds! / Cathleen Schine
Three Great Meals / William White
Read This First / Bruce McCall
Take It from Me / Nancy Franklin
Changes in the Memory After Fifty / Steve Martin
The Hundred Greatest Books That I've Read / Steve Martin
Reintroducing Me to My Habitat /Jack Handey
Thank You for Stopping /Jack Handey
Homework: A Parent's Guide / Christopher Buckley
What Happened to My Money? / David Owen



RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS

On Taxi Drivers /Alexander Woollcott
Father Isn't Much Help / Clarence Day
The Night the Ghost Got In James Thurber
Ring Out, Wild Bells / Wolcott Gibbs
The Ballet Visits the Splendide's Magician / Ludwig Bemelmans
Cloudland Revisited: Why, Doctor, What Big Green
Eyes You Have! / S.J Perelman
Thoughts on Radio-Televese /John Lardner
The Musical Husbands / Adam Gopnik
Listening to Bourbon / Louis Menand
Look Back in Hunger /Anthony Lane
Tennis Personalities / Martin Amis
Car Talk /John Updike

VERSE

Critic / E. B. White
Song to Be Disregarded / E. B. White
To a Perfumed Lady at the Concert / E. B. White
Song of the Queen Bee / E. B. White
Rhyme of an Involuntary Violet / Dorothy Parker
Fulfilment / Dorothy Parker
Bohemia / Dorothy Parker
Mother's Home Again! / Don Marquis
Melancholy Reflections After a Lost Argument /
Phyllis McGinley
The Seven Ages of a Newspaper Subscriber / Phyllis McGinley



Incident in the Afternoon / Phyllis McGinley
Procrastination Is All of the Time / Ogden Nash
To My Valentine / Ogden Nash
So That's Who I Remind Me Of/ Ogden Nash
Compliments of a Friend / Ogden Nash
The Invitation Says from Five to Seven / Ogden Nash
Theme and Variation / Peter De Vries
People / W H. Auden
Six Poets in Search of a Lawyer / Donald Hall
The Naked and the Nude / Robert Graves
12 O'Clock News / Elizabeth Bishop
Christmas in Qatar / Calvin Trillin
Duet, with Muffled Brake Drums /John Updike
Ocular Hypertension /John Updike


Notes on Contributors