Fierce Pajamas

Selected Humor Writing from The New Yorker

By: David Remnick, Henry Finder

Narrated by: Patrick Frederic, Chris Gannon

When Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, he described it as a “comic weekly.” And although it has become much more than that, it has remained true in its irreverent heart to the founder’s description, publishing the most illustrious literary humorists of the modern era—among them Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Groucho Marx, George S. Kaufman, James Thurber, S. J. Perelman, Peter De Vries, Mike Nichols, Marshall Brickman, Woody Allen, Donald Barthelme, Calvin Trillin, George W. S. Trow, Veronica Geng, Garrison Keillor, Ian Frazier, Roy Blount, Jr., Bruce McCall, Steve Martin, Christopher Buckley, and Paul Rudnick.

This anthology gathers together, for the first time, the funniest work of more than seventy New Yorker contributors. Parodists take on not only writers like Hemingway and Kerouac, but TV documentaries, Italian cinema, and etiquette books. (Enough have been published, Robert Benchley maintains, “that there should be no danger of toppling over forward into the wrong soup, or getting into arguments as to which elbow belongs on which arm.”) Other pieces offer perspectives on the heights of fame, the depths of social embarrassment, and the ups and downs of love and sex. Such well-loved sketches as Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” take their place alongside light-hearted essays on food, tennis, and taxis, and flights of fancy that follow an apparently simple premise to the point of no return, and sometimes well beyond. Here you will find large insights (Woody Allen: “Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage”) and hard-earned wisdom (Ian Frazier on dating your mom: “Here is a grown, experienced, loving woman—one you do not have to go to a party or a singles bar to meet, one you do not have to go to great lengths to know”). And, not least, a great deal of helpful advice, including Steve Martin’s on memory and middle age: “Bored? Here’s a way the over-fifty set can easily kill a good half hour: 1. Place your car keys in your right hand. 2. With your left hand, call a friend and confirm a lunch or dinner date. 3. Hang up the phone. 4. Now look for your car keys.”

A rich selection of humorous verse includes caustic gems by Dorothy Parker, the effortless whimsy of Phyllis McGinley, and Ogden Nash’s unforgettable slapstick prosody, as well as forays by luminaries who ought to have known better, like Robert Graves, Elizabeth Bishop, and W. H. Auden.

A wonderful gift for others, or a delightful treat for oneself, Fierce Pajamas is a treasury of laughter from a publication described by Auden as “the best comic magazine in existence.”©2001 The New Yorker; (P)2001 Random House Inc., Random House Audio, a Division of Random House Inc.

Critic reviews

“A complete delight from beginning to end.” —The New York Times

“Classic humor writing from a fantasy slumber party of writers.” —Vanity Fair

“Quite simply among the greatest stuff like this ever written . . . There is comic brilliance in these pages. . . . [Fierce Pajamas] is more than worth your time, your money and the potential damage to your funny bone.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“The New Yorker’s fine anthology of humor writing can inspire us to collectively bemoan the scarcity of a certain kind of printed comedy: the subtle and sophisticated type." —Newsday

Could not get into it.

Would you try another book from the authors and/or Byron Jennings and Julie Halston ?

No.

Has Fierce Pajamas turned you off from other books in this genre?

Yes.

What three words best describe Byron Jennings and Julie Halston ’s voice?

Okay, about it.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Fierce Pajamas?

I wasn't impressed with the first stories. Good for putting you to sleep. I never got beyond those.

Any additional comments?

I just couldn't get past the first hour of uninteresting and not at all funny.

Skip the first narrator and you'll be fine

I found the narrator who reads the first story to be insufferable, and had to skip all his readings. Other than that, thoroughly enjoyable. The other narrators do a fine job.

Pomp Without Circumstance

Here we have writers who, mostly, are writing for each other and mostly for themselves. There are a few grounded gems for the layperson--such as anything by James Thurber, Steve Martin, or Robert Benchley--but you're most likely to run into self-absorbed neurotics who clearly think having a repertoire of a niche, French vocabulary and a Euclidian mental mapping of European literature is the same as culture. When you have elitists such as E. B. White who aggressively stamped his name with William Strunk on their famous treatise 'How to Write If You're Us, and Why You Can't If You Aren't' (otherwise titled 'Elements of Style') and S. J. Perelman whose writing is more esoteric to his contemporaries than the Book of Isaiah. Mix this with glib music from an third-floor apartment ensemble between chapters and you're one beat away from asking yourself why David Remnick thought any of this ever needed to leave New York City.

great, but niche

ROFL! This is really one of the funniest audio books I've ever read, but I got to say, it is not for everyone. Humor is dry, stories come from the thirties to the aughts, so be ready to hear a wide range of, what, classicity?
Check out the sample first. It helps if you are already a New Yorker fan

Excellent Readers

Anthology has the best rendition of the Secret Life of Walter Mitty. All of the readers are impeccable.