Further Foolishness:

by Stephen Leacock

The mystery had now reached its climax. First, the man had been undoubtedly murdered. Secondly, it was absolutely certain that no conceivable person had done it. It was therefore time to call in the great detective. He gave one searching glance at the corpse. In a moment he whipped out a microscope. "Ha! ha!" he said, as he picked a hair off the lapel of the dead man's coat. "The mystery is now solved." He held up the hair. "Listen," he said, "we have only to find the man who lost this hair and the criminal is in our hands." The inexorable chain of logic was complete. The detective set himself to the search. For four days and nights he moved, unobserved, through the streets of New York scanning closely every face he passed, looking for a man who had lost a hair.

Genres: Humor, Essays, Fiction, Ebooks

150 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1916

About the author

Stephen P. H. Butler Leacock, FRSC, was a Canadian teacher, political scientist, writer, and humorist. Between the years 1915 and 1925, he was the best-known English-speaking humorist in the world. He is known for his light humour along with criticisms of people's follies. The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour was named in his honour.

Wikipedia article.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stephen Leacock was enormously popular in the first half of the twentieth century. "Further Foolishness" was published in 1916 and, while some sections show their age and have lost their effectiveness, it still has the capacity to entertain a modern reader.

It is divided into four topical sections: "Follies In Fiction", "Movies and Motors, Men and Women", "Peace, War, and Politics" and "Timid Thoughts On Timely Topics". These can be read in any order. The third section is the weakest and the humour is dated. On the other hand, it has a historical and cultural significance. There are some essays which certainly stand out. "Are The Rich Happy?" is still very funny. "the Snoopopaths" is a satire lampooning popular pulp novels of the time. Particularly interesting is " Madeline of the Movies: A Photoplay done back into words". Here Leacock is satirising the old silent morality film-short of the type created by D.W.Griffith and his Biograph company. We can still read this sketch with considerable pleasure. But one should remember that we tend to see such films as naive and antiquated. But Leacock was actually dealing with a state-of-the-art technology when he wrote it. He refers to it as "a moving picture photoplay". So there is an additional layer to the satire which we may miss entirely. The final piece in the book is an interesting essay "Humour as I See It" which is well worth reading.

Thus, many of the essays in the book show their age, but they also reveal what people found funny nearly a century ago. At the same time there are a fair number of genuinely humorous pieces which still work. Considering that "Further Foolishness" is in the public domain and available free from Project Gutenberg, it is well worth reading.

[Lawrence]

returning to Leacock's Victorian humor -- a good slice of Canadiana. Takes me back to high school English lit as well.

[Lucy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This particular collection didn't thrill me, I found it a bit dated and some of the attitudes rather less pleasant than some of his other work.

[Janelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars. Leacock let me down with this book.

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

He's funny, but not quite Mark Twain (who he is often compared to).