WHIMSY III — Western Humor and Irony Membership Serial Yearbook: Proceedings of the 1984 WHIM Conference: Contemporary Humored. by Don L. F. Nilsen and Alleen Pace Nilsen (review)

252Rockv Mountain Review contract theory "betrays him occasionally into representing social authority as a more unproblematic reality than . . . he really knows it is" (149). In other words, Dickens usually recognized the problematic nature of social life — an observation very close to the equivocation and ambiguity noted by the other two critics. Magnet's analysis seems derivative at other points as well. For one thing, his description of Oedipal elements in father-son relationships follows Marcus'. As Marcus points out, the apprentice Sim Tappertit aspires to the sexual power held by his surrogate father Gabriel, steals a master key in symbolic transference of that power, and has his legs crushed in a symbolic castration, a retribution for his rebellious behavior (185-86). Magnet makes these same points in his discussion (61-68), and his discussion of Oedipal elements in the relationship between John and Joe Willet also seems based on Marcus'. Second, the most interesting parts of Magnet's thesis seem broadly indebted to Robert E. Lougy's 1972 study of Hard Times, "The Romance of Radical Literature" (Dickens Studies Annual, II, 237-54). Like Magnet, Lougy uses Freud's notion, from Civilization and Its Discontents, that society grinds through a dialectical struggle between two sets of forces: those Thanatos-oriented forces (law, conscience, learned mores) which stabilize yet smother the social order and those Eros-oriented forces (love, imagination) which disrupt yet vivify the social order. According to Lougy, these dynamics move the world of Coketown, and Magnet by coincidence finds Freud's idea an equally handy tool for interpreting the earlier novel. In most cases, Magnet's analysis goes far beyond that of his predecessors; nevertheless he should salute all past views which in any way counterpoint his. Neither Lucas nor Lougy is cited at all. In connection with Barnaby Rudge Marcus receives only a single, unrevealing citation (59; the reference is left out of the index). Yet Magnet finds time to cite Jack Lindsay's leftist reading, a convenient straw man to refute. Boise Slate University MICHAEL CASE DON L. F. NILSEN and ALLEEN PACE MLSEN, eds. WHIMSY III — Western Humor and Irony Membership Serial Yearbook: Proceedings ofthe 1984 WHIM Conference: Contemporary Humor. Tempe, Arizona: WHIM/English Department, Arizona State University, 1985. 287 p. This is a book? Whimsy III: Contemporary Humor seems to be for the most part a transcript of conference proceedings, a common enough genre in the professional and academic world, and as such is hampered in its being a readable book by the very nature of its form — the miscellany. Now if it were a true anthology, or proceedings of a symposium with a genuinely unifying theme, it'd be a far more inviting work to review — and more to the point, to read not only for information and instruction — but for amusement. However, plowing through the almost 300 pages is a task, and even after having scanned, read, and reviewed the collection, I failed to find fundamental focus — real unity. Despite the categories and subcategories and headings, it all seems no more pulled together than a garage sale with too many boxes labeled "miscellaneous"; trying to stuff all this merely under the rubric "contemporary humor" is not enough. But let's approach the fundamental weakness of this collection: first, the act of reading itself is not enjoyable because of deficiencies of graphic design. More vitally, the reading is not enjoyable as an experience: I found too many of the efforts a Book Reviews253 little torpid — and this in a volume titled with studied light-heartedness Whimsy. (Cute.) More, it's subtitled Contemporary Humor. And it isn't funny. This is a "serious" problem — one that has two faces. A number of pieces are indeed "serious" — that is, they are well researched, well thought out, and carefully crafted analyses of what constitutes humor, many of them essays of definition, striving to detail the very essence of the humorous — but the articles are not themselves amusing . Of course, they are scholarly papers, and worthy of respect in terms of the genre, though they sure vary in readability and persuasiveness. Here are some representative examples: Martin Stoneman (Rikki), "The Og Viewpoint: If Today's Humor Isn...