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Edgar Wilson Nye (1850–1896)

Forfatter af Comic History of the United States

22+ Works 183 Members 7 Reviews

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Image credit: By Who-When-What Company - The Who-When-What Book published 1900, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3024389

Værker af Edgar Wilson Nye

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Cat Encounters: A Cat-Lover's Anthology (1979) — Bidragyder — 10 eksemplarer

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This collection of Nye's humorous essays was assembled by him and published following his death from meningitis. As such, these are his last writings, and hold up surprisingly well for material written over 120 years ago. Though Nye's early writings, like Twain, were often set in the west, by this point, the essays range over tales of the west, being stuck with worthless land in Minnesota, taking trips up and down the East coast, panning the attempts of a popular actor of the time to do serious theater ("During his extraordinary histrionic career he gave his individual and amazing renditions of Hamlet, Phidias, Shylock, Othello, and Richelieu. I think I liked his Hamlet best, and yet it was a pleasure to see him in anything wherein he killed himself.'). The title essay is a prime example of his work, as he extols the virtues of renting a room at the Ludlow Street Jail ("... there is a sense of absolute security when one goes to sleep here that can't be felt at a popular hotel, where burglars secrete themselves in the wardrobe during the day and steal one's pantaloons and contents at night.... Here the burglars go to bed at the hour that the rest of us do."

Nye's humor is only occasionally too topical to be understood now. Hence it has lasted better than similar collections, such as Will Rogers' Literary Digest. Other obstacles to the modern reader, such as dialect humor (which he defends in an appended essay honoring James Whitcomb Riley, his partner on the talk circuit) and racial stereotyping, while not completely absent, are extremely limited. Nye, like Robert Benchley, excelled mixing silliness and self-deprecation, rarely hostile, with the exception of the actor mentioned above.

Recommended to fans of American humor.
… (mere)
 
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ChrisRiesbeck | Nov 14, 2020 |
Old Book, 1891, short, humorous columns on various subjects. 504 pages
 
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Mapguy314 | Dec 20, 2018 |
3 stars for Nye, 0 for Riley. In their day, both were very popular but James Whitcomb Riley, "the Hoosier poet," was way more famous for way longer. Today, his poems, many in a made-up midwest dialect, are pretty unreadable, whereas Nye's essays are still amusing and wide-ranging. "Wit and Humor" appears to be a re-issuing of Nye and Riley's "Railway Guide," a title as deliberately misleading as Benchle's collection "David Copperfield." Surprisingly for the times in which it was written, only one essay suffers from serious stereotyping. If you liked Twain's Roughing It or various essays, give Nye a try.… (mere)
 
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ChrisRiesbeck | Jul 9, 2014 |
I started reading this because I thought it was a history of the US by Bill Nye, the Science Guy. Only to find out that there was a comic writer of some hundred years ago or more also named Bill Nye (not the Science Guy). I kept reading it because it was a populist history of the US and I thought it would be interesting to see if there were many differences I could tell in how historical events (up to 1895 or so) had been perceived then vs. now. Obviously, many differences but what I found the most interesting (in a disturbing way) was to be reminded how ok it was in 1900 to be very overtly racist. The writing was racist enough, but the illustrations were over the top racist. Amazing to see how far we've come (although still a long way to go) - but just staggering what passed for ok in 1900.… (mere)
 
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stuart10er | Nov 5, 2013 |

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22
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1
Medlemmer
183
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#118,259
Vurdering
½ 3.5
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ISBN
57

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