The Face Is Familiar
By
$2.75
LITTLE, BROWN
BY this time the reading public in the United States must be fully aware not only that Mr. Ogden Nash is the Lone Ranger of American light verse, but that he remains as consistently funny as he is popular. He has taught us to laugh at light verse in a new way. We used to laugh in the English fashion at the wit or the technique — for light verse can he amusing merely in technique— or at both. But in reading the average Nash we are not only laughing at wit and technique but laughing at ourselves as well.
That is what is new. Light verse in the American tradition (Carryl, Fields, or F. P. A.) has usually turned on a literary conceit, a nonsensical situation, a word play, or some happy invention of the unreal. Nash writes directly about the man in the street, the housewife in the house, the common annoyance, the universal frustration. And he writes about them in terms of society verse, not poetry. The Face Is Familiar is a large selection of his best verse. It is guaranteed, high-test, pure American humor.