INTRODUCTION
The first thing to be said of Bugs Baer is that he is one of the entertaining American humorists. That at once distinguishes him from the majority of his fellow-workers; and what gives him distinction, in the literal sense, from the rest is that he expresses himself in an intensely personal way. There are humorists so gifted that even without a style of their own, they have the capacity to amuse us; Baer is not one of them. Remove him ever so slightly from his manner, tell over one of his amazing Family Albums with the change of one adjective, and it is all lost. His fun is neither furious nor rollicking, but it is rowdy and this rowdiness runs through his manner. I have suggested elsewhere that he is a kinsman of Falstaff and his companions, and this is not a purely literary analogy. I found it by the simple accident of quoting phrases for several days when I had been reading both, and finding that at least half of the time I had ascribed them to the wrong source.
His work seems to me wholly outside the literary tradition, even outside the American tradition of vulgar humor. He is not like Bill Nye and not like Mark Twain; with the latter he shares the gift
5
