Books: Funny

THE GAZELLE’S EARS—Corey Ford —Doran ($2). Funnyman Ford’s average of irresistibility remains close to normal, despite the current sunspots and a slump in stocks. His tendency is to play the same style of shot for about 25 paragraphs and then hole out with a neat pun even a chip shot, straight from the shoulder. Irrelevance at all costs, old family bywords in new surroundings, let the meaning where it may—that is the dialectic of Fordian funning, on traffic problems, bicycling for ladies, telephones, going to college and other major sports. Readers of the New Yorker will meet a lot of ( friends, notably “our Mr. Busts Tilley,” factotum, of funny publishing. The organs referred to by the title are missing for a while, at a clubmen’s bachelor dinner but turn up safe and sound next day in an overcoat pocket.