CODE DOES NOT TAKE LAMPOON SERIOUSLY

The following review of the football number of the Lampoon was written for the Crimson by Grant Hyde Code '18, instructor in English A.

The last time I reviewed the Harvard Lampoon. I made the old mistake of taking it seriously. In a subsequent letter to the CRIMSON, an illustrious graduate of the Lampoon, class of '90 or there abouts, was kind enough to point out my mistake. He explained, as nearly as I can remember (the gentleman must pardon me if I misquote him) that the Lampoon was not intended to be funny, or generally intelligible, or anything like that. It was not to be considered as a commercial publication. Its sale was merely a traditional joke perpetrated by a select club at regular intervals. The persons at whose expense the joke was sold were not supposed to see it. In fact the search of such persons (at this point my critic pointed out delicately that I was one of them) who looked for humour in the Lampoon really furnished the humour. The Lampoon, my critic explained, was in the nature of a fraternal rite performed by the members of a private club for their own enjoyment.

The Funny Jokes Are the Clipped Ones

An inspection of the current issue of the Lampoon indicates that the ancient the is still being performed with all due solemnity, that the old joke is still being cracked at the expense of the reader. Industrious young clubmen in training for business have collected a mass of really professional advertisements. The more juvenile members of the club who still have a taste for collecting things have clipped a fair sample of the best and the worst jokes from the various funny papers such as the Tennessee Mugwump, the American Legion Weekly, and the Daily Mail. The fact that a number of these jokes are really funny indicates that the young collectors have not yet caught the solemn spirit of the ancient rite.

Drawings Are Best Feature

The really serious work of the cartoonists is a tribute to the Fine Arts Department. In fact, the drawings are the best part of the paper and entitle it to serious consideration as an expression of undergraduate draughtsmanship. Since the Lampoon is the only publication we have that is open to the Fine Arts, it naturally attracts the best talent in the University. The portraits of Professor Kittredge, Professor Baker, H. T. Parker, Walter Hampden and other interpreters of the drama, the realistic studies of life in the gymnasium, and the seductive portrait of a pre-Raphaelite pet called Gladys cannot be impaired in value by the cryptic remarks placed under them, remarks which are preferable to the virtual spirit of the club rather than to any sense of humour.

The tables, the paraphrases of classic writers, the poems which somehow missed publication in the Advocate, the jokes the point of which is that they have no point--all these things which puzzle the casual reader in search of fun, are quite in the Lampoon tradition. In short, the current issue of the Lampoon, to paraphrase an old howler stands with one foot in the past while with the other it salutes the rising dawn of the Fine Arts Department