IT IS TO LAUGH

In connection with the remarks of an English reviewer of the current Lampoon it is not irrelevant to scan the English conception of a university's humorous magazine.

The Granta, published by the members of Cambridge University (yes, the Lampoon's critic is from Oxford) offers an "American number." And besides being American it is a very entertaining number. The jokes are the jokes of Punch, but the hands are the hands of John Held Jr.

Since it is avowedly "American", even containing slang expressions which had their American heyday some four years ago it cannot be taken as the English counterpart of the Lampoon. The English, however, should also be warned that the Lampoon is far from the typically American undergraduate comic publication. For such examples one must seek one of the many professionally collegiate periodicals.

The reviewer of the Lampoon commends the admirable restraint exhibited by omission of the obvious reference to "indifferent horsemanship." The Granta, possibly justifiably, saw no reason to exclude the obvious and its American number is liberally sprinkled with remarks concerning those things by which the United States is known to the Englishman: Hollywood, Mayor Thompson of Chicago, and banditry--of Chicago and elsewhere.

One quality the Granta does possess which is foreign to its American proto-types, and that is the ability to ridicule without becoming bitter. Concerning its immediate victim, these United States, the magazine is gently cynical; but it never becomes heated and it seems always to remember that its "message" should remain subordinate to its primary function--humor.