Booklist Review
Editor Winokur claims he's been in a bad mood since 1971. On the evidence of this topical dictionary of spleen, he's been wallowing in it ever since. Good for us! Probably for him, too. He has amassed a fabulously funny fortune of fractious facetiae from such legendary down-putters as Samuel Johnson, Voltaire, G. B. Shaw, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, H. L. Mencken, George S. Kaufman, Dorothy Parker, W. C. Fields, Oscar Levant, Groucho Marx to mention just a few and plenty of lively contemporary nay-sayers. The captious quotations are interspersed with profiles of or interviews with 15 of the 64 ``World-class Curmudgeons'' he lists just before the unaffable alphabet begins, usually tacking on a tiny treasury of their bonniest mots and/or of anecdotes about them. The wits so honored include, among the living, John Simon, Roy Blount, Jr., Ian Shoales, Quentin Crisp, Mike Royko, and Fran Lebowitz. RO. 081 Quotations, English / American wit and humor [CIP] 87-11236