Volume 26, Number 3 · March 8, 1979
Vulgar Marxism
By Michael Wood
Groucho
by Hector Arce
Putnam's, 541 pp., $14.95
Borges once suggested that writers create their own predecessors, and T.S. Eliot, a long-time admirer of Groucho Marx, had earlier said much the same thing. The suggestion certainly holds for comedians too. Tristram Shandy may now seem rather heavily influenced by Duck Soup, and there are interchanges in Dickens which plainly owe a good deal to A Day at the Races. Consider the unlettered Mr. Boffin's attempt, in Our Mutual Friend, to contract the one-legged Silas Wegg as a reader. Mr. Boffin's price is half a crown a week, and Wegg puts on a grand show of magnanimity. 'Mr. Boffin,' he says, 'I never bargain.' Boffin, impressed, says, 'So I should have thought of you,' and Wegg continues:
Review, 3033 words
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