Educational laughs

Imagine making light of the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the Russian Revolution and Stalin’s bloody purges. Well, more than 60 years ago Richard Armour not only imagined it but wrote a book about it, It All Started With Marx. All these years later, it remains a funny and, oddly enough, educational book.

Armour was, after all, an educator first and foremost. His students at the California college where he taught English knew him as Dr. Armour. So when he wrote his satirical books (or perhaps they should be called parodies of textbooks), he based his humor on facts, usually those found in other, more serious books on the same subjects. Like Mad magazine during its heyday, Armour informed about the very things he ridiculed.

Thus we find lines like this: “Marx did not live to complete Das Kapital, nor have many readers lived to finish it.” The facts, then the gag, all in one neat sentence. Two pages later, commenting on the size of Russia, Armour writes, “From the earliest times the Russian has had plenty of elbow room, which explains why he puts his hands on his hips while dancing.”

Like Henny Youngman, a contemporary of Armour’s, he keeps the one-liners coming, one after another. Some fall flat, but they come so quickly that readers never break stride. If one gag isn’t funny, the next one will be.

Armour’s books on history, art, literature and a variety of other subjects were popular during the Fifties and Sixties. I discovered them when I was in high school. Much of what I read in them reinforced what I read in traditional textbooks. I missed It All Started With Marx back then. It was good to catch up with it now. It’s never too late to learn.