A BETTER SORT OF INSULT

FROM THE NY TIMES, AN EXCERPT FROM DICK CAVETT'S BOOK A LIFE IN RIMSHOTS


I haven’t ever found any great writing on that wonderful and often unappreciated art form, the insult.

There are two kinds of insult. “I was bored by your book” is one kind. “Your book? Once I put it down, I couldn’t pick it up,” is the other.

Although both are insults, only one is witty. Or, at least, funny. I suppose we should reserve the accolade “wit” for the very highest practitioners of the art — Parker, Wilde, Shaw, Twain, Kaufman, Levant, Marx et al. Some would include Rickles. (As when Sinatra entered a club while Don was onstage. Rickles: “Make yourself comfortable, Frank, hit somebody.”)

While on the subject, I believe it was writer/critic Clive James who is said to have remarked, when a man punched Sinatra in the face one night outside the stage door, “That’s the first time the fan hit the . . . .”

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