Bob and Ray Tonight: Kurt Vonnegut Jr. remembers being interviewed for a job by the fellows

[Bob and Ray's jokes] feature Americans who are almost always fourth-rate or below, engaged in enterprises which, if not contemptible, are at least insane.

And while other comedians show us persons tormented by bad luck and enemies and so on, Bob and Ray's characters threaten to wreck themselves and their surroundings with their own stupidity. There is a refreshing and beautiful innocence in Bob's and Ray's humor.

Man is not evil, they seem to say. He is simply too hilariously stupid to survive.

And this I believe.

-- from Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Foreword to
Write If You Get Work: The Best of Bob & Ray

by Ken

In most anybody else's book, this line on the copyright page might be the funniest thing in it, attributing copyright to a pair of dubious characters name of "Robert B. Elliott" and "Raymond W. Goulding." Coupla bankster exec types? FBI agents, maybe? (No, but they probably played them at some point on radio or TV.) This isn't anybody else's book, though, it's Write If You Get Work: The Best of Bob & Ray (Random House, 1975).

And the book came rigged out with a foreword by one of the few people on the planet who might fairly be described as "Bob and Ray-worthy," the great Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Could there be a better way to kick off this siege of "Bob and Ray Tonight"? (Note: For a listing of previous "Bob and Ray Tonight" offerings, check out the series index.)


FOR KURT VONNEGUT JR.'S FOREWORD, CLICK HERE


THURBER TONIGHT (including WOODY ALLEN, ROBERT BENCHLEY, BOB AND RAY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, S. J. PERELMAN, JEAN SHEPHERD, and E. B. WHITE TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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