The humorous writing of Donald Ogden Stewart treats the concerns and postures of the 1920s, when he produced most of it, in styles well suited to the period itself, parody and satire. Stewart shared with Ring Lardner, Robert Benchley, and James Thurber a concern for the "little man," and, following Lardner, he contributed his own brand of crazy humor, which relied on slapstick effects and non sequitur for its impact. The vociferous rejection of puritanism, the rebellion against authority, and the dissatisfaction with American culture in general which characterized the thinking of many young writers in the 1920s are all present in Stewart's work. At times he had a surpassing ability to compress these themes in his humor. Burton Rascoe wrote of Stewart's fifth book, The Crazy Fool (1925): "By writing a nonsensical narrative somewhat in the vein of Lewis Carroll, and weaving into it most of the formulas...