["Addams and Evil"] is the latest collection of irrationally sinister cartoons by Charles Addams from The New Yorker, a macabre mixture from the lower levels of Havelock Ellis case histories, centered upon a family group bound together in feline complicity and a murderous but happy neurosis. They have scalding cauldrons for Christmas carolers, their children's school activities include counterfeiting and coffin building, the nursery is decorated with octopi and a platypus…. Yet somehow it is all outrageously funny, probably because no matter how bad things are with you, they were never like this. It is the triumph of a family well adjusted to its environment.

This Addams version of the Jukes family, however, is by no means the whole book, merely a cohesive unit in a collection of linear comments on midgets, predatory plant-life, morticians, golfers, witch-doctors and murderous mates, all on a psycho-neurotic binge.

William Germain Dooley...