SOURCE: A review of Fred Allen's Letters, in Commonweal, Vol. 82, No. 19, August 20, 1965, pp. 599-600.

In the following review of Fred Allen's Letters, Weales enjoys the examples of Allen's wit, while finding fault with editor Joe McCarthy's organization of the book.

One of the few lines in The School for Scandal that I have ever been able to care much about is the one about the pistol ball that "struck against a little bronze Shakespeare that stood over the fireplace, grazed out of the window at a right angle, and wounded the postman, who was just coming to the door with a double letter from Northamptonshire." I do not quote it here because it was a favorite of Fred Allen's although it might well have been (he was a notorious reader—rare among comedians), but because it illustrates a comic method which he used consistently and well. His comedy...