Female Humor - A Comparison in Styles

These three writers were sort of stairstep kids - Aloise Buckley Heath, 1918; Jean Kerr, 1922 and Erma Bombeck, 1927.  All had husbands and children as material.

I had never heard of Aloise, but after reading the book of collected columns by her I understood why.  She really wasn't that funny, but she was a Buckley!  The compilation of her works was written by her sister, Priscilla, and brother, Bill Buckley, Jr. who launched the National Review magazine.  They were among the eight children of John and Ann (Harding) Buckley.  Aloise went on to top them by having 10 of her own.

All of the Buckely's were encouraged to believe they were the best and the brightest; that everything they did was witty, worthy of heed (Reid, age 9, wrote Churchill and urged him to pay England's war debt) and that all were great intelluctuals.  To which I would say, "Not."

Aloise contributed an annual Christmas column to the National Review and the family newsletter (an early version of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians") which detailed the family's various comings and goings, illnesses and new babies, of which there were an inordinate number.  "In March, 1958, the Buckley girls will have 20 girls; the Buckley boys only 10."

This enormous crew was mutually exclusive to each other and it's best described in Aloise's "sense of humor."  A sentence:  "Matt, who has a Sense of Humor, but is Fundamentally Kind, took her aside..."  So Victorian -- and So Silly. 

Jean Kerr had five boys and one girl and was the wife of noted NY Times critic Walter Kerr.  Thus she saw a lot of theatre (from very good seats, as you can imagine.)  "Last night I saw a play.  I won't tell you the plot.  But it was about this young man who was so disturbed that he turned up in the 2nd act wearing a dress.  I don't know what he was so disturbed about.  But I knew what I was disturbed about.  He was wearing my dress.  I mean the one I had on."  She then details how hard it is for her to find clothing that fits.  She was quite tall.  She is tremendous fun because she has such a sense of the ridiculous.

Dear, dear Erma Bombeck had three kids and a husband and was undoubtedly the most widely-read and beloved of them all.  

Sadly, all of these funny ladies are dead.  Aloise, age 49, of a brain aneurism; Bombeck at 74, kidney failure and Kerr, 81, with pneumonia.   I don't doubt that Erma and Jean were delighted to run into each other in Heaven, but Aloise hasn't even seen them yet -- too busy visiting with The Buckleys.