To tell one dirty joke can be fun: to hear twelve already strains the situation: but to compile a thousand must surely take a fanatical devotion to the cause. In Mr Legman this cause has found an indefatigable devotee. He has collected, categorized and presented his data with an unflagging industry. And Mr Legman is not content to anthologize the 'dirty joke': he had to rationalize it as well. And here he self-consciously picks on Freud's Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious as his guide and model. In this battle between the inherent vitality of the dirty joke and Mr Legman's vehement attempt to rationalize it, what should have been an anthology turns more and more, as one trudges through it, into a mortuary of the dirty joke. Perhaps Mr Legman is not to blame for it. All jokes breathe and come alive in an actual social ambience, and the void of the printed page fails to nourish their verve and venom.