cover image Laughing Matters:: On Writing M*A*S*H, Tootsie, Oh, God!, and a Few Other Funny Things

Laughing Matters:: On Writing M*A*S*H, Tootsie, Oh, God!, and a Few Other Funny Things

Larry Gelbart. Random House (NY), $24 (304pp) ISBN 978-0-679-42945-6

More miscellany than memoir, this engaging collection of excerpts, essays, reviews and reflections showcases a wordplay-loving writer who grounds his comedy in balky reality. Gelbart, who says he was ""an amused, not an abused child,"" sold his first lines as a teenager (his father was Danny Thomas's barber) and sailed onward. He writes interestingly about the experiments in structure and style with M*A*S*H (""We delighted in throwing the show up into the air each week and seeing how it came down""), and his sketches of Milton Berle, Neil Simon et al. are elegant. The book does gets diffuse, and it's frustrating that Gelbart tells us little about his personal life and that his reflections on craft don't extend deeply into self-analysis. But his thoughts remain entertaining nonetheless and showcase him as a heartening example of a writer for stage and screen who has managed to sustain both ideals and enthusiasm. Author tour. (Mar.)