Gershon Legman (November 2, 1917 – February 23, 1999) was an American

cultural critic A cultural critic is a critic of a given culture, usually as a whole. Cultural criticism has significant overlap with social and cultural theory. While such criticism is simply part of the self-consciousness of the culture, the social positions of ...

and

folklorist Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...

, best known for his books ''The Rationale of the Dirty Joke'' (1968) and ''The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography'' (1964).

Life and work

Legman was born in

Scranton, Pennsylvania Scranton is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, Lackawanna County. With a population of 76,328 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 U ...

, to Emil and Julia Friedman Legman, both of Hungarian-

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

descent; his father was a railroad clerk and butcher. After a failed stab at rabbinical school Legman attended and graduated from Scranton's Central High School, where

Jane Jacobs Jane Jacobs (''née'' Butzner; 4 May 1916 – 25 April 2006) was an American-Canadian journalist, author, theorist, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book '' The Death and Life of Great American Cities ...

and

Cy Endfield Cyril Raker Endfield (November 10, 1914 – April 16, 1995) was an American screenwriter, director, author, magician and inventor. Having been named as a Communist at a House Un-American Activities Committee hearing and subsequently blacklisted ...

were classmates. He enrolled in the University of Michigan for one semester in the fall of 1935, but left without sitting for his exams. He then settled in New York City where for a number of years he was a part-time freelance assistant to the physician and sexological researcher

Robert Latou Dickinson Robert Latou Dickinson (1861–1950) was an American obstetrician and gynecologist, surgeon, maternal health educator, artist, sculptor and medical illustrator, and research scientist. Early life Robert Latou Dickinson was born on February 21, 1 ...

at the New York Academy of Medicine while simultaneously working in the bookshop of

Jacob Brussel Jacob R. Brussel (June 21, 1899 – October 1979) was an antiquarian bookseller and publisher in New York City whose firm J.R. Brussel also dealt in erotica. For many years Jake Brussel operated a shop, under various names including Atlantis and Ort ...

, where a brisk business was done in publishing and selling contraband

erotica Erotica is literature or art that deals substantively with subject matter that is erotic, sexually stimulating or sexually arousing. Some critics regard pornography as a type of erotica, but many consider it to be different. Erotic art may use a ...

; while spending long hours at the New York Public Library acquiring an autodidactic education. In the late 1940s he became the editor of the little magazine '' Neurotica''. Throughout his career Legman was an independent scholar without institutional affiliation, except for one year during 1964–1965 when he was a writer in residence at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

, in the first year of the new campus' undergraduate programs. He pioneered the serious academic study of

erotic Eroticism () is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, scul ...

and

taboo A taboo or tabu is a social group's ban, prohibition, or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, sacred, or allowed only for certain persons.''Encyclopædia Britannica ...

materials in

folklore Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging ...

. He also was a talented raconteur and could spin out tales non-stop for hours. As a young man he acquired a number of interests including sexuality, erotic folklore, also

origami ) is the Japanese paper art, art of paper folding. In modern usage, the word "origami" is often used as an inclusive term for all folding practices, regardless of their culture of origin. The goal is to transform a flat square sheet of pape ...

—for which he was a pivotal figure in founding the modern international movement. In 1940, at age 23, Legman wrote ''

Oragenitalism ''Oragenitalism'' is a book by the American folklorist Gershon Legman, published by the Julian Press in 1969. The book describes various types of oral sex. The book is intended as "instruction manual, conduct guide, and household advice book". T ...

, Part I: Cunnilinctus'' under the pen name Roger-Maxe de la Glannège. Nearly all copies were seized by the police and destroyed in a raid on Jacob Brussel's shop. For a period of time, Legman was a bibliographic researcher and book scout for the

Kinsey Institute The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction (often shortened to The Kinsey Institute) is a research institute at Indiana University. Established in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1947 as a nonprofit, the institute merged with Indi ...

. In 1949, he published ''Love and Death'', an attack on sexual censorship, arguing that American culture was permissive of graphic violence in proportion to, and as a consequence of, its repression of the erotic. Legman published and shipped the treatise himself, although he ran afoul of the

United States Post Office Department The United States Post Office Department (USPOD; also known as the Post Office or U.S. Mail) was the predecessor of the United States Postal Service, in the form of a Cabinet department, officially from 1872 to 1971. It was headed by the postmas ...

authorities, who stopped his deliveries due to the supposed "indecent, vulgar, and obscene" content. The book also included a chapter that attacked contemporary pre-Code comic books as harmful to children for their celebration of violence, foreshadowing the later crusade against the comic book industry dominated by

Fredric Wertham Fredric Wertham (; born Friedrich Ignatz Wertheimer, March 20, 1895 – November 18, 1981) was a German-American psychiatrist and author. Wertham had an early reputation as a progressive psychiatrist who treated poor black patients at his Lafargue ...

. ''Love and Death'' was an outgrowth of the

little magazine In the United States, a little magazine is a magazine genre consisting of "artistic work which for reasons of commercial expediency is not acceptable to the money-minded periodicals or presses", according to a 1942 study by Frederick J. Hoffman, ...

''Neurotica'', edited by

Jay Landesman Irving Ned "Jay" Landesman (July 15, 1919 – February 20, 2011) was an American publisher, nightclub owner, writer, and long-time expatriate resident in London, England. With the Beats He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of the fo ...

and published in nine issues between 1948 and 1952. Legman was a regular contributor and eventually took over from Landesman as editor. Other contributors included

John Clellon Holmes John Clellon Holmes (March 12, 1926, Holyoke, Massachusetts – March 30, 1988, Middletown, Connecticut) was an American author, poet and professor, best known for his 1952 novel '' Go''. Considered the first "Beat" novel, ''Go'' depicted eve ...

Larry Rivers Larry Rivers (born Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg) (1923 – 2002) was an American artist, musician, filmmaker, and occasional actor. Considered by many scholars to be the "Godfather" and "Grandfather" of Pop art, he was one of the first artists ...

Carl Solomon Carl Solomon (March 30, 1928 – February 26, 1993) was an American writer. One of his best-known pieces of writing is ''Report from the Asylum: Afterthoughts of a Shock Patient''. Biography Solomon was born in the New York City borough of the ...

Judith Malina Judith Malina (June 4, 1926 – April 10, 2015) was a German-born American actress, director and writer. With her husband, Julian Beck, Malina co-founded The Living Theatre, a radical political theatre troupe that rose to prominence in New York C ...

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

Marshall McLuhan Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his ...

, and

Kenneth Patchen Kenneth Patchen (December 13, 1911January 8, 1972) was an American poet and novelist. He experimented with different forms of writing and incorporated painting, drawing, and jazz music into his works, which have been compared with those of Will ...

, which gave it influence disproportionate to its small circulation of a few thousand. The magazine had a few clashes with the authorities, and closed after the censors objected to an article on

castration Castration is any action, surgical, chemical, or otherwise, by which an individual loses use of the testicles: the male gonad. Surgical castration is bilateral orchiectomy (excision of both testicles), while chemical castration uses pharmaceut ...

written by Legman. The full set of ''Neurotica'' was reprinted in one volume by Hacker Art Books, New York, in 1963. ''The Horn Book : Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography'' was a collection of assorted writings from the 1950s and 1960s. Legman was a prolific writer of essays, reviews, and scholarly introductions, including those for the anonymous Victorian erotic memoir ''My Secret Life'' (1966),

Aleksandr Afanasyev Alexander is a male given name. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants listed here are Aleksandar, Al ...

's '' Russian Secret Tales'' (1966), and

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...

's '' The Mammoth Cod'' (1976). He supplemented his income at times through the sale of rare erotica. On account of his trial for violating United States Post Office regulations in his distributing his book ''Love and Death'', Legman found it prudent to depart the United States. In 1953 Legman left his native United States for a farm, ''La Clé des Champs'', in the village of

Valbonne Valbonne (; oc, Vauboa) is a commune near Nice in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France. Valbonne means "the good valley" in Provençal and translates to "Vaubona" in Occitan. The c ...

in the South of

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, where he was able to pursue his intellectual interests with greater freedom. In 1955 he organized an exhibition of

Akira Yoshizawa Akira Yoshizawa (吉澤章 ''Yoshizawa Akira''; 14 March 1911 – 14 March 2005) was a Japanese origamist, considered to be the grandmaster of origami. He is credited with raising origami from a craft to a living art. According to his own es ...

's origami at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Legman spent several decades compiling specimens of bawdy humor including

limericks A limerick ( ) is a form of verse, usually humorous and frequently rude, in five-line, predominantly trimeter with a strict rhyme scheme of AABBA, in which the first, second and fifth line rhyme, while the third and fourth lines are shorter and ...

. In 1970, his first volume of over 1,700 limericks (published in 1953 by Les Hautes Etudes, Paris) was released in the United States as ''The Limerick''. He followed this with a second volume, ''The New Limerick'' in 1977, which was reprinted as ''More Limericks'' in 1980. His magnum opus was ''

Rationale of the Dirty Joke ''Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor'' is a book by American social critic and folkloristics, folklorist Gershon Legman. The book analyzes more than 2000 jokes and folk tales in terms of social, psychological, and historical ...

: (An Analysis of Sexual Humor)'', a tour de force of erotic folklore, succeeded by ''No Laughing Matter : Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor, 2nd Series'', for which a subscription had to be paid to support publishing, as no publisher would touch it after Grove did volume one in 1968. Near the end of his life, Legman edited ''Roll Me in Your Arms'' and ''Blow the Candle Out,'' two volumes of bawdy songs and lore collected by

Vance Randolph Vance Randolph (February 23, 1892 – November 1, 1980) was a folklorist who studied the folklore of the Ozarks in particular. He wrote a number of books on the Ozarks, as well as ''Little Blue Books'' and juvenile fiction. Early life Randolph ...

(both 1992). Other achievements include his edition of Robert Burns' ''The Merry Muses of Caledonia'' (1965).

Autobiography

The title of Gershon Legman's autobiography, ''Peregrine Penis'', was a sobriquet bestowed on him by his girlfriend Louise "Beka" Doherty, on account of the fact that he "used to travel to meet her in strange places."Brottman 2004, p. 38 The writing of ''Peregrine Penis'', over "six hundred pages" in length, was continually subsidized by

Larry McMurtry Larry Jeff McMurtry (June 3, 1936March 25, 2021) was an American novelist, essayist, bookseller and screenwriter whose work was predominantly set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas.

. On September 5, 2016, Book One of Gershon Legman's autobiography became available as a print-on-demand, two-volume set, carefully edited by Judith Evans Legman (G. Legman's widow), under the title ''I Love You, I Really Do''. On March 8, 2017, Book Two appeared in a third volume, under the title ''Mooncalf'', which continues the story of Legman's life up to the eve of World War II. Book Three, ''World I Never Made'', was released in a fourth volume in August 2017. A fifth volume, ''Musick to My Sorrow'', was published in March 2018, and a sixth volume, ''Windows of Winter & Flagrant Delectations'', appeared in October 2018.

Evaluation

Legman was in many senses a radical, but never identified with the movements of his time, decrying the

sexual revolution The sexual revolution, also known as the sexual liberation, was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the United States and the developed world from the 1 ...

, for example, in ''The Fake Revolt'' (1967), and leaving countless irascible ''obiter dicta'' on such topics as

women's liberation The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism that emerged in the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which effected great ...

rock and roll Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock 'n' roll, or rock 'n roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from Africa ...

and the

psychedelic Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary states of consciousness (known as psychedelic experiences or "trips").Pollan, Michael (2018). ''How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of ...

movement's use of mind-altering substances. However, he said he was the inventor of the famous phrase "

Make love, not war "Make love, not war" is an anti-war slogan commonly associated with the American counterculture of the 1960s. It was used primarily by those who were opposed to the Vietnam War, but has been invoked in other anti-war contexts since, around the w ...

", in a lecture given at the

Ohio University Ohio University is a Public university, public research university in Athens, Ohio. The first university chartered by an Act of Congress and the first to be chartered in Ohio, the university was chartered in 1787 by the Congress of the Confeder ...

in 1963. He remained essentially an individualist and an idealist: "I consider sexual love the central mystery and central reality of life", he wrote. And "I believe in a personal and intense style, and in making value judgements 'sic'' This is unfashionable now, but is the only responsible position".

Mikita Brottman Mikita Brottman, née Mikita Hoy, (born 1966) is a British American non-fiction author, scholar, and psychologist known for her interest in true crime. Her writing blends a number of genres, often incorporating elements of autobiography, psych ...

offers the consensus view of Legman as, in many ways, his own worst enemy, exacerbating his rejection by the academic community with vitriolic attacks upon it. In Bruce Jackson's view "Legman is the person, more than any other, who made research into erotic folklore and erotic verbal behavior academically respectable" and who made accessible to other scholars material that scholarly journals had long been afraid to publish. Gershon Legman died February 23, 1999, in his adopted home country, France, after several years of debility, and a week after suffering a massive stroke.

Legman's sexuality

According to historian

George Chauncey George Chauncey (born 1954) is a professor of history at Columbia University. He is best known as the author of '' Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940'' (1994). Life and works Chauncey re ...

's book '' Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940'', Legman was gay and is credited with having invented the vibrating dildo when he was only twenty. However,

holds that he was exclusively heterosexual, accounting for both the abandonment of his proposed volume on fellatio as well as, possibly and in some measure, for his contempt for

Alfred Kinsey Alfred Charles Kinsey (; June 23, 1894 – August 25, 1956) was an American sexologist, biologist, and professor of entomology and zoology who, in 1947, founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, now known as the Kinsey Instit ...

. He was married for many years to Beverley Keith (died of lung cancer, 1966), married briefly to Christine Conrad, ended by annulment, then to Judith Evans.Brottman, pp. 7–10 et passim, 29

Books

* 1940. 'Roger-Maxe de la Glannège' (pseud.). ''Oragenitalism. An encyclopedic outline of oral excitation. Part I. Cunnilinctus''. N.p., N.e., (New York,Jacob Brussel),1940. 63pp. New revised and augmented edition : ''Oragenitalism. Oral techniques in genital excitation''. New York, Julian Press, 1969. 319pp. Contains five sections. I – Cunnilinctus. II – Fellation. IIa – A practical treatise. III – Irrumation. IV – The Sixty-Nine. * 1949. (With Burt Franklin). ''David Ricardo and Ricardian Theory. A bibliographical checklist''. New York, Burt Franklin,1949. vi, 88pp. * 1949. ''Love and Death. A study in censorship''. New York, Breaking Point, 1949. 95pp. New Edition: New York, Hacker Art Books, 1963. * 1950. (With G. V. Hamilton). ''On the Cause of Homosexuality. Two essays the second in reply to the first''. New York, Breaking Point, 1950. 31pp. * 1952. ''Bibliography of Paper-Folding''. N.p., ''Journal of Occasional Bibliography'', 1952. 8pp. * 1953. (Jarry) Alfred Jarry. ''King Turd''. Trans. G. Legman & Beverley Keith. Translator's Note by G. Legman. New York, Boar's Head Books, 1953. 189pp. * 1953. ''The Limerick. 1700 examples with notes variants and index''. Paris: Les Hautes Etudes, 1953. 517pp. * 1964. ''The Horn Book. Studies in erotic folklore and bibliography''. New York, University Books, 1964. 565pp. (U.K. edition : Jonathan Cape. 1970). Spanish translation: Mexico City, Ediciones Roca, 1974. * 1965. (Burns) ''The Merry Muses of Caledonia''. Collected and in part written by Robert Burns. Edited by G. Legman. New York: University Books, 1965. lxv, 326pp. * 1966. (Farmer & Henley) John S. Farmer & W. E. Henley. ''Dictionary of Slang & Its Analogues''. Volume I. Revised Edition. Introductions by Lee Revens & G. Legman. New York, University Books, 1966. xcvii, 461pp. * 1966. (Afanasyev) Aleksander N. Afanasyev. ''Russian Secret Tales''. Folklore annotations by Giuseppe Pitré. Illus. Leon Kotkofsky. Introduction by G. Legman. New York, Brussel & Brussel, 1966. xxix, xix, 306pp. New Edition: Baltimore, Clearfield, 1988. Contains new foreword by Alan Dundes. * 1966. (With others). ''The Guilt of the Templars''. By G. Legman, Henry Charles Lea, Thomas Wright, George Witt, Sir James Tennent, Sir William Dugdale. Prefatory note by Jacques Barzun. New York: Basic Books, 1966. xi, 308pp., illus. * 1967. ''The Fake Revolt. The naked truth about the hippy revolt''. New York: Breaking Point, 1967. New Edition. New York: Breaking Point, 1969. * 1968. ''Rationale of the Dirty Joke. An analysis of sexual humor. First series''. New York: Grove Press, 1968. 811pp. * 1975. ''No Laughing Matter. Rationale of the Dirty Joke. Second Series''. New York: Breaking Point, 1975. 992pp. * 1976. (Twain). ''The Mammoth Cod. And address to The Stomach Club'' with an introduction by G. Legman. Milwaukee: Maledicta, 1976. 25pp. *''The New Limerick: 2750 Unpublished Examples, American and British''. New York, 1977, ) * 1979. (McCosh) Sandra McCosh. ''Children's Humour''. Introduction G. Legman. London: Panther, 1979. 335pp. * 1982. ''The Art of Mahlon Blaine. A Reminiscence'' by G. Legman. With a Mahlon Blaine bibliography compiled by Roland Trenary. East Lansing, Peregrine Books, 1982. 26, 82pp. illus. * 2009. ''A Word on Caxton's 'Dictes'.'' Introduction Karl Orend. Paris, Alyscamps Press (St.Yon Pamphleteers Series: Volume 1), 2009. xi, 31pp. New Edition: St.Yon & Paris, Alyscamps Press & Michael Neal, 2011. * 2016. ''I Love You, I Really Do'' (Part I). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. First volume of Legman's autobiography. 498pp. * 2016. ''I Love You, I Really Do'' (Part II). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Second volume of Legman's autobiography. 528pp. * 2017. ''Mooncalf''. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Third volume of Legman's autobiography. 562pp. * 2017. ''World I Never Made''. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Fourth volume of Legman's autobiography. 668pp. * 2018. ''Musick to My Sorrow''. CreateSpace. Fifth volume of Legman’s autobiography. 598pp. * 2018. ''Windows of Winter & Flagrant Delectations''. CreateSpace. Sixth volume of Legman's autobiography. 747pp.

References

Additional reading

* 1977.

Reinhold Aman Reinhold Aman (April 8, 1936 – March 2, 2019) was a chemical engineer and professor of German before achieving national and even international recognition as the publisher of ''Maledicta'', a scholarly journal dedicated to the study of offensive ...

(Ed.& Intro.). ''Maledicta, The International Journal of Verbal Aggression''. Waukesha, Winter 1977. Vol.1 N°2 Special issue 'In Honorem G. Legman. Festschrift'. * 2004. Mikita Brottman. ''Funny Peculiar. Gershon Legman and the Psychopathology of Humor''. New Jersey: Analytic Press, 2004. * Susan G. Davis, "Eros Meets Civilization: Gershon Legman Confronts the Post Office", in Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair: ''Serpents in the Garden: Liaisons with Culture and Sex''. Counterpunch & AK Press, Edinburgh, 2004. * 2019. Susan G Davis. ''Dirty jokes and bawdy songs: the uncensored life of Gershon Legman''. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2019 (Cloth, Paper, PDF, ePub). 332 pages. *

: ''Books: a Memoir''. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2008.

External links

Gershon Legman and American Folk Humor

British Origami Society: David Lister on Gershon Legman's contribution to paperfolding

An appreciative essay by Martha Cornog and Timothy Perper

Obituary : Gershon Legman

The Legacy of Gershon Legman

{{DEFAULTSORT:Legman, Gershon 1917 births 1999 deaths American expatriates in France American male journalists American erotica writers American folklorists Jewish American writers Writers from Scranton, Pennsylvania American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent Off-color humor Social critics 20th-century American non-fiction writers Journalists from Pennsylvania 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American journalists 20th-century American Jews