1 O'Clock in the Button Factory.

By Jerome Beatty Jr. '39. New York: The MacmillanCompany, 1964. 282 pp. $4.95.

"Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit," wrote Virgil some centuries back - "peraps someday it will be pleasing for you to look back and recall these things" - a sentiment echoed repeatedly by author Jerry Beatty '39.

Beatty gets right down to cases in the opening chapter when he expounds his "Doctrine of prospective laughter." Most of us look back at unpleasant events or situations sometime later and find humor in them, Beatty points out. Why can't we just face grim occurrences with humor as they happen, Beatty asks, like the lady who stepped into the lifeboat from the sinking Titanic remarking, "It's true, I had ordered ice, but this is going too far."

In previous dissertations, Beatty has concentrated on a single subject - the plight of the commuter, the plight of the suburban housewife, and the plight of the male animal. In this current selection-of-the-month by Jokes Anonymous, the author covers - or uncovers - all stops in what's billed as "The American Sense of Humor - an outrageous inquiry into what's funny, what isn't and why."

With facile mind and equally facile pen, Beatty ranges our world, probing at the international situation, religion, life, death, philosophy, sex, politics, and other areas where "angels fear to tread." The zany characters he dreams up match the situations into which he plunges them and the reader must keep constantly attuned to catch the subtleties of phrasing and thought. Bill Charmatz's illustrations complement the textual descriptions.

Beneath the ribald prose and cornball anecdotes flashes an undercurrent of perceptive insight into human foibles and an appreciation of the dilemmas facing us that together call for more reflection than might seem apparent at first reading. Jerry Beatty would be an interesting neighbor and friend. You can make his acquaintance through this treatise on how to laugh at life.