188. The feuilletoniste

He wrote numerous brief sketches for The New Yorker infused with a sense of ridicule, irony, and wryness, frequently using his own misadventures as their theme. He chose to describe these pieces as feuilletons — a French literary term meaning "little leaves" — and he defined himself as a feuilletoniste.

A typical example is his 1950s work, "No Starch in the Dhoti, S'il Vous Plait." where he composes a series of imaginary letters that might have been exchanged between an angry Pandit Nehru in India and a sly Parisian laundryman about the condition of his laundered underwear.

He was incidentally enough, indirectly responsible for the success of Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22. When first published, this novel received lukewarm reviews and indifferent sales. A few months later, in an interview for a national publication he was asked if he had read anything funny lately, whereupon he went to considerable lengths to recommend Catch-22. After the interview was published, sales of Heller's novel skyrocketed.

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