Partners, by Veronica Geng (Harper & Row, 184 pp., $13.95)
Veronica Geng, the cleverest New Yorker humorist to come along since Woody Allen, has just brought out her first collection of pieces, a slender volume called Partners, which contains more than enough laughs to lighten up a week-long seminar on the future of liberalism. Miss Geng specializes in parody and burlesque, and her deliciously wild fantasies cover a lot of ground: an NBC sitcom about Henry James at prep school; an Oriana Fallaci interview with a fascist hyena so tough he kills reporters and swallows their cassettes; a congressman’s all-purpose form letter to his constituents that sounds like a post-Doonesbury update of Robert Benchley’s “The Treasurer’s Report.” (“As your Representative, I played a cameo role in last year’s Legislative Session, during which a substantial number of new laws were enacted under or near my sponsorship or with my vigorous opposition.”) Best of all is “Ten Movies That Take Women Seriously,” a wicked sendup of the Jill Clayburgh/Jane Fonda school of feminist filmmaking; movie number five is Portentimento, in the course of which “Lillian Heilman (Mia Farrow) and Mary McCarthy (Liv Ullmann) try on hats and learn to touch-type, tutored by Dashiell Hammett (director Woody Allen) and Edmund Wilson (Pat McCormick), while Stalin (Jerry Stiller) collectivizes the Ukraine.” If you still think Fran Lebowitz is the ne plus ultra of Eighties urban humor, read Partners and change your mind.
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