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 o ...

folklorist Folklore studies (also known as folkloristics, tradition studies or folk life studies in the UK) is the academic discipline devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currency in the 1950s to distinguish the ac ...

, and author of '' The Rationale of the Dirty Joke'' (1968) and ''The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography'' (1964).

Early life and education

Legman was born in

Scranton, Pennsylvania Scranton is a city in and the county seat of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, United States. With a population of 76,328 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, Scranton is the most populous city in Northeastern Pennsylvania and the ...

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

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

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 Isabel 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 Ci ...

and

Cy Endfield Cyril Raker Endfield (November 10, 1914 – April 16, 1995) was an American film director, who at times also worked as a writer, theatre director, and inventor. Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he worked in the New York theatre in the late 1930s ...

were classmates. He enrolled in the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

for one semester in the fall of 1935, but left without sitting for his exams.

Career

After departing the University of Michigan, Legman relocated to

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

, where he was a part-time freelance assistant to the physician and sexological researcher Robert Latou Dickinson at the

New York Academy of Medicine The New York Academy of Medicine (the Academy) is a health policy and advocacy organization founded in 1847 by a group of leading New York metropolitan area physicians as a voice for the medical profession in medical practice and public health r ...

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 art, literature or photography 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. Erot ...

; while spending long hours at the

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress a ...

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 in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

, 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, sculp ...

and

taboo A taboo 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, offensive, sacred or allowed only for certain people.''Encyclopædia Britannica ...

materials in

folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

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

origami ) is the Japanese 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 paper into a ...

, becoming a pivotal figure in founding the modern origami international movement. In 1940, at age 23, Legman wrote '' Oragenitalism, 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.

Author

In the lats 1930s and early 1940s, Legman was involved with an informal, New York-based

pornography Pornography (colloquially called porn or porno) is Sexual suggestiveness, sexually suggestive material, such as a picture, video, text, or audio, intended for sexual arousal. Made for consumption by adults, pornographic depictions have evolv ...

writing group of authors. He was already intimately knowledgeable of the milieu of erotic literature, acquainted with a number of European and American publishers, booksellers, and collectors of erotica. Legman regularly wrote pornographic texts at $50 a page for "an oil millionaire from

Oklahoma Oklahoma ( ; Choctaw language, Choctaw: , ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Texas to the south and west, Kansas to the north, Missouri to the northea ...

," which remained mostly unpublished. The customer soon terminated their arrangement, "alienated" by the excessive literary style. One of Legman's texts, titled "The Passionate Pedant" subsequently found its way into ''The Oxford Professor Returns'', a collection published in 1971 by

Grove Press Grove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1947. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, and Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative book press in the United S ...

. The novel contained some of its author's wit and humor. E.g. "'Well, gentlemen', said the professor, 'we are gathered once again to discuss cunt in its socio-psychological and psycho-physiological significance in modern civilization'." In 1949, Legman 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, established in 1792. From 1872 to 1971, it was officially in the form of a Cabinet of the Un ...

authorities, who stopped his deliveries due to the supposed "indecent, vulgar, and obscene" content. Legman's book 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 Lafa ...

. ''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 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, Larry Rivers, Carl Solomon,

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 Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of th ...

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 studies, media theory. Raised in Winnipeg, McLuhan studied at the University of Manitoba a ...

, 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, surgery, surgical, chemical substance, chemical, or otherwise, by which a male loses use of the testicles: the male gonad. Surgical castration is bilateral orchiectomy (excision of both testicles), while chemical cas ...

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 Nikolayevich Afanasyev (; – ) was a Russian Slavist and ethnographer best known for publishing nearly 600 East Slavic and Russian fairy and folk tales, one of the largest collections of folklore in the world. This collection was ...

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

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Fau ...

's ''The Mammoth Cod and Address to the Stomach Club'' (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 moved to ''La Clé des Champs'', a farm in the

South of France Southern France, also known as the south of France or colloquially in French as , is a geographical area consisting of the regions of France that border the Atlantic Ocean south of the Marais Poitevin,Louis Papy, ''Le midi atlantique'', Atlas e ...

village of

Valbonne Valbonne (; ) 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 commune i ...

, where he pursued his intellectual interests with greater freedom. In 1955, he organized an exhibition of Akira Yoshizawa's

at the

Stedelijk Museum The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (; Municipal Museum Amsterdam), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

. Legman spent several decades compiling specimens of bawdy humor including limericks. 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''. In 1977, he followed with a second volume, ''The New Limerick'', which was reprinted as ''More Limericks'' in 1980. His magnum opus is considered to be '' Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor'', a overview of erotic folklore. It was followed 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 put out 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 (both 1992). Another of Legman's endeavors was his edition of

Robert Burns Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the List of national poets, national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the be ...

' ''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, because 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, 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. The seventh and last volume, "The Book of Moones" was published on Amazon, as were the others, in 2022.

Legacy

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 Western world from the late 1950s to the early 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 feminism, feminist intellectualism. It emerged in the late 1960s and continued till the 1980s, primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which resu ...

rock and roll Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock-n-roll, and 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 African ...

and the psychedelic movement's use of mind-altering substances. However, he said he was the inventor of the famous phrase " Make love, not war", in a lecture given at the

Ohio University Ohio University (Ohio or OU) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus in Athens, Ohio, United States. The university was first conceived in the 1787 contract between the United States Department of the Treasury#Re ...

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. This is unfashionable now, but is the only responsible position". Mikita Brottman 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.

Personal life

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, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940.'' Academic career Chauncey ...

'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, Mikita Brottman 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 Insti ...

. 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

Death

Legman died February 23, 1999, in Bar-sur-Loup, France, where he had been residing, a week after suffering a

stroke Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...

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, Wisconsin: Maledicta, Inc., 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.

Notes

References

Additional reading

* 1977. Reinhold Aman (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. *