Ever-present laughter

Which would you rather watch: a film starring the Marx Brothers or Laurel and Hardy? I would choose the latter, hands down. While the Marx Brothers are funny enough in the gag department, they are, in my book at least, inferior to Laurel and Hardy in that their comedy is based on creating consternation rather than, as in the case of Stan and Ollie, embodying it. I suppose that it was because they were lords of misrule that the Marx Brothers were so terrifically popular during the 1960s, when misbehavior gained mass appeal.

And perhaps it's the decade's mischievousness that explains the lack of organization in the pages, first published in 1967, of "The Groucho Letters: Letters From and to Groucho Marx" (Simon & Schuster, paperback, $16). The book, in all its slapdash disorder, now reappears to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Groucho's death. Instead of proceeding by date or correspondent, the letters have been tossed willy-nilly into vague categories as if organized by some loony file clerk in a madcap comedy - "A Day at the Archives," say. But once one accepts this chaotic situation - and the paucity of footnotes, the absence of index, and the exasperating impression of miscellany - there is much to enjoy here.

Groucho was a witty writer, and so were a number of his correspondents, who make up a strange assembly running from Jerry Lewis - who is not funny, though he does manage to evoke all that is servile about Hollywood - to T. S. Eliot, with whom Groucho exchanged photographs and praise. Groucho finally had dinner at Eliot's house, an uncomfortable occasion that he describes wryly to his brother Gummo. To begin the evening Marx quoted from "The Waste Land" and "Eliot smiled faintly - as though to say he was thoroughly familiar with his poems and didn't need me to recite them." Later Eliot, who was more interested in discussing "Animal Crackers" and "A Night at the Opera," quoted one of Groucho's old jokes. "Now it was my turn to smile faintly. I was not going to let anyone - not even the British poet from St. Louis - spoil my Literary Evening."

There are excellent letters to Fred Allen - whose glasses, Groucho told him, "give your face the same kind of softness that General Grant had at Appomattox" - as well as from Allen ("i have just returned from boston. it is the only sane thing to do if you find yourself up there"). There are letters to and from his brothers, E. B. White, James Thurber, and Russell Baker. But the very best correspondence here is with his good friends the scriptwriters Goodman Ace, Arthur Sheekman, and Harry Kurnitz. "I am going to a football game," Kurnitz wrote from London, "which I believe they call 'cricket' over here."

And now for something completely different: "Monty Python's Flying Circus," in fact. There are two sorts of fans of this brilliant show and the magnificent movies made by its creators. There are those who like the disruptive elements, which are best represented in Terry Gilliam's graphics, that is to say, where the world is turned inside out and upside down and order is blown to smithereens. And there are those who get a little weary of that and who prefer the inspired way the Pythons employ the conventions of an orderly society to show its essential absurdity and indecency. In this respect, the spectrum runs from John Cleese strutting about in his tin-pot, punitive, self-righteous persona to Eric Idle oozing media smarm. Among the many stops in between lies one version of Michael Palin, the concerned, compassionate-eyed facilitator, superbly represented in his role as a prison guard, helpful and caring, handling the flow of condemned men in "Monty Python's Life of Brian." ("Next! Crucifixion? . . . Go-o-o-d. Out of the door. Line on the left. One cross each.")

As it happens, I have been reading Michael Palin's "Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years" (St. Martin's, $29.95). It is terrifically good: funny, astute, and wonderfully written - to say nothing of being an orderly work, possessing footnotes, an index, and even photographs. Each session of pawing through its 650 pages left my spirits buoyed by its humor and generosity, and by its author's capacity for gratitude and for joy in his good fortune: "I hope I shall never get used to this way of life," he writes in May 1970 after a perfect lunch in sunny weather filming a Monty Python episode in Torquay - a day made complete when "we . . . spent the rest of the afternoon playing football dressed as gynaecologists." Food and drink and fellowship are described rapturously here, yet it is clear that Palin finds his greatest happiness in his family, in his wife (the same one he's always had), and his three children, who are a source of continuing pride, delight, and amusement ("Thomas is as energetic as ever. He helps around the house with devastating results").

Palin devotes a good deal of attention to the gestation and completion of his various projects, as a Python and otherwise, and to his changing relationship with - and views on - the other Pythons. He is a master at giving deft glimpses of what is essential in the people he runs into: "Harrison Ford," he reports, "looks young and alienated. He would look over his glasses at us if he had any. As it is he moves broodingly around - like a famous man might do if he knew how famous he is." Here too are battles against censorship, which become most irksome with "Monty Python's Life of Brian." When that film is condemned by Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish groups, he observes: "It looks as though we may become a major force for ecumenical harmony."

Palin's love of the English countryside and of life in general (an electrocardiogram operator pronounced him as having "a very nice heart") are all well described - as is some gruesome dental work. He is attentive to the state of the country, including its despoliation by corrupt, ugly "civic redevelopment," and its increasingly, and to Palin, lamentable, conservative temper. I can only say in conclusion: Bring on Volume 2.

Katherine A. Powers lives in Cambridge. Her column appears on alternate Sundays. She can be reached by e-mail at pow3@verizon.net.