Laugh To The Max

Max was born in 1952. He was the creation of Pericle Luigi Giovanetti, a Swiss draughtsman, painter and illustrator of Italian and French parentage, born in Basel during the First World War. 

Among Giovanetti's earliest commissions were some cartoons which were published in 1951 in the British satirical magazine Punch. These were soon followed by the artist's defining creation, the wonderful Max, a marmot and the main character in a series of homonymous comic strip adventures, published initially in Punch but soon to break out into the wider world.

Max the Marmot by Pericle Luigi Giovanetti

Max was based on Giovanetti's love of the European marmot, then to be found in the hill country of his native Switzerland. (I don't know if there are any left... that could be a poem: 'Are There Still Marmots In Switzerland?') The illustrator depicted his anthropomorphic marmot in a steady stream of witty and wordless cartoons which soon became best-selling books the world over, for Max's humorous mis-happenings transcend the barriers of language, and have amused and delighted children and adults alike for generations now..

I still have a slightly marmot-eared copy of 'The Penguin Max', dated 1962, in which, across a succession of double-page spreads, good-natured but accident-prone Max engages in adventures ranging from four to a dozen story frames, all of which are beautifully sketched and very funny. 

My favourite is probably the strip in which Max writes a letter. I've had to reduce the scale of the scan to fit the blog, but you can probably click on the image to enlarge it and linger over the exquisite detail in each frame. 

Max writes a letter

I'm down south for the week-end, celebrating my elder daughter's birthday, looking through old family photographs and enjoying some time with my grandson, who is now walking. He's the happiest little fellow and a reminder that laughter  (a proper chortle in his case) arrives quite early in a child's development. He's not eighteen months old yet, but clearly finds all sorts of things funny, as did my elder daughter when she was at an even younger age (see below). Happy birthday. 

my elder daughter (and her mum) circa 1987

Today's poem is a steal and an extension from a joke doing the rounds on social media at the moment (for all poets are magpies). It's a marker of the times and an ode to paranoia.

Laughter

This evening I arrived home

to find the wifely one

sitting in the kitchen in the dark

nursing a large glass of white wine.

'Bad day?' I enquired solicitously.

'Not so loud', she replied sotto voce.

'Why are you whispering?' I asked.

Nervously, she enunciated softly

'Alexa reports on everything we say.'

I laughed, but my wife scowled.

 

Then I swear that Alexa laughed quietly, 

Siri, Telegram and Tik-Tok all chortled,

the refrigerator shook with silent mirth,

kettle, microwave and toaster giggled,

while outside the Tesla laughed

and somewhere off in the night

Chinese five spies snickered,

Muttley or a TV chuckled,

Mona Lisa gave a flicker 

of a painted smile as

the credits rolled 

on the floor.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)