When playful, or sprightly, or oblique _moues_ in words are pounced on by censors and labeled horribly lewd, then these censors must secretly be so afraid of the effect of sexual descriptions on their own glandular secretions that even the most moderate chuckle or eye-wink in print makes them shiver childishly. “Cutie” is a barbed satire on this infinitesimal venom spurted at sexual verities. Herman Pupick, a prude with one glass eye and splintered pieces of glass in what passed for his heart, is forced to stagger in hilarious pursuits of Cutie herself, who represents an intelligent, involved, nicely belligerent pagan and hoyden, with a face so exquisitely symmetrical, so magically, enticingly, softly, elasticly gleaming, that a paralyzed octogenarian would have jumped out of his wheel-chair in a miracle restoring him to youth. In the uproarious contretemps between Cutie and Pupick, she is seduced to an adultery of which his sourly blotched, equally self-holy wife is unaware. To Pupick, every tiny dalliance and eye-wink represents a dire sin, magnified by a blithe lack of repentance on the part of the minute transgressors. This book appeared in the Early Twenties. At present the best way to indicate the piercing impudence of a Cutie toward the perennial Fraud of Pupick would be as follows: “Look, Pupick, a person isn’t taking up for adultery just because he admits that it exists and describes the motivations and reasons which make it happen in some cases. That is an accusation as silly as calling some one a lush-hound because he sat in a party of drunks and sympathized with some of the things which they said and did, even though he was sipping ... er, ginger ale. You’re sour cream, Pupick, and your mug would make a rotten cantaloupe apologize to the grocer trying to palm it off on a customer for nine cents and a bus transfer. And as far as sexual details are concerned, rusty nuts and screws always have a yen against nuts and screws oily, polished and in perfect working order. You see, Pupick, a wolf who’s lost most of his claws and teeth ties on a pair of papier mache wings and claps a cardboard halo on his head and slowly and contentedly dies of starvation, but you, Pupick--you’re worse than the wolf. You insist that everybody should have all his teeth pulled out, because you’re a sanctimonious, buttery, pimply long-face. So take your frustrations to the nearest gin-mill (like you did when I pushed you into one on the North Side of Chicago) and pretend that you can chew just as well with your store bicuspids and molars as you did when you were still able to chew rawhide on a bet. Only wipe that cheesy smile off your puss when you try to pull the same camembert line in the next liquid-poison emporium.” So long, folks, and be sure to read our strip tease of a censor-faker starting on the next page. FIRST CANTO _Introducing the Alligator’s Tonsils_ FIRST CANTO