NONFICTION - July 28, 1991

NEVER TRY TO TEACH A PIG TO SING: Still More Urban Folklore from the Paperwork Empire by Alan Dundes and Carl R. Pagter (Wayne State University Press: $39.95; $15.95 paper; 435 pp.) . The printing press may grab the spotlight because it fostered the Enlightenment, but the photocopier (and now the fax) arguably have had more of an impact on us ordinary worker bees. These far more accessible tools may not have fomented any revolutions, but they surely have prevented some by enabling employees to circulate memos, cartoons, mottoes and other gags that vent the inevitable frustrations of office life. Shepherding this collection into print was a grueling task for Dundes, an anthropology professor at UC Berkeley, and Pagter, a corporate lawyer, for most publishers told them that Americans only wanted to hear from those thriving at the top, not from those stewing in the middle--those who print posters with sayings like, “THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THIS PLACE AND THE TITANIC IS THEY HAD A BAND.”

We are fortunate that the authors succeeded, though, for these sayings are written by the world’s most honest and forthright author: Anonymous. Most of them try to joke away some kind of fear, as in these definitions from the flyer “Medical Terminology for the Layman”: “ barium --what to do when CPR fails . . . outpatient --a person who has fainted.” Unfortunately, the authors offer only mundane interpretations of each document rather than the kind of searching inquiry one finds in the work of the 19th-Century folklorists. The authors might have examined, for instance, whether the ethnic prejudices implicit in many of these documents is simply a way of blowing off steam, or whether it reflects an actual rise in American racism--an especially topical issue given the LAPD’s recent computer folklore.