Gershon Legman
| Gershon Legman | |
|---|---|
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| Born | November 2, 1917 Scranton, Pennsylvania |
| Died | February 23, 1999 (aged 81) Opio, Canton du Bar-sur-Loup, Alpes-Maritimes |
| Occupation | Writer, folklorist |
Gershon Legman (November 2, 1917 – February 23, 1999) was an American cultural critic and folklorist, best known for his books The Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1968) and The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography (1964).
Legman was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania to Emil and Julia Friedman Legman, both of Hungarian/Romanian Jewish 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 and Cy Endfield were classmates. He enrolled in the University of Michigan for one semester in the fall of 1935, but left without sitting for his exams. He then settled in New York City where for a number of years he was a part-time freelance assistant to the physician and sexological researcher Robert Latou Dickinson at the New York Academy of Medicine while simultaneously working in the bookshop of Jacob Brussel, where a brisk business was done in publishing and selling contraband erotica; while spending long hours at the New York Public Library 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, in the first year of the new campus' undergraduate programs. He pioneered the serious academic study of erotic and taboo materials in folklore. He also was a talented raconteur and could spin out tales non-stop for hours.
As a young man he acquired a number of interests including sexuality, erotic folklore, also origami—for which he was a pivotal figure in founding the modern international movement. In 1940, at age 23, Legman wrote Oragenitalism, Part I: Cunnilinctus under the pen name Roger-Maxe de la Glannege (an anagram of his real name). Nearly all copies were seized by the police and destroyed in a raid on Jake Brussel's shop. For a period of time, Legman was a bibliographic researcher and book scout for the Kinsey Institute.
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