As I was reading Charles McGrath's highly amusing essay (Jan. 22), I received a text message from my son, who left earlier that day from New York City to go to Bogotá, Colombia.

Top cartoonists of that decade drew cartoons showing Volkswagens, and these were published along with amusing automotive essays by such humorists as H. Allen Smith, Roger Price and Jean Shepherd.

To the Editor: Nicholas O'Connell's amusing essay "The Grand Prix Approach to Paris" (Nov. 29) could have the unfortunate effect of discouraging many who might otherwise enjoy touring France by car.

In 1897 Gale published the book Korean Sketches (Chicago: Fleming H. Revell), a collection of often amusing essays about daily life in Korea, some previously published in the Repository.

There is a fine introduction by Ian Frazier and an amusing and insightful essay by Joel Smith that chronicles the evolution of Steinberg from a cartoonist into a more complex kind of artist.

More than just amusing essays in postmodern pastiche, however, herworks are little monuments to significant moments or crises in the artist's spiritual biography.

I remembered that a Mr. Smith of Cambridge had written somewhere or other an amusing essay about his own somewhat ubiquitous name-- an essay which showed considerable knowledge of genealogy and topography.

There is even an amusing little essay on the implications for Schoenberg of being short: like Schubert, Mahler and Webern, he was under 5 foot 4.

In modern macroeconomics, the controversy surfaces again, and is discussed in amusing essays by Prof. Anwar Shaikh (see references).

The organization approaches the disease with a sense of humor and includes a "cancertainment" section with amusing essays including "Top 10 Signs You've Joined a Cheap HMO."