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harvio's review against another edition
4.0
- an entertaining, scholarly, and funny mini-history of humour and jokes
- from the ancient Greeks through to Seinfeld
- from the ancient Greeks through to Seinfeld
giovannigf's review
3.0
Amusing essay stretched into a whole book the way you stretched papers in high school and college - lots of empty spaces and illustrations.
hilaritas's review
4.0
Fun and clever, but altogether too slight. You can definitely tell this is a (barely) padded-out New Yorker article. Holt is here at his most waggish and philosophy-broish, but he's clearly having a good time, and the reader is mostly doing so with him. It's less a serious attempt to provide a satisfying philosophical account of humor, and more an excuse to drop a bunch of groaners. Nonetheless, worth reading as a lark.
trin's review
4.0
Confession: I don’t find jokes funny. Not really. Witticisms, yes. Humorous stories, indeed. But jokes—setup: punchline jokes—not so much. Possibly there is something wrong with me.
I liked this book, though. It’s short—not much more than a glorified magazine article—but the history is fascinating and the philosophy digestible. I loved the examples of jokes from ancient times: they were hilarious, in the sense that they were hilariously bad. I especially enjoyed the discussion of Poggio Bracciolini, who with his 15th Century Liber Facetiarum, became the author of the first joke book published in Europe. This despite his, as Holt puts it, “regrettable tendency to preempt the punchline.” For example: “The abbot of Septimo, an extremely corpulent man, was traveling toward Florence one evening. On the road he asked a peasant, ‘Do you think I’ll be able to make it through the city gate?’ He was talking about whether he would be able to make it to the city before the gates were closed. The peasant, jesting on the abbot’s fatness, said, ‘Why, if a cart of hay can make it through, you can, too!’”
Correction: I seem to like jokes that are really badly told.
(All right, for the record, there was one joke in this book that did make me laugh in the traditional manner. From page 106:
A Jewish grandmother is watching her grandchild playing on the beach when a huge wave comes and takes him out to sea. She pleads, “Please, God, save my only grandson! Bring him back.” And a big wave comes and washes the boy back onto the beach, good as new. She looks up at heaven and says, “He had a hat!”
Yup, definitely something wrong with me.)
I liked this book, though. It’s short—not much more than a glorified magazine article—but the history is fascinating and the philosophy digestible. I loved the examples of jokes from ancient times: they were hilarious, in the sense that they were hilariously bad. I especially enjoyed the discussion of Poggio Bracciolini, who with his 15th Century Liber Facetiarum, became the author of the first joke book published in Europe. This despite his, as Holt puts it, “regrettable tendency to preempt the punchline.” For example: “The abbot of Septimo, an extremely corpulent man, was traveling toward Florence one evening. On the road he asked a peasant, ‘Do you think I’ll be able to make it through the city gate?’ He was talking about whether he would be able to make it to the city before the gates were closed. The peasant, jesting on the abbot’s fatness, said, ‘Why, if a cart of hay can make it through, you can, too!’”
Correction: I seem to like jokes that are really badly told.
(All right, for the record, there was one joke in this book that did make me laugh in the traditional manner. From page 106:
A Jewish grandmother is watching her grandchild playing on the beach when a huge wave comes and takes him out to sea. She pleads, “Please, God, save my only grandson! Bring him back.” And a big wave comes and washes the boy back onto the beach, good as new. She looks up at heaven and says, “He had a hat!”
Yup, definitely something wrong with me.)
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