Mark Twain, American Humorist examines the ways that Mark Twain’s reputation developed at home and abroad in the period between 1865 and 1882, years in which he went from a regional humorist to national and international fame. In the late 1860s, Mark Twain became the exemplar of a school of humor that was thought to be uniquely American. …
Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder: A Study of German National Character through Folklore
Life Is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder was first published in 1984 and from the outset inspired a wide variety of reactions ranging from high praise to utter disgust. Alan Dundes’ theses identifies a strong anal erotic element in German national character, citing numerous examples of scatological data from authentic compilations of German folklore. The examination of this …
Jonathan Ames has drawn comparisons across the literary spectrum, from David Sedaris to F. Scott Fitzgerald to Woody Allen to P.G. Wodehouse, and his books, as well as his abilities as a performer, have made him a favorite on the Late Show with David Letterman. Whether he’s chasing deranged cockroaches around his apartment, kissing a beautiful actress on …
An Idiot Girl’s Christmas: True Tales from the Top of the Naughty List
IT’S LAURIE NOTARO’S HOLIDAY HANDBOOK. PREPARE TO LAUGH YOUR TINSEL OFF.It’s the most wonderful–and most dreadful–season of the year, when boxes of truffles attack your thighs, drunken holiday revelers stay long past their welcome, and your grandmother has conniptions at the department store over the price of hand lotion. Welcome to Laurie Notaro’s Christmastime. In ten brand-new stories …
Selected and introduced by acclaimed novelist and poet Paul Beatty, Hokum is a liberating, eccentric, savagely comic collection of the funniest writing by black Americans. This book is less a comprehensive collection of African-American humor than a mix-tape narrative dubbed by a trusted friend―a sampler of underground classics, rare grooves, and timeless summer jams, poetry and prose juxtaposed …
Humor is the most celebrated of all Jewish responses to modernity. In this book, Ruth Wisse evokes and applauds the genius of spontaneous Jewish joking–as well as the brilliance of comic masterworks by writers like Heinrich Heine, Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Babel, S. Y. Agnon, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Philip Roth. At the same time, …
Some things are funny — jokes, puns, sitcoms, Charlie Chaplin, The Far Side, Malvolio with his yellow garters crossed — but why? Why does humor exist …
Comedy: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
To consider comedy in its many incarnations is to raise diverse but related questions: what, for instance, is humour, and how may it be used (or abused)? When do we laugh, and why? What is it that writers and speakers enjoy – and risk – when they tell a joke, indulge in bathos, talk nonsense, or encourage irony?This …
Performing Marginality: Humor, Gender, and Cultural Critique (Humor in Life and Letters Series)
How do contemporary American female comics perform onstage, and what does this performance reveal about power relations in our culture as well as the existence of a “female” and, more specifically, “feminist” genre of stand-up comedy? In this long overdue study of women and stand-up comedy, Joanne R. Gilbert explores these questions in order to illuminate the social, …
Humor at its best is a somewhat fluid and transitory element, but most books about it are illustrated with hardened old jokes from the comic papers, or classic witticisms jerked out of their context. Max Eastman, in this work, avoids this catastrophe by quoting mainly from contemporary American humor. This is not an anthology in that selections have …