Some Recommended Books

There are a number of excellent studies by sociologists, notably Michael Mulkays On Humor (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988) and Christie Davies The Mirth of Nations (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002). The anthropologist Elliott Oring has considered humor from an impressively wide range of perspectives; most of his essays are collected in Jokes and Their Relations (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), and in Engaging Humor (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003). There is an overview of psychology experiments, with some excellent pieces as well as a lot of technical jargon, in a collection edited by Willibald Ruch, The Sense of Humor: Explorations of a Personality Characteristic (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1998). And the neuroscientist Robert Provines Laughter: A Scientific Investigation (New York: Viking, 2000) is a delight from beginning to end. Jim Holts brief Stop Me If Youve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes (New York: Norton, 2008) is a sprightly history of joke collectors, with some good jokes thrown in. There is a lot of fine material in Charles R. Gruners The Game of Humor: A Comprehensive Theory of Why We Laugh (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1997). An older book, George Mikes curmudgeonly Humour in Memoriam (London: Routledge,1970), is also interesting and has a number of excellent jokes. The clinical psychologists Seymour and Rhoda Fisher collected fascinating material on the childhoods and personalities of comedians in Pretend the World is Funny and Forever: A Psychological Analysis of Comedians, Clowns, and Actors (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1981). The historian Daniel Wickberg has a penetrating account of humor as a feature of American culture, The Senses of Humor: Self and Laughter in Modern America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). In Russell L. Peterson, in Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008), ponders the wisecracking style of Letterman, Leno, and the rest. Among the myriad discussions of jokes, two by a folklorist and a philosopher stand out: Alan Dundes Cracking Jokes: Studies of Sick Humor Cycles and Stereotypes (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1987); and Ted Cohens Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Another philosopher, Simon Critchley, surveys the subject briefly in On Humor (New York: Routledge, 2002). Walter Redferns Puns (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984) covers the field, with examples in French as well as English. Of the numerous books on Jewish humor, Ive found two especially helpful: Rabbi Joseph Telushkins Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About the Jews (New York: Harper, 2002), and Steve Lipmans Laughter in Hell: The Use of Humor during the Holocaust (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1991). An older and neglected, but very invigorating, book is Elizabeth Sewells The Field of Nonsense (London: Chatto and Windus, 1952). And Paul Johnson gives a genial appreciation of narrative and visual humor in Humorists (New York: HarperCollins, 2010). Ted Sennetts Your Show of

Shows (New York: Macmillan, 1977) is an affectionate history of the iconic program, with entertaining transcripts of many of its best-loved sketches. Among numerous collections of humor by women, The Penguin Book of Womens Humor, ed. Regina Barreca (New York: Penguin, 1996), is especially good. Susan Horowitz gives an insightful study of pioneer female comedians in Queens of Comedy (Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1997). And there is much of interest in autobiographical accounts by Phyllis Diller, Carol Burnett, Kathy Griffin, Sarah Silverman, and Tina Fey. A particularly good memoir by a working humorist, with a career that spanned more than half a century, is Larry Gelbarts Laughing Matters: On Writing M*A*S*H, Tootsie, Oh, God! and a Few Other Funny Things (New York: Random House, 1998). And theres a great deal of interesting material, in unusually well-conducted interviews, in Mike Sackss And Heres the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on Their Craft (Cincinnati: Writers Digest Books, 2009). Stand-up comedy has given rise to endless practical handbooks that teach how to do it, or try to, but there are also some thoughtful books by experienced performers that transcend the genre: Joan Rivers Enter Talking (with Richard Meryman, New York: Dell, 1987); Jay Sankeys Zen and the Art of Stand-Up Comedy (New York: Routledge, 1998); Steve Martins Born Standing Up (New York: Scribner, 2007); and George Carlins Last Words (with Tony Hendra, New York: Free Press, 2009). Richard Zoglins Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America (New York: Bloomsbury, 2008) is a savvy and comprehensive overview, based on wide reading and extended interviews. For cartoons there are hundreds of collections but surprisingly little discussion. A terrific exception is Iain Topliss study of four masters from the New Yorkers golden age, The Comic Worlds of Peter Arno, William Steig, Charles Addams and Saul Steinberg (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). And of course there are the two classics that continue to be influential: Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of Comic, tran. Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell, in Comedy, ed. Wylie Sypher (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956); and Sigmund Freud, The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious, tran. Joyce Crick (London: Penguin, 2003). Elliott Oring offers a thought-provoking critique in The Jokes of Sigmund Freud: A Study in Humor and Jewish Identity (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997).