Accidental Blogger

A couple of days ago, a group discussion among the A.B. authors about blogging matters degenerated quickly into a somewhat lengthy exchange of jokes and a brief analysis of what makes us laugh. I was reminded of that late day e-mail thread with my co-bloggers when I came upon a book review (not a favorable one) in the New York Times. In his book, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This : A History and Philosophy of Jokes, author Jim Holt attempts to understand and explain the workings of the human funny bone through the ages. 

We know that Yorick was a fellow of infinite jest. But what exactly was his boffo material? Did he slay them with borscht-belt one-liners, or did he stick to observational humor — Seinfeld-like riffs on the miseries of Danish weather? Alas, we cannot know. But it seems fairly certain that even melancholy Danes prized a choice punch line, like the Romans and the Greeks before them.

In “Stop Me if You’ve Heard This,” his wispy inquiry into the history and philosophy of jokes, Jim Holt offers up a choice one from ancient times. Talkative barber to customer: “How shall I cut your hair?” Customer: “In silence.”

Bada-bing.

This knee-slapper comes from “Philogelos,” or “Laughter-Lover,” a Greek joke book, probably compiled in the fourth or fifth century A.D. Its 264 entries amount to an index of classical humor, with can’t-miss material on such figures of fun as the miser, the drunk, the sex-starved woman and the man with bad breath.

Let us not forget the “skolastikos,” or egghead: “An egghead was on a sea voyage when a big storm blew up, causing his slaves to weep in terror. ‘Don’t cry,’ he consoled them, ‘I have freed you all in my will.’”

Bada-boom.

Holt, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, combs through a number of obscure texts, ancient and modern, in his fast-moving, idiosyncratic survey of humor and its vagaries through the ages. Unfortunately, the 150 joke anthologies compiled by Melissus in the Augustan age disappeared, but the Renaissance humor of Poggio Bracciolini survived — proof that fat jokes and fart jokes never grow old — as did numerous Elizabethan jest books.