Only Joking

Everything that Morreall did wrong, the authors of Only Joking do right.  Who knew that a book about humor could actually be funny?  The authors fully acknowledge how analyzing jokes can effectively ruin them,  and make a successful attempt "not to spoil everyone's fun."  Plus, jokes at the bottom of each page; can it get any better?  In fact, the book makes fun of the idea of analyzing jokes with cracks such as the continuing analogy to dissecting a frog.  At the start of the chapter on the theories of humor, the reader is told to "prepare for the descending gloom," which I thought would have been more appropriate on the title page of Comic Relief (sorry Morreall).  The book covers most all of the same theories that Morreall does, yet manages to remain interesting and entertaining.  Only Joking still analyzes humor and theories of it, but it does so without being repetitive.

I enjoyed reading some of the book's perspectives on humor, such as comparing joking with someone to dating.  The authors present humor as a "noble art," which was refreshing after reading so many negative opinions of laughter.  The book gave examples of people using humor to make a positive impact.  I found it interesting that out everything we have read on humor so far this semester, this book was the first to actually describe ways that people were using humor to benefit others.  It was neat how Alice Hortop was able to use humor as a form of therapy after seeing how helpful it was when she joked around with her amputee patients.  I think technique such as this should be more widely used.  The STANDUP program was also interesting to read about.  The idea alone of creating software to create jokes is intriguing, but using it with the eventual goal of helping speech-impaired children tell jokes is even better (especially coming from someone who was in Speech-Pathology for a semester).  These examples show that like the title of chapter one says, joking matters.

Overall I really enjoyed reading Only Joking.  It was not hard to read about theories of humor when the authors make jokes along the way.  In fact, the book pokes holes in the various explanations of humor just as I normally do in my head when I read about them.  Even though the authors do not go into quite as much detail on the different theories from the chapters we read, I still think that any reader can walk away with a good general understanding of them.  It also offered new perspectives that were different from our other class readings.  I give Only Joking two thumbs up.