What's so Funny?: The Comic Conception of Culture and Society
Did you hear the one about... ? (Fill in the blank with sex, death, children, work, bodily functions, or whatever is appropriate.) Why study humor? Can we truly pare it down to basics and expect to retain the comedic element, whatever that is? Davis, sociologist and author (e.g, Smut: Erotic Reality/Obscene Ideology, LJ 3/1/83), argues that humor reveals universal truths about people and society. Citing comedians from Aristotle through Mark Twain and Groucho Marx to Steve Allen and Garry Shandling (and many in between), and tapping a range of good through breathlessly bad jokes, he attempts to illustrate the idea that "comedy negates organization, structure, form, even clarity itself." Unfortunately, the general reader may skip the well-researched but dense explanatory notes and go right for the jokes, thus negating Davis's arguments. Recommended only for academic libraries.- Nancy L. Whitfield, Meriden P.L., Ct.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.