Not available to order
Publication date:
25 July 2017Length of book:
168 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442281776
When E. B. White said “analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog; few people are interested and the frog dies,” he hadn’t seen Al Gini’s hilarious, incisive, and informative take on jokes, joke-telling, and the jokers who tell jokes. For Gini, humor is more than just foolish fun: it serves as a safety valve for dealing with reality that gives us the courage to endure that which we cannot understand or avoid. Not everyone tells jokes. Not everyone gets a joke, even a good one. But, Gini argues, joke-telling can act as both a sword and a shield to defend us from reality. As the late, great stand-up comic Joan Rivers put it: ‘If you can laugh at it, you can live with it!’ This book is for anyone who enjoys a good laugh, but also wants to know why.
“I have been the victim of some of Al Gini’s early research for this book, being one of his unsuspecting students many years ago. I had intended on attending and listening to boring lectures about dry philosophy subjects. But he’d interject humor and, therefore, make it nearly impossible to forget the lessons. (Shaking fist at sky…) Damn you, Gini!”