A Unified Joke Theory?

The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny by Peter McGraw and Joel Warner attempts to do what many others have before: dissect jokes and thus explain how humor works. The main theory, provided by McGraw, who is the director of the Humor Research Lab at the University of Colorado, is called the benign-violation theory.

Jokes, once dissected, stop being funny. So without having read the book, it's impossible for us to weigh in with an opinion. Instead, we read Joel Epstein ruminations on the idea in his article for Commentary magazine, "Notes On What's So Damn Funny."

Epstein includes many jokes in his piece, so at the very least, you'll get some laughs. But seriously, read his article. And if you like it, try McGraw and Warner's book.

Thanks, you've been great! G'night!



[Thanks once more to Arts & Letters Daily]

Six

Tuesday Jan 21, 2014 was The Typing Monkey's sixth anniversary ... or birthday? What do you call the day that marks another year of blogging into the wind? Right. "Pointless." Very good.

[At this point in the conversation, our intern Kim was asked to clock out for the day. "Clock out? I don't even get paid," he said. Kim. Kim, c'mon. -- ed.]

To celebrate, we punish you with links culled from Arts & Letters Daily, our ongoing source of quality journalism, editorials and critical thinking that helps us remember there's more to this technology than bewbs and horror movie trailers.

"We need to talk about TED" by Benjamin Bratton
... in which a man gives a TED talk that points out everything wrong with TED talks. It's like he's saying what we're thinking.

"No, Jane Austen Was Not a Game Theorist" by William Deresiewicz 

... a call to resist and reject the post-Freakonomics/Gladwell trend in literary and art criticism to assert that modern, often trendy, scientific theories and ideas are the real themes and subtexts of many great works of art, history be damned.

"The Paratext's the Thing" by Thomas Doherty

"The irritating distractions have morphed into the main attractions."

Perhaps the thematic thread that connects these editorials is just in our imagination. But  we think they're complementary.

Yeah, But Have You Listened to Bach on Acid?

The Typing Monkey recently peered through the magic keyhole of On An Overgrown Path, a blog that holds a flickering candle into the odd corners of the world of classical music. Cancel your meetings and forward the phones, 'cause you're going to be doing some reading.

Overgrown Path's (sole?) contributor goes by the hand Pliable, and whoever that is, he or she is about to go away for a while and put the blog on hold. No matter. That will give you time to catch up.

To get you started, here are a few links to stories from Overgrown Path that will keep your attention:

From "JSB on LSD" -- "'Let me advise you, if you ever use mescaline or LSD in therapy, to try the effect of [Johann Sebastian Bach's] B-minor suite.'" That's an excerpt from a letter Aldous Huxley wrote to psychiatrist Humphry Osmond. The B-minor suite will always trump Pink Floyd.

And do make sure to read the one-two punch about Edward Elgar, who has a gossamer connection to early LSD experiments, and a clear connection to the Order of the Golden Dawn. Who knew?

There's much more to On An Overgrown Path -- listening and reading recommendations galore -- so have fun.

Reading About Reading: Demoniacs and Things Under the Bed

Josephine Livingstone's "When Nuns Puked Nails" reviews the book The Devil Within by Brian Levack. The book examines the phenomenon of demonic possession, concentrating on the act's heyday in the 16th and 17th centuries. Her review was published on Prospect magazine's blog.

Livingstone manages to get in a little more literary critique into a book review than most of us are used to, thanks to Prospect allowing for more muscular writing than mainstream media makes room for these days.

Not having read Devil Within, we have no basis for debate with Livingstone, but it's clear she enjoyed the book and her review makes us want to read it. Especially this portion of her review:
"Popular apocalyptic thought—the strong suspicion that the final battle between good and evil was under way—made possession seem reasonable, even expected. The devil (or his attendant demons) taking control of your body was like the forces of evil saving seats at the cinema by putting coats on them."

And she points out that much of the Catholic procedure of exorcism at that time followed what amounted to a script, with even the possessed (usually a woman) knowing their role in the event.

On a similar topic, Peter Stanford reviewed Medusa's Gaze and Vampire's Bite: The Science of Monsters by Matt Kaplan, for The Telegraph. Stanford never uses the term "fortean" but he's nearly there regarding his admiration for Kaplan's approach to answering the question: Why do we want to believe in monsters?

Kaplan, at least per Stanford, doesn't pass judgment on any of the believers, nor does he insist that the psychological or scientific "answers" are the only truth. If that's not in the spirit of Charles Fort, then let's fold up the internets and go home.

Kaplan's book shot to number one with a silver bullet on The Typing Monkey's reading list.

"It is usually about murder ... "

At some point in your life, maybe not this very moment, but some time in the future, you will hear reference to Raymond Chandler's "how to write a good mystery story" guide disguised as a critical essay "The Simple Art of Murder."

You will wonder: "Have I read that?" Which means you probably haven't. Luckily, the University of Texas at Austin's American Literature Archive has made it easy to read Chandler's incisive work anywhere you have access to the Web. From 1950's ink-on-paper, to your 21st century electronic device: ta da!

And, should you care, they also have a virtual copy of Flannery O'Connor's 1960 essay "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction."