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“Stop Me If You’ve Heard This,” Jim Holt

Mark Twain once said that humor analysis was like dissecting a frog: When you take it apart to explain it, you lose the overall meaning. Well, I think that’s what he meant, and if he did then he might have a problem with Jim Holt’s “Stop Me If You’ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes” (W.W. Norton and Company, $15.95).

Holt’s brief book (less than 130 pages) begins with a history of jokes and their telling, tracing them back to ancient times. Jokes operate as ways to upset the established order or introduce a little subversion in everyday life, Holt argues, and the examination of what makes jokes funny is a serious business.

The book looks at a variety of jokes (including many politically-incorrect ones) to see what it is that makes them funny, at least within the context of their being told. Holt states up front that he felt unsure about whether or not to include some of the jokes, but that a history of jokes would be incomplete without some of the more notorious examples.

Holt then looks at the philosophy of jokes (yes, you read that right). Laughter is an involuntary reaction, triggered by something either unexpected or incongruous with our expectations. The most interesting topic that Holt brings up is the fact that many of the more respected minds of history (as well as some of the more bloodthirsty tyrants) didn’t have much of a sense of humor. This might explain why joke-telling is regarded with such disdain even today. It might also explain the shocking decline of Iraqi stand-up comedy under Saddam Hussein.

Jokes don’t just make you laugh, Holt claims; they can express submerged desires that you might not otherwise lay claim to. Henny Youngman’s classic “Take my wife … please!” is a prime example of what Freud might have called a classic repressed desire. Considering how low humor is held by most “serious” thinkers, it’s interesting that Freud devoted an entire book to the topic (which I thought was just a clever Woody Allen joke until I actually stumbled across a copy). Holt presents other takes on just why jokes affect us, many of which wouldn’t be out of place in a Psych 101 textbook. The overall meaning of a joke may be simply that its one-two punch of the set-up and punch line trumps any attempt to break it down into more complicated parts.

I took a course at Clemson devoted to the study of American humor, and the one thing I got out of it was how serious the study of humor can be. Jim Holt’s book won’t have you rolling in the aisles, but it will make you think about why some jokes do.