The Importance of Being Funny - Why We Need More Jokes in Our Lives

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.;A brief, highly selective, and somewhat fallacious history of humor and joke telling -- How do you make funny? so, what's a joke? -- Comedy and coping with reality -- Dirty jokes, tasteless jokes, ethnic jokes -- Conversations with a colleague about humor and ethics -- Philogagging: humor in the classroom and beyond.