Scan barcode
lahowitt's review
Felt like reading someone’s college paper. I didn’t get the purpose of it. and I didn’t agree with the logic even in the parts I did read before quitting.
ponch22's review against another edition
3.0
Won a signed copy of this by winning [a:Ken Jennings|45003|Ken Jennings|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1353968375p2/45003.jpg]’s Tuesday Trivia a few months ago. Probably could have finished it faster if life wasn’t so hectic (or it was a little more funny?). I’ve enjoyed most of Jennings’s other books ([b:Brainiac|79195] especially) and I was excited to read his take on comedy.
Jennings has well-researched the history of comedy, and I do agree with his basic premise that perhaps comedy has infected our culture too much, but the writing is a little too distant to really hold my attention for long stretches of time. It was easy for me to put the book down and not pick it up for a few days.
I wanted to like this more than I did & if I could give it a 3.5* I would—I actually found myself reading through the endnotes just to find some more interesting facts/writing (some of Jennings’s wittiest remarks are in these notes)! But Goodreads limits users to whole stars and the month+ it took me to read this means I gotta round it down.
Jennings has well-researched the history of comedy, and I do agree with his basic premise that perhaps comedy has infected our culture too much, but the writing is a little too distant to really hold my attention for long stretches of time. It was easy for me to put the book down and not pick it up for a few days.
I wanted to like this more than I did & if I could give it a 3.5* I would—I actually found myself reading through the endnotes just to find some more interesting facts/writing (some of Jennings’s wittiest remarks are in these notes)! But Goodreads limits users to whole stars and the month+ it took me to read this means I gotta round it down.
erboe501's review against another edition
4.0
While I didn't always find Jennings very funny while listening, the book did make me reflect on humor, jokes, and comedy in ways I hadn't ever before. I never really thought of the history or technicalities or evolution of what we think is funny, so I learned a lot.
90sinmyheart's review
3.0
This was okay and I recognized faaaaar too many tweets but it was too long! I love you KJ, please take over Jeopardy when Alex retires
kathystl's review against another edition
3.0
This had a lot of good history-of-comedy bits that were interesting. Overall though I found it a bit slow. It was fine, but ultimately a bit of a bummer. Jennings doesn't exactly blame comedy for Trump's election, but he gets close to that cliff. Overall it was...fine.
adamrbrooks's review against another edition
4.0
UPDATE:
Writing my original review made me realize how much I had liked this book, even though I needed a break. I was glad to pick it up and dive back in. Ken really does make a compelling case that the current state of comedy is too much of a good thing, and that it harms our ability to seriously engage with issues, even if it has power to educate about issues.
Very glad I finished it for real.
ORIGINAL REVIEW
Confession 1: I only read about half this book. I just wasn't getting through it quickly, though I really enjoyed it. This is regardless of...
Confession 2: I love Ken Jennings. And (shhhh!) he's better than Alex Trebek.
The thesis is really interesting. That there's so much humor now, that it's infected everything we do in culture -- "life is now a never-ending barrage of little micro-jokes" -- and it's become too much. It's too accessible, too self-referential, too easy. I'm not it's bad (or that Ken is saying it's bad), but it clearly has changed things. I enjoy not only laughing at a joke, but sometimes getting WHY it's funny. This is certainly different than how people used to enjoy comedy.
The barrage also means people have trouble seriously engaging with real topics, and look for the joke before anything else. Humor can be a great way to explore a topic, or take a breather. But often it becomes an off-ramp, derailing serious thought. ("Something can be important without being serious, but that doesn't mean *nothing* should be taken seriously.")
Here's an example: People were enjoying making fun of a blowhard asshole, he won the presidency and flipped a party into authoritarianism. Ha ha?
Interesting bit, on why it's hard/impossible to dissect humor: "Even a single emotional response like 'sadness' can be trigger by many different things: Loss, guilt, loneliness, fear, disappointment, frustration, even music that swells in a certain way. Why should laughter and amusement be any different?"
"Funny doesn't just change; it evolves ... When the 'Tupac is still alive' trope caught on, 'Elvis is alive' jokes went away. They were competing for the same resources, and we didn't need both"
(Speaking of which: I have a note on my phone of hack jokes that people use reflexively that suck. Top of the list? Nickleback jokes and stepping-on-Legos gags)
Also interesting that if a brain surgeon triggers laughter, the patient will try to explain it. This reminds of something I've read about our flawed thinking, and how we justify our gut reactions: We think the brain is a reasoning machine. But it's actually a rationalization machine."
Good note on structure: Why is a list of three funny? It's the shortest list that can set up a pattern and then break it.
"When you look at television comedy overall during the last three decades, what you're largely seeing is shows trying to recapture in live action what The Simpsons did in animation."
"Once a certain kind of humor becomes cultural shorthand for hipness and youth and smarts, literally anything else risks looking square and old and dumb."
"Jokes are a little like soda pop, or porn. As an occasional treat, they way they started out, they hardly counted as a vice... When jokes come at us in dozens of YouTub videos and late-night monologues and hundreds of ads and thousands of tweets per day, they also start to feel less and less like a treat."
Writing my original review made me realize how much I had liked this book, even though I needed a break. I was glad to pick it up and dive back in. Ken really does make a compelling case that the current state of comedy is too much of a good thing, and that it harms our ability to seriously engage with issues, even if it has power to educate about issues.
Very glad I finished it for real.
ORIGINAL REVIEW
Confession 1: I only read about half this book. I just wasn't getting through it quickly, though I really enjoyed it. This is regardless of...
Confession 2: I love Ken Jennings. And (shhhh!) he's better than Alex Trebek.
The thesis is really interesting. That there's so much humor now, that it's infected everything we do in culture -- "life is now a never-ending barrage of little micro-jokes" -- and it's become too much. It's too accessible, too self-referential, too easy. I'm not it's bad (or that Ken is saying it's bad), but it clearly has changed things. I enjoy not only laughing at a joke, but sometimes getting WHY it's funny. This is certainly different than how people used to enjoy comedy.
The barrage also means people have trouble seriously engaging with real topics, and look for the joke before anything else. Humor can be a great way to explore a topic, or take a breather. But often it becomes an off-ramp, derailing serious thought. ("Something can be important without being serious, but that doesn't mean *nothing* should be taken seriously.")
Here's an example: People were enjoying making fun of a blowhard asshole, he won the presidency and flipped a party into authoritarianism. Ha ha?
Interesting bit, on why it's hard/impossible to dissect humor: "Even a single emotional response like 'sadness' can be trigger by many different things: Loss, guilt, loneliness, fear, disappointment, frustration, even music that swells in a certain way. Why should laughter and amusement be any different?"
"Funny doesn't just change; it evolves ... When the 'Tupac is still alive' trope caught on, 'Elvis is alive' jokes went away. They were competing for the same resources, and we didn't need both"
(Speaking of which: I have a note on my phone of hack jokes that people use reflexively that suck. Top of the list? Nickleback jokes and stepping-on-Legos gags)
Also interesting that if a brain surgeon triggers laughter, the patient will try to explain it. This reminds of something I've read about our flawed thinking, and how we justify our gut reactions: We think the brain is a reasoning machine. But it's actually a rationalization machine."
Good note on structure: Why is a list of three funny? It's the shortest list that can set up a pattern and then break it.
"When you look at television comedy overall during the last three decades, what you're largely seeing is shows trying to recapture in live action what The Simpsons did in animation."
"Once a certain kind of humor becomes cultural shorthand for hipness and youth and smarts, literally anything else risks looking square and old and dumb."
"Jokes are a little like soda pop, or porn. As an occasional treat, they way they started out, they hardly counted as a vice... When jokes come at us in dozens of YouTub videos and late-night monologues and hundreds of ads and thousands of tweets per day, they also start to feel less and less like a treat."
mybrilliantbasset's review against another edition
3.0
Love Ken. Love his three-page list of everything he finds funny. Love the two-page flow chart thread. There’s just something sorta soul sucking about reading about the very homogenous Western canon of comedic technique, and not even the GOAT can make it palatable.
jcpdiesel21's review against another edition
4.0
An academic yet entertaining examination of comedy in today's culture. The first two chapters are a little rough, especially the 2+ pages where Jennings lists things he thinks are funny off the top of his head, but after that the book takes off and gets into a nice groove. I was astounded to discover how much the ratio of jokes per minute on a standard sitcom has changed through time, that potential TV writers can be discovered via tweets on Twitter, and the manner in which comedy can help explain the election of Donald Trump. As usual, the writing is witty and well-researched while covering a multitude of areas associated with the main topic, complete with footnotes. Although a little denser than expected at times, well worth the read.
sbenzell's review against another edition
3.0
An often funny, erudite, Bill Bryson-esque take on the history, sociology and politics of American comedy.
It was interesting to hear an argument about how apolitical US standup traditionally was. I can't say I come away completely agreeing, but the book certainly moved my beliefs in that direction.
I enjoyed his engagment with theories of comedy, both Bergson's and Plato's philosophy and more modern evolutionary approaches. I wish he had gone deeper into this though. In general his books main flaw is that most topics -- theories of comedy, history of US comedy, the rise of irony etc. get only a surface level treatment.
To the extent the book has a thesis, it is that comedy isn't necessarily bad, but it is a useful stance for the cynical who can always fall back on 'just kidding!' or 'I was just expressing a regressive social stance ironically!' to dodge any criticism. While cynics often use comedy, it is the cynicism that is the problem -- not the comedy. Irony can fight for good, as in "A Modest Proposal", or it can be constructive and laughing-with, such as in MST3K's good natured 'riffing'.
Jennings makes a very important point along these lines in his most useful chapter -- on pedantry surrounding the term 'Irony'. While the scrooge living on 'cheapskate lane' isn't technically ironic on its face, the cosmic coincidence is -- in a sense -- ironic. The true distinction we should draw isn't between irony and coincidence, or irony and sarcasm. Rather it is between comedy in the search of honesty and truth and comedy as a cynical shield against true human engagement.
It was interesting to hear an argument about how apolitical US standup traditionally was. I can't say I come away completely agreeing, but the book certainly moved my beliefs in that direction.
I enjoyed his engagment with theories of comedy, both Bergson's and Plato's philosophy and more modern evolutionary approaches. I wish he had gone deeper into this though. In general his books main flaw is that most topics -- theories of comedy, history of US comedy, the rise of irony etc. get only a surface level treatment.
To the extent the book has a thesis, it is that comedy isn't necessarily bad, but it is a useful stance for the cynical who can always fall back on 'just kidding!' or 'I was just expressing a regressive social stance ironically!' to dodge any criticism. While cynics often use comedy, it is the cynicism that is the problem -- not the comedy. Irony can fight for good, as in "A Modest Proposal", or it can be constructive and laughing-with, such as in MST3K's good natured 'riffing'.
Jennings makes a very important point along these lines in his most useful chapter -- on pedantry surrounding the term 'Irony'. While the scrooge living on 'cheapskate lane' isn't technically ironic on its face, the cosmic coincidence is -- in a sense -- ironic. The true distinction we should draw isn't between irony and coincidence, or irony and sarcasm. Rather it is between comedy in the search of honesty and truth and comedy as a cynical shield against true human engagement.
klertmen's review against another edition
5.0
Good mix of a history of comedy and exploring how it's infected/influenced other areas of life