Naked Jape: Uncovering the Hidden World of Jokes

Writing about humor has been compared to vivisection--neither subject makes it out alive in the end. Such is not the case with Only Joking. Here you find a heartfelt and simultaneously intellectual look at what makes us laugh, what makes jokes tick, and what our sense of humor says about ourselves, our culture and our dreams. But don't expect tedious essays or endless pedantic discourses--this book is coauthored by a stand-up comic, so naturally the delivery is impeccable. As an added bonus, the book is filled with great jokes on every page--from Carr himself to Carlin to Emo Phillips to the unknown jokesters. Well worth a look.

I laughed when I read ONLY JOKING by Jimmy Carr and Lucy Greeves, but I'd recommend that you read it because the answer to the book's subtitle--WHAT'S SO FUNNY ABOUT MAKING PEOPLE LAUGH?--is what made it more than just a collection of jokes. The authors take an in-depth look at humor and view it from several perspectives, including a discussion of why jokes are important, the science of laughter, offensive jokes and why we laugh at them, and why we need political jokes. One chapter alone made it worth reading to me; i.e., Chapter 6, " No way to make a living" (How to be a professional jokester). Here were the five basic rules for telling a joke: 1. Pick your moments. It's easiest, of course, to tell a joke when everyone's relaxed and enjoying himself. Telling a joke to relieve tension is a high-risk strategy, but potentially hilarious. besides, there'll be other funerals. 2. Know where you're going before you start. Hopefully, in the direction of the punch line. It sounds obvious, but it's amazing how often people embark blithely on a joke they think they know without rehearsing the all-important ending, only to find themselves completely lost. 3. Don't be tempted to over-elaborate-using fewer words often works better. Eddie Izzard makes it look easy, but remember that one man's surreal flight of fancy is another man's rambling incoherent humiliation. 4. Project a demeanor of relaxed confidence-it gives your listener permission to laugh. You can try deadpan if you like, but normal social joke-telling usually requires the teller to laugh too. 5. Enjoy it. If you're all tense and competitive about sharing a joke with friends, if your entire self-esteem is resting on the outcome, then you're doing it for the wrong reasons. On the other hand, you are showing signs of the borderline personality disorder that characterizes all the best comedians; perhaps you should consider doing this for a living? Carr and Greeves also presented a compilation of jokes that can be seen throughout the book . . . I particularly liked this joke from Carr: * My dad used to say, "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Until the accident. There were hundreds of other quips from such comic geniuses as Steve Martin, Sarah Silverman, Gary Shandling, and Jay Leno . . . in addition, there were these jokes that at least had me chuckling: * I was a ballerina, but I had to quit after I injured a groin muscle. It wasn't mine.--Rita Rudner; * I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying.--Woody Allen; * I was on a date with this really attractive model. Well, it wasn't really a date date. We just ate dinner and saw a movie. Then the plane landed.--Dave Attell; and * I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into a black neighborhood after dark.--Dick Gregory. You'll like ONLY JOKING. And that's no joke!

This is one of the few library books that I managed to finish reading before I had to return it. Not only did I learn a fair bit about humor (did you know that some animals laugh?) but the book appealed to my warped sense of humor. There's a quote at the beginning of each chapter -- "God is a comedian, performing for an audience that is too afaid to laugh. Nietzsche". There's a joke at the bottom of almost every page -- "What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea.--Mahatma Gandhi". Each chapter ends with a couple of pages of jokes -- "Remember: it takes forty-two muscles to frown and only four to pull the trigger of a decent sniper rifle.--Mitch Henderson". And the text itself can be very funny -- "In Rome there was a special fool market, a sort of boutique adjunct to the main slave market, where you could buy a genuine idiot. These days you can't give them away, but in the first century A.D. they were reassuringly expensive." And, by the way, some of the jokes are definitely NOT G rated.

Humor is infective. If you want a brief history of humor, and lots of great examples,this is a good read. It touches on the different humor perceptions of males and females, and explains, as well as can be, why some can tell funny stories and some get lost in the timing and other factors. I think it's a hoot! Good clean fun with a "G" rating. Many familiar names among the contributors. awp

Proving that he's much more than just a TV game show host who likes to hook contestants' genitals up to live electrodes, Jimmy Carr (and his co-author Lucy Greeves) produced an extreme rarity: a very, very funny book with a lot of serious ideas on what humor is, why people laugh, what the heck is "wrong" with people who decide to become comedians... Contains hundreds of sidebar jokes -- of his own; of other comics -- in addition to the well-written, sometimes hysterically amusing main text. A MUST HAVE for the bookshelf of anyone even remotely employed in the Humor Business, or any lay person who's ever told a joke, laughed at a joke, not laughed at a joke...