Tragedy and Comedy

Walter Kerr offers this exhaustive study into the nature of comedy for us to explore. He started out, by his own admission, trying to write a book about the nature of comedy only and not involving tragedy. As he went along, he realized that he could not do so for the very root of comedy is tragedy. Comedy is born through proper, high tragic elements and lets the viewer see the "behind the scenes" or the "truth" of an event. A tragic moment is a man stepping up to the microphone and letting you know that the president has been shot. The "truthful" or "comic" moment is the exact same scene, but you see the man stub his toe on the platform and whisper an expletive right when he gets into microphone range. It is a fantastic book and puts Walter Kerr up there with the top critics of modern times.