Article: Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes

Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes by Jim Holt (Norton) $15.95.

Frequent New Yorker contributor Jim Holt explores the history of the joke book-collections of jokes go all the way back to ancient Greece-and it's a pleasant-enough tale. As it turns out, the story is not that unusual... or funny. We learn that the Philogelos, the first joke book, was lost in the Dark Ages, and that dirty joke books had to be smuggled into modern-day America through the back door of academia in the 1950s, as subjects of serious study. But Holt never explains exactly why any of this matters.

The second half of the book is supposed to be a philosophical inquiry into what makes jokes ...

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