“There was no existing history of jokes,” not until now. Where do jokes come from? And have we always laughed at the same things? Jim Holt, author of Stop Me If You’ve Heard This explains all… whilst sharing a few of the best jokes from over the past 2,000 years.
A man sits in a barber’s chair. The barber asks him “So, how would you like it cut?”
The man replies, “In silence!” (Dates back to 4/5th century A.D)
Starting life as an article for the New Yorker, Jim Holt’s new book Stop Me If you’ve Heard This takes an historical and philosophical look at the joke, whilst also documenting some of the weirdest, oldest and silliest gags from the past 2,000 years.
The result is a fascinating insight into how the joke – as well as our sense of humor – has dramatically evolved. Jim Holt explains to Samiat Pedro what it was like writing the book.
You must have felt a little apprehensive about taking on the task?
No. I had cheerfully assumed the scholars had already done the hard work – that I would be “standing on the shoulders of giants”, so to speak. To my horror, I discovered that there was no existing history of jokes from which I could crib.
With no existing history of jokes – strange but true – where do you start?
Happily, I soon chanced on the only surviving joke collection from Greco-Roman times, and then I was off and running. Some of these ancient jokes were funny, by the way, but others were just weird – like this joke, one of several about lettuce, which the Romans seemed to find screamingly funny:
An egghead was eating dinner with his father. On the table was a large lettuce with many succulent shoots. The egghead said, “Father, you eat the children$$s$$ I’ll take mother.”
??? Certainly one of those “you had to be there” jokes. And what about writing the rest of the book?
As for the “philosophical” part of the book, I was aware of the danger of appearing ridiculous in probing what makes jokes work. As one wag put it, “Trying to define humor is one of the definitions of humor.”
Do you feel you have achieved your aim in writing the book?
Yes, because my aim was modest: to give the reader some insight into how joking has evolved over the millennia and how deep thinkers have regarded the mystery of laughter. I also got to stick in about a hundred of my favorite jokes, ranging from the filthy to the profound. My motto was: “Do not exhaust your subject – take only its flower.” As a result, the book is blessedly short, just like a good joke ought to be.
Ironically most of the figures within the history of the joke were either very serious, or not actually that funny. Palamedes, a Greek hero of the Trojan War, is credited with inventing the joke (before being stoned to death). Is it more than coincidence that these miserable men were fascinated with jokes?
Poggio was a secretary to eight consecutive popes. His day job was writing papal bulls, which I’ve always thought must require a pretty good sense of humor. Gershon Legman was an inspired nut who thought jokes were a sort of verbal rape. But hey, he did coin the slogan “Make Love, Not War!”. Freud was right when he said that people who are obsessed with jokes tend to be neurotic. I’m a case in point. Do you feel you are any closer to knowing what it is that truly makes us laugh?
Stand-up comics have certain working hypotheses about what kills and what bombs. There’s the “k” rule, for example. Words with the k-sound make people laugh. (One comic I know is always trying to write a joke that ends with “kayak.”) But no one really understands why “k” is funny, any more than music hall performers back in the old days understood why audiences would erupt with laughter at the merest mention of cheese. They just did.
So, what is it that makes us laugh?
If you want a theory… well, the best one I know of is the “false alarm” theory. We laugh when a spurious threat turns out to be trivial. Something strange or disquieting in the joke’s setup dissolves into absurdity in the punchline: Did you hear about the bulimic stag party? The cake came out of the girl. Jokes trivialise scary things, like sex and death. It’s been conjectured that the evolutionary point of laughter is to communicate to others in your social group that a seeming threat is really nothing to worry about. And the message spreads because laughter is contagious.
Which is your favourite joke out of all those you came across?
Freud said jokes should not only be short, but too short. The shortest one I’ve been able to find consists of two words: “Pretentious? Moi?” (If someone doesn’t think it’s funny, you can accuse them of not knowing French.) Another favourite joke was told to me by an angelic-looking little girl at a Catholic school where I once taught: “Mr. Holt, what’s better than roses on a piano? Tulips on an organ.”
A lot of jokes that tend to ‘live on’ are the smutty or offensive jokes. Why do you think that is?
We’re all a cauldon of naughty desires, but most of us don’t act on them because we’re slaves to bourgeois morality (and a good thing, too). Dirty jokes liberate us for just a moment from this oppressive master, allowing our improper impulses to emerge and then evaporate harmlessly into laughter. They set us free. And as President Bush wisely said, “all peoples in all ages want freedom”.
Ah, soon-to-be former President Bush? Now that opens up a whole other batch of jokes…
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This is out now.
Published by Profile Books, £8.99 Hardback.
