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Lapham’s Quarterly: Comedy
Mind-bending drugs meet a good stiff drink in this issue on altered states and inebriation.
- GenresEssays
221 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
3 people are currently reading
75 people want to read
About the author
Lewis H. Lapham
181 books134 followersLewis Henry Lapham was the editor of Harper's Magazine from 1976 until 1981, and again from 1983 until 2006. He is the founder and current editor of Lapham's Quarterly, featuring a wide range of famous authors devoted to a single topic in each issue. Lapham has also written numerous books on politics and current affairs.
Lapham's Quarterly
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/
Lapham's Quarterly
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 4, 2014
Comedy after Death? (L.Q. Fall 2013: Death.) I could die laughing.
"Comedy's tough!" - Jay Leno, late twentieth-, early twenty-first-century American late-night television host and comedian, for those of you reading this is around 2214. (Consult your mind chip implant for 2214 explanations of American and television.)
Lapham's Quarterly is the finest publication I read. One could spend a decent college semester studying a mere handful of the 75+ literary extracts and authors in each issue. I feel my reviews are woefully inadequate. Having said that... (I hate that phrase)...
Each quarter per annum editor Lewis H. Lapham and his staff assemble a compendium of thoughts on a particular subject assembled from the span of written history. The topics in 2013 were Intoxication, Animals, The Sea, and Death. What could be more fun than that? Comedy, of course! Often, however, I felt like this issue Comedy was more like death warmed over. Sooo serious, this humor thing. Where's the fun and funny? It's here, some of the time. Other times we are treated to analysis throughout the ages of why we laugh, or not.
At least in L.Q. I am exposed to the great minds of time immemorial without having to read the complete works of each, such is the state of the modern lackadaisical non-classical education. Else I might have to suffer this:
" I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."
-- Mark Twain, Letter to Joseph Twichell, 13 September 1898
See! I've been spared, speared, de-inspired! (And why did Twain read it more than once?)
"To me [Edgar Allen Poe's] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death." -- Mark Twain
THIS is FUNNY! But neither quote appears in L.Q. It's not an encyclopedia after all.
As usual, I digress.
The L.Q. contributors are as diverse as Voltaire, Dorothy Parker, Aristotle, Mark Twain, Moliere, Jonathan Swift, Woody Allen, Lewis Carroll, Plato, Homer, Lenny Bruce, and Charlie Chaplin, to name a very few.
Lewis Lapham's Preamble on the theme isn't exactly riotous this quarter, though it has its moments. His command of the language seems stilted to me (it always does), perhaps an attempt to drag the hoi polloi among us into at least a microcosm of exposure to intelligent language and thought. (That would be me, scrolling across sentences line by line, word by word, with my index finger pointer, struggling as perhaps I did in 3rd grade elementary, just to mentally pronounce Mr. Lapham's lofty scribulous composition, never mind Ruskin's admonition that "you must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable-nay, letter by letter".)
The three sections of the main body, titled Voices In Time as usual, are Situational (26 writings), Observational (24), and Confrontational (26).
Situational:
Sarah Silverman. Charlie Chaplin. Standards cut and dried. Joseph Heller, Catch-22. (A genius of dyslexic logic. I really must read this book.)
Woody Allen, The w@h^o*r#e of Mensa. (Internet thing about risqué words on some sites, even though Allen's story is clean. Don't get me started on Political Correctness or I swear I'll digress on you again.) Hilarious, with more than a small nod to Mickey Spillane or Dashiell Hammett. You can find this one at http://woodyallenitalia.tripod.com/sh.... Some of LQ's readings are available free but not this one. (The free link changes quarterly, see Archives on that page for back issues.)
There is analysis of comedy, such as Henri Bergson in The Human Element (p. 35):
"The first point to which attention should be called is that the comic does not exist outside the pale of what is strictly human. A landscape may be beautiful, charming, and sublime, or insignificant and ugly; it will never be laughable."
Observational:
Lewis Carroll is cleverly funny (p. 94):
1. Babies are illogical;
2. Nobody is despised who can manage a
crocodile;
3. Illogical persons are despised.
Answer: Babies cannot manage crocodiles.
1. No one takes in the Times unless he is well-educated;
2. No hedgehogs can read;
3. Those who cannot read are not well-educated.
Answer: No hedgehog takes in the Times.
In L.Q. there is usually a writing or 2 or 3 or more that I find fairly incomprehensible, this in addition to my difficulty with Elizabethan/Shakespearean speech or other antiquity or foreign translations. The analysis of laughter by Herbert Spencer, p.99, was one such piece in this issue. He has a point but a complementary piece based on modern research, such as http://science.howstuffworks.com/life..., might have been more enlightening.
'Kids on a train' I liked (1923, Robert Benchley Brings the Kids). The comedy of minding inquisitive you children.
Jane Austen's dismissive and subtly sarcastic brief on the kings of England is witty. (P. 108.)
Chris Rock is here, speed of light rant, soooo politically incorrect. (Not even in the Confrontational section!) Hilarious. (P. 128.)
Dorothy Parker, 1927. Superrrbly witty and cutting. (P. 130.)
Confrontational:
Arthur Miller, Mark Twain, Freud (Sigmund, a veritable laugh riot(?)). On and on.
The prologue essays are excellent (and available free). Once Upon A Time in the West (a lot about Twain) and Split Peronalities (the dark side of comedians).
Don't get L.Q, read it, and weep. Read it and smirk, chuckle, laugh, and contemplate.
"Comedy's tough!" - Jay Leno, late twentieth-, early twenty-first-century American late-night television host and comedian, for those of you reading this is around 2214. (Consult your mind chip implant for 2214 explanations of American and television.)
Lapham's Quarterly is the finest publication I read. One could spend a decent college semester studying a mere handful of the 75+ literary extracts and authors in each issue. I feel my reviews are woefully inadequate. Having said that... (I hate that phrase)...
Each quarter per annum editor Lewis H. Lapham and his staff assemble a compendium of thoughts on a particular subject assembled from the span of written history. The topics in 2013 were Intoxication, Animals, The Sea, and Death. What could be more fun than that? Comedy, of course! Often, however, I felt like this issue Comedy was more like death warmed over. Sooo serious, this humor thing. Where's the fun and funny? It's here, some of the time. Other times we are treated to analysis throughout the ages of why we laugh, or not.
At least in L.Q. I am exposed to the great minds of time immemorial without having to read the complete works of each, such is the state of the modern lackadaisical non-classical education. Else I might have to suffer this:
" I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."
-- Mark Twain, Letter to Joseph Twichell, 13 September 1898
See! I've been spared, speared, de-inspired! (And why did Twain read it more than once?)
"To me [Edgar Allen Poe's] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death." -- Mark Twain
THIS is FUNNY! But neither quote appears in L.Q. It's not an encyclopedia after all.
As usual, I digress.
The L.Q. contributors are as diverse as Voltaire, Dorothy Parker, Aristotle, Mark Twain, Moliere, Jonathan Swift, Woody Allen, Lewis Carroll, Plato, Homer, Lenny Bruce, and Charlie Chaplin, to name a very few.
Lewis Lapham's Preamble on the theme isn't exactly riotous this quarter, though it has its moments. His command of the language seems stilted to me (it always does), perhaps an attempt to drag the hoi polloi among us into at least a microcosm of exposure to intelligent language and thought. (That would be me, scrolling across sentences line by line, word by word, with my index finger pointer, struggling as perhaps I did in 3rd grade elementary, just to mentally pronounce Mr. Lapham's lofty scribulous composition, never mind Ruskin's admonition that "you must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable-nay, letter by letter".)
The three sections of the main body, titled Voices In Time as usual, are Situational (26 writings), Observational (24), and Confrontational (26).
Situational:
Sarah Silverman. Charlie Chaplin. Standards cut and dried. Joseph Heller, Catch-22. (A genius of dyslexic logic. I really must read this book.)
Woody Allen, The w@h^o*r#e of Mensa. (Internet thing about risqué words on some sites, even though Allen's story is clean. Don't get me started on Political Correctness or I swear I'll digress on you again.) Hilarious, with more than a small nod to Mickey Spillane or Dashiell Hammett. You can find this one at http://woodyallenitalia.tripod.com/sh.... Some of LQ's readings are available free but not this one. (The free link changes quarterly, see Archives on that page for back issues.)
There is analysis of comedy, such as Henri Bergson in The Human Element (p. 35):
"The first point to which attention should be called is that the comic does not exist outside the pale of what is strictly human. A landscape may be beautiful, charming, and sublime, or insignificant and ugly; it will never be laughable."
Observational:
Lewis Carroll is cleverly funny (p. 94):
1. Babies are illogical;
2. Nobody is despised who can manage a
crocodile;
3. Illogical persons are despised.
Answer: Babies cannot manage crocodiles.
1. No one takes in the Times unless he is well-educated;
2. No hedgehogs can read;
3. Those who cannot read are not well-educated.
Answer: No hedgehog takes in the Times.
In L.Q. there is usually a writing or 2 or 3 or more that I find fairly incomprehensible, this in addition to my difficulty with Elizabethan/Shakespearean speech or other antiquity or foreign translations. The analysis of laughter by Herbert Spencer, p.99, was one such piece in this issue. He has a point but a complementary piece based on modern research, such as http://science.howstuffworks.com/life..., might have been more enlightening.
'Kids on a train' I liked (1923, Robert Benchley Brings the Kids). The comedy of minding inquisitive you children.
Jane Austen's dismissive and subtly sarcastic brief on the kings of England is witty. (P. 108.)
Chris Rock is here, speed of light rant, soooo politically incorrect. (Not even in the Confrontational section!) Hilarious. (P. 128.)
Dorothy Parker, 1927. Superrrbly witty and cutting. (P. 130.)
Confrontational:
Arthur Miller, Mark Twain, Freud (Sigmund, a veritable laugh riot(?)). On and on.
The prologue essays are excellent (and available free). Once Upon A Time in the West (a lot about Twain) and Split Peronalities (the dark side of comedians).
Don't get L.Q, read it, and weep. Read it and smirk, chuckle, laugh, and contemplate.
February 24, 2018
(Original review date: 30 August 2014)
Each issue of Lapham's Quarterly includes dozens of brief excerpts from historical literature on a particular topic. Spanning time, geography, form, and theme, each edition provides an interesting look humanity's evolving conceptualization of various universals - such as animals, youth, death, lust, and politics.
Comedy is an interesting subject because it's so culturally dependent. There isn't much that is universally funny, except for maybe poop and sex - which both come up quite a bit in here. So I didn't enjoy this issue as much as I have others, just because not much of it was particularly funny to me. Even the modern stuff often wasn't to my taste - when the very first selection is Sarah Silverman trying to justify using the word "Chink" in a routine, it isn't a good sign. Worst fucking comedian working today.
Still, there's a lot of variety in here, from modern comedy routines to bawdy Roman poetry, from Freud's psychoanalysis of humor itself to a fascinating biography of Charlie Chaplin. There were enough pieces I enjoyed to outweigh the boring and awful ones.
Some snippets I liked:
In Florence, a young woman, somewhat of a simpleton, was on the point of being delivered. She had long been enduring acute pain, and the midwife, candle in hand, inspected her private parts, in order to ascertain if the child was coming. "Look also on the other side," said the poor creature. "My husband has sometimes taken that road."
Buttsex! Funny since at least 1452.
During the night a numbskull got into bed with his grandmother. When his father beat him on account of this, he said, "You've been screwing my mother for a long time without any trouble from me, and now you're angry at finding me with your mother just once?"
Incest! Funny since at least ancient Greece.
I'm a strange creature, for I satisfy women,
a service to the neighbors! No one suffers
at my hands except for my slayer.
I grow very tall, erect in a bed,
I'm hairy underneath. From time to time
a beautiful girl, the brave daughter
of some churl dares to hold me,
grips my russet skin, robs me of my head,
and puts me in the pantry. At once that girl
with plaited hair who has confined me
remembers our meeting. Her eye moistens.
English riddle, circa 975. The answer, of course, is "an onion".
Something which never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap.
The oldest known joke, from Sumeria, circa 2300-1900 BC. I don't think it's held up very well.
Each issue of Lapham's Quarterly includes dozens of brief excerpts from historical literature on a particular topic. Spanning time, geography, form, and theme, each edition provides an interesting look humanity's evolving conceptualization of various universals - such as animals, youth, death, lust, and politics.
Comedy is an interesting subject because it's so culturally dependent. There isn't much that is universally funny, except for maybe poop and sex - which both come up quite a bit in here. So I didn't enjoy this issue as much as I have others, just because not much of it was particularly funny to me. Even the modern stuff often wasn't to my taste - when the very first selection is Sarah Silverman trying to justify using the word "Chink" in a routine, it isn't a good sign. Worst fucking comedian working today.
Still, there's a lot of variety in here, from modern comedy routines to bawdy Roman poetry, from Freud's psychoanalysis of humor itself to a fascinating biography of Charlie Chaplin. There were enough pieces I enjoyed to outweigh the boring and awful ones.
Some snippets I liked:
In Florence, a young woman, somewhat of a simpleton, was on the point of being delivered. She had long been enduring acute pain, and the midwife, candle in hand, inspected her private parts, in order to ascertain if the child was coming. "Look also on the other side," said the poor creature. "My husband has sometimes taken that road."
Buttsex! Funny since at least 1452.
During the night a numbskull got into bed with his grandmother. When his father beat him on account of this, he said, "You've been screwing my mother for a long time without any trouble from me, and now you're angry at finding me with your mother just once?"
Incest! Funny since at least ancient Greece.
I'm a strange creature, for I satisfy women,
a service to the neighbors! No one suffers
at my hands except for my slayer.
I grow very tall, erect in a bed,
I'm hairy underneath. From time to time
a beautiful girl, the brave daughter
of some churl dares to hold me,
grips my russet skin, robs me of my head,
and puts me in the pantry. At once that girl
with plaited hair who has confined me
remembers our meeting. Her eye moistens.
English riddle, circa 975. The answer, of course, is "an onion".
Something which never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap.
The oldest known joke, from Sumeria, circa 2300-1900 BC. I don't think it's held up very well.
February 19, 2014
Picking this volume up I expected a treasury of humor and some of the pieces had me laughing out loud. What surprised me was there were quite a few serious pieces on the nature of comedy and what it means to be a comedian. There were even some negative pieces critiquing and condemning humor. The combination was not the nonstop laugh that I assumed it would be, but instead actually provoked reflection and contemplation. Lapham's quarterly is always an intellectual journey, not simply entertainment.
January 5, 2014
I know this is more of a journal than a book, but I'm really enjoying these essays, stories and excerpts. It includes pieces by everyone from Sarah Silverman and Woody Allen to Aristophanes and Moliere.
June 17, 2015
My first Lapham's! Awesome collection of comedic pieces and essays about humor. This won't have you rolling on the floor, as one of the goals of the collection is to show what translates and what does not.
Read
May 9, 2023Maybe possibly read the Freedom edition instead and could not find the title on goodreads
May 25, 2020
Humor in all its permutations.
January 7, 2015
Two immigrants meet on the street.
"How's by you?" asks one.
"Could be worse. And you?"
"Surviving. But I've been sick a lot this year, and it's costing me a fortune. In the past five months, I've spent over three hundred dollars on doctors and medicine."
"Ach, back home on that kind of money you could be sick for two years."
"How's by you?" asks one.
"Could be worse. And you?"
"Surviving. But I've been sick a lot this year, and it's costing me a fortune. In the past five months, I've spent over three hundred dollars on doctors and medicine."
"Ach, back home on that kind of money you could be sick for two years."
February 4, 2017
Through space and time, comedy changes and sometimes doesn't translate well, but it is nice to see an excellent anthology of comedy.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews