Wit's End

September 1, 2018
A playful book that celebrates all forms of wit.In his latest, Geary (Deputy Curator, Nieman Foundation for Journalism/Harvard Univ.; I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World, 2011, etc.) discusses many of the forms wit can take. To add to the fun, he writes each chapter in a style that mimics the topic under discussion. A chapter that compares wit to fencing is a "dramatic dialogue" between philosopher Denis Diderot and literary theorist Madame de Staël, who says that, to be witty, one must have what is known in fencing as a riposte, "a quick, robust return thrust." Another chapter, written as a scientific paper, examines "how wit might work in the brain" and includes footnotes, figures, tables, and diagrams. Geary has great fun with the many different styles: an essay written in the manner of 17th-century English playwright Joseph Addison's Spectator essays on "the nature of wit"; a section written in jive; a poem in the form of a rap song; an art history lecture that states that "seeing is an interpretive act," such as when one detects a human face in a rock outcropping; even a sermon. The use of different styles for each chapter is sometimes too clever for its own good, but one is likely to come away from the book convinced of many of the author's arguments, as when he demonstrates that "puns are not wit's lowest form but its highest expression." Many of the anecdotes are hilarious, as when Geary notes that, after a Columbia University philosopher stated in a lecture that no language exists in which two positives make a negative, another professor muttered from the back of the hall, "Yeah, yeah.""To see clearly, look askance," Geary advises. He heeds his own advice to entertaining effect.

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Starred review from September 15, 2018
Upon entering a restaurant and seeing a former spouse, Groucho Marx quipped, Marx spots the ex. In Groucho's spontaneous inversion of a trite phrase, Geary discerns a manifestation of wit as a mental power that breaks through sterile habits of thought, so opening up new imaginative horizons. Though readers might expect wit in a comedian, Geary recognizes wit as an intellectual force that does far more than amuse. As the capacity to fruitfully fuse radically different ideas, wit guides visual artists, scientists, philosophers, dramatists, and priests. Geary indeed underscores the versatility of wit by casting his chapters in various genres?one, for instance, in the heroic couplets of neoclassical poetry; another in the sober reflections of a sermon; another in the scintillating dialogue of a satiric play; yet another in the rigorous logic of a scientific article. Readers roaring with laughter at outrageous puns one moment find themselves carefully assessing psychological studies the next, only to then spin into the wild linguistic creativity of jive. Geary's own puckish style?mischievous and unpredictable?itself sparkles with wit as it provides the thread stringing together these variegated beads, all strikingly different, yet all remarkably similar in illuminating how wit exposes hidden truths, awakens dormant capacities. An exhilarating romp, entertaining and enlightening.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)