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| While this Quartz article is a few years old now, I've been saying stuff like this for way longer. The case for puns as the most elevated display of wit  Humor me please, and consider the pun. Though some may quibble over the claim, the oft-maligned wordplay is clever and creative, writer James Geary tells Quartz. His upcoming book Wit’s End robustly defends puns and tells the distinguished history of these disrespected witticisms. And yes, this is basically a book ad. I've repeatedly stated my position on book ads. Humor me please, and consider the pun. You want me to dump a bucket of bile on you? Though some may quibble over the claim, the oft-maligned wordplay is clever and creative, writer James Geary tells Quartz. My father (who, being a dad, made plenty of what are now called "dad jokes," which involve puns) tried to teach me that the pun is the lowest form of wit. No, Dad; respectfully, it's the highest. The lowest is fart jokes, which is why they're the oldest known form of comedy. “Despite its bad reputation, punning is, in fact, among the highest displays of wit. Indeed, puns point to the essence of all true wit—the ability to hold in the mind two different ideas about the same thing at the same time,” Geary writes. Yeah, well, I've written things like that, too, but I have yet to be interviewed by a magazine. The bible, the Indian epic the Ramayana, and the classic Chinese philosophical text the Tao Te Ching all avail themselves of puns, he notes, though we may not recognize these ancient jokes. That's because puns are heavily language-dependent (unlike farts, which are recognizable in any language). I've probably said this before, but when I was in Tours, I asked a tour guide if the city was named for towers (because "tower" in French is "tour.") No, apparently, it's named for an ancient Celtic tribe who lived along the Loire, similar to how we here in the US kicked the Indians out and named some towns after them. But the city's flag features three towers. Because it's a pun, albeit a visual one. I could also make a pun about "Tours guide," but that would be beneath me, wouldn't it? There is some truth to the rumor that I started learning French so I could pun in other languages. Geary also points out that William Shakespeare, the greatest English language playwright of all time and an acknowledged master of rhetorical jousting, loved puns. Anyone with a passing familiarity with Shakespeare would know this. Indeed, many a great mind has been inclined to pun. The 18th-century English poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge thought it was practically a prerequisite to intelligence, declaring, “All men who possess at once active dance, imagination, and philosophical spirit, are prone to punning.” This should also come as no surprise. I've often wondered about the title of his second-most-famous poem: does "rime" play a dual role, referring to ice and verse? I haven't seen anything definitive on that, yet. But the story starts in the Antarctic, so I'm going with "yes." Geary admits that he often makes pun in his head—but he mostly keeps them to himself. He can’t explain why the wordplay’s not appreciated. Because they break a listener's mind and are painful. They are only funny to the punster. Which is why I'm fond of my puns, but not your puns. And especially not puns related to the planet whose orbit lies between those of Saturn and Neptune. In short, puns are the highest form of humor, demonstrating the punster's high levels of intelligence, mental alacrity, and good looks. They prove you're a wit, and not just half of one. |
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