The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay M ore Than Some Antics

by John Pollack

Overview

A former word pun champion's funny, erudite, and provocative exploration of puns, the people who make them, and this derided wordplay's remarkable impact on history.

The pun is commonly dismissed as the lowest form of wit, and punsters are often unpopular for their obsessive wordplay. But such attitudes are relatively recent developments. In The Pun Also Rises, John Pollack-a former World Pun Champion and presidential speechwriter for Bill Clinton-explains why such wordplay is significant: It both revolutionized language and played a pivotal role in making the modern world possible. Skillfully weaving together stories and evidence from history, brain science, pop culture, literature, anthropology, and humor, The Pun Also Rises is an authoritative yet playful exploration of a practice that is common, in one form or another, to virtually every language on earth.

At once entertaining and educational, this engaging book answers fundamental questions: Just what is a pun, and why do people make them? How did punning impact the development of human language, and how did that drive creativity and progress? And why, after centuries of decline, does the pun still matter?

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101513866
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/14/2011
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	480,394
File size:	210 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John Pollack, former presidential speechwriter, won the 1995 O. Henry World Championship Pun-Off. His previous books include Cork Boat and The World on a String: How to Become a Freelance Foreign Correspondent. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Chapter 1 Cutting It Up: The Anatomy of a Pun 1

Chapter 2 Labs and Retrievers: How the Brain Fetches Meaning from Sound 31

Chapter 3 To Pun or Not to Pun: The Risible Fall of Puns Through Time 55

Chapter 4 Riddles of History: How Puns Conquered Human Imagination 117

Chapter 5 More Than Some Antics: Why Puns Matter 135

Epilogue 153

Acknowledgments 155

Endnotes 163

Select Bibliography 193

Index 205

What People are Saying About This

P.J. O'Rourke

"He tells us, with a clarity unusual for the subject, how the mind works..."

From the Publisher

"Anyone with an interest in language is going to find this book fascinating." —-David Crystal, author of How Language Works

Editorial Reviews

It is sometimes thought that puns are the lowest form of humor (unless you thought of them yourself), but masters of the art such as Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Dorothy Parker prove such contentions wrong. Over the decades, this universal practice has been examined ("In the pun, two strings of thought are tangled into one acoustic knot"—Arthur Koestler), dissected, and exemplified, but never perhaps as entertainingly as in John Pollack's robust new The Pun Also Rises. Its chapter titles provide pregnant hints about its contents: 'The Anatomy of a Pun," "How the Brain Retrieves Meaning from Sound," "The Risible Fall of Puns through Time," "How Puns Captured Human Imagination," and "Why Puns Matter." (P.S. Author Pollack is no knock-knock amateur. He is a former O. Henry Pun-Off World Championship winner.)

— Tim Flannigan

"A compelling exegesis on what puns are and why they matter." — The Los Angeles Times

"A fun, cogent argument in favor of a dubious, often-damned art." — Kirkus Reviews

"He tells us, with a clarity unusual for the subject, how the mind works..." — P.J. O'Rourke, The New York Times Book Review

"The best books on language are the ones that encourage us to reexamine what we think we know, and "The Pun Also Rises" does exactly that." — Boston Globe

"Whether you are practicing punster, interested in language or just hungry to learn something on the beach this summer as you lie on the sand-which-is there (see what happens when you talk to this guy?), Pollack's book is fun and informative." — Detroit Free Press

From the Publisher

"Whether you are practicing punster, interested in language or just hungry to learn something on the beach this summer as you lie on the sand-which-is there (see what happens when you talk to this guy?), Pollack's book is fun and informative."

-Detroit Free Press

"The best books on language are the ones that encourage us to reexamine what we think we know, and "The Pun Also Rises" does exactly that."

-Boston Globe

"He tells us, with a clarity unusual for the subject, how the mind works..."

-P.J. O'Rourke

"A compelling exegesis on what puns are and why they matter."

-The Los Angeles Times

"The best books on language are the ones that encourage us to reexamine what we think we know, and "The Pun Also Rises" does exactly that."

Boston Globe

"A compelling exegesis on what puns are and why they matter."

The Los Angeles Times

"Whether you are practicing punster, interested in language or just hungry to learn something on the beach this summer as you lie on the sand-which-is there (see what happens when you talk to this guy?), Pollack's book is fun and informative."

Detroit Free Press

Pollack is a compulsive pun-maker who won the 1995 O. Henry Pun-Off World Championship. While some may think puns are a low form of humor, Pollack explains how punning helped shape our language and influenced the rise of modern civilization. He draws heavily from various disciplines to present what he considers the first known pun; explains the legendary Polynesian punning duels, Shakespeare's invention of the knock-knock joke, Thomas Jefferson's lost comments on punning; and reveals that the history of the pun goes back further than the recorded history of almost anything else. Pollack also demonstrates how the brain processes humorous wordplay. Pollack's work aims to combine punning history with modern-day use of puns, but, surprisingly, he does not include the work of many well-known punners, e.g., Richard Lederer's Get Thee to a Punnery (1988) and Pun and Games (1996) and Art Moger's The Best Book of Puns (1998), preventing this title from being the definitive choice on puns. Former New York Mets announcer Pete Larkin's resonant voice nicely balances this lively material, which will appeal to all etymologists, lexicographers, and language mavens and nicely supplements other related titles. [The Gotham pb will publish in April 2012.—Ed.]—Dale Farris, Groves, TX

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