Wit's End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It

by James Geary

Overview

Entertaining, illuminating, and entirely unique, Wit’s End “convey[s] the power of wit to refresh the mind” (Henry Hitchings, Wall Street Journal).

In “this inventive and playful book” (Tom Beer, Newsday), James Geary explores every facet of wittiness, from its role in innovation to why puns are the highest form of wit. Adopting a different style for each chapter—from dramatic dialogue to sermon, heroic couplets to a barroom monologue—Geary embodies wit in all its forms. Wit’s End agilely balances psychology, folktale, visual art, and literary history with lighthearted humor and acute insight, demonstrating that wit and wisdom are really the same thing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393357592
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/29/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

James Geary is the author of four previous books, including the New York Times bestseller The World in a Phrase, and is the deputy curator at Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism. A sought-after speaker and avid juggler, he lives near Boston, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Oft Was Thought, An Essay in Sixty-Four Lines 1

One Bad Apple, Or, An Apology for Paronomasia 5

Thirty-Five Days in May 17

Watchers at the Gates of Mind: Wit and Its Relation to Witzelsucht, Malapropisms, and Bipolar Disorder 35

Perfect Witty Expressions and How to Make Them 52

Advanced Banter 62

An Ode to Wit 76

Turning Words 79

My Name Is Wit 91

Slapstick Metaphysics 105

The Chains of Habit 113

Finding Minds 125

Ambiguous Figures 136

Wisdom of the Sages 150

True Wit 163

Wit's End 166

Wit Thanks 177

Notes and Bibliography 181

Illustration Credits 213

Index 215

Editorial Reviews

"[James Geary] raps, rhymes, puns, quips, jives, and dialogues his way through this rich history and analysis.… The end result is an extended dance remix on the art of the quip that is both humorous and instructive."

Quartz - Ephrat Livni

"Geary is a keen storyteller, promiscuous with quotes and figures. One could do worse at a cocktail party than simply opening his book at random and reading aloud."

The New Yorker - Katy Waldman

"Juggles scholarship, humorous anecdote and critical insight with a diabolical, almost sinister dexterity."

Michael Dirda

"[Wit’s End is] an entertaining exploration of how intellectual dexterity manifests itself in both verbal and visual form.… [Geary] shows here that he’s fully equal to the task, enhancing our appreciation of how true wit can both amuse and enlighten."

Shelf Awareness - Harvey Freedenberg

"Readers roaring with laughter at outrageous puns one moment find themselves carefully assessing psychological studies the next.… An exhilarating romp, entertaining and enlightening."

Booklist (starred review)

"[Geary takes] a quirky approach for a quirky topic."

New York Times Book Review

"I have been reading Wit’s End in juxtaposition to rereading and again writing about James Joyce’s Ulysses. Geary prompts me to think that Joyce’s title could have been No End to Wit. Goethe wrote an essay called “No End to Shakespeare.” There seems to be no end to James Geary’s versatility."

Harold Bloom

"Wit’s End is delicious. James Geary has managed to produce a witty book about wit that steers an elegant path between waggishness and wisdom."

Stephen Fry

"Geary is a keen storyteller, promiscuous with quotes and figures. One could do worse at a cocktail party than simply opening his book at random and reading aloud."

The New Yorker

"Comedy is famously impossible to describe without destroying it, so James Geary—in this entertaining and informative and funny book—makes a very smart and effective move: he embodies the many different forms that wit takes, from poems to jokes to jive to rap. In a time of constant, unintentional humor, here is a purposeful and valuable reminder that sometimes it's on purpose and sometimes it's very nearly life-saving."

David Shields

"Wit’s End juggles scholarship, humorous anecdote and critical insight with a diabolical, almost sinister dexterity. No shrinking violet, Geary fully intends to strut his stuff, to glitter and beguile, and he does so with remarkable ingenuity and chutzpah."

Washington Post

"Whoever was the foremost authority on this topic is now second-most."

Bob Mankoff

"Crucially, instead of analyzing wit to death, Mr. Geary chooses to embody it... [He] writes not just playfully but with panache... Geary's chief success is in conveying the power of wit to refresh the mind."

Wall Street Journal

"If you've ever spent hours overanalyzing your favorite stand-up special or sitcom episode, this is the kind of insightful, carefully reasoned deep dive you'll love."

David Litt

"Geary is a keen storyteller, promiscuous with quotes and figures. One could do worse at a cocktail party than simply opening his book at random and reading aloud."

The New Yorker

James Geary’s essays on wit—what it is, how it’s manifested—give narrators David De Vries, JD Jackson, and Janet Metzger vocal workouts. His discussions of topics such as jive and stand-up comedy become examples of the forms themselves. He starts with a mock Alexander Pope poem; De Vries narrates the couplets in a British accent that makes them sound like Shakespeare. As Geary keeps up the parodies throughout, listeners may not feel as if they're learning while they chuckle. But Geary is providing informative observations on wit—for example, on the way Wile E. Coyote's misadventures play with expectations. Geary becomes more serious as he discusses Robin Williams’s suicide and puns that get around censorship in China. This audiobook could help listeners craft better puns as it reveals the secrets of silliness. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2019 - AudioFile

2018-08-13

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.

Kirkus Reviews