Customer Reviews

Only Joking: What's So Funny About Making People Laugh?

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This is one of the few library books that I managed to finish reading before I had to return it. Not only did I learn a fair bit about humor (did you know that some animals laugh?) but the book appealed to my warped sense of humor. There's a quote at the beginning of each chapter -- "God is a comedian, performing for an audience that is too afaid to laugh. Nietzsche". There's a joke at the bottom of almost every page -- "What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea.--Mahatma Gandhi". Each chapter ends with a couple of pages of jokes -- "Remember: it takes forty-two muscles to frown and only four to pull the trigger of a decent sniper rifle.--Mitch Henderson". And the text itself can be very funny -- "In Rome there was a special fool market, a sort of boutique adjunct to the main slave market, where you could buy a genuine idiot. These days you can't give them away, but in the first century A.D. they were reassuringly expensive." And, by the way, some of the jokes are definitely NOT G rated.

This book is both an entertaining and informative treatise on humor, laughter, joking and comedy. Authors Carr and Greeve craftily combine serious research with genuine humor and comedy. The best feature of the book are the hundreds of jokes that are included in the book - one joke at the bottom of each page and a series of jokes to conclude each chapter. There are interesting and insightful discussions about the place of humor in the human psyche, cultural development, and politics, among others. The authors give proper due to appropriate sources, both scholarly and other. At times, however, they segue into their own theories without clearly stating so, while giving the impression that their conlcusions are supported by all that preceded them. The two final chapters were a letdown, with an unnecessarily long review of the place of offensive humor, and a somewhat anticlimatic concluding chapter. The only other criticism I have is that a disproportionate number of Carr's jokes appear among those at the bottom of the pages, presumably objectivelty selected from a very large number of candidates. Seems like a bit of nepotism by the father of these one liners (though they are very funny). Nevertheless, I highly recommend this book for the sheer enjoyment of the humor and the well-covered history and role of comedy.

Humor is infective. If you want a brief history of humor, and lots of great examples,this is a good read. It touches on the different humor perceptions of males and females, and explains, as well as can be, why some can tell funny stories and some get lost in the timing and other factors. I think it's a hoot! Good clean fun with a "G" rating. Many familiar names among the contributors. awp

Writing about humor has been compared to vivisection--neither subject makes it out alive in the end. Such is not the case with Only Joking. Here you find a heartfelt and simultaneously intellectual look at what makes us laugh, what makes jokes tick, and what our sense of humor says about ourselves, our culture and our dreams. But don't expect tedious essays or endless pedantic discourses--this book is coauthored by a stand-up comic, so naturally the delivery is impeccable. As an added bonus, the book is filled with great jokes on every page--from Carr himself to Carlin to Emo Phillips to the unknown jokesters. Well worth a look.

Proving that he's much more than just a TV game show host who likes to hook contestants' genitals up to live electrodes, Jimmy Carr (and his co-author Lucy Greeves) produced an extreme rarity: a very, very funny book with a lot of serious ideas on what humor is, why people laugh, what the heck is "wrong" with people who decide to become comedians...
Contains hundreds of sidebar jokes -- of his own; of other comics -- in addition to the well-written, sometimes hysterically amusing main text.
A MUST HAVE for the bookshelf of anyone even remotely employed in the Humor Business, or any lay person who's ever told a joke, laughed at a joke, not laughed at a joke...

If you are seriously interested in comedy, or the mechanism of laughter, or how comedy comes about, or why we need to laugh, this is a great read. Lots of research went into this guide: a bit of understanding of being human.

You can read the book the way you want to. You can scan the history pages and read all the jokes between the white space or before each chapter. A great read!

Great book about the nuts and bolts of comedy told as the authors can tell it. It's a cross between a scholarly paper and a joke book in it's own right.

I just picked up a copy for $3.99 on a remainder table at a close out store. Don't spend $63+. That's just ridiculous.

I laughed when I read ONLY JOKING by Jimmy Carr and Lucy
Greeves, but I'd recommend that you read it because the answer
to the book's subtitle--WHAT'S SO FUNNY ABOUT MAKING
PEOPLE LAUGH?--is what made it more than just a collection
of jokes.

The authors take an in-depth look at humor and view it from
several perspectives, including a discussion of why jokes are
important, the science of laughter, offensive jokes and why we
laugh at them, and why we need political jokes.

One chapter alone made it worth reading to me; i.e., Chapter 6,
" No way to make a living" (How to be a professional jokester).
Here were the five basic rules for telling a joke:

1. Pick your moments. It's easiest, of course, to tell a joke when
everyone's relaxed and enjoying himself. Telling a joke to
relieve tension is a high-risk strategy, but potentially hilarious.
besides, there'll be other funerals.

2. Know where you're going before you start. Hopefully, in the
direction of the punch line. It sounds obvious, but it's amazing
how often people embark blithely on a joke they think they know
without rehearsing the all-important ending, only to find
themselves completely lost.

3. Don't be tempted to over-elaborate-using fewer words often
works better. Eddie Izzard makes it look easy, but remember
that one man's surreal flight of fancy is another man's
rambling incoherent humiliation.

4. Project a demeanor of relaxed confidence-it gives your
listener permission to laugh. You can try deadpan if you
like, but normal social joke-telling usually requires the
teller to laugh too.

5. Enjoy it. If you're all tense and competitive about sharing
a joke with friends, if your entire self-esteem is resting on
the outcome, then you're doing it for the wrong reasons.
On the other hand, you are showing signs of the borderline
personality disorder that characterizes all the best
comedians; perhaps you should consider doing this for a
living?

Carr and Greeves also presented a compilation of jokes
that can be seen throughout the book . . . I particularly liked
this joke from Carr:

* My dad used to say, "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you
stronger." Until the accident.

There were hundreds of other quips from such comic geniuses
as Steve Martin, Sarah Silverman, Gary Shandling, and Jay
Leno . . . in addition, there were these jokes that at least had
me chuckling:

* I was a ballerina, but I had to quit after I injured a groin
muscle. It wasn't mine.--Rita Rudner;

* I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want
to achieve immortality through not dying.--Woody Allen;

* I was on a date with this really attractive model. Well, it wasn't
really a date date. We just ate dinner and saw a movie. Then
the plane landed.--Dave Attell; and

* I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude
would come into a black neighborhood after dark.--Dick Gregory.

You'll like ONLY JOKING. And that's no joke!