The Sense of Humor (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

Eastman, Max

 
9781330702833: The Sense of Humor (Classic Reprint)

Sinopsis

Excerpt from The Sense of Humor

This may seem a remote opening for a book about humor, but it happens that the problem of humor has always been a special field of play for the irresponsible essay-writer, and the literature that adorns it is no toriously inconsequential. When I told Bernard Shaw that I was writing this book, he advised me to go to a sanitarium. There is no more dangerous literary symptom, he said, than a temptation to write about wit and humor. It indicates the total loss of both. And with a proper emphasis upon the word literary, that is entirely true. But if technical science con tinnes to develop as it has in the last half-century, and men of letters continue not to develop, it will soon be true that there is no more dangerous literary symptom than a temptation to write about any problem of gen eral knowledge. People will take our Plays seriously, but not our Prefaces - not our essays, epigrams, and immortal disquisitions. These they will glance through with an indulgent smile, and then go look the thing up in a laboratory report and find out what the truth is.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Reseña del editor

Excerpt from The Sense of Humor

This may seem a remote opening for a book about humor, but it happens that the problem of humor has always been a special field of play for the irresponsible essay-writer, and the literature that adorns it is no toriously inconsequential. When I told Bernard Shaw that I was writing this book, he advised me to go to a sanitarium. There is no more dangerous literary symptom, he said, than a temptation to write about wit and humor. It indicates the total loss of both. And with a proper emphasis upon the word literary, that is entirely true. But if technical science con tinnes to develop as it has in the last half-century, and men of letters continue not to develop, it will soon be true that there is no more dangerous literary symptom than a temptation to write about any problem of gen eral knowledge. People will take our Plays seriously, but not our Prefaces - not our essays, epigrams, and immortal disquisitions. These they will glance through with an indulgent smile, and then go look the thing up in a laboratory report and find out what the truth is.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Reseña del editor

Excerpt from The Sense of Humor

Although I have tried to make this book enjoyable, and keep it alive to the qualities of its subject, my prevailing purpose has been scientific. So far as the present technique of psychology permits of solutions, I have tried to solve the problem of humorous laughter. And if I have taken one valid step toward that solution, it will please my purpose better than any amount of the success that might be called literary.

The relation between science and the literature of generalities seems to me to be one of the great problems of the future. For science is developing so technical and special a body of knowledge upon every subject under the sun, that only an expert can know anything substantial of what is to be known about it. And yet literary men with no real training in science continue to pretend that they know something, if not everything, about all subjects. They write essays upon general problems with the same free joy of self-expression with which they write stories or poems about particular things or experiences. And these essays, while they may stimulate the reader and give him a fine sense of mental companionship, are very likely to be in flat contradiction to some method or result that scientific men have already humbly and conscientiously verified in which case they certainly belong to the second and not the first order of human values.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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