"What's another word for Thesaurus?"

I went to a restaurant that serves "breakfast at any time". So I ordered
French Toast during the Renaissance. -- Steven Wright

A proposition ...

A deconstruction of the pun appeared as an essay in the New York Times last week: "To Ambrose Bierce it was a 'form of wit to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.'"

Puns, however, even appear in what should be taken as serious news writing.

Police: Man skips out of paying for prosthetic leg
AP
Tue Mar 31, 9:10 pm ET
DES MOINES, Iowa – A man who police say skipped out of paying for a prosthetic leg has been arrested.

Is punning not humor? Stephen Wright, that most literately elegant of whimsical humorists, often sees puns as left-handed commentary.

Humor writing is difficult. Perhaps that's because humor is like pornography: indefinable but recognizable.

A response by Richard Bylina ...

I have always contended that writing humor is the toughest slice of writing out there. Those who can do it, probably cut their teeth on a myriad of mistakes, gaffs, and awkward sideshows for unappreciative, or worse, over-appreciative relatives ("Grandma please, I can't breath between these two round mounds of silicon compounds."). From demented childhood antics through high school class clown acknowledgments to the student that professors in college hated to see on their enrollment sheets (and who took advantage on every occasion to flunk that student out of their seven-year plan to do undergraduate study of three-toed sloths), these individuals have honed those humor skills throughout their life. They have a leg-up on those of us who came to the realization late in life that humor in a depression (recession) can make you money.

But...I think a fair amount of humor writing can be learned, because like all aspects of writing, there are ample examples and explanations of what is funny and sometimes even why. It can be crafted. So just like Data on "Star Trek: TNG," you can tell a funny anecdote, but not everyone will laugh along with you. It's timing, audience prep, and comediatic prep that counts. I saw Rosanne Barr when her Domestic Goddess bit was a few nervous jokes in a short stand-up routine. Lots and lots of practice made it better.

The audience must also be prepped for your humor. A "Seinfeld" episode touched on this about how Jerry was forever warming up the audience for another comic who always followed him, but who really wasn't all that funny, yet would have a warm and receptive audience thanks to Jerry. Set-up is a truism. When you pick up a book by an author, everything about it sets up the expectation for your reaction to the words on the page: the author's name (Stink E. Butt), the title (Sea Monkeys Strike Back), the genre aisle you're in (Humor), the short synopsis on the back cover (Mutant Sea Monkeys seek revenge on a Colorado fifth-grader's amoral antics by controlling two comedy writers to create skits sympathetic to the Sea Monkey's plight and disastrous for the child.). If it's not funny out of the gate...it was probably ghost-written by me and gets thrown in the dumper.

Audience anticipation counts; reader set up counts more. It is harder to
pass a camel through an eye of a needle than to inject humor into the funny bone of reader if it's not infused in the first few pages either by joke, pun, or a set-up worth guffawing over. And herein lies the odd thing about humor in novels. With no scientific research by me at all, it seems that novel humor is either short one or two line bursts or the long, slow burn of bizarrely braided plot twists that come together in the second half of the novel for an outlandish finish. The movie version for me is "A Fish Called Wanda".

But the written page is a harsh mistress and even a strong muse has a rough time directing the writer to get all the elements of funny down on a page that is more naturally on display in other mediums. Imagine the Three Stooges in a book! By the time Moe gets around to poking Curly in the each eye with a single finger from each hand instead of the usual two fingers from one hand that was originally stymied by a pole that has by now been shoved up Larry's nose without anyone noticing...whew! A 2.5 - 3 second routine takes two pages to describe the physical, emotional, and psychological intent. Who can wait that long to laugh?

And then there's the X factor...everyone's sense of humor is unique and
subjective. When "The Cosby Show" was in its "Hey, hey, hey-day," "Sixty Minutes" did a story on humor, I believe it was George Will who had said he'd never seen an episode of "TCS". He watched one and commented that there wasn't a single thing funny on the show despite a live studio audience howling with laughter. Don't pick on the collective intelligence of a studio audience versus George Will...not the point. (I'm almost certain all theirs together would exceed George's.) My wife thinks my one-off thoughts are funny. I make her laugh every day, because laughter is good for the heart, soul, and other rooms in the house, but some of my off-the-wall story lines are just plain weird to her, and I question my long-term humor quotient and potential. Others have told me that "I" should be writing humor, but I enjoy killing off people too much; however, I'm trying to combine the two.

As far as Robin Williams is concerned, he stands on a playing field of one for stream of conscious humor. No one else has a grappling hook that can be thrown to the level on which he has raised that art form. We should enjoy it, for we shall never see the likes of him again in our lifetime. But it doesn't mean that what he does translates to humor on the written page. And on some days, humor is found where you find it: In a "Family Circle" cartoon that resonates with your life experience, at a prat in a playground, or a funny remembrance of a fallen friend during a solemn funeral procession. Humor drifts about us like pollen to land and tickle us at its fancy.