On Tue, 27 Jun 2000, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> Apropos of humor, here's an interesting book. Yoshie
> The Senses of Humor: Self and Laughter in Modern America. By Daniel
> Wickberg (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. x plus 267pp.).
>
> ... "The self-objectifying capacity of the sense of humor," Wickberg
> writes, "was specific to the individualism of a bureaucratic society;
> self-objectification removed the conflict between internal and
> external sources of authority and, in doing so, reconciled the ethic
> of self-determination with the demands of bureaucratic organization."
Fascinating. Suggests both how innovative Lincoln was as a politician and why Twain seems so unfunny to us now.
--C. G. Estabrook