Crime & Mystery
About three quarters into Andrew Stott’s Comedy and I’m still interested, which is saying something for a book that is very happy to let theory do the heavy lifting.
It’s useful, certainly. Sometimes almost unreasonably so. But I keep wondering whether there’s enough room here for comedy to stay a comic event, rather than becoming an object pinned under glass and labelled in several competing ways. Still, I’d rather have a book that takes the subject seriously than one that treats “the funny bits” as self-explanatory. They rarely are.
It’s useful, certainly. Sometimes almost unreasonably so. But I keep wondering whether there’s enough room here for comedy to stay a comic event, rather than becoming an object pinned under glass and labelled in several competing ways. Still, I’d rather have a book that takes the subject seriously than one that treats “the funny bits” as self-explanatory. They rarely are.
Theory can be a useful tool, but it can also flatten the thing you came for. With a book on comedy, that feels like a risk worth noticing. If the subject stops being funny in any recognisable sense, you start wondering whether the analysis has won by default. I’m more interested in criticism that leaves a bit of mess behind.