Comedy

Volume VII, Number 1 | winter 2014

Purchase

Preamble

The Solid Nonpareil

By Lewis H. Lapham

From Mesopotamia to Mark Twain, the question has remained the same for thousands of years—who’s laughing now?

Black and white photograph of Mark Twain sitting between two men.

Essay

Once Upon a Time in the West

By Ben Tarnoff

How a simple story of a man and his talented frog made Mark Twain a national celebrity.

Map showing comedic theater tropes from around the world.

Map

The Human Comedy

Theatrical fools and buffoons from around the world and across time.

View

Miscellany

Austrian-born philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein observed in 1947, “A typical American film, naive and silly, can—for all its silliness and even by means of it—be instructive. A fatuous, self-conscious English film can teach one nothing. I have often learned a lesson from a silly American film.”

Voices In Time

c. 1555 | Paris

Merry Pranksters

A prank-war between a nobleman and the court fool escalates out of control. More

Voices In Time

1896 | London

Sense and Nonsense

“Babies cannot manage crocodiles.”More

Voices In Time

1225 | France

Goodbye to All That

A wife takes a priest as her lover and hides him in an unfortunate place.More

Charts & Graphs

Punked!

Historical hoaxes and stunts.

View

Classical engraving of Aristophanes with a long beard.

Don DeLillo standing outside in a jacket, black and white photo

Calvin Trillin standing in front of a refrigerator in a black and white photograph

Contributors

black and white photo of Groucho Marx wearing glasses and smoking a cigar from the side of his mouth

black and white photo of James Thurber lighting a cigarette in the new york times office

Black and white photograph of Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud with cigar.

Some things are privileged from jest—namely, religion, matters of state, great persons, all men’s present business of importance, and any case that deserves pity.

—Francis Bacon, 1597