22: The Pun Also Rises

A book by John Pollack

“Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.”

So quipped, apparently, American writer Elwyn Brooks White, author of children’s classics Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web. And within White’s bon mot lies the main problem with John Pollack’s The Pun Also Rises: it takes punning too seriously .

The book’s subtitle is: ‘How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics’. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a subtitle with a lot going for it, not least a beloved Oxford comma. (That’s right Vampire Weekend, I give a f**k about an Oxford comma.)

It starts strong as well, with Pollack—a former speechwriter for Bill Clinton—hilariously recounting his triumphant participation in the 1995 O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships before putting any pun sceptics straight with the claim that “punsters throughout history have served as some of the most adventurous scouts on the frontiers of language”. He then introduces us to the Sanskrit grammarian Panini (and duly includes a sandwich joke), explains how childish playground jokes are linguistically instructive because they are punny (“What has four wheels and flies? A garbage truck.”), and outlines his own broad definition of a pun. From the opening pages, Pollack leaves his reader in little doubt as to what is in store: an essentially playful look at the history of the pun.

But then it all gets a bit…dry. A bit sober. Given this is a book which has a title punning on Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, the most alcohol-drenched book I’ve ever read, this is a shame.

It’s not uninteresting. There are regular tidbits that are fascinating, such as the fact that the three little ear bones common to all mammals are structured in such a way that we can still hear while eating, unlike reptiles. Or that Mark Twain once dismissed the cauliflower as being “nothing but a cabbage with a college education”. Or that the drummer’s rimshot (the ba-dum-tsss sound) was originally “used to punctuate a good joke, not poke fun at it”.

Pollack also does plenty of his own punning, much of it brilliant—as is to be expected from a former world champ—and there is much fun to be had simply in pun seeking.

Unfortunately, though, that is not enough to prevent the shadow of seriousness from casting its pall over The Pun Also Rises. I completely understand the inclination to take what initially seems like a fairly frivolous subject and try to do more than just have a laugh with it. But I think Pollack goes a little too far in holding up the pun as a key driver in the history and development of humanity. I don't buy it. The more he explains the pun and attempts to inject it with more significance than it ever wanted, the less fun the pun becomes. And puns are supposed to be fun, like this:

Alas, poor Humpty. If only he'd been born an American.