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Wit's end : what wit is, how it works, and why we need it / James Geary.

by Geary, James, 1962- author.

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New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2019]

Wit and humor -- History and criticism.

9780393254945 (hardcover) :

0393254941 (hardcover) :

x, 226 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Oft was thought, an essay in sixty-four lines -- One bad apple, or, An apology for paronomasia -- Thirty-five days in May -- Watchers at the gates of mind: wit and its relation to Witzelsucht, malapropisms, and bipolar disorder -- Perfect witty expressions and how to make them -- Advanced banter -- An ode to wit -- Turning words -- My name is Wit -- Slapstick metaphysics -- The chains of habit -- Finding minds -- Ambiguous figures -- Wisdom of the sages -- True wit -- Wit's end.

"A witty book about wit that steers an elegant path between waggishness and wisdom."--Stephen Fry. In this whimsical book, James Geary explores every facet of wittiness, from its role in innovation to why puns demonstrate the essence of creativity. Geary reasons that wit is both visual and verbal, physical and intellectual: there's the serendipitous wit of scientists, the crafty wit of inventors, the optical wit of artists, and the metaphysical wit of philosophers. In Wit's End, Geary embraces wit in every form by adopting a different style for each chapter; he writes the section on verbal repartee as a dramatic dialogue, the neuroscience of wit as a scientific paper, the spirituality of wit as a sermon, and other chapters in jive, rap, and the heroic couplets of Alexander Pope. Demonstrating that brevity really is the soul of wit, Geary crafts each chapter from concise sections of 200, 400, or 800 words. Entertaining, illuminating, and entirely unique, Wit's End shows how wit is much more than a sense of humor."--Provided by publisher.

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