What's so Funny?  The Comic Conception of Culture and Society
Murray S. Davis  What's so Funny? Bookmark and Share  Murray S.
Davis  400 pages | 15 cartoons, 2 line drawings | 6 x 9 | © 1993
Cloth $32.50 ISBN: 9780226138107 Published December 1993 Jokes,
puns, stories, tales, sketches, and shticks saturate our
culture. And today the stuff of comedy is almost inescapable,
with all-comedy cable channels and stand-up comics acting as a
kind of electronic oracle. We're laughing more often, but what
are we laughing at? Murray Davis knows. In this inventive book,
he uses jokes (good, bad, offensive, and classic) to reveal the
truths that comedians deliver. What's So Funny? is not about the
psychology of humor but about the objects of our laughter—the
world that comics turn upside down and inside out. It also
explores the logic of comedy as a serious, critical assault on
just about everything we take for granted.  Drawing on a vast
array of jokes and the work of dozens of comedians from Jay Leno
and Lenny Bruce to