Often ebullient, but sometimes just gassy, this ambitious study
sketches a counter-history of Western thought by tracing the
salient roles of laughter. Toward the end of this book, Sanders (A
is for Ox, 1994; English and History of Ideas/Pitzer College)
reveals himself as a devotee of Lenny Bruce's comedy. Impassioned
arguments for the cultural significance of Bruce's vitriolic
routines - e.g., that they exposed the workings of racism - make
clear Sanders's investment in his titular theme of subversion. It's
unfortunate that this meditation on Bruce doesn't go deeper and
didn't come sooner, for Sanders never quite nails down why laughter
should necessarily be considered subversive, and he only convinces
the reader of his own passion for the subject when he gets to
Bruce. That said, the landscape he tours is indeed a glorious one.
Highlights include: the deep unity of laughter and weeping in the
Hebrew tradition; the birth of irony in the Socratic style; the
animus of the Christian tradition to laughter; and the
revolutionary outbursts of humor in medieval carnival - eruptions
brilliantly captured, Sanders shows, by Chaucer. Sanders astutely
notes the links between jesting, aggression, and envy. He
nevertheless insists on opposing humor to power, narrating how
humor is a liberating force. It seems, however, that humor could
just as well be a safety vane, a way of blowing off steam while
leaving the system intact. There are other flaws here. Sanders
takes too much delight in tracing out etymologies (which, like
dreams, too often fall flat when recounted). Also, he repeatedly
invokes the distinction between oral and literate modes of culture,
a key theme in his previous work that can seem beside the point
here. Overall, though, Sanders wears his learning lightly enough.
Refreshing, although the promise of subversion fizzles. (Kirkus
Reviews)
Sudden Glory presents the history of one of the most evanescent but
powerful forms of human expression - laughter. Here is the first
book to look not at humor or comedy, but it laughter itself - and
specifically at the way laughter evolved into an effective weapon
for political subversion. Barry Sanders asks What did people laugh
at? And why? What was the Church's attitude? The Rabbis'? Who could
do it, when, and at whom? When did the joke first appear? Sudden
Glory records the changes in attitudes toward laughter from the
ancient world down to the present, with specific emphasis on
cultural shifts from the late Middle Ages, when the Church's reach
into the realm of the body was felt throughout society, through the
end of the eighteenth century, when only deviants and derelicts
laughed freely. Along the way, Sanders imagines the voices of women
and peasants, whose laughter often went unrecorded, but surely not
unheard. Sanders concludes with a brilliant chapter on contemporary
laughter, beginning with "sick" comic Lenny Bruce (with whom he was
personally acquainted), and ending with women stand-up comics, who
seem to be finding their voices while male comics are mired in
adolescent shtick. Sudden Glory, which contains an extensive
bibliography on the subject of laughter, is an important study from
one of our most penetrating and playful public intellectuals.
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