RE: Scholarly work on humor in the fine arts.
 
          Andrew Cockburn, the famously funny Stalinist (how's that
          for an oxymoronic epithet) journalist, wrote an introduction
          for a series of PG Wodehouse Jeeves novels. In it, he refers
          to a analytical definition of a laugh as "a tightening of
          the nasal and labial muscles." And throughout the rest of
          the essay he calls analysis of Wodehouse's humour
          "naso-labial-ism."
 
          I myself find it kind of funny that you are working on what
          sounds to be a quite sober analysis of why humour is missing
          in the fine arts. Maybe a case of naso-labialism? Actually,
          I would be interested to hear in more detail what your
          program will be like.
 
          Eric Siegel
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