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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