In the 1940s, long before the unlovely abbreviations LOL and ROTFL became standard usage, the great film critic James Agee broke the four main kinds of laughter inspired by silent-film comedians into ...

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“HUMOR can be dissected, as a frog can,” E. B. White once warned, “but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.” Until recently, many ...

Humour is too important to be left to the humorists. Especially since most of them are miserable sods: alcoholics, suicide-prone, gloomy, rude and exceedingly grim company. There is something about ...