Word: humor
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Sidney Nolan's drawings do not, in general, add much to this excellent book. Where the intent is light humor, they succeed modestly; but Lowell and Juvenal are similar in that they frequently intend to repel through the use of humor not light but grim, and Mr. Nolan's attempts to repel only amuse. But one buys the book to read Lowell, and what one reads is surely contemporary poetry of the first rank. After twenty years, this seems for the present generation closer to fact than opinion, though taste in succeeding ones will doubtless fluctuate. For the present...
Although the Lampoon has made it up to the decent mark, it is useless to pretend that it is much of a provocative humor magazine. Like all Lampoonsthis issue has a few strong points, but the magazine needs more visual pep-cartoons, maybe photographs-and a less staid layout. But basically, what the 'Poon needs is more talent to widen the nucleus of good writers which has kept a spark of life in this year's issues...
...method by which Joyce presents his data is nearly as significant as the data itself, for the method is the electronic joke, and Joyce uses is masterfully. In The Medium is the Massage McLuhan explains that "older societies thrived on purely literary plots. They demanded story lines. Today's humor, on the contrary, has no story line-no sequence. It is usually a compressed overlay of stories." The electronic joke, in other words, is the pun. The humor arises from the superimposition of different ideas. The book-age man, listening with eyes that can only focus on one idea...
McLuhan has a sense of humor that is somewhat zany and heavy-handed, and he has a prose style to match.Understanding Media violates many of the traditions of linear prose, and it need not be read from beginning to end. McLuhan makes every page stand on its own and the pages can be read in almost random order. But to accomplish this he is forced to repeat again and again his basic principles. The aphorisms, particularly "the medium is the message," are recited with such frequency that they become completely unchallengeable. The material presented, however, is sufficiently interesting that this...
McLuhan believes that learning has traditionally been a glum affair, aimed at "serious" students. The most effective weapon for attacking the contemporary environment, he says, is humor. The humor he uses is often outlandish, but this is hardly surprising when one considers that the humorist is a romantic-revolutionary-reactionary who believes that the "science-fiction" technology of the present and future will enable us to recreate a beautiful and protective past...