Unless you’re one of those tragic souls with no sense of humor, you have a pretty good idea of what’s funny. That might be different from what I find funny, while someone else might be different from both of us. Funny is subjective.

It’s also important.

That’s the thesis of Al Gini’s new book “The Importance of Being Funny: Why We Need More Jokes in Our Lives.” While he doesn’t try to determine the mechanisms of comedy, he does attempt to explore the idea of why comedy matters to us in the first place. Call it the philosophy of funny.

Gini’s stock-in-trade isn’t comedy. It’s philosophy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s a fair degree of overlap between the two disciplines.

Over the course of half-a-dozen breezy, quick-reading chapters, Gini digs into the notion of humor and offers some insight as to how very important it is to the human experience. There’s a little bit of nuts-and-bolts stuff – talk about structure and foundational tenets and whatnot of jokes – but from there, things pretty quickly move in more pop philosophical directions.

To give you an idea, Chapter 3 is titled “Comedy and Coping with Reality.” It explores the idea that jokes and joke telling are a sort of existential safety valve, a way for us to take some kind of charge over things we cannot control or even understand. Truth to power can often be easiest expressed via humor; it’s a way to discuss the deep and dangerous in a relatively low-risk fashion.

Other ideas explored include the concept of the dirty/tasteless/ethnic/otherwise offensive joke, and how there are numerous contexts that drastically influence their impacts – some that are obvious, others not so much. From there, it’s a logical leap to the consideration of ethics in humor, so Gini has a conversation with a colleague about the ethical ramifications of certain types of jokes and what that can mean, both in terms of the teller and the told.

Gini also introduces us to the term “philogagging,” that aforementioned notion of overlap between the realms of philosophy and comedy. A longtime professor, Gini has taken to using jokes to describe his classes and to grab attention and interest via jokes in his lectures. Jokes are the gateway he uses to engage.

And in case you were wondering – yes, there are jokes. A lot of jokes. You’ve got long ones and short ones, knock-knock jokes and shaggy dog stories. Some of them are OK, others approach dad-joke groaner territory. There are even a few that are pretty good.

If “The Importance of Being Funny” sounds a bit academic, well … that’s because it is a bit academic. Not overwhelmingly so – this isn’t some sort of scholarly work – but it’s treating its ideas with intellectual respect.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t readable.

Gini’s writing has a geniality that works nicely with a tricky subject to examine. He’s found a narrow window in which to operate, one in which he’s able to treat his explorations seriously without taking them TOO seriously. His passionate connection with the ideas being expressed goes a long way toward imbuing the book with an energy that it would fall flat without.

If you love comedy and have ever wondered WHY you love it, “The Importance of Being Funny” is for you. It’s a thoughtful and thought-provoking read … and it’s even got a few laughs.

“The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.” - Moliere

In our overly serious, rush rush rush world, finally a practical case made for the virtue of stopping and just laughing at the hundreds of little jokes life presents us every day.

Insightful and humorous look at humor

I enjoyed this book. I will go so far as to say that the only weakness of the book was that it wasn’t longer. I certainly could have read more about the need for and the value and ethics of comedy. Al Gini is a great writer with great insights into comedy. He formalizes the types of things I think about when I hear jokes or stand-up comics. But his book isn’t just theory. He gives a lot of examples of jokes so the book is actually quite funny, sort-of practice what you preach.

When I started reading this book, one of my first thoughts were,"what the heck did I get this for?" Books about jokes and being funny, usually aren't. This started a little rough, but pretty soon I found myself nodding in agreement, and laughing. Sometimes laughing at the old, tried and true. Some new, and a few where I said to myself that I need to remember that one! Yep, I'd recommend this book and author.

There are many potential pitfalls in discussing humour including the fact that humour can be very subjective and that even the funniest material is likely to lose its capacity to amuse when subjected to critical scrutiny. Despite being well aware of these problems Al Gini’s ‘The Importance of Being Funny’ is not wholly successful in avoiding them.

The book does not aspire to be “a complete history or investigation of humour” and Gini expresses a commendable desire “to focus on jokes and joke telling as well as the people who tell jokes.” The book is peppered with jokes and given that some of them originated with such talents as Milton Berle, Bob Hope, Joan Rivers and George Burns, it is highly unlikely that the reader won’t find something that makes them laugh.

Gini is to be commended for including jokes that some will find tasteless, in order to explore what, if anything, is comedically off limits. His conclusion that some jokes may seem funny yet still be “unethical and socially unacceptable” seems judicious.

Gini’s analysis is, however, sometimes open to question. “Today’s professional comedians rarely rattle off one-liners or deliver a long series of disconnected jokes”, he opines. It may indeed be rare but the careers of Stewart Francis, Milton Jones, Tim Vine, Emo Philips and Steven Wright, amongst others, show that this form of stand-up is still far from dead. What is dead, according to Gini, is the practical joke – a statement that surely ignores the Jackass school of comedy. Most tendentiously he asserts that “there is no such thing as a pure joke, a universal joke or a joke that would make sense and be funny to everyone” when the slapstick comedy of the silent cinema clearly had a global audience.

The aspect of the book which severely tries the reader’s – or at least this reader’s – patience is Gini’s ponderous style of writing. This is a brief book but seems much longer given the longwinded way in which even the simplest of ideas is expressed.

To give an example, Gini writes that, “When a joke ‘flops’ - fails - the teller and the told did not connect; for whatever reason, the target audience failed to respond.” This is because “audiences can find a joke … boring, tedious, unsophisticated, offensive or utterly uninteresting.” Do we really need to be told that to flop means to fail, and what is the precise difference between something being “boring, tedious … or … uninteresting”?

Gini can even mindlessly riff on “nothing”:

“Virtually every professional comic has bombed on stage. The lights go up, you’re introduced, you’re in front of the mic, and you’re giving them your best stuff, material that has worked before, and yet … nothing! Literally, nothing! No applause! No laughs! No boos! No heckling! Not even a little nervous coughing.”

It is thus entirely typical that instead of being told that aspiring comedians should “Practice, practice, practice!” Gini says they should “Practice, practice, practice practice, and practice!"

Gini’s regular job is Professor of Business Ethics at the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago and in ‘The Importance of Being Funny’ he admits to lacing his lectures with jokes in an effort to keep his students interested and engaged. After reading this book you’ll know exactly how they feel.

It is important, it really is, to be funny, to see the humorous aspects of things that might not have the immediate comedic appeal if only to make life more bearable. Gini wrote an entire book about it, just basically expanding and waxing philosophic on the basic premise of laughter being awesome. The author's a professor and indeed a lot of the book reads as a sort of how to incorporate funniness into teaching to liven up the class. The rest has to do with such subjects as the ethics of joking, delivery/timing/audience and so on. The book was an easy read and, although somewhat repetitive at times,quick enough not to mind it. The best part was the actual jokes that peppered the narrative. I love jokes, I can only hope some of them will stick in my memory, because there were some pretty good ones in here. So if perceived as a jokes compendium with some additional information on how and when to tell them best, it's a fun and practical book. Read it, delight your friends and charm the pants off of strangers, because funny is the way to go. If they don't laugh, just walk away, you don't want those cheerless sour dour bastards in your life anyway. Thanks Netgalley.