Wisecracks

I enjoyed this book. The subject matter is interesting with some strong opinions, not necessarily aimed to make the author popular. Some opinions are supported by facts, some are speculation. But Dr. Shoemaker is always clear when he is speculating, which I appreciated. I also appreciated that the book does not get bogged down in philosophical jargon; the writing is clear and concise and a background in philosophy is not required. One might think that a book on wisecracks would be funny, but this book generally isn’t and it isn’t meant to be, as far as I could tell. This is hardcore philosophy. But some of the cited jokes are funny and Shoemaker does have a good sense of humour, when he shares it. I also recommend reading the acknowledgements, which helped place the book in context. Thank you to Netgalley and University of Chicago Press for the digital review copy.

David Shoemaker is a much-published philosopher and a Professor at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University, and in our modern reality of social media piling-on and cancel culture, he was interested in investigating what role humour (specifically wisecracks) plays in human interaction and whether there is something objectively valuable about this kind of “put down” humour that could speak back to the “prigs” with their efforts to silence others with a blanket “There’s nothing funny about ______” attitude. Wisecracks is the result of that investigation, and as Shoemaker is a fan of wisecracking humour himself, he entertainingly balances scholarship with snark and assembles what I found to be a compelling argument in favour of this type of joking around. This is exactly the sort of thing I like to read about, and it was well done.