| Author | Message | ||
     Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 62.121.31.177 |
My latest blog entry is a defence of puns and wordplay in general. Some of the greatest authors in history have been punsters. My blog entry includes my selection of the five best novels that utilise wordgames... http://rhysaurus.blogspot.com/ What is your general feeling about wordgames in fiction? Bonus or distraction? Pompous or generous? Smart or smartarse? Has anyone out there ever read Finnegan's Wake? This is a subject dear to my heart... | ||
| Skip (Wolfnoma) Username: Wolfnoma Registered: 07-2010 Posted From: 216.54.20.98 |
I enjoy puns as well, speaking of which here is one of my favorites; A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel, and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office, and asked them to disperse. "But why?}" they asked, as they moved off. "Because," he said. "I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer." | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.238.145 |
I actually read Finnegans Wake all the way through, every word, when I was on a break from graduate school. I did it just to do it, to say I did it... so, okay, I guess I can say I did it. What did I actually understand of it? On my own? Oh, about .01. In the last section, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker starts to wake up from his dream - the entire novel is a one-night dream of his - and so, as lucidity starts to enter, the novel briefly becomes grok-able. But other'n that... I couldn't tell you WHAT the hell was going on. The book did nothing but make me even more  . | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 12.165.240.116 |
I loathe puns. Can't stand them. People fond of sprinkling their sentences with puns annoy the heck out of me. And yet ... I love Groucho Marx, Vladimir Nabokov, Martin Amis, Thomas Pynchon, and Donald Barthelme, among others, all skilled punsters. Somehow these writers make the whole thing palatable. Why the contradiction? I guess literary wordplay strikes me as fundamentally different from conversational wordplay. The former suggests an artist at play; the latter, an egomaniac with his head in the clouds, incapable of contributing to a discussion. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.9.39 |
Wouldn't Groucho Marx qualify as "conversational wordplay"? Oscar Wilde sort of bridges the gap between the conversational and the literary as well. I think it's all in the substance of what's said. | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 12.165.240.116 |
>> Wouldn't Groucho Marx qualify as "conversational wordplay"? If I were having a normal, everyday conversation with him (and if he responded as "Groucho") he would probably annoy the heck out of me. But in the context of his artistic work, I'd say he wouldn't qualify, no. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.184.58 |
Rhys, this is a subject on which I have strong feelings not dissimilar to your own. But it's late and I'm very tired. I'll get back to you. Puns are my life. (Only RCMB veterans will appreciate that that statement is no exaggeration.) | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.90.14 |
To me, puns feel like flat-pack, easy-assemble humour. They're everything comedy shouldn't be: inelegant, irrelevant to life and devoid of emotion. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I edge towards having a similar opinion to Proto - puns don't really do much for me, I'm afraid. Apart from make me groan in despair. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.13.40 |
But what are all your attitudes towards mondagreens, paraprosdokians, and eggcorns? Let alone, feghoots. (all cribbed from Wikipedia - me, I'm particularly fond of the paraprosdokian. Lots of humorous examples there - this one particularly made me laugh: "It's too bad that whole families have to be torn apart by something as simple as wild dogs." — Jack Handey)  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.139.141 |
I've noted before that my life was changed by the Puffin Club – not only the suberb books it turned me on to in the early 1970s as an embryonic weird fiction fan, but the wise and witty leadership of Kaye Webb (founder of Puffin Books, and onetime girlfriend of Walter de la Mare) and the amazing competitions. One of the latter involved drawing/painting and describing original teapots. One of the winners was a severely cracked teapot with the caption 'Porcelain Teapot'. Imagine very small Joel with lightbulb suddenly glowing over his head. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.104.135.73 |
The Moomins did it for me. I can remember sitting on the foor listening to the teacher and being transported to that wonderful place. Hooked from that moment on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moomin | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.48.128 |
As you say, Joel, I think puns are great for children, as they're playing with the building blocks of language. But Peter Jones from Dragon's Den mistaking TALES FROM THE CRYPT level puns for wit evokes only dyspepsia. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.48.128 |
Nobody in history has ever laughed at a pun. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
Bullshit. i laff at them all the time. I love 'em | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
Proto rests his case. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
Only needs one person to prove a stupid blanket statement like Proto's wrong. Plenty of peeps here laugh at puns. I've seen you put your Lol emoticons up at plenty of Joels efforts, even mine on occasion. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
I can get high off language -- if it is employed in a particular way. The works of Julián Ríos have this effect on me; and he does it mainly (but not only) with puns. It's not a case of Ríos just making the occasional single pun and then sitting back and waiting for the reader's 'groan reflex' as it sinks in... Books such as Larva: A Midsummer Night's Babel or Poundemonium utilise hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of puns relentlessly -- and the language becomes a sort of flowing music. I find it impossible not to get caught up in the current of his prose. Larva: A Midsummer Night's Babel is paerticularly impressive. Each pun (and nearly every other word is a pun) has an explanatory note printed in lists on the facing page, and these notes are also full of puns, some of them with explanatory footnotes of their own, and some of those footnotes are full of puns that have their own endnotes. Some people may find this irritating; but I find it enthralling. It's simultaneously a linear and non-linear reading experience. But the most remarkable thing of all is that the book still manages to present a coherent and fascinating story! | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.68 |
I've certainly laughed at puns. Bob Shaw made me, and so did John Brunner, not to mention the Kenneth Horne shows. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
I still haven't found the "famous" pun in Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light novel, despite browsing it extensively in the search. Looks like I'm going to have to read it properly, cover to cover... Well that's no chore! Zelazny was a master! | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.223.50 |
I've never seen it happen. Masochistic groans, but never true laughter. But then I've never heard one from Messrs. Shaw or Brunner. (Maybe it takes a true messr to make one. That might work if the word "messer" means the same thing in your country as it does in mine. There's another thing - puns don't travel well.) They seem mechanical to me. One could write a program to perform metathesis and Spoonerisms on any input sentence, cross-correlate with double-meanings and output a number of "jokes". It seems to me that it's a cruder form of humour, less evolved than even toilet humour perhaps. A machine could never run around with its crotch on fire. Well it could, but it wouldn't be funny. Damn, that would be funny. But it wouldn't be funny if the machine had no character. I guess that's the problem with puns - they tell us nothing about character, when even toilet humour does. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
See Ambrose Bierce's "Exile of Erin" joke in The Devil's Dictionary. Wonderful. My chief mentor in pundom was my father. I remember him remarking to me that whereas the greatest modern French writers were left-wing, the greatest modern British writers were right-wing. As I pondered this apparently complex and contentious statement, he added: "So we lose the Bataille but win the Waugh." Puns are not to groan at. They are moments of pure joy, semantic fireworks, linguistic canapes. Though where I live, 'canapes' is something you would heat up to eat with a pie. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.148 |
That "Exile of Erin" entry is very good. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
"They're everything comedy shouldn't be: inelegant, irrelevant to life and devoid of emotion." The only thing humour should be is funny. Elegance certainly isn't required. Certainly not. As any fan of the Inbetweeners (and I know there's quite a few on this board) will tell you, it only needs Jay's stray hairy bollock poking out of his speedos for the whole school to see at the fashion show and you've got one of the funniest TV moments this year. I'd definitely argue with you that puns aren't elegant. Some of them aren't, but some definitely are - check out most of Joels... | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.143.178.131 |
Puns and word play are a joy and you only have to listen to the classic Round The Horne episodes to appreciate that. I came to that show late on through the digital radio repeats on BBC 7, but it made me realise what a true comic genius Kenneth Williams was. An extraordinary talent, along with Marty Feldman. Also, a very good comedian for puns and wordplay is Milton Jones. I prefer him to the slightly more relentless Tim Vine. There's something almost lyrical about his act. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.33.242.34 |
The Moomins did it for me. I can remember sitting on the foor listening to the teacher and being transported to that wonderful place. Hooked from that moment on. I never realised The Moomins was full of puns and wordplay, but perhaps Richard Murdoch didn't make the most of them in his TV narration (I never read the books) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.31.223 |
One of my tutors used to tell me not to confuse puns with genuine humour. She never did unpack the statement. Anyway, I think puns are a bit like horror fiction. When they're great, they're great; but all too often they're misused, as in cheap innuendo and vulgarities. As a final word on them: I seem to recall some wit responding to the claim that puns are the lowest form of humour by saying, "Well then, they're also the foundation of all comedy." | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
Joel - do you not think that some puns are therefore only possible according to the knowledge of those it's aimed at? | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.143.178.131 |
I like a good double entendre too: A woman walks into a bar and asks for a double entendre. So the landlord gives her one. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
The best thing about Double entendres is that they only mean one thing... | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.143.178.131 |
Also, for genius puns see any strip by Cat Sullivan in Viz. Though he's not as punny as he used to be. He also does a brilliant wee strip for 2000 AD called Droid Life. My favourite of which features Rouge Warriror, the future soldier looking for that perfect shade of lippy. There's also Nemesis The Horlicks, who bursts into your room at night, wielding a sword and offering you a nice soothing milky drink. (and yes, I realise someone's going to go fnarr fnarr at that). | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
One of my favourite TV shows for wordplay at the moment is Not Going Out, a BBC sitcom with Lee Mack and Tim Vine A typical exchange – Tim is trying to get Lee to fill in a survey about his diet. Tim – How many cups of coffee do you drink in a day, between 1 and 2… Lee – Eight Tim – You drink 8 cups of coffee a day? Lee – No, I drink 8 coffees between 1 and 2 Tim – So how many do you drink in a day? Lee – 36 Tim – My god, how do you sleep at night? Lee – It’s fair trade coffee. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.164.128 |
"One of my tutors used to tell me not to confuse puns with genuine humour. She never did unpack the statement." I agree with that. They use the same mechanism that comedy often uses, but that doesn't mean they are actually comedy. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
Yeah, but you've never had a sense of humour Proto | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
 | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.109.145.132 |
Bit baffled by your statement Proto, as comedy is such a subjective thing. I've seen acts whose main currency in laughs are puns, so that would suggest that would be genuine humour involved. If you don't like puns, fair enough, but it doesn't mean that they're not humorous or a valid part of comedy. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
The only things which fail to convince me of having any comedic value are Jim Davidson and Roy Chubby Brown. | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.109.145.132 |
Who aren't the only comedians to use them, and then they usually use them to make crude references to sex or racism. Go listen to or watch some Milton Jones or Tim Vine. Or go back to the best of the Round the Horne radio series. Or go to the brilliantly strange world of Emo Phillips. There are many comedians who are farcleverer and subtler with words than those two. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.246.35 |
The mechanism is similar to that of an optical illusion - viewing something one way and then having that view turn itself sideways. If it's just words that do that, I find that dry and irrelevant and, basically, not funny. Amusing, perhaps, but not nothing that's going to have a physical effect on me. | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.109.145.132 |
Fair enough. Seems a bit of an odd view of the workings of comedy to me. But whatever floats your boat. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
Jonathan - the Jim Davidson and Chubby Brown comments were in no way connected to the ongoing debate about puns. I was just 'steering' the conversation into a direction about truly bad comedy. If it can at all be labelled such. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.104.135.73 |
John... Joel...'I've noted before that my life was changed by the Puffin Club – not only the suberb books it turned me on to in the early 1970s as an embryonic weird fiction fan, but the wise and witty leadership of Kaye Webb (founder of Puffin Books, and onetime girlfriend of Walter de la Mare) and the amazing competitions. One of the latter involved drawing/painting and describing original teapots. One of the winners was a severely cracked teapot with the caption 'Porcelain Teapot'. Imagine very small Joel with lightbulb suddenly glowing over his head.' Then my reply to that..... 'The Moomins did it for me. I can remember sitting on the foor listening to the teacher and being transported to that wonderful place. Hooked from that moment on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moomin' | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.143.76 |
Yes, it was a lateral response to what I'd said: picking up on the theme of early Puffin books (around the time the puffin logo got smaller and cuter than it had originally been). Whereas the landlord's The Inhabitant of the Lake was a littoral reponse to Lovecraft. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.251.14 |
Double entendres are not usually puns, because they tend to play on different meanings of the same word rather than on different words that sound similar. The best double entendres play so skilfully with phrases that no single word carries the weight of double meaning – the last verse of Ray Davies' 'Lola' is a brilliant example. Another is Kenneth Williams, in role as Sandy, explaining about his law firm: "We have a criminal practice that takes up most of our time." Both "criminal" and "practice" are being used ambiguously, and the long tail of the sentence resonates and shivers as a consequence. Don't get me started on the joys of camp. We'll be here all night. Again. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.251.14 |
Oh all right then. Camp can be the most delicate, bittersweet kind of humour. Think of Denton Welch describing a twilit Mediterranean beach with a single distant boat "returning another ineligible bachelor to the prose of shore". Or another favourite moment: Jean Genet, in a work of purported non-fiction, describing how he picked up a sailor in the port of Briest at dead of night and handcuffed him to a lamp-post – so far, with the sailor's full consent – and then simply removed his wallet. As he walked away, counting the banknotes, his victim called after him: "Won't you just let me suck you off?" Unforgettable. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.245.192 |
I think most double entrendes are too obvious. I like to really couch mine as much as possible, such as.... "Hey there, pretty lady. You mind if I lay my Le Pére Goriot on your Critique of Practical Reason?" | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.245.192 |
If I get a confused response (inevitably), I lay my ready book down, and say, "Tell you what. How much to push my Bleak House?" | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.31.223 |
Interesting thread. But as the Frenchman said after a modest breakfast, "Un oeuf is enough." | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
Agree, before I slip into a self-induced coma. NB: Kenneth Williams was a great comedian, but a lot of stage material was written for him by other comedians. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.21 |
As Oscar Wilde said, upon his release from prison and after being caught in a hotel with a groom: "When starting anew, I always begin at the bottom of the page." | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.57.89 |
Joel, have you read / heard any material by David Sedaris? I've been listening to his audiobooks and it's been a long while since I've laughed so hard and then been pounded like a church bell by bathos. I love the sound of his sister too. He describes her walking around wearing makeup that makes it look as if she's been beaten up. When anyone asks her what happened, she just turns to them with a huge smile giddy with excitement: "I'm SO in love." | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
Thanks for all these comments, folks! I wasn't expecting much of a response -- so it has been great to witness so much interest! Very gratifying indeed... However, I'm wondering if we have fallen into the trap of considering puns in isolation -- as an end in themselves? One of the things I'm more interested in than puns-for-puns'-sake is the notion of the pun as a bonus. Let's imagine a text without any wordplay (The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis, for instance) and let us call this text, "T(0)". Now imagine the same text telling the same story but with wordplay (including puns) and let us call this new text, "T(p)". Which would you rather read? T(0) or T(p)? The wordplay and puns in T(p) are there simply as a bonus -- the plot and characters are identical. So which would you prefer, if you had to read one or the other? I'll be very interested indeed to hear your answers... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.31.223 |
T(p) for me. I love it when writers have fun with language. Such as Amis calling a new hair-do a "rug rethink". Class. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 89.19.74.173 |
T(p) = f(homonyms) T(p) != f(character) T(p) => distraction from plot,  T(0) > T(p). Quod erat demonstrandum. (I can cut and paste Latin from the web. Impressive, eh?) | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 89.19.74.173 |
That "therefore" wasn't meant to be so prominent. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-09-17 Nice play on words in here today | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
Proto: so in your view... d (distraction) T(0) > T(p) because (d) Well, that's an answer, of course. But surely distraction is under the control of the reader? You can choose not to be distracted, can't you? If you don't like T(p) can't you edit it in your mind as you read to convert it into T(0)? We choose to be distracted: it's not something that's ever forced upon us. Imagine that you earn £18,000 per annum for your work; and you are given a Christmas bonus of £250. Do you believe that this extra £250 somehow distracts from the £18,000? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.242.129 |
"Un oeuf is enough." Sure. That's kinda funny.  And the other funny ones here are... meh. What's the point of et al.? | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
Please, can somebody start an argument. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.31.223 |
No, they can't! | ||
| Skip (Wolfnoma) Username: Wolfnoma Registered: 07-2010 Posted From: 216.54.20.98 |
How about some puns then? | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.151.175 |
"Imagine that you earn £18,000 per annum for your work; and you are given a Christmas bonus of £250. Do you believe that this extra £250 somehow distracts from the £18,000?" If the extra £250 was broken into coins and each one firmly sellotaped to every note of the £18,000, then yes. |