"A brilliant and groundbreaking book."— Adam Kirsch, author of The People and the Books
"Thoughtful.… Fascinating."— Mark Horowitz New York Times Book Review
"A serious study, and most interesting at its most serious and obscure."— Cathleen Schine New York Review of Books
"Both erudite and breezy.… Dauber’s breadth left me breathless and his depth left me in his debt."— Adam Rovner Forward
"A serious and good philosophical work… that doesn’t consist entirely of jokes but has an awful lot of them in it.… Some of its jokes are laugh-out-loud funny, and some of them are poignantly beautiful."— David Baddiel Times Literary Supplement
"An excellent new survey of Jewish humor from the Old Testament through Adam Sandler."— Joseph Epstein Weekly Standard
"A comprehensive, accessible treatment of a complex subject. As the famous 1960s ad campaign for Levy’s rye bread told us, you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy it."— Harvey Freedenberg BookPage
"Hugely smart and hugely readable.… Here is a serious book full of the reasons Jewish humor is as funny and influential as it is, whether it’s a response to persecution or a social satire or intellectual or raunchy or ironic or folksy."— Jeff Simon Buffalo News
"Sharp and wide-ranging.… Dauber finds comedy in unexpected places."— Adam Wilson Bookforum
"This book is brilliant, endlessly revelatory, and Jeremy Dauber is that rare scholar and critic of real depth who doesn’t just make his subject accessible but animates it with the strength of his prose. He’s also one of the few writers I’ve encountered who can explain a joke without killing it. Bravo."— Sam Lipsyte, author of The Fun Parts
In a major work of scholarship both erudite and very funny, Jeremy Dauber traces the origins of Jewish comedy and its development from Biblical times to the age of Twitter.
Organizing his book thematically into what he calls the seven strands of Jewish comedy-including the satirical, the witty, and the vulgar-Dauber explores the ways Jewish comedy has dealt with persecution, assimilation, and diaspora through the ages. He explains the rise and fall of popular comic archetypes such as the Jewish mother, the JAP, and the schlemiel and schlimazel. And he explores an enormous range of comic masterpieces, from the Book of Esther, Talmudic rabbi jokes, Yiddish satires, Borscht Belt skits, Seinfeld, and Curb Your Enthusiasm to the work of such masters as Sholem Aleichem, Franz Kafka, the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Joan Rivers, Philip Roth, Sarah Silverman, and Jon Stewart.
In a major work of scholarship both erudite and very funny, Jeremy Dauber traces the origins of Jewish comedy and its development from Biblical times to the age of Twitter.
Organizing his book thematically into what he calls the seven strands of Jewish comedy-including the satirical, the witty, and the vulgar-Dauber explores the ways Jewish comedy has dealt with persecution, assimilation, and diaspora through the ages. He explains the rise and fall of popular comic archetypes such as the Jewish mother, the JAP, and the schlemiel and schlimazel. And he explores an enormous range of comic masterpieces, from the Book of Esther, Talmudic rabbi jokes, Yiddish satires, Borscht Belt skits, Seinfeld, and Curb Your Enthusiasm to the work of such masters as Sholem Aleichem, Franz Kafka, the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Joan Rivers, Philip Roth, Sarah Silverman, and Jon Stewart.
Editorial Reviews
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940169636758 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 10/31/2017 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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