Where Does Humor Come From?

[Jean Riva]

I landed on Amazon.com today by accident when I clicked on what I thought was a joke. The Amazon page I found myself on listed 3,259 books on the topic of learning how to write humor and that got me to thinking---I know, that's a rare occasion but I do have my moments. Anyway, is it possible to learn how to be funny from a book? Has anyone here ever read a book on writing humor? And if you have, would you recommend it?

I just counted the books in my library on various aspects of learning how to write and I have thirty-six but not one on humor. I've always thought that humor comes from conditioning i.e. growing up in a family that sees humor more easily than others or you become a class clown to cover up for some perceived shortcoming. Where does humor come from?---in general and yours personally.

3,259 humor writing books

[Jean Riva]

Jane, I love these line: "One yells, the other bites. Neither one seems to be fighting fair." I'm not knowledgeable enough to figure out the answer to your original question about why people made apologetic comments for laughing at this article. But I do know one thing: anyone should have known from the title that it was meant to be funny thus no apology was necessary. People. Who knows what goes through their minds. I'm glad I'm an alien from the Planet Aphasia.

[Jean Riva]

Randy--- You're running ahead of schedule here. As babies we're highly amused by our toes, then we're suppose to forget about them for 70 years before we start contemplating them again. Didn't you ever wonder what all those old people in nursing homes are doing as they sit lined up in their wheelchairs, heads bowed and staring at their open toed slippers?

[jcorn]

Lol!