Point of Balance

There is a destiny which seems to overtake men who write seriously about humor. Aristotle by some mercy escaped; his treatise on comedy disappeared. But Bergson attempted a philosophy of humor, and the result was more humorous than philosophical. It is therefore an invitation to misgivings, or to something more serious, for a man to tell us openly in a subtitle that his book is about “laughter and the absurd.” Yet this is exactly what Michael Mason does in The Centre of Hilarity (Sheed and Ward, $4.50).

Yet immediately Mr. Cason restores confidence. The book is about humor as “play”—a concept which not only deepens the issues but, with a wrench, integrates humor into a larger scene and balance. For “play” includes the body’s fidgetings, the mind’s anomalies, and the entire dialectic of reality, as well as the comedian’s epigram. Bergson began with the physical and literal act of laughter—thus demonstrating the bankruptcy of an “empirical” approach which ignores instinct in the name of science. Everyone knows that humor goes deeper into man than the perfunctory reaction of the body. One can read a whole Dickens novel without a sound, yet swim in a weightless world. Not laughter but levity is the test: that buoyancy which made Ruskin dance when he studied Tintoretto’s brushwork, that rising of the energies which saner if less brilliant Frenchmen than Bergson call joie de vivre.

GW

About the Author

Garry Wills

Featured Tags

There is a destiny which seems to overtake men who write seriously about humor. Aristotle by some mercy escaped; his treatise on comedy disappeared. But Bergson attempted a philosophy of humor, and the result was more humorous than philosophical. It is therefore an invitation to misgivings, or to something more serious, for a man to tell us openly in a subtitle that his book is about “laughter and the absurd.” Yet this is exactly what Michael Mason does in The Centre of Hilarity (Sheed and Ward, $4.50).

Yet immediately Mr. Cason restores confidence. The book is about humor as “play”—a concept which not only deepens the issues but, with a wrench, integrates humor into a larger scene and balance. For “play” includes the body’s fidgetings, the mind’s anomalies, and the entire dialectic of reality, as well as the comedian’s epigram. Bergson began with the physical and literal act of laughter—thus demonstrating the bankruptcy of an “empirical” approach which ignores instinct in the name of science. Everyone knows that humor goes deeper into man than the perfunctory reaction of the body. One can read a whole Dickens novel without a sound, yet swim in a weightless world. Not laughter but levity is the test: that buoyancy which made Ruskin dance when he studied Tintoretto’s brushwork, that rising of the energies which saner if less brilliant Frenchmen than Bergson call joie de vivre.