RoR: Forum

Jake was not trying to be sarcastic in the proper sense of sarcastic. If here were, he would have said something like, "Oh, that was a great post," with the sarcastically ironic implication that it was not. He was only, and quite successfully, ironic. It was my fault for using sarcasm in the loose and inaccurate sense that it is used, when ironic was the proper word.

Jake's post was hilarious, and my response was meant in kind.

Post 21

Monday, June 22, 2009 - 3:54pm

Steve,

Funny stories. And I'd agree that "dry" humor is oblique. It doesn't give the the punch line straight on. It just leads you to the general vicinity and points. The rest of the journey is yours, and so you are rewarded not only by the enlightenment, but by a small sense of accomplishment. Now that's Objectivist humor!

: )

jt

Post 22

Monday, June 22, 2009 - 5:06pm

Authur Koeslter's Act of Creation has this on puns:

"The pun is the bisociation of a single phonetic form with two meanings - two strings of thought tied together with one accoustic knot." He went on to write of a series of pun-like humor that stretch from simple plays on words that sound the same, to the play on ideas, like this one: "The superego is that part of the personality which is soluable in alchol." He writes that the concept 'soluable' is bisociated between the chemical laboratory procedure and the Freudian view of the (metaphorical) dissolution of virtue when under the influence.

Robert punned us with a bisociation of two different uses of "lowest" (Lowest on the scale of wittiness, versus lowest on the scale of civility)
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In the world of art, the sister of the pun is the rhyme. (Koestler)

Post 23

Monday, June 22, 2009 - 5:26pm

Ted,

I agree that the intended structure is more irony than sarcasm - but it is easy to mistake it for just sarcasm - all you have to do is not 'get' the irony part. And I still maintain that the structure isn't adequate to let most people 'get' that it is ironic.

And as Jake says in his reply, he intended a variant of sarcastic irony. The irony makes it a joke - and that allows to sarcasm to be dismissed as purposely untrue. Without the irony it would definitely be categorized as tearing out a chunk of flesh.

Post 24

Monday, June 22, 2009 - 5:53pm

In the world of art, the sister of the pun is the rhyme. (Koestler)
..........

Offhand, do not agree... or else not understand his meaning... rhyme was a methodology to remember metered condensed messaging, of experiences or events, or instructions, in a world which at that time did not have written language... even today, poetry is properly a verbal messaging, despite it being able to be written...

Post 25

Monday, June 22, 2009 - 6:26pm

Robert,

You'd need to understand the premise of Koestler's Act of Creation. The act he speaks of is in our mind, it is the "Ah Ha" instant that occurs when we have a new thought, when we grasp the essence of a work of art, or when we get a joke. It is an intellectual/emotional instant born of certain kinds of mental processes.

He makes an argument that humor, discovery, and art are all related in the sense of being different kinds of acts of creation. He shows links between types of humor, types of discovery and types of art. He ties them together with identifications of the mental processes and the results - in the way that ideas or stimuli are juxtaposed to trigger an identification.

I believe that Koestler is saying the same series of mental processes are at work with a getting a pun and having an emotional reaction to the rhyme in a poem. I'm not sure on this, and you would probably need to read him, since I'm not doing his theories justice here.

Post 26

Monday, June 22, 2009 - 7:05pm