Author Description

Part I: Starters -- No End Of Jokes: The Lies Of The Land, Evolving Jokes, Folk Journalism, Favorite Incongruities -- A Harmonious Human Multitude: Franklin: Muddied Giant, Teachers, Varied Masks, Franklin's Monsters--and Some Offspring -- Cast Typing: John Wesley Jarvis, Storyteller, Mike Fink, David Versus Davy, Davy Versus Captain Fear Of Hell's Gulch, Davy Ii, Davy Iii, And Mose -- Part Ii: The Golden Age Of American Humor -- A National Phenomenon: Oppositions, Ichabod And Rip -- The Reputables: To Laugh Newenglandly, The Yankee And The Major -- Subversives: The Profile Of A Prude, A Gallery Of Rogues -- Two Masterpieces: The Big Bear Of Arkansas, Sut Lovingood And The End Of The World -- Tall Tales Go West: The Last Frontier -- Derby, Alter Egos: Phoenix And Squibob, Jim Bridger And William Wright -- Part Iii: And The War Came -- Changes In Jokelore: Twilight Of The Comic Demigods, The Local Colorists -- Phunny Phellows: Charles Farrar Browne/ Artemus Ward, Shaw, Locke, And Smith -- Part Iv: Mark Twain -- Mark Twain's Chestnuts: The Jokes That Never Die, Eiron And Alazon, The Art Which The Teller Puts Into The Telling, Mark Twain's Other Masterpiece -- Mark Twain Pioneers: Eirons In The Fire, Nightmares And Silences -- Part V: Into The Twentieth Century -- The Turn Of The Century, 1895-1905: Another Transitional Period, Some Urban Humorists -- Between The Wars: Mass Production Comic Demigod, The Lunatic Fringe: Colyumnists And Algonquin Wits, The New Yorker, Benchley And Perelman, White And Thurber, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty -- Modern Humor: Humor In Fiction, The Great American Novel, Up From The Underground, Cinema, Cartoon, And Stand-up Comic. Walter Blair, Hamlin Hill. Includes Index. Bibliography: P. 531-546.