I decided to do my final reading
reflection blog as kind of a reflection across the entire semester. So, here’s
my spiel about every reading we’ve done this semester….
We all remember starting with Morreall.
None of us really liked him. It took him 20 pages to say what he could’ve said
in three. As a student in the Schieffer School, that especially pushed my
buttons because I’ve been taught to write tightly. Nevertheless, I think he had
some good things to say and some interesting thoughts about humor theories. I
particularly enjoyed reading about the evolution of laughter from the play mode
onward. I wish there was some way to cut down on the sheer amount of pages we
had to read, as I often found myself counting pages instead of actually
enjoying the material. I don’t know that there is a way to cut down on Morreall
in the future, however. If there is a way, I suggest doing that. Less is really
more when it comes to busy students (especially if we’re expected to really
digest and think about the material).
Next we read stories from The 50 Funniest American Writers. I have
to admit, when we first began reading stories from this book, I was not
impressed. I was actually even frustrated. I didn’t find any of the stories
funny at first. The story we read about the family vacation was downright
disturbing to me. Like, really, truly, disturbing. It made no sense to me why a
person riding next to a corpse for a few hours in a car was something to laugh
at. By the time we got to the story about the difference between men and women
in relationships, however, I really began to enjoy the book. Everything we read
after that was hilarious to me. I’m going to look through the book more this
summer to see what other potentially humorous stories are in there, because I
enjoyed the ones that made me laugh so much.
After The
50 Funniest American Writers came Slaughterhouse-Five.
Many of my classmates didn’t enjoy this book, but I actually found it very
entertaining. This was actually my favorite book we read throughout the course.
I think the reason so many people didn’t like it is because it’s based upon
dark humor. In my experience, dark humor is kind of hit and miss with people.
Either they find it hilarious, or completely unentertaining. It’s kind of the
same thing that happens with dry humor; some people like it and some people
don’t. I don’t think Dr. Williams was wrong for introducing this type of humor
to us, however. I think it’s a type of humor we all should be exposed to,
because it clearly does exist in the world. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the
book, having a deep and meaningful class discussion on it (that seemed to be
the only really deep conversation we had over a reading this semester), and
doing the “Life of Meaning” blog project based on Slaughterhouse-Five. Everything surrounding this book was really
enjoyable for me, and I wish that more of my classmates had found the
experience as enjoyable as I did.
But, we all have our likes and dislikes,
as I clearly found out when we got to reading The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain. I absolutely hated this book.
Downright hated it. This book also seemed to be hit or miss with the class, but
unfortunately, it was a miss for me. I found no point whatsoever in reading a
bunch of random quotations from Mark Twain, most of which I found neither
profound nor funny. What really made me angry, however, was getting to class
and finding out the book Dr. Williams wanted us to read appeared to only be
30-40 pages in length. I wasted several hours reading over 300 pages of
meaningless quotes, and it was worth completely nothing, because I wasn’t even supposed to read that many! This is
where ISBN numbers come in handy, and why I would’ve really appreciated them in
the syllabus. I could’ve been saved so much time and frustration had I known
which edition of the book I was supposed to read.
ISBN numbers would’ve come in handy on a
lot of our readings this year, actually. I really enjoyed reading Tales of Juha, but it was hard to follow
along in class because none of us knew what page which story was on because we
all had different editions of the book. Nevertheless, Juha was an entertaining
character for me, and I appreciated learning from him. I feel like I learned a
lot about humor, not only in the Arab culture, but around the world. Every
country/culture has its own Juha. We all have our fables that we use to teach
children, and I found it extremely interesting to see a huge collection of them
all put together. I think Juha did a good job addressing all sorts of humor,
from witty puns to taboo humor. I wish we could’ve had a major in-depth
discussion over this book like we had over Slaughterhouse-Five,
but, unfortunately, that didn’t happen. In the future, I think many things can
be done with this book in Lit and Civ, so I hope Dr. Williams keeps it and
discusses it more with future students (should he continue to go with a humor
theme).
The only other readings we did were from Only Joking and Anguished English. I have to say that I really enjoyed these books
as well. I wish we could’ve read more from Only
Joking, though I do understand it’s a costly book. I understand Dr. William’s
concern for offending us, as well, but I do think we’re all adults here, and,
as honors students, have the capacity to study potentially offensive material
in a professional manner. We can’t be shielded from offensive material when we
get out into the real world, so I think it’s good for us to discuss this type
of material in a healthy and safe environment (that way we know how to deal
with it when we get into the real world). As far as Anguished English goes, I really enjoyed starting every Wednesday
with readings from that book, and wish it would’ve been longer. I’ll definitely
be keeping that book to look at in the future for a good laugh.
The readings this semester were kind of
all over the place for most of us, I think. I feel like we all had readings we
absolutely loved and readings we didn’t like so much. I appreciate the fact
that we were exposed to so many different styles of humor, and looking back, I
only wish we had gotten the chance to dissect the readings more in class.
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