I highly recommend Enzio Busche’s autobiographical book Yearning for the Living God. He tells a wonderful story of casting an evil spirit out of a missionary; I hate to even summarize it because it needs to be told in his words. But he makes the point that the adversary does not have a sense of humor.

There are parts of the scriptures that definitely make me laugh, although like someone said I don’t know if I think the writers meant for it to be funny. One that comes to mind was Jeremiah, who was approached by a group of those left in Jerusalem after many had been taken captive. IIRC, they wanted Jeremiah to ask the Lord what they should do. He said, no, you won’t listen. They said, “please, please, we promise we’ll do whatever you say!” So he does, and comes back and tells them “whatever you do, don’t go to Egypt or you’ll be killed.” “WHAT?” they respond. “God did not tell you that!” And they go to Egypt.

“But behold, they were Nephites.” There was some kind of disguise intrigue. Throwing down the rocks at their will and pleasure. Well, I can’t do it, but trust me, it’s screamingly funny.

Or the bit with the fortified wine, and the guards want to skim a bit of it, and the pranksters say “no, this is for a special occasion” but that only made them more desirous…

And I agree with your assessment of Everybody Loves Raymond. I’m trying to figure out why the relationship humor there is skin-crawling, but Dr. Cox’s relationship with his wife (and others) in Scrubs doesn’t bother me — and is often funny.

I do think the kind of quick-witted dialog found in old black & white movies has come back to television. I’m not sure about novels. It is much harder to get that sort of thing to work in a novel without coming off as coy and cloying. I think the best kind of novel humor is the kind of humor found in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell where the humor is very, very, very dry. But then one must be Jane Austen in order to write it. (Which could explain the billions of books out there which re-use her plots.)

It also explains why Jezebel got so mad. Sure, he killed her priests, but he TAUNTED them first.

BTW, Elijah’s prodigy is Elisha who gets bears to maul the rude “youths” (i.e. teenagers). You gotta love these guys.

I would like to believe God has a sense of humor.

Funny books I’ve read: Marley the world’s most terrible dog, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, and The Last Juror all made me laugh out loud. Also, the couple of chapters I read in Augesten Burroughs book (before the explicit gay sex parts)made me laugh out loud.

I heard Chris Rock say once that black people are the hardest to make laugh. It’s got to be really funny before they laugh out loud. That’s me. Attempts at humor, or books discussing humor are not funny. Bright cheerful books (lots of LDS fiction)masquerade as humor, but are seldom really funny.

I’m with the ancient Greeks.

“In the land of the Chaldeans, at the residence of my fathers, I, Abraham, saw that it was needful for me to obtain another place of residence;”

It initially reads like a “ho-hum, time to move along” statement, but then a few verses later you read about how the corrupt priests had nearly killed him, and his life was still in danger, and he had to get the hell out of Dodge in order to just breathe the next day. “Needful” to find a new place of “residence” indeed!

It was a pleasure reading your post, Eugene, and I found a lot to enjoy in the comments too.

We might have to agree to differ on the subject of comedy in the Bible (I tend to feel that we are capable of finding great humour in the Bible, but that the writers, too in awe of their great subject perhaps, didn’t intentionally put the humour there).

I agree with you on the longing for “wild men”, the cultural need for “wild men”, in every generation, as the culture grows tired and craves renewal. (Art and culture, like everything else, follow an endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.)

And I was fascinated by Kate’s idea that US medical dramas were smuggling the Shakespearean fool back onto primetime TV. Because we need the characters who:

“…say things other people don’t admit/want to hear.”

I love the sound of Eric Thompson’s script too.

And I agree with R.W. Rasband about A Confederacy of Dunces, so funny and so heartbreaking…

Best of luck with the site, it’s great,

-Julian Gough, Berlin