Giveaway: The Pun Also Rises

In combination with my review of The Pun Also Rises I have the opportunity to give away a copy of this incredibly interesting non-fiction book. Click here to read my review.

The summary of the book from Goodreads is:

A former word pun champion's funny, erudite, and provocative exploration of puns, the people who make them, and this derided wordplay's remarkable impact on history.

The pun is commonly dismissed as the lowest form of wit, and punsters are often unpopular for their obsessive wordplay. But such attitudes are relatively recent developments. In The Pun Also Rises, John Pollack-a former World Pun Champion and presidential speechwriter for Bill Clinton-explains why such wordplay is significant: It both revolutionized language and played a pivotal role in making the modern world possible. Skillfully weaving together stories and evidence from history, brain science, pop culture, literature, anthropology, and humor, The Pun Also Rises is an authoritative yet playful exploration of a practice that is common, in one form or another, to virtually every language on earth.

At once entertaining and educational, this engaging book answers fundamental questions: Just what is a pun, and why do people make them? How did punning impact the development of human language, and how did that drive creativity and progress? And why, after centuries of decline, does the pun still matter?

You can win a copy of The Pun Also Rises by leaving a comment letting me know how you feel about puns. You must be a follower to enter. Make sure to include your e-mail so you can be contacted if you win. Winners will have 48 hours to respond or a new one will be picked. This is open to the US and Canada only. No PO Boxes please. It ends May 15th at 11:59 PM MST.

Author Guest Post: John Pollack

The Best Puns

The best puns are always spontaneous, powered by context and surprise. Some of my all-time favorites occurred in the following exchange at the1995 O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships, in Austin, Texas. I was paired with an opponent and we were given a topic. Alternating, each of us had five seconds to make a pun on that topic, back and forth, until someone missed. It was single elimination.

The emcee—a tall Texan in a straw hat—introduced me and my opponent to the crowd of about 500. I was already outmatched; my adversary was a bespectacled, forty-something man named George McClughan who, as the judge pointed out, just happened to be a former champion. Talk about a bad draw.

The topic was “Air Vehicles.”

“George, why don’t you go ahead and start,” the judge said.

“Oh, all right,” my opponent said. “If a helicopter had babies,” McClughan asked, “would it be a baby Huey?” It took me a moment to get it—a clever reference to both the cartoon duck and the workhorse chopper of Vietnam. He was going to flatten me.

My mind flashed to all the aircraft hanging from the rafters back at The Henry Ford museum outside of Detroit, where I worked. “I hope I come up with the Wright Flying Machine,” I said.

“Wait, wait . . .” It was the judge, holding up his hand. “It’s gotta be a puh-un.” In his Texas drawl, pun was almost a two-syllable word.

“The Wright Brothers,” I said. “W-R-I-G-H-T—I hope I pick the Wright Flying Machine.”

A sudden cheer swept the audience. The brawl was on.

“That was so plane to see,” McClughan said, grinning.

I struggled to come up with a response, but saved myself at the last second with a crude pun on Fokker, the defunct Dutch aircraft maker.

McClughan didn’t flinch. “I guess if I’m going to B-52 next week I’m never going to C-47 again,” he said.

“Well…,” I said, scanning the audience, “I’m looking for a Liberator out there.”

McClughan toyed with me. “This guy’s pretty good,” he said. “I was hoping he’d B-1 bomber.”

I was finding my rhythm. “You don’t think I’d take to flight, do you?”

“I don’t know,” he answered casually. “You’re just up here winging it.”

“U-2?”

In its economy and perfect congruence of sound and meaning, a pun couldn’t get any purer. I could pun for an entire lifetime and never make a better one, ever. It was a knockout punch, and the crowd roared. But that rangy Texan refused to fall.

John Pollack is a journalist, author, and former Special Assistant and Presidential Speechwriter to Bill Clinton. He has written for publications such as the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Advertising Age, and the Associated Press. He was named the World Pun Champion at the 1995 O. Henry World Championship Pun-off and has written speeches for corporate and public-sector leaders such as Jeffrey Katzenberg, Carly Fiorina, John Glenn, David de Rothschild, and actress Goldie Hawn. He currently works as a speechwriter and consultant for ROI Communication, an internal communication consulting firm. He lives in Manhattan. To learn more about John, visit his website http://www.thepunalsorises.com/

A review of The Pun Also Rises can be found on In The Next Room here.

The Pun Also Rises by John Pollack

I am the kind of person who is always making (and then laughing at) their own puns, usually ones which aren't very good or clever but which I enjoy nonetheless. So of course I had to read John Pollack's history of the pun, The Pun Also Rises. The book provides a brief overview of how the pun developed, the origin of various puns, as well as peoples' perception of puns over time.

The Pun Also Rises is divided into five chapters with a prologue in which Pollack competes in the World Pun Championships. Occasionally Pollack gets distracted and may ramble on for a page or two about how a historical figure never received love from his mother (Grimod) or what the anatomy of the ear drum is like. Although there are potentially interesting tidbits, they really having nothing, or very little, to do with the topic of the book and so I found them more distracting than anything. However, other readers might appreciate these offshoots more than I did.

The aspect of The Pun Also Rises that lost me most is Pollack's constant defense of the pun, supposedly against harsh critics who would eliminate all puns. Although he gives examples throughout history, none of them are contemporary, and I honestly cannot think of a single time I have ever heard of anyone claim to want all puns gone. Sure, not everyone finds them funny, but the implication of the book is far more serious than that and it is one I really felt needed more support if it was supposed to be believable.

That said, The Pun Also Rises is a fun enjoyable book which reminded me slightly of Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss for the way that it takes a topic that is not necessarily riveting and explains it in a way that is both interesting and informative. Pollack talks about all the important places we find puns these days, and inserts some subtle ones himself- such as the subtitle of the book. I'm also pretty sure that if I read the book again, there would be way more puns that I did not pick up the first time, and for that reason this is definitely not a book you want to rush through. Asides from the making me chuckle, like any good non-fiction, I learned a lot, and I would definitely recommend the book to individuals interested in linguistics and wordplay. Although I was slightly puzzled by Pollack's need to repeatedly defend the pun, overall The Pun Also Rises is a brief, informative and intelligent introduction to the history of the humble and wonderful pun.

Release Date: April 14th, 2011
Pages: 224
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This review was a part of TLC Book Tours. Click here to read what other tour hosts thought. For the purpose of this review I was provided with a copy of the book which did not require a positive review. The opinions expressed in this post are completely my own.