The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics by John Pollack
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’m going to start this review with some self-indulgence, which is really par for the course when it comes to my style of reviewing. I’m just a tiny bit drunk, and I could swear I’ve already written a review for this book. But I can’t find that review anywhere. I have a phrase in my head, that I feel I must have written already, something about how John Pollack peppers The Pun Also Rises with puns, which is to be expected. But I can’t for the life of me find on any of my several hard drives and cloud drives and others depositories for expository writing any such file. So, I apologize if this winds up being redundant.
I also apologize for discussing other than the book at hand in this review. The truth is, there’s not much to the book itself. Which is not a castigation on my part. More of a revelation, or whatever the appropriate word is for when someone shows you what you already knew was there: what can really said about puns, at book length? Their history and development over the course of the evolution of language itself warrants not much more than a Wikipedia entry. Puns are, simultaneously, too vague and too specific a subject to say much about, other than to denote their usage. As analyses go, The Pun Also Rises does its best, but can’t help to wander around.
A more philosophical or even argumentative treatment might a larger tome make, but Pollack ’s book is not that. He does start off with an engaging anecdote, and frankly, I would have liked to see more of that kind of thing. A biography of a man’s life in punning would have been worthy of several hundred pages. Instead, we get a kind of history of social attitudes towards puns, some of the rationale behind their usage, a tiny bit of the linguistics involved. But not much else.
And yet, for all that, the book was engaging. I started it when I was on a visit to a friend, came upon the paperback edition, and decided to finish via the ebook. Pollack doesn’t bog the reader down with too much, and treats the subject for what it’s worth: quasi-lightly. It’s a quick read, and a good read, and not a waste of time in the least.
As I write this, I have to say, I’m becoming less and less convinced that I wrote anything about this before now, afterall. Don’t know what that says about me, or about the pilsners I’ve just swallowed. But never mind all that. The dedicated Punshmith will find in Pollack’s book a nice light history, and the language enthusiast, too, will find enough of a treatment to speak on the subject with a tiny bit of requisite authority.
As for me, an unabashed fan of puns and punning, I liked the book enough to get drunk and write about it. Enough said.