Wired Mesh

A Study of American Latrinalia

Why can't Polish people tell jokes?

While you consider the answer to that question, enjoy this New Yorker profile of one Gershon Legman, the author of “Rationale of the Dirty Joke,” an encyclopedic anthology and analysis of vulgar humor. "Reading through Legman’s vast compilation of dirty jokes is a punishing experience, like being trapped in the men’s room of a Greyhound bus station of the nineteen-fifties," writes Jim Holt.

But what an old john it is: Holt traces the written history of the joke back to the Philogelos, a fourth or fifth century collection. ("The most haunting joke in the Philogelos, however, is No. 114, about a resident of Abdera, a Greek town whose citizens were renowned for their foolishness: 'Seeing a eunuch, an Abderite asked him how many children he had. The eunuch replied that he had none, since he lacked the means of reproduction. Retorted the Abderite . . .' The rest is missing from the surviving text, which goes to show the strange potency of unheard punch lines.") There's also a brief discursive on Rennaisance humorist Poggio Bracciolini, who almost single-handedly resurrected the art of the joke. The lingering effect of the piece is a feeling that the ancients had their minds in the gutter about as much as we do, reality television aside.

Timing.