The Philoctetes Center is known for its serious discussions, but on March 21 it was home to some serious laughter, as the roundtable The Comic Imagination played to a packed house. Moderator Cody Walker, the author of Shuffle and Breakdown, a book of poetry, introduced what he called "a dream panel": comedian Lewis Black, a regular guest on The Daily Show and star of the HBO specials Black on Broadway and Red, White, and Screwed; Jim Holt, author of Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes; Bruce McCall, a regular contributor of comic illustrations to the New Yorker and author of the children's book Marveltown; and Tami Sagher, a writer for 30 Rock and an improv performer at the Upright Citizens Brigade.

Walker began the discussion by pointing to the difficulty of talking about humor, lest the talk kill the laughs. He likened the problem to a concern the poet Philip Larkin expressed about literary criticism—that it might make people afraid to read poetry, "as a description of a chair in terms of whizzing molecules would make one afraid to sit down on it." Despite such misgivings, the ensuing conversation offered plenty of jokes, along with insights into what makes jokes funny. "The best theory I know of laughter is now called the false alarm theory," Holt remarked, offering the example of a group of our primitive ancestors frightened by rustling in a nearby bush. When the noise turned out to be nothing but foraging monkeys, laughter conveyed the news of the false alarm. "It's contagious, so laughter spreads through the group, and everyone knows that the seeming threat is not a threat. We laugh at things that are genuinely menacing, and by making jokes about them we pretend that they're trivial," Holt concluded.

The panelists considered the idea that K is the most comic letter, and that certain numbers are funnier than others. They also noted that neurotics often find refuge in humor, as do historically oppressed peoples: "the Jews, the Irish, the Canadians," quipped McCall, who hails from Canada. Sweden and Switzerland haven't produced many comedians, he noted. Black described his stint teaching stand-up comedy to the Dutch. "The Dutch didn't feel their language was conducive to jokes. There were no Dutch stand-up comics when I went there. And now there are two."

The line between comedy and insult is a tenuous one, and members of the Philoctetes Center audience may have sensed this friction. "Why are shrinks so unfunny?" McCall complained. "There's not an analyst who's got a sense of humor." "We're in the New York Psychoanalytic Institute," Walker reminded him.

Sagher stressed the importance of context to comedians: "It depends where you're saying something, and who you're saying something to." The panelists discussed 9/11 jokes that had failed or succeeded, as well as other issues that are problematic for the comedy trade. "Abortion," Black declared. "It's an exhausting topic to find a joke about. God knows I've attacked it from every angle." "You can't even say the word on T.V," Sagher pointed out. When comedy writers are alone with each other, however, little is off limits. "I feel like racists and rapists and comedy writers would be comfortable with [those jokes]," she said.

Following the discussion, audience members posed questions and offered jokes and insights of their own. One woman mentioned the dating preferences of her friend, a woman who seeks a man with a great sense of humor on the theory that "it's a foregone conclusion that he would then be intelligent," whereas the opposite is not always the case. "We all belong to Mensa," McCall remarked. "Mensa is defined as an organization for people who are really smart, but not smart enough not to join Mensa," Holt responded.

Walker concluded the event with a quote from the poet W.H. Auden: "Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh." "By that definition," Walker said, "I now love all of these panelists."
-Polly Rosenwaike