- 352 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
About this book
A funny and insightful memoir, called “raw and risky” by The New York Times Book Review, from an award-winning poet who tells the story of his life through the jokes he loves to tell.
Since Andrew Hudgins was a child, he was a compulsive joke teller, so when he sat down to write about jokes, he found that he was writing about himself—what jokes taught him and mis-taught him, how they often delighted him, but occasionally made him nervous with their delight in chaos and sometimes anger.
Because Hudgins’s father, a West Point graduate, served in the US Air Force, his family moved frequently; he learned to relate to other kids by telling jokes and watching how his classmates responded. And jokes opened up to him the serious taboo subjects that his family didn’t talk about openly—religion, race, sex, and death. The Joker is then both a memoir and a meditation on jokes and how they educated him, delighted him, and occasionally horrified him as he grew.
The book received overwhelming praise in hardcover: “The writer’s uncanny recall for the adolescent jokes…helping the young wordsmith determine just how he felt about each of those taboo topics—makes it stand apart…Thoughtful and…amusing” (The Boston Globe); "Hudgins doesn't hold back in [this] rip-roaring memoir that examines how the ancient—and sometimes offensive—art of joke telling affects life, society, religion, and everything in between" (Entertainment Weekly); “If we’re lucky, [The Joker] will stir up an American dialogue about all kinds of fascinating, lurid, confounding, important subjects that reside in the great undertow of jokes” (Garden & Gun).
Since Andrew Hudgins was a child, he was a compulsive joke teller, so when he sat down to write about jokes, he found that he was writing about himself—what jokes taught him and mis-taught him, how they often delighted him, but occasionally made him nervous with their delight in chaos and sometimes anger.
Because Hudgins’s father, a West Point graduate, served in the US Air Force, his family moved frequently; he learned to relate to other kids by telling jokes and watching how his classmates responded. And jokes opened up to him the serious taboo subjects that his family didn’t talk about openly—religion, race, sex, and death. The Joker is then both a memoir and a meditation on jokes and how they educated him, delighted him, and occasionally horrified him as he grew.
The book received overwhelming praise in hardcover: “The writer’s uncanny recall for the adolescent jokes…helping the young wordsmith determine just how he felt about each of those taboo topics—makes it stand apart…Thoughtful and…amusing” (The Boston Globe); "Hudgins doesn't hold back in [this] rip-roaring memoir that examines how the ancient—and sometimes offensive—art of joke telling affects life, society, religion, and everything in between" (Entertainment Weekly); “If we’re lucky, [The Joker] will stir up an American dialogue about all kinds of fascinating, lurid, confounding, important subjects that reside in the great undertow of jokes” (Garden & Gun).
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Yes, you can access The Joker by Andrew Hudgins in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Social Science Biographies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Dedication
- Introduction: Where the Naughty Boys and Girls Live
- Chapter One: Catch it and Paint it Green
- Chapter Two: Hide in the Grass and Make a Noise like a Peanut
- Chapter Three: Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear
- Chapter Four: What Did the Devil Ever Do for You?
- Chapter Five: Everybody Out of the Pool
- Chapter Six: A Quart Low
- Chapter Seven: Where’s the Edge?
- Chapter Eight: The Perilous Needs of the Joke Teller
- Chapter Nine: Never Lose Your Head Over a Piece of Tail
- Chapter Ten: I Just Want to Make Sure He Knows I’m a Bull
- Chapter Eleven: Morning, Ladies!
- Chapter Twelve: We Might as Well Leave Now, Fanny
- Chapter Thirteen: You Two Just Crack Each Other Up
- Postscript
- Andrew Hudgin’s Ten Favorite Jokes
- Acknowledgments
- About Andrew Hudgins
- Copyright