‘The Bare Bones Book of Humour’: An anthology of humour writing rewards big laughs

Humour is a delicate concept that needs to be handled tastefully. It has often been looked down upon by the highbrow literary crowd as a trifling genre. Sigmund Freud believed that laughter at most was a phenomenon that could release any psychic traces of conscience which were otherwise repressed. Whereas some notions of humour centre on the belief of superiority, as claimed by Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes. This is a generic idea: what makes a person laugh is the misfortune of others, which in turn makes them feel superior. If we were to check who espoused this belief first, then our suspects would be the philosophers of ancient Greece.

Usually, humour anthologies are victims of two predicaments: either jokes being mistaken for wit or clever premises faltering at execution. The latter does ensure laughs, but at the cost of the writing. The Bare Bones Book of Humour is able to avoid both of these predicaments and lands firmly on its feet. What it offers is a rewarding experience of tales from around the world, such as Africa, which is usually on the margins when it comes to representation in storytelling. Whether it is an intentional gesture by the editor, Ankit Raj Ojha, or not, it is...

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