Hey, look at the title of this post again. Amazing, ain’t it? Even though I’m writing about puns, I’ve resisted all temptation to use a punny headline. You know what that means? It means we’re gonna have a serious and thoughtful treatment of this subject and not merely a lot of cheap pun-filled silliness, dammit. And I say that as one who has proven many times over his capacity for a vast shining buttload of cheap pun-filled silliness. So a little respect, please.
I mean that, because when it comes to getting a little r-e-s-p-e-c-t, the pun is no Aretha Franklin. It’s more like Rodney Dangerfield. Which is a shame, because there’s a lot more depth in punology than most folks begin to suspect. Furthermore, even that unexpected depth penetrates merely the relative tip of the ice cube (forsaking here the usual imagery of the freezing North Atlantic for one of a double scotch on the rocks) when we consider the full field of wordplay (which we aren’t yet but will in time; I promise).
Today, however, we’re merely skating across the surface of that ice cube as I invite you to share a simple binary classification of puns that I’ve been using for, goshamighty, decades now: high puns and low puns. They’re best described with an example. You may know it.
A man spending the night in a monastery is treated to a supper of the best fish and chips he’s ever had in his life. When he steps into the kitchen to compliment the cook he finds one of the brothers washing dishes. Thinking it clever, he asks, “Are you the fish friar?” The brother answers, “No, I’m the chip monk.”
Okay, groan away, then take a closer look. The first joke is a high pun, signifying that both meanings of the phrase are literally true. The Brother may truly be both the fish friar and the fish frier. The second is a low pun. He can be a chip monk, but not a chipmunk. Only one of the meanings can be literally true, the other merely sounds funny.
Oddly, I’ve never seen that point made by anyone other than myself, so if you have, I’d love to know about it. Back in 1981, Art Moger wrote a compilation called The Complete Pun Book. It’s still available online for just a few bucks and well worth the trivial expense if puns are your thing. I wrote Mr. Moger about my high/low classification and told him it ought to be noted in something called The Complete Pun Book, suggesting he include it if he ever did another edition. He wrote back appreciating my point and admitting that the very idea of a “complete pun book” is an absurdity, for which he blamed the publisher. He, too, had never heard my distinctions addressed in any formal way, just as I never found out whether another edition of the book ever came out to praise my insight.
My father, brother, and I used to argue over a matter similar to the monastery puns in that it concerned a joke with at least three different and interchangeable punch lines. It told of two doctors who shared office space. The sign on the door read:
Dr. Thomas Smith, Psychiatry
Dr. Franklyn Jones, Proctology
Specialists in Odds and Ends
The other versions were, “Specialists in Nuts and Butts,” and “Specialists in Queers and Rears.” There may well have been others, but I do recall those three.
I always held, and still do, that the “odds and ends” punch line is the funniest. I find it more intellectually haha-ifying because it’s a high pun. The phrase can be considered true in both its literal and idiomatic senses. The other two aren’t even proper puns. They’re barely even wordplay.
None the less, my bother and father saved their heartiest guffaws for “nuts and butts.” I once thought that was due strictly to their earthier senses of humor, but as I’ve mentally chewed over the disagreement through the years I’ve realized that there’s more to it. For one thing, the incongruity of having such an inappropriate phrase as “nuts and butts” in a formal setting has a Marx-like tickle factor of its own. I mean like Groucho and Harpo, not Karl.
Furthermore, “butts” is just an inherently funny word. If you doubt me on that, just reread my first paragraph.
And finally, I’m not ending with a pun, either.
I like both your analysis and your blog, as I sense that you may have landed us on the beginning of an interesting odyssey through manifestly different ways of approaching the science of puns. Much analysis starts with bifurcation: creating a plane for discussion of a concept by investigating one aspect through its dichotomy. Here, “high” and “low” keying off of the “plus or minus externally sensical” distinction, for the grave lack of a better-sounding, less awkward moniker for this spectrum (one possible suggestion: +/- contrived?). Yet I can’t help imagining there are other such bifurcations to explore, and it may only be after we plumb a few of those depths that we blunder into a newer and potentially even more exciting theory of puns. Sadly, it’s 5 am where I live right now and I need to get to work, so more on this later. And yes, I do remember you telling me the “odds and ends” pun half a century ago and I realized it’s value even then.
Replying to my own reply, it should have ended with “its value.” Once again betrayed by my arch-foe Herr Otto Korrekt, may his name be erased from the Book of Life.