An elusive topic …

… Humor, by Terry Eagleton (book review) - PopMatters. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Rather than forge a path forward on what humor should do, he just ambles along the roads much more often taken and points out all the lovely foliage on either side. Humour makes no argument beyond a survey of all the ways one can debunk some portion of all preceding theories of humor. This is so wise, because there simply cannot be a unified field theory on the subject. Humor is the heart of postmodernity in this way, and yet rather than tangle himself in the thorny gobbledygook of critical theory, Eagleton sets out merely to describe. I say "merely", but this is an enormous undertaking for a book that runs under 200 pages.