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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 5 page summation of an essay by William Zinsser entitled "Humor." The writer summarizes and lists Zinsser's principal points, which serve to give the aspiring humorist a comprehensive guide to this form of writing. No bibliography is provided.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khhumor.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
best, and sometimes the only, tool that a writer has for making a specific point. While humorists are typically dismissed as inconsequential and serious writers, exemplified by Hemingway and Faulkner,
are award prizes, Zinsser argues that humor, especially social satire, has more power to show the world realistically than does practically any other point of view. To substantiate this point,
he cites the Doonesbury comic strip by Garry Trudeau, in regards to politics, and Catch-22 and Dr. Strangelove, in regards to books and movies. These examples make Zinssers point quite
clear to any readers familiar with these works. The Doonesbury cartoon strip frequently lampoon the foibles and misrepresentations inherent in American politics. Catch-22 and Dr. Strangelove both eloquently argue
against the lunacy of war while making us laugh. To demonstrate the nature of how social satire can point out the ridiculousness of certain behaviors, Zinsser outlines how he
found it ridiculous in the 1960s that roughly half of American females always had their hair in curlers and wore them everywhere. He imagined letter to the editor for a
fictitious magazine called Haircurl, which he modeled after real magazines of this era. These letters highlight the ridiculousness of wearing hair curlers everywhere. His point is not that the subject
was important, but rather that his satire, once read, would forever change the perspective of the reader regarding this subject, turning this hair trend from a slightly unpleasant phenomenon into
a something laughable. Zinsser describes how he used precisely the same satirical technique to highlight the ridiculous controversy over table logistics at the Vietnam peace conference in Paris. Rather
than report the various conditions imposed by the participants in a serious manner, Zinsser put their various conditions regarding the shape of the table in terms of his own "peace"
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