I wonder if all jokes boil down to the same pattern that eventually gets layered and complexified by veteran comedians. A joke is made by creating a frame with an embedded assumption, and then using a punchline to break the frame and reveal an implied truth. There are two layers of subtext, the assumption (the undertone), and the post-punchline

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I don’t see humor as some sort of shrunken or deficient cousin of “real” writing. Being funny is about as deep and truthful as I can be. When I am really feeling life and being truthful, the resulting prose is comic. The world is comic. It’s not always funny but it is always comic. Comic, for me, means that there is always a shortfall between what

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