The Joker
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- Synopsis
- From an award-winning poet and compulsive joke teller, a memoir about the jokes that educated him about history, religion, and family--delighting him, and often horrifying him, as he grew into adulthood.Since he was a child, Andrew Hudgins was an unabashed joke teller. When he decided to write about jokes, he discovered that he was actually writing about himself: what jokes had taught and mistaught him, how they often charmed him, and yet how they occasionally made him nervous with their frequent delight in chaos and anger. Born into an Air Force family, Hudgins spent his early childhood moving from base to base. He made friends by telling jokes to his classmates and observing how they responded. But jokes provided Hudgins with more than a source of amusement or a means to relate to friends. Jokes revealed a new world to him: the serious taboo subjects that his family didn't openly discuss--religion, race, sex, and death. In The Joker, Hudgins tells and analyzes the jokes that explore the contradictions in the Baptist religion he was raised in, the jokes that told him what his parents did not tell him about sex, and the racist jokes that divided his family. Hudgins also recounts the jokes he used to court his wife, writer Erin McGrath, and those they continue to tell as they renew their love for each other. Called "a treasure, a golden whoopee cushion, pearled set of chattery teeth" (Benjamin Percy, author of Red Moon, The Wilding, and Refresh, Refresh) and "an absolutely brilliant book, as necessary as it is pleasurable" (Richard Bausch, author of Something Is Out There), The Joker is creative nonfiction at its best, written by a man who knows how to tell a joke, make you laugh, and then dissect what makes it so funny--without killing the humor.
- Copyright:
- 2013
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- ISBN-13:
- 9781476712734
- Related ISBNs:
- 9781476712710
- Publisher:
- Simon & Schuster
- Date of Addition:
- 06/12/13
- Copyrighted By:
- Andrew Hudgins
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs, Literature and Fiction, Humor
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.
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- by Andrew Hudgins
- in Nonfiction
- in Biographies and Memoirs
- in Literature and Fiction
- in Humor