Michael Krasny - Let There Be Laughter (Corte Madera)

Tickets: $22 (includes a signed copy of Let There Be Laughter)

From the host of NPR affiliate’s “Forum with Michael Krasny,” Let There Be Laughter is a compendium of Jewish jokes packs the punches with hilarious riff after riff that also offers a window into Jewish culture

Michael Krasny has been telling Jewish jokes since his bar mitzvah, and it’s been said that he knows more of them than anyone on the planet. He certainly states his case in this wise, enlightening, and hilarious book that not only collects the best of Jewish humor passed down from generation to generation, but explains the cultural expressions and anxieties behind the laughs.

“What’s Jewish Alzheimer’s?”
“You forget everything but the grudges.” 

“You must be so proud. Your daughter is the President of the United States!”
“Yes. But her brother is a doctor!”

“Isn’t Jewish humor masochistic?”
“No. And if I hear that one more time I am going to kill myself.”

With his background as a scholar and public-radio host, Krasny delves deeply into the themes, topics, and form of Jewish humor: chauvinism undercut by irony and self-mockery, the fear of losing cultural identity through assimilation, the importance of vocal inflection in joke-telling, and calls to communal memory, including the use of Yiddish.

Borrowing from traditional humor and such Jewish comedy legends as Jackie Mason, Mel Brooks, and Joan Rivers, Larry David, Sarah Silverman, Jerry Seinfeld and Amy Schumer, Let There Be Laughter is an absolute pleasure for the chosen and goyim alike.

Michael Krasny, Ph.D., is a scholar and Professor of English and American Literature at San Francisco State University, the host of KQED’s “Forum with Michael Krasny,” an award winning broadcast journalist, and author of two acclaimed books, Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life and Spiritual Envy: An Agnostic’s Search. Since 1993 he has been the host of “Forum with Michael Krasny,” a news and public affairs interview program produced at KQED Radio, the National Public Radio affiliate in San Francisco, California. The program is the most listened to locally produced public radio program in the United States and the number one program in its morning time slot in the San Francisco Bay Area market.

 

Location: 

51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925
Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means By Michael Krasny Cover Image
$19.99
Email or call for price
ISBN: 9780062422040
Published: William Morrow - September 27th, 2016