John Bruns Publishes First Book: Loopholes
Director of the Film Studies Program and Assistant Professor of English John Bruns published his first book, Loopholes: Reading Comically, in early June. The book brings together contemporary and classic studies of humor with the idea that comedy is not simply a literary or theatrical genre, but a certain way of disclosing or undoing the way the world is organized. Bruns argues against settled views of comedy as “relief” from serious and important matters, or as a “low” form of artistic creation.
From the jacket:
Bruns’ Bakhtin-inspired study does what so few even think of doing: it takes the comic comically – as a way of understanding life in terms of new opportunities, new ways out in a world that has no endings, no resolutions.
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Gary Saul Morson, Northwestern University.
Theories of comedy often falter in their attempts to map exactly where the nub of humor lies, yet this bright and engaging book argues that comedy isn't a definable object so much as a mood, a tone, or a way of thinking absent of objective qualities...it's the essential next step in the discussion and a must for humor scholars everywhere.
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Andrew McConnell Stott, University of Buffalo, SUNY.
In Loopholes John Bruns challenges us to participate in unorthodox frivolity. The challenge, which proves surprisingly formidable, amounts to thinking about comedy comically, outside of bounds and disciplines in an institutional place apt to appear, if not unsettling, then a little ridiculous...One can hardly avoid nervous laughter at the moral anarchy being flirted with here, but if you can lose your grip, the promise is an experience presently beyond our grasp: Cavell's movies without depression, James's sensibilities without detachment, Kafka's labyrinths without fear.
-- R. M. Berry, Florida State University, author of Frank and editor of Forms at War and Fiction's Present.
