Borrowing Jokes
Dear Mr. Menaker,
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your book, “A Good Talk” and laughed out loud on repeated occasions (doesn’t usually happen with books). Your easy writing style made the words flow off the page just like we were chatting. Enjoyed it immensely!
The bit about religion didn’t resonate but that would require a conversation for another time. I might suggest Henri Nouwen’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son” to contrast Christopher Hitchen’s “God is Not Great”.
Hope you won’t mind if I borrow some of the jokes.
Pete Gullo
Dear Mr. Gullo,
After such a complimentary and flattering note, by all means borrow my jokes. Thank you very much for writing, and I will definitely look at Nouwen’s book.
The tradition of borrowing (or stealing) other people’s wit or wisdom in conversation is of course an old–and I think for the most part honorable–one. It’s an implicit compliment to the originator (if he or she really is the originator; you never know), and it shows a close attention to and understanding of what one has heard. It helps to explain why comedians are always joking about stealing jokes. And someone smart isn’t going to run out of new things to say–it’s not as though you are robbing money from his bank account.
And if you’re really super-ethical, you can always attribute the joke to the source after you crack it and get the laughs. That way, you win twice: the good response to the joke and the admiration of honesty. But maybe not in my case, because if you said, “I got that from Daniel Menaker” you might well get “Who?” in response. Not quite as resonant as Daniel Webster, perhaps.
Dan Menaker
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