"Laughter need not be cut out of anything, since it improves everything"
About this Quote
Thurber smuggles a manifesto into a sentence that sounds like friendly advice. “Need not be cut out” is the tell: he’s answering an accusation before it’s made, anticipating the scold who treats humor as an impurity in serious work, serious art, serious life. The phrasing evokes censorship and trimming - the editorial instinct to sanitize, to get “down to business.” Thurber’s counterclaim is deliberately sweeping: laughter doesn’t merely coexist with seriousness; it “improves everything.” Not softens, not distracts, improves. He’s elevating comedy from garnish to instrument.
The subtext is a defense of the comic sensibility as a kind of intelligence. Laughter, in Thurber’s world, is a solvent: it breaks down pretense, loosens panic, punctures pomp. It makes room for clarity because it forces a moment of distance from whatever is trying to dominate us - fear, authority, ego. That’s why it reads less like optimism than like strategy. Comedy doesn’t deny the mess; it gives you leverage on it.
The context matters: Thurber came up in the era of The New Yorker’s urbane wit, writing through economic collapse and global war, when “serious” arguments were constantly being used to justify brutality and conformity. His line pushes back on the idea that gravity equals virtue. It also rejects the false choice between pleasure and rigor. For Thurber, laughter is rigor - a way to test the world for hypocrisy, and to survive it without becoming it.
The subtext is a defense of the comic sensibility as a kind of intelligence. Laughter, in Thurber’s world, is a solvent: it breaks down pretense, loosens panic, punctures pomp. It makes room for clarity because it forces a moment of distance from whatever is trying to dominate us - fear, authority, ego. That’s why it reads less like optimism than like strategy. Comedy doesn’t deny the mess; it gives you leverage on it.
The context matters: Thurber came up in the era of The New Yorker’s urbane wit, writing through economic collapse and global war, when “serious” arguments were constantly being used to justify brutality and conformity. His line pushes back on the idea that gravity equals virtue. It also rejects the false choice between pleasure and rigor. For Thurber, laughter is rigor - a way to test the world for hypocrisy, and to survive it without becoming it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Joy |
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