‘The Bare Bones Book of Humour’: An anthology of humour writing rewards big laughs

Humour is a delicate concept that needs to be handled tastefully. It has often been looked down upon by the highbrow literary crowd as a trifling genre. Sigmund Freud believed that laughter at most was a phenomenon that could release any psychic traces of conscience which were otherwise repressed. Whereas some notions of humour centre on the belief of superiority, as claimed by Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes. This is a generic idea: what makes a person laugh is the misfortune of others, which in turn makes them feel superior. If we were to check who espoused this belief first, then our suspects would be the philosophers of ancient Greece.

Usually, humour anthologies are victims of two predicaments: either jokes being mistaken for wit or clever premises faltering at execution. The latter does ensure laughs, but at the cost of the writing. The Bare Bones Book of Humour is able to avoid both of these predicaments and lands firmly on its feet. What it offers is a rewarding experience of tales from around the world, such as Africa, which is usually on the margins when it comes to representation in storytelling. Whether it is an intentional gesture by the editor, Ankit Raj Ojha, or not, it is indeed, however, a welcome move.

Ridiculousness in the mundane

The anthology begins with Jahnavi Gogoi’s “The Invitation”. It is a delectable tale set in Assam, where humour emerges from a site of tension between irreverence and awkwardness. Bhaskar is called by his boss for dinner. He does not know that this is a trap set by his boss to arrange a meeting between his unmarried sister-in-law, Anjulata, and him. The comic culmination towards the end of the story through misrecognitions feels earned rather than forced. Gogoi’s eye for ridiculousness embodied in the mundane moments works wonderfully.

A great subversion takes place in Merlin Flower’s “Robes and Roles”. God starts menstruating after a woman’s curse. Heaven is designed as a corporate system where tasks are delegated to angels. Yet the story ends as it is about to take off. One can perhaps sense a deliberate restraint by the author or a premise that outruns its execution.

“Because of Ram and Rice” by Steve Akinkuolie is among the strongest pieces in the anthology. The cultural specificity of Nigeria works particularly well here. It critiques religious performance by combining familial hypocrisy with festivity. Lines likening the muezzin’s call to a ram’s final bleat are as funny as they are unsettling. The humour in the story serves as a sharp commentary on ritualised piety, where animals suffer in religious practices conceived by mankind.

Allan Miller’s “The Developments” is also among the finest pieces in the collection. Miller taps into magical realism with a wry Scottish humour. The long shadow of a curse cast by a builder runs through a person’s life as he tries to find a solution. There is a repeated deflation of mystery, where dinosaur bones are revealed as sheep remains and ancient coins are but chocolate coins. The ending is excellent, and one won’t see the plot twist coming.

Some stories are centred on the psychological terrains of human beings. Amit Majmudar’s “Regeneration” relies on tropes of excess and bravado to highlight how confidence structures the sexual desire in older men instead of virility. Ankit Raj Ojha’s “A Man of Culture” too utilises the psychological landscape of teenagers from Bihar to examine adolescent masculinity and their empty afterlives. Nneoma F Kenure manages to depict the anxieties of a woman feeling unsafe quite well in “There’s a Man in My Bathroom”.

Irony and satire

Some stories thrive on social irony and satire. Rahul Gaur’s “Irritants of the Benevolents Kind” is a cultural critique of contemporary desi behaviour. Its subheadings, like “Premature Applause Disorder”, “Flex’ing the Ugly Muscle”, and “The High Beam Heft”, are very likely to remind one of the great satirist Jaspal Bhatti’s works like Flop Show and Full Tension. “Protection” by Aparna Kalra is among the most tonally confident stories in this collection. It stands out for its satire of moral regulation and state surveillance in Indian society, where bureaucratic snooping gets transformed into a quirky Orwellian comedy of state-sanctioned intimacy and missing condoms.

“Enlightenment Begins at Home” by Swapnit Pradhan is a light take on enlightenment, besides also being a clever commentary on the bizarreness of 15 minutes of fame achieved on social media. Aneeta Sundararaj’s “Yantra, Tantra, Mantra” is a searing critique of the guru culture where frauds masquerade as healers, such as Jyotish ji, Guru ji, and Pandit ji. “A Memsahib Learns to Cook” by Sahana Ahmed is a sweet take on military wives and the pop cultural phenomenon of Instagram cooking.

Humour also brushes against fear and sadness in this anthology. “Uncle Khai’s Wife” by Nifemi Adediran borrows from children’s literature’s horror motifs, while “Sleep-induced Dilemma” by Mitra Samal uses melancholy as a frame to capture the quiet ache of queer desire in the Indian office culture. Alice Eze’s “How to Marry a Prince in Ten Business Days” is a take on how women get rejected in a world driven by social media’s culture of affirmations and trends. These stories strive to remind us that humour can cohabit with vulnerability instead of negating it.

“Barambaba” by Padmanabh Trivedi captures the quaintness of North Indian rural life well and uses the quintessential Hanuman Chalisa to evade ghosts and witches. François Bereaud’s “Funeral Hopping” is a sardonic take on death. “The Haunting of Hill House” by Abhilipsa Sahoo is an excellent example of situational humour in the contextual setting of an Indian middle-class family. “The Sound of Something Big” by Sherry Morris has a very Joycean quality to it.

“Greetings to Jack” by Vishaal is about an aeroplane hijacking gone wrong that leaves one in splits with its puns and situational misunderstandings. “Weeds” by Sylvia Beaupré is an interesting take on divorce and the phenomenon of the man-child in American culture. “A Job to Love” by Shih-Li Kow is a satirical take on a late-stage capitalism dome that mimics sunlight. Doug Jacquier’s “A Tail of Co-dependence” is a mystifying take on a thief getting chased by authorities, whereas “Two Good People” by Grace Q Hu is about a thief in guilt.

However, not every piece achieves the same level of flourish, prompting one to feel a sudden shift in tonality. Yet, this unevenness is also its core strength. The resistance to a singular definition of what humour ought to do is resisted well by The Bare Bones Book of Humour.

This review, by focusing on a few stories, intends to be selective and highlight the collection’s varied thematic concerns. Several contributors, while not discussed in detail, enrich the collection through their creative experiments with tonal play, narration, and form. These pieces manage to enrich the anthology’s larger commitment to humour by reinforcing plurality instead of prescription.

Abhik Ganguly is a poet, writer, scholar-practitioner, and a Junior Research Fellow pursuing his PhD at the Department of English, University of Delhi. His works have been published in Gulmohur Quarterly, Monograph, Indian Review, Setu Magazine, and elsewhere. He is available on Instagram and X.

The Bare Bones Book of Humour, edited by Ankit Raj Ojha, Bare Bones Publishing.