Benjamin Errett - Elements of Wit: Mastering the Art of Being Interesting

There you are, in a big sales meeting. The client makes a weak joke in your direction and the boss looks your way. Say something. Say anything. Well, not just anythingyou need something clever but innocuous, smart enough to show your intelligence without showing off, something funny but not a joke. You dont want to be offensive, snide or holier than thou. If this were a game of tennis, youd simply want to keep the ball in play. At this moment, what you need is wit.

Unfortunately, in the time it took to read those sentences, your window of opportunity has slammed shut. The pregnant pause gave birth to awkward silence, and a colleague coughed, or spoke up, or dropped a pen. The spotlight has shifted, at least for now. But this will happen again, one day. A moment like this will be presented to you and you alone. You can once more hope for a distraction. (Or maybe hire your coughing colleague to follow you around, hacking you out of difficult situations.)

Alternately, you can respond with just the right words at just the right time, putting the client at ease, impressing the boss, brightening the room and showing yourself to be in command of the situation.

OK, so maybe you dont attend sales meetings. Youre self-employed. You avoid people who cough. Still, wouldnt you choose the second option? Of course you would. But how?

This book is how. Its also why, and most important, its who.

What if one of the Great Wits had been sitting in your chair in that moment of need? Say Oscar Wilde, green carnation in lapel and all, was prepared to offer a rejoinder on your behalf. Why, it would be like when Alvy Singer enlisted Marshall McLuhan to quiet a loudmouth in Annie Hall.

To be clear, the physical reanimation of the illustrious dead is sadly not the subject of this book. Instead, its a deep dive into the character traits of the Great Wits, those names seen most often at the end of aphorisms and quips, with one express purpose: To find out how they did it. What skills, talents, flaws and peccadillos fixed their wit in the popular imagination? Andthis is where you, sitting in your little sales meeting, praying for inspiration, come inhow can a modern reader learn from these individuals?

In some cases, the lessons are almost entirely what not to do. There are Great Wits who led horrid lives, the wisecracks coming at the price of just about everything else. Can you subtract the substance abuse, the cruelty, the thwarted aspirations and the abject misery to leave behind a facility for sparkling epigrams? This book says, you know what? Sure you can.

We open on the Authors sitting room. You sit side by side in tastefully upholstered wingback chairs. The fireplace is crackling away and there is still frost on your respective martini glasses. The Reader is briefly surprised by the transportive power of wordsa moment ago you were thumbing through this book on the new and noteworthy table at the bookseller, but maybe thats the Tanqueray talking. You regain composure and repeat your question.

READER: Whats the point of wit?

AUTHOR: The sharp end, the part that hurts.

READER: You know what I mean. Whats it for?

AUTHOR: Its for intelligent conversation, sharp thinking, laughter, truth and human civilization. But whats more important is what its against.

READER: Which is?

AUTHOR: Regurgitated thought, talking points, doublespeak, stagnation and dullness.

READER: So its for good things and against bad things? These days, who isnt?

AUTHOR: Ah, but wit is the horse that best pulls that crowded bandwagon.

READER: And youre saying shes been put out to pasture by mistake?

AUTHOR: Exactly. But not by mistake, really.

READER: So what do we need to bring her back, aside from another drink?

The Author swallows the last drops of his martini, fetches your empty glass, passes you a plate of deviled eggs and walks over to the well-stocked beverage cart.

READER: Less vermouth this time, please.

AUTHOR: Of course. Now what I mean to say is that wit hasnt simply been gently forgotten. Its been misunderstood, redefined and twisted into a meaningless word. Its definition is now barely defined.

READER: So whos made wit so meaningless, what did it used to mean, where did we go wrong, when was this alleged golden age of wit and why should we care?

AUTHOR: You forgot how.

READER: How will you answer my previous questions?

AUTHOR: The insecure made it meaningless; it once meant good sense that sparkles; we killed it by accusing it of cruelty and memorizing bad jokes instead; it was ascendant during the Enlightenment, but perhaps also during the 1920s; and we should care because its the best possible use of our brains.

READER: The best possible use of our brains? What about curing diseases? Repartee isnt much use against the Ebola virus.

AUTHOR: OK, best may be a subjective term there. But wit, if we return to its original definitionand perhaps dress it up a bit for the twenty-first centurycan get us to all sorts of discoveries.