Selections from Allen Notebooks
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What makes something humorous? This could be a very hard question to answer. Why? Because something that is hilarious to one person may be not at all humorous to another. Or something that was not comical to someone 30 minutes ago may all of a sudden become funny to that same person after a few drinks. Or something that was amusing to someone in 1973 may be not at all amusing to someone in 2004. In this essay, this author will attempt to answer the question, "What makes something humorous?", using the comical piece by Woody Allen called "Selections from the Allen Notebooks". Written in 1973, Allen's excerpts from his "private journal", have passed the "test of time" and are comical even today because they violate the expectations of readers and hold the everlasting comical properties of being ironic, absurd, and random thoughts that make their readers laugh.
Allen's main tool in creating his humorous work is irony...