A tour de force, Geary’s nimble disquisition on wit uses a different style to present each distinct facet of linguistic ingenuity. Verbal repartee is a dramatic monologue, the neuroscience of wit is couched as a scientific paper, and other brands of cleverness come through in very British heroic couplets or street-wise jive. The deputy curator at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Geary draws on the deep experience with sharply honed language he imbibed when compiling his popular Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists, The World in a Phrase, and his study of metaphor, I Is An Other, to demonstrate that wit is a quick, instinctive intelligence that allows us to come up with exactly the right remark (or gesture or facial expression) at just the right moment.
