Nugae Venales: Or Jokes For Sale in English: Humor, Brief Essays, and Short Poems

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Nugae Venales means jokes for sale in Latin. It was the title of a 17th-century collection of jokes and paradoxes by Richard Head. This book was inspired by that one but is not entirely humorous. Many of the brief essays and poems are meant to be taken seriously.

There is a complex relationship between pain and humor. Some say humor is merely a defense mechanism; I disagree. Some also suspect comedians are just angry. Some seem to be, but more often they are just very nervous and sensitive.

This book is designed in five chapters that recount daily musings of the author going mainly backward in time across most of slightly more than a year. It is a sort of companion piece to The Book of Irish Bulls, a work of literary analysis I published last year. There are reflections in this book on art, society, and a bit of politics in the brief essays. The short original poems are sometimes silly and sometimes bitter. There are signs of resentment about what authorities did in 2020 and 2021. Respect should be earned, not simply expected.