Away with Words

April 15, 2017
A merry look at competitive wordplay.Punning may not seem a viable path to winning any kind of championship, but Fast Company editor and reporter Berkowitz (co-author: You Blew It!: An Awkward Look at the Many Ways in Which You've Already Ruined Your Life, 2015) discovered a new world of competition when he first attended Punderdome, where punsters with monikers like Punky Brewster, Forest Wittyker, Words Nightmare, and Black Punther gather to outwit one another. That experience led him to the O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships, "the Olympics of pun competitions," held in Austin, Texas, and many other such events throughout the country. English, Berkowitz learned, "is uncontestably the best language to pun in" because it has the largest vocabulary, with many words drawn from hundreds of other languages. Only English allows for a pun like, "Paris is a site for soirees." The author defines four kinds of puns: homophonic, with words that sound the same but have different meanings; homographic, with words "spelled the same but sound[ing] different"; homonymic, with words spelled and sounding the same; and portmanteau, with words that combine two other words to mean something different. The book is filled with examples of puns, many of which do not seem funny on the page; some, as Berkowitz readily admits, are simply bad. A great pun, he writes, "is its own reword. A mediocre pun, though, is just awkword." The author chronicles his interviews with a host of punsters, investigates the history of punning across cultures, and discusses his experience at the North East Texas Humor Research Conference, "among Earth's least funny places." Linguists and other experts hardly enlighten him about what makes a good punster, but he does learn from contestants that practice is important. He also reproduces a digital exchange on the topic of weather, which elicits such remarks as, "spoken like a raining pun champion" and "I'm losing my cloudt." Lighthearted and occasionally witty.

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June 1, 2017

This funny little book results from Berkowitz's (editor & staff writer, Fast Company) yearlong dive into the subculture of pun competitions. First he attends, documents, and finally performs himself in the monthly Punderdome pun competition in Brooklyn, then moves on to explore similar doings around the country, including the annual O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships in Austin, TX. Berkowitz first attended Punderdome at the invitation of a friend and was overwhelmed by the unimaginable scene of 500 people screaming and cheering because someone made a pun. As the author begins to participate himself, he takes readers behind the scenes and introduces us to the punsters, not only their punning performances but describing their offstage lives as well. He attends a humor research conference and details his disappointing, unfunny conversations with the world's foremost pun expert and visits the sets of popular TV shows such as Bob's Burgers and Veep, whose producers rely on puns. Of most fun is Berkowitz sharing in detail his own nerve-wracking performance at the World Championships, as well those of his competitors. VERDICT Recommended for passionate readers of books about words and wordplay.--Paul A. D'Alessandro, Brunswick, ME

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2017
Berkowitz begins this nonfiction adventure through the sludge of semantics with a disclaimer: he figures readers will get annoyed with his book. He expects them to groan with frustration. He predicts his book will fly angrily across a few living rooms. The book is, after all, a penetrating expose of American pun competitions. Despite Berkowitz's ominous warning, Away with Words is an enjoyable read. Taking a Mary Roach approach to investigating the world of wordplay, he attends the major pun conferences, befriends the pun superstars, and even visits the writers' rooms of TV's punniest showsBob's Burgers and @midnight. The book calls for a close read; solving the phonetic tricks without hearing them aloud takes time. Overall, it's time well spent. Readers will leave having enjoyed a hearty belly laugh over Berkowitz's natural skepticism of the sport and also with a pocketful of fresh puns to whip out around the water cooler.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)