| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 130.4

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| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 130.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

Benjamin Franklin's Humor. By Paul M. Zall. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005. ix, 186p. Notes, sources, index. $27.95.)
Benjamin Franklin is everywhere this year in Philadelphia, the three hundredth anniversary of his birth. In University City (the neighborhood surrounding the University of Pennsylvania, which he helped found), where I live, one cannot bung half a brick (to steal from P. G. Wodehouse, another very funny writer) without risking bruising something Franklinish. Van Pelt Library had an exhibit devoted to his education schemes, there appear to be more statues than usual on the campus, elsewhere in the city the National Constitution Center presented an excellent exhibit on Franklin's life and work. Books over the past two years have presented him as a loyal subject of the empire, a statesman, a brilliant diplomat, a quintessential American, weak on slavery, and a founder second to none, except perhaps Washington. Yet before he was any (or all?) of these things, long before his adulthood, his early retirement, his spectacular rise, and his international fame, at least in print as early as the age of thirteen, Ben Franklin was very funny.	1
Paul M. Zall explores Franklin's use of humor from his days as a child apprentice until almost his last public statement, registering his concern about American slavery. Along the way, Zall suggests that humor was a leitmotif in Franklin's life and career. Franklin deployed humor in different ways at different times to accomplish varying goals, but usually, in all the important issues of his life, one did not have to wait too long to find Franklin being funny.	. . .

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