It’s fairly safe to say that no one knows how to write humor. The great modern humor essayists – Dave Barry, P. J. O’Rourke, and the late Lewis Grizzard and Erma Bombeck, among many others –do it naturally, instinctively knowing just what turn of phrase and clever irony readers will find funny, but they probably couldn’t even begin to explain how they do it. People who are not great humor writers, obviously, don’t know either.
