Essay on a form of wit

This book is the masterwork of the acclaimed Quirmian arch-clown Jean-Paul Pune. Still on the teaching syllabus of the Fools' Guild and compulsory reading for all student Fools and Clowns, M. Pune's masterwork dissects the nature of that form of wit and humour which untutored, somewhat rural, people have been using, on a crude and unschooled basis, since the very dawn of language, involving that play on words which is now eponymously known as the Pune after the man who exemplified the type.

Pune devotes 160,000 words on defining the Five Great Classes and seventy-three sub-classes of the Pune or play on words, which all students at the Guild are expected to commit to memory on pain of pain. Pune's stand-up routine made him memorable in all parts of the Disc where he performed, as he was the first man to perfect the art of pronouncing brackets, a valuable tool in dealing with rustic audiences lacking in intellect who would otherwise be too slow to get the point. Observe the following, a joke in fact originated by Pune, for which he was tarred and feathered and left for dead:-

Q:- When is a door not a door?

A:- When it's ajar! (a jar).

Shortly afterwards he travelled to Ankh-Morpork, fuming inside that Quirmians simply did not appreciate his lofty and elevated humour, hoping to find a more responsive audience there...