Nathan’s Kindle Notes & Highlights

The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster

When my father and grandfather committed acts of punmanship, they were often, generally by the women at the table or in the car with them, begged if not ordered to cease at once. Maybe puns are a guy thing—I don’t know. I can’t see how anybody who claims to love language can fail to marvel at the beautiful slipperiness of meaning that puns, like aquarium nets, momentarily catch and bring shimmering to the surface. Puns act to shatter or at least compromise meaning; a pun condenses unrelated, even opposing, meanings, like a collapsing dwarf star, into a singularity. Maybe it’s this antisemantic ...more