A Great Little Book

This book will be lost on some Ref21 correpondents, but I've just been given a copy of Eric W Gritsch's book, The Wit of Martin Luther (Fortress), a superb study of the humour of the great Reformer.

Here's the jacket blurb: `This mini-treatise finds in Luther's humor a key to his whole life and thought.  Eric Gritsch ties Luther's wit and humor not only to his sharp polemical exploitation of the absurd or incongruous in service to his Reform.  At a deeper level, Luther's wit and witticisms also reflected Luther's keen appreciation of human frailty and the unknowability of things divine.  Luther, Gritsch shows, especially relished humor in his interpretation of the Bible, in his pastoral relationships, and in his encounters with death.  Ultimately, humor in face of mortality is a gauge of human freedom, a lightening up that makes of life a divine comedy.'

This from the intro: `Humor is anchored in self-knowledge that indicates one's limitations.  Such insight is a mark of human maturity and freedom, expressed in the ability to joke about oneself.  Conversely, lack of humor means the loss of the freedom to face one's limitations.  People without a sense of humor are like dried fruit, perhaps attractive at the time of harvest, but later repugnant and boring.  Truly mature people have a sense of humor that is open for many attitudes, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous.'

And the great man himself should always have the last word: `Tomorrow I have to lecture on the drunkenness of Noah, so I should drink enough this evening to be able to talk about that wickedness as one who knows by experience.'

Btw, Luther's been dead a while, just in case anyone wants him banned from the blog.