I'd except Kierkegaard's ruminations, but otherwise basically agree with Marcus's point about formal thinking not allowing much room for humor. And that was my initial point about Mark Twain's HUMOR as opposed to his satire. Let me repeat, his humor is often deep, but by definition it is not serious. Humor is an attitude, a suspension of directed and meaningful action (that is to say, seriousness) in order to appreciate incongruity. Satire may arise from humor, but when it does, it tries to move the intial humorous perception--which is ethically neutral--to confirm an ethical position. Satire is a species of rhetoric; humor is not. Twain raised satire to an art, but I prefer the even higher level to which he raised humor, I think. Given recent responses to plugging one's own work here, I hesitate to say that I've written a fair amount on humor's structure, functions, etc. in the concluding chapter to _Necessary Madness: THe Humor of Domesticity in 19th-c. American Literature_ (Oxford: 1997), but I'll risk the flames. Gregg