[Mel Brooks' "The Producers"] did not make me laugh as much as I had anticipated, and perhaps anticipation is part of the problem. Let us suppose that an acquaintance stops us in the street with the announcement that he is going to tell us the funniest joke ever told. But first, he tells us, he is going to synopsize the joke, describe its high and low points, analyze the style of its telling, compare it with other jokes in the same genre from other eras, and psychoanalyze those listeners who will laugh at it and those who will not. Then and only then does he tell us the joke. Do we laugh? Not likely. The element of surprise is gone because we listen with too many preconceptions. In short, we listen more to the how of style than to the what of content….

The idea that two Jewish...