Edwin (Ted) Fenton Shares Collection of Humorous Puns

Puns are used to create humor and sometimes require a large vocabulary to understand. It has long been used by comedy writers, such as William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and George Carlin. Suggesting two or more meanings, this figure of speech exploits multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for its intended humorous or rhetorical effect.

Tortured Tales and Twisted Sayings written by Edwin (Ted) Fenton contains 10 amusing stories designed to activate the reader's funny bone. He began to write these stories two decades ago when a friend of his who had been hospitalized by an accident needed something to relieve the tedium of a long hospital stay. His family and numerous houseguests found copies about his study and groaned their way through what eventually became a collection. As they heard punch lines, they sent them to him. What appears in this book represents a sample of this genre.

Each of the stories in this book begins with a delightful full page color drawing which hints at the theme of the story followed by the two-page story itself- omitting the last line. Readers should pause to puzzle out for its missing words. The next page features another drawing that portrays the missing line and the line itself drawn from a well-known story or song lyric.

Tortured Tales and Twisted Sayings is meant to entertain readers with a sense of humor similar to one's own or to those folks who can at least enjoy a good play on words. Beyond his scholarly works as a professor at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University, this enjoyable read presents the other side of Edwin Fenton whose cleverness as a humor writer is vividly captured through this little book.

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About the Author

Edwin (Ted) Fenton, professor emeritus of history, joined the Carnegie Institute of Technology (Carnegie Tech) faculty in 1954. He has served on five of Carnegie Mellon's eight presidents and has received the university's highest honor in teaching (the William H. and Francis S. Ryan Teaching Award) and education (the Robert Doherty Prize for Educational Leadership). Author or editor of more than 200 publications, Fenton has also served as director or chair of the Carnegie Education Center, the University Teaching Center, and the Center for University Outreach and the Educational Facilities Committee. He was a founding member of the Academy for Lifelong Learning and a lifetime member of the university's philanthropic association, the Andrew Carnegie Society. He now lives in Wellfleet on Cape Cod where he fishes, gardens, makes furniture, reads, writes and celebrates life with his wife, Barbara, and assorted offspring, friends and dogs. Fenton's published works include New History of the United States (1975); Immigrants and Unions: A Case Study: Italians and American Labor, 1870-1920 (1973); and Carnegie Mellon1900-2000, a Centennial History.

Tortured Tales and Twisted Sayings * by Edwin (Ted) Fenton
A Collection of Humorous Puns
Publication Date: March 19, 2013
Picture Book; $31.99; 46 pages; 978-1-4797-6462-4
Picture Book Hardcover; $41.99; 46 pages; 978-1-4797-6463-1
Ebook; $3.99; 978-1-4797-6464-8

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