Social change can be tough on humor. A few years ago I read a book of stories and sketches by James Thurber, who I remembered as being very funny, and felt as the comedian Chris Rock remarked about watching the movie The Last Temptation of Christ, “Not many laughs.” S. J. Perelman, another writer I once thought immensely amusing, has also over the years lost his magic, at least for me. Time, that relentless monster, seems to have done in both writers, each considered a great humorist in his day.

Time is even harder on jokes. One of Henny Youngman’s characteristic quickie jokes used to go: “A bum came up to me on the street and asked me for 50 cents for a cup of coffee. When I told him coffee was only a quarter, he replied, ‘Won’t you join me?’ ” Today one would have to change the egregiously politically incorrect “bum” to “homeless man,” and have the man ask for $6 for a cup of coffee. When you tell him coffee is only $2.75, he replies, “I have a hankering for a chocolate croissant to go with it.”