About The Tutti Frutti Society

Welcome to The Tutti Frutti Society, a chronicle at my attempts to laugh both with and at the Germans as our world falls into chaos and right-wing extremism. At the very least, there's a great repository of bleak comedy. If you're new to staring into the abyss, I've got a whole bunch of seasoned pros ready to help you meet the ceaseless tide of bad news with a smile on your face.

But my goal is here to do more than just enliven your day with some bleak German jokes. German humor often lacks the kind of cutting wit and rhetorical quickness that is the hallmark of the political humor I grew up with– Americans from Mark Twain to Jon Stewart have built their reputations on a cerebral kind of laughter that often tries to speak truth to power, and often relies on sarcastic exaggeration or ironic distortion for effect. In this way, Germans are often as unfunny as their reputation– the commitment to speaking "directly" (whatever that might mean) often seems too absolute to allow for this kind of criticism to take comedic form.

But that doesn't mean Germans aren't funny–it just means the kinds of funniness that have mattered most in German culture take place outside of the comedic forms we know best in the English-speaking world.

About Me

My name is Peter Kuras. I got a PhD in Germanic Languages and Literatures at Princeton, then moved to Berlin, where I now live with my wife and two daughters. I've written on German politics and culture for publications including The Economist, Jewish Currents, Granta, The Times Literary Supplement, Die Welt, and Der Freitag and have translated a wide range of material. Have questions about German culture? Interested in help thinking through your own intellectual problems? Want someone to really teach your kid how to write? Be in touch.