Shaggy Dog Story

A Shaggy Dog Story?

My neighbour John Rogers, who read my last post "Is This True Love?" tells me that it is a typical example of a type of story called Shaggy Dog Story!
Wikipedia has a note defining the term as follows:

"In its original sense, a shaggy dog story is an extremely long-winded tale featuring extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents, usually resulting in a pointless or absurd punchline based on a play on words in cliché form. These stories are a special case of yarns, coming from the long tradition of campfire yarns. Shaggy dog stories play upon the audience's preconceptions of the art of joke telling. The audience listens to the story with certain expectations, which are either simply not met or met in some entirely unexpected manner."

Here is the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_dog_story.

 What an absolutely punny coincidence! I absolutely love such things that life throws at me. Yes, "Is This True Love?" is a shaggy dog story in more ways than one!

-kannan


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