Joseph Boskin, Scholar of Humor and April Fools' Prankster, Dies at 95
In March of 1983, a public relations official at Boston University asked Joseph Boskin, a scholar of humor in the history department, whether he knew anything about the origin of April Fools' Day.
Answering facetiously — but apparently not facetiously enough, Professor Boskin later recalled — he replied that he had been researching the subject for many years. The university, to his surprise, issued a news release touting him as an authority on the subject.
What happened next was one of the kookiest episodes in the annals of April Fools' tomfoolery, with a revenge plot involving a coconut cream pie.
'I've written three or four books,' Professor Boskin told The Christian Science Monitor in 2010, 'but this seems to be my Andy Warhol moment.'
Professor Boskin died on Feb. 16, his family said. He was 95. His death, in a hospice facility in Lincoln, Mass., had not been widely reported.
Shortly after the news release went out, Fred Bayles, an Associated Press reporter, requested an interview with Professor Boskin, who couldn't immediately be reached because he was flying to Los Angeles to interview Norman Lear for a book he was planning to write.
When the purported April Fools' expert landed, he heard his name paged over the airport intercom. It was the B.U. public relations office.
'I said, 'You know, I was just jiving,'' Professor Boskin told The Christian Science Monitor. 'I protested and said I couldn't do it. She said, 'Oh no, you must call him.''
After reaching Mr. Bayles, Professor Boskin admitted that he knew nothing about the origin of April Fools' Day.
'I was a young, eager reporter, and I knew this would make a great national story, and so I figured he was just being shy about it,' Mr. Bayles said in an interview. 'Little did I know shyness was not his problem. So, like a good reporter, I persisted.'
In the spirit of April Fools' Day, Professor Boskin relented.
On the spot, he invented a tale about Constantine, the Roman emperor. A group of court jesters, he said, had convinced Constantine that they could run the empire better than he could. Constantine was amused and appointed a jester named Kugel as king for a day. Kugel declared that April 1 would be an annual holiday dedicated to absurdity.
'I figured he would catch on,' Professor Boskin told BU Today, a university publication. 'Instead, he asked how to spell Kugel.'
On April Fools' Day, Mr. Bayles's article appeared in newspapers around the world.
'In a way, it was a very serious day,' Professor Boskin was quoted as saying in the article. 'In those times, fools were really wise men. It was the role of jesters to put things in perspective with humor.'
Two weeks later, Professor Boskin told his class what he had done. One of his students was a reporter for the campus newspaper. Sensing a good story, the student called The Associated Press for comment. Mr. Bayles found out and was devastated.
'I thought my career was over,' he said. 'It was absolutely horrifying.'
The A.P. published an article about the episode that quoted a Boston University spokesman saying, 'We regret that something that originated as a story on humor has now proved humorless.'
Professor Boskin contended that he had done nothing wrong.
'I made up the story because it comported with April Fools' Day,' he said, 'and I don't know what all the hullabaloo is about.'
The story did not end there, though.
Joseph Boskin was born on Aug. 10, 1929, in Brooklyn to Abraham and Diana (Geyer) Boskin. His father was a plumber.
After graduating from the State University of New York at Oswego in 1951, he served in the Army as a historian for a top-secret scientific expeditionary unit in Greenland. Afraid of heights, he spent much of his deployment avoiding H-13 helicopters.
'Heady as it was for others, the air-sail thrill of a lifetime was not for me,' he wrote in a memoir, 'Corporal Boskin's Cold Cold War: A Comical Journey' (2011). 'I was already quite content defending my country as a land historian.'
After his Army service, he earned a master's degree in history from New York University and, in 1959, a doctorate from the University of Minnesota.
Professor Boskin did research into race relations while teaching at the University of Southern California in the early 1960s. After joining the Boston University faculty in 1969, he began teaching humor and wrote academic journal articles with titles like 'Humor in the Civil Rights Movement' and 'Black Humor: The Renaissance of Laughter.'
After The Associated Press debunked the April Fools' prank, Professor Boskin thought the story would fade into history. So did Mr. Bayles — at least he hoped it would. But every year around April 1, reporters would seek out the pair for interviews. Mr. Bayles always said no; Professor Boskin often said yes.
'It was like he was rubbing it in,' Mr. Bayles said.
In 2004, Mr. Bayles joined the journalism department at Boston University — yes, really. Their memories of who reached out to whom differ, but they eventually agreed to have lunch at the university's faculty club.
Before they met, Mr. Bayles said, he went to the supermarket to buy a pie. He was going to pie his nemesis right in the face.
'He's big into humor, so I thought I'd return the favor,' Mr. Bayles recalled. 'I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out which pie would be funnier. Lemon meringue was in the running, but I settled on coconut cream.'
They engaged in small talk before getting to Constantine and Kugel. Mr. Bayles, with the pie in his knapsack, revealed that he had felt — and continued to feel — betrayed. Professor Boskin said that he hadn't appreciated being branded a liar.
'His eyes really darkened,' Mr. Bayles said. 'I was taken aback. And I realized, at that point, that this had been torturing him in some ways, too.'
He left the pie in his knapsack and went back to his office to eat it.
Professor Boskin's marriage to Claire Greenberg in 1955 ended in divorce. He is survived by his longtime partner, Charlene O'Connor; his daughters, Julie Scott, Lori Boyle and Deborah Boskin; three grandchildren; and a brother, Melvin.
The story of the professor and the reporter didn't end with their lunch.
Mr. Bayles's daughter, Cara, became a reporter. She had grown up hearing the story and thought it was one worth telling, so in 2017 she emailed Professor Boskin asking for an interview.
'I'd be delighted to get together with you,' he replied, adding, 'I have to say, there are sudden surprises in life, and this is one I never could have imagined.'
Ms. Bayles was not entirely convinced that the pie detail was true; it sounded almost too good. She told Professor Boskin about her father's revenge plan and asked what he thought.
'Even if it's a hoax,' he said, 'it's a great hoax.'
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