A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go.

In 1922 after continuing financial troubles the magazine was taken over by the Workers Party of America. In 1922 Eastman embarked on a fact-finding tour of the Soviet Union to learn about the Soviet enactment of Marxism. Marriage and family
After moving to New York City Eastman married Ida Rauh a fellow radical; they divorced in 1922.

Max Forrester Eastman (January 4 1883 – March 25 1969) was an American writer on literature philosophy and society a poet and a prominent political activist. In later life however his views turned sharply and he became an advocate of free market economics and an anti-Communist.