What is Wit?
Wit is humor that depends on intelligence — quick perception, wordplay, unexpected connections. It is the humor of Oscar Wilde, not of Monty Python.
The components of wit
Wit combines speed (quick responses), intelligence (unexpected connections), and economy (saying much with little). A witty remark achieves its effect in one turn; it does not require extended explanation.
Wit vs absurdism
Wit operates within the rules of language and logic — it exploits them cleverly. Absurdism violates those rules or ignores them. A witty one-liner depends on double meaning or clever framing; an absurdist one-liner depends on the refusal to mean at all.
Wit in anti-humor
Anti-humor can be witty when the non-joke is delivered with deadpan precision. The Archive's books have a wit of concept — the joke of presenting 'ew' as a serious novel is a witty conceptual move, even if no individual sentence is clever.