Humor really is one of the greatest signs of intelligence. I struggle with stories that contain no humor; I don't feel traumatic passages as deeply if the author never gives me a chance to come up for air.
Being funny is a sign of intelligence. That said your intel doesn’t leave you when living in another language. The humor is different - hard to translate into another language.
Long ago I was a reader for The Crescent Review, a literary magazine, long gone, out of North Carolina, I think. The editor, whose name I don't remember, gave me instructions, one of them about humor: if a story is funny, send it on to me. We don't get enough humor.
I'd agree with that. Not enough by way of story in contemporary America is funny. Talk about Chekhov being funny, though his plays are sometimes done dead serious. It's his own sense of humor. Tolstoy, yes, the moralist. Dostoevsky too can be funny, funnier, I think, even in those long, serious novels. Dmitri is just about to make love to Grushenka when he's arrested. Painfully funny. But I do think humor is a function of the personality of the writer. If it's not there, it's not going to make its way into a story. If it IS there, it will get into your first draft, at least. And I think it ought to be nurtured. Laughter heals.
Roberta, I remember The Crescent Review! I do! Nicely done, as I recall. As for finding the funny, one of the few actually funny short stories I can recall is from Allan Gurganus, also of North Carolina and entitled "Nativity, Caucasian" (first in Harper's, then collected in White People). One of the reasons truly funny might be so hard to find is that it relies so heavily on spontaneity which, I believe, can be hard to sustain when by its very nature a written piece requires revision after revision. Spontaneity, and with it funny, can thus be edited right out. Many, many stories & novels have funny bits, of course---and who couldn't name a line or two, or a scene. But the only truly funny novel I can think of that is funny all the way through, that would qualify as comic, is A Confederacy of Dunces, whose author was, tragically & ironically, anything but a man in the grip of a strong sense of humor. Lest this end on a down note, here's part of the opening of the Gurganus story: "I was born at a bridge party. This explains certain frills and soft spots in my character. I sometimes picture my own genes as so many crustless multicolored canapes spread upon a silver oval tray." Oh, the potential in that first line for funny! And it delivers.
I don't think funny has to be consistent, all the way through. But what about One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? That's laugh out loud. Catch 22. Twelve Chairs by the Russians Ilf and Petrov. There was a lot of funny stuff right after the revolution, oddly. Even Isaak Babel! I love the writers who can be funny and serious at the same time, like Lorrie Moore. Spontaneity is a certain kind of humor, but you can sustain it if, as George suggests, you keep the funny stuff in or insert it on revision. It's a matter of voice. (I don't know the Gurganus story, but I'm going to look for it.) Yeah. The Crescent Review was a good lit mag. Glad you remember it!
Interesting observation about contemporary American stories overall lack of humor (or attempts thereof). I haven't read far/wide enough to speak to that (and humor is so subjective), but it does occur to me that personally, I tend to favor the humor of long-dead writers, often British or Russian. I'm also a fan of Lorrie Moore for the same reason you mention, writers like Don DeLillo, Miranda July, Denis Johnson, Leonard Michaels, and others (Saunders as a personal favorite, obviously :))
On a different note, Noah Baumbach's blend of humor and pathos along with complex, authentic characters endlessly delights and floors me (as well as lots of other film/television), but still, it's interesting to ponder. If true, I wonder why it is the case.
It was such a departure! I liked that he tried an adaptation of it, enjoyed the first half or so, but felt less engaged as it went on. I'm only reading the book now though, haha- halfway through. Is it possible to capture the voice/humor of a narrator of that sort in film? Anyways, what did you think of it?
Such a departure, for sure! And, you know, it wasn't necessarily my thing either (I too was all in on the first half, and then faded in the second), but I'm so so glad he did it. It was unlike anything I'd seen, and for that reason alone, I'm glad it exists. :)
So interesting, Kate, that you put Lorrie Moore in the funny category, which confirms our belief that humor is soooo subjective. I much admire her stories, too, and have all of them, but to me funny she is most definitely not. Witty, brilliant, edgy, even sardonic, but funny?? Nope. No laughs there. I know a lot of people thinks she's hilarious, so maybe I'm an outlier, but for all the reasons that I read her, none involves laughter. If I want a laugh, I go elsewhere.
Agree, actually - it's more about looking for that blend of humor (even if light) with the serious / pathos ..agreeing with the original poster and with you about Moore. Laugh-out-loud funny isn't the only flavor or prerequisite fortunately:)
The way Moore presents trouble invites me, at least, to laugh before I cry--maybe, as Chekhov put it, to laugh through tears. It's certainly a different kind of humor from the laughing out loud I enjoyed watching Fawlty Towers last week. (And my lover, who is recovering from a bad marriage, did not find Cleese's and Scales' bickering funny, which would speak to the relative nature of humor.) But the way Moore juxtaposes the situation of a child's mortal illness with the language of the doctors the child's mother has to deal with in "People Like That Are The Only People Here" makes me laugh, though I feel it in my gut, a painful laugh, as opposed to the enjoyment I got out of watching Prunella Scales nag John Cleese in the television show (which hit my lover in his gut, so go figure).
So, um, funny how many types of funny there are (wicked, slapstick, clever, witty, ironical, etc), how subjective humor can be (Babel?), and how much, finally, is owing to taste.
Babel: the description of a Cossack commander's legs as “girls sheathed to the neck in shining riding boots" in "My First Goose." That's funny. I see humor as a juxtaposition of two things that don't go together, but of course that's only one kind of humor.
The writer asks George how he responds "to humor in the writers [he has] so generously shared with us so far?" I'm trying to understand that question. I would guess the response to humor would be to laugh or chuckle, no? But i don't think that's what the questioner means here. Do you mean does George like the sense of humor of some of the writers we've read here? Does he find their humor funny? We've read Hemingway (not funny), Chekhov (sometimes funny), Tolstoy (not funny), Grace Paley (funny), Dostoevsky (funnier than Tolstoy but not really funny), Hawkins (funny; also painful), Gogol (funny in an old-timey way), Saunders (funny), Messina (not funny), Munoz (not funny), Hurston (sometimes funny), Mansfield (not funny), Olsen (not funny), Babel (not funny), Berriault (not funny), Hsun (not funny). I am not holding tight to any of those quick knee-jerk reactions, by the way. They are just my memory of the stories and whether or not they had humor in them. So, the writers with humor would be Chekhov, Paley, Hawkins, Gogol, Saunders, and sometimes Hurston. Why do i find these writers funny and not the others? i would say that it comes down to the writer's use of voice, along with a story's chosen tone, and also the personality of the writers themselves. Babel could tell a joke (In the Basement cracked me up), but My First Goose isn't at all funny. I'd say Paley is all about voice, and her voice is so unique and inimitable--she's just infused with humor naturally. Chekhov--well, he could be deadly serious, but his output was massive and I think sometimes he just liked to get funny. Gogol--well, the Overcoat has a sad, funny thing running through it, and The Nose has its premise. I haven't read more of his work so i can't really say more. Hawkins also is all about voice. She's funny and tough and soft and sad, all at once. Hurston is funny in her longer works, in that she pokes fun at some of her characters. And Saunders? Don't get me started! That guy is a nut!
What I like about going over of all of this is that I'm realizing just how many stories we've read here, and just how many stories do and do not have humor in them. The thread that ties them all together is that they have all been amazing. Do I prefer the funny ones? Not always. But I'd say something with a touch of humor is more of my sweet spot than something deadly serious. I love getting sad over something sad, but I really, really, really love to laugh.
I think the only writers I like are those that use humor in some way. My favorite writing of all uses humor while dealing with dark and/or "serious" subjects. Saunders certainly fits that description. And take "An Honest Thief." I find the line "Why because folks do take in lodgers, to be sure," hilarious. My understanding is that Dostoevsky is funnier in the original Russian too.
Tolstoy is a puzzle to me. For some reason I have never responded to his writing, despite recognizing his skill. Is it a lack of humor? I'm not sure. He certainly uses humor, but it's of a lighter variety than Dostoevsky or Gogol. It seems less personal, if that makes sense.
None of this is to dispute anything you've said, but just that your musings got me musing :-)
I haven't read enough of any of the authors to definitively say anything about them! Regarding Tolstoy: have you read Anna Karenina? You've read everything(!), so i'm guessing you have. You didn't care for that book? I remember loving it, though it occurs to me now that it's been 35 years since I read it!
I'm a very slow reader and I've really read so little, but I did go on a major Russian literature kick for a while.
Yes, I tried Anna Karenina! I got halfway through and and just didn't care enough what happened to the main characters to continue. I feel like this is a blot on my character, but I don't know what to do about it. I must say that it joined company with some other "great" books that I abandoned halfway through, like The Count of Monte Cristo.
Not a blot on your character! There's no reason to finish a book that isn't working for you. I think different books speak to us at different times in our lives. Maybe in the future, you'll try that book again and love it. (I've abandoned all sorts of books, too.)
I enjoyed reading this off-the-cuff synoptic reprise of the stories we've encountered and engaged with in Story Club. Incisive and insightful for sure. Not least because while I feel that I'm getting where your coming from in each of your opinions on the 'humour / not humour' dimension of each I'm also delighting in finding myself disagreeing with you in some cases.
For example: "My First Goose isn't at all funny". Really? My thought is that it is richly riddled with humourously absurd moments? I've read it as something along the lines of being 'a darkly satirical, viciously polemical take down of the perpetrators of senseless cyclical violence'... sorry about that being un-pithy... but I'm reaching for words... and, now may even go with... 'fearfully hilarious'.
It's not that I'm disagreeing with your view Mary (its yours, it is considered and you've every right to it) but much more that, through you and others sharing so readily, I'm sensing that I'm inching my way towards better understanding of what this 'humour' that gets mentioned in relation to mentioned of the stories is: here in Middle England its has, too often, eluded me.
Humor is subjective. You may find that My First Goose has absurd moments (perhaps you are referring to the description of those boots...? Or the farting sequence...?), but overall, to me, it's a frightening story. And a sad one. I didn't find any humor in it--but that's probably just me.
You're so right... frightening and, more than, terrifying and sad and, even sadder, given what's a happening in the same vicinity today (imagine, 48 people attending a funeral wake in a village cafe in Ukraine's Kharkiv region yesterday. Maybe the evil bastard who ordered the targeted strike on civilians is named Savitsky?
Thing is this 'humour' dimension is a moveable feast isn't it? Not just in cross-cultural trans-Atlantic terms but in the way we react to reading the same text, in regard of 'humour / not humour' at different points in our lives?
Good chatting Mary... you do make the little grey cells thinking.
When my husband told me that his office was moving from NY to Miami we went for a drive and had a long conversation about what to do. Then at the end of the talk I said, can we please put this back in the box of things that won’t happen? But we couldn’t and a year later it did happen. A few months before moving, I registered us for an improv comedy course. It was my birthday gift to him—although he did not ask for this. The joke was on him. It was the best thing we could have done. All of a sudden we were actively practicing techniques for any scenario to be a little funnier. We learned the secret to getting laughs was that we had to respond authentically. Which seems a lot like what Ms. Williams was encouraging. And, scene.
I appreciate the idea of maintaining the mystery in humor without trying to penetrate and over analyze it so that it 100% "makes sense". Almost like a zen koan. Since I first saw the "pay it forward" sketch in the most recent season of Tim Robinson's Netflix show I Think You Should Leave, I've had his frantic drive through order of "55 BURGERS, 55 FRIES, 55 TACOS, 55 PIES, 55 COKES, 100 TATER TOTS, 100 PIZZAS, 100 TENDERS, 100 MEATBALLS, 100 COFFEES, 55 WINGS, 55 SHAKES, 55 PANCAKES, 55 PASTAS, 55 PEPPERS AND 155 TATERS" playing on a loop in my head at regular intervals as I contemplate the mystery of why specifically the numbers are so funny to me. 55 is funnier than 50, 60, 53, or 65. Why? I have no idea. To shift into 100s, back to 55s and end with a sole 155 - I say this with all sincerity - is like perfect, hilarious poetry to me. I can't explain it and I don't think I want to explain it. The mystery is too important to me. This is, incidentally, how I feel about G-d.
I think the 55 is about the rhythm of it, and yes you're right, that really works! I know a couple of comedians and they work on this idea of rhythm a lot, stuff like the rule of three but also just the basic rhythm of a sound of a word or phrase. And repetition. Very similar to the way poets do in fact. Also, stuff like call backs works brilliantly in other types of writing too, so prose writers have lots to learn from stand-ups, probably...
A common phrase in Ireland is to refer to 55 and a half thousand people being/doing somewhere/something . . . why 55.5 I have no idea but my dad (who was a very funny man0 always used that phrase and it is stuck in my head too.
This immediately reminds me of “shfifty five.” Do we all remember this?? To this day I repeat “girlfriends age: shfifty five” in my head.
I wonder if 55 is funny bc of that video and its popularity. By the end of “shfifty five” he’s just singing the number 55 as normal back and forth with the shfifty. It’s possible this was deeply engrained in the brains of millions of kids and teens and now 55 is funny. It’s a shared culture.
To be funny, you must risk looking like an idiot. When you really bomb, the knowledge of your idiocy will act as an analgesic. Bullies bomb all the time, but they never have those “I am an idiot” moments that will help them bounce back. They just get worse, trapped in a foul bubble of unfunniness.
Incidentally, today at my doleful job, I got an email from a physician who had some business with my department. “I just wanted to f/u about what we were discussing...”
It took me five minutes to realize he meant ‘follow up.”
Growing up my Dad often accused me of having no sense of humor. And I didn’t get it because I found so many things funny and I could make people laugh especially when I had a good quick observation. Now I’m the mom of a very serious kid and I know he has a wicked sense of humor. What makes my kid funny is he has sharp observations especially of incongruities that he delivers quickly. He uses reversal to upend expectations in ways that are particularly snappy. But he is still a serious human and in that way it’s even funnier when he cracks a joke.
I just finished Northranger Abbey and, good lord, Austen was hilarious. I laughed out loud multiple times.
So interesting that your Dad used to accuse you of not being funny--yet you could make people laugh. I think there's a story in there. And I agree, Austen is so funny.
Definitely a story! Yet, I think it's mostly that, like my own son, I was pretty serious and so when people said jokey things I would (annoyingly) want to dissect what was really meant. My own children now find me completely ridiculous and goofball-y.
This question is an interesting one because it really points out that what is funny is such a range. My dad was very funny in a variety of ways. Definitely full of practical jokes, but also also sort of silly and sweet. He wasn't stand up comedian funny, but he definitely understood and embraced the absurd.
Oh, yes, Welty's "P.O"---I'd mentioned a Gurganus story in an earlier post that I think is a hoot, but I'd forgotten what a gem this is. I think it's easier to sustain humor over the course of a shorter piece.
I've always admired writers who can write funny, (you are certainly one) and I once interviewed several funny writers to ask, "What makes something funny?" Amazingly, none of them could put their finger on it, and neither could I--we all just knew funny when we saw it. I think it has a lot to do with tension and release, and the unexpected. And not punching down. The founder of The Onion, with whom I've been studying humor writing for the last few years, has made a careful study of it and did indeed dissect this frog. Among many other helpful things in Scott Dikker's "How to Write Funny" book series are 11 "funny filters" that give an idea of where the humor might fall in a piece:
Irony – intended meaning exact opposite of literal meaning.
Character – comedic character acting on his or her traits.
Reference – reference something in real life to something that happened in the readers life.
Shock – usually sex, violence, death, drugs, swearing, bathroom humor, gross out humor.
Hyperbole – exaggerating something to an absurd extreme, something that’s impossible, breaks the realities of science.
Parody – mimic the thing you want to parody as much as possible.
Wordplay – using words other than their primary function, switching around, rhyming, puns, double entrendre.
Analogy – comparison of two disparate things.
Madcap – silly, crazy, nonsensical.
Metahumor – humor that makes fun of other humor or the idea of humor.
Misplaced Focus – you purposefully put your attention on the wrong thing.
While vaudevillian humor can be hilarious, I like the more subtle kind that sneaks up and thumps you on the back of the head. Humor is fun to study but also very subjective; what's funny to one person may not be to another, and it's also very contextual. The same joke may bomb out of context when previously it got guffaws inside it. The main thing I learned from studying with Scott is that you need to bounce your humor writing off another writer, because after awhile you can no longer see it.
I'm guessing this book is for people who want to be humor writers (right?): people who want to write jokes for stand up comics, or who want to compose "humor" pieces--a funny essay, an over-the-top piece for McSweeneys, or a "shouts and murmurs" piece for the New Yorker. (I could be wrong! I haven't read the book.) And it's probably excellent for that. This list is a great place to start for thinking up ideas for those sorts of outlets. But I think that's an entirely different kind of "funny" from humor that comes through in a short story or a piece of fiction. In order to be funny in a short story, I think you have to be a naturally funny person--you have to have that sort of gift. And I'm not sure it can be learned. (Just like I'm not sure writing can be learned.) Studied, yes. Intellectualized and analyzed, yes. But to create it--to be a Gary Shteyngart or Lorrie Moore or Joshua Ferris or Nick Hornby--I think you have to simply be a funny person and know how to match the tone of your story and the flow of your jokes to the tale you are telling. It's hard enough to learn how to write a short story. But learning how to write a FUNNY short story (not a joke story, but a story that has humor instilled inside of it)--that's a whole other ball game.
Hmm. No I don't think it need necessarily be a 'How - to' guide, though I've not read the book either. This list could just be a list of noticings... hey look I've noticed that humour sometimes, often even, springs out of these wells.
And any open and sincere noticing will prompt thoughts, hone our pattern-spotting apparatus, and enrich the experience of the world, right? Or it can do, so long as it's not taken to be a definitive or prescriptive ruling.
So, when humour appears and it's not quite in this list, then GREAT, we're open to it. Doesn't have to be a taxonomy necessarily, just an ongoing and developing appreciation for craft... just like we do all the time in SC about other aspects of story-telling.
The book is called "How to Write Funny," so I took it to be a "how to" guide. I think it's a great list! And I think it's probably a super fun book to read. Not dissing the book at all. As I read through it, my mind immediately popped to all sort of comics and movies. (In fact, I'll probably end up buying the book. It's very intriguing. And I'm a huge Onion fan.) My point, probably poorly articulated, is that it takes a certain kind of genius to write a funny short story or novel. And while we can analyze where the "funny" came from in a story, I'm not convinced such a thing can be taught. Hard enough to learn how to simply write a story at all--much less make it funny.
The book is called How to Write Funny, (with sequels) and what I’ve learned from it and the frequent “Writers Room” zoom calls where we share and critique each others’ material is this: when I get an idea for a story into which I want to incorporate humor, which elements fit best? Do I want wordplay, irony, hyperbole or parody, or all of them (those are my favorites.) There are lenses you can use for writing humor, and it helps to know them. At least it has helped me. That’s the only reason I brought this up, because it has helped so much. And for practice and great fun, over the past 3 years I did get 20+ articles published in online humor mags that nobody’s ever heard of except other humor writers, but the fun and community and learning have been terrific. It can be learned, and humor chops can be sharpened.
Fantastic! I love that you've gotten your humor pieces published! And anything that helps us become the writers we want to be--that's also fantastic. I think i'll buy that book today and see what's in it. You've convinced me!
Let me know what you think: I might also want to buy it! (Though hardly anything seems funny today, as if humor died. But maybe it’s only playing dead.)
I took the class to learn how to better incorporate humor into my fiction and non-fiction writing. I specifically asked about that before joining, and was welcomed among the short-sketch writers, stand-up comics, and cartoonists. Humor in fiction is different but it’s also not. The elements of humor are the same regardless of genre, and a joke or punch line can be edited and sharpened for maximum effect. Humor writing can also, to a pretty good extent, be learned, even later in life if you did not grow up among funny people—you can at least learn to recognize which element is in use. But you’re also right—I believe humor can’t be forced, it has to appear organic and spontaneous and in context, which is when it becomes almost intuitive, as when George writes it.
I’ve been learning how to incorporate humor into a serious manuscript I’m working on, and it has been helpful.
Hi Karen. Thank you for this. I read over my earlier comment, and I hope I didn't come off as horribly dismissive. i didn't mean to be! (Sometimes, I hit "post" too quickly, I think.) It's great that you've gotten so much out of that class and that it's helping you to infuse humor into your work. Maybe I should stop saying that humor can't be learned--others in these threads have also said they've learned humor as an adult. It's just such a foreign concept to me! Though i don't think I come off as very funny around here, I've written two comic novels, and I used to write humor pieces for public radio. I'm not saying I'm a comic genius by any stretch, but humor is my natural default state in my writing. And although I've become a better writer over time, my humor has just always been there. (Note: I'm guessing there are many people who have read or heard my work and didn't find me funny. I"m not for everybody.) I grew up in a very funny family--my siblings are so much funnier than i am. The thing is, humor in fiction is--to me--a different animal from writing jokes. It's more embedded. There are some punch lines, perhaps, but it's more of a rhythm thing. Can that rhythm thing be taught? Maybe so! Maybe through editing, a person can punch up their own writing, even if the humor doesn't come naturally to them. Sounds pretty hard, though. I can't imagine incorporating humor into a piece that doesn't already have that tone there to begin with. Anyway, interesting to think about and clearly I need to re-think my thoughts! Thanks for the conversation.
No worries, Mary. I’m really enjoying all the conversation threads on this topic. The reason I decided to get a bit more forensic about humor writing is because I’m working on a memoir of braided stories about when climate change denial first became embedded in federal government policy (as spokesperson for a wildlife agency, I had a catbird seat to the shenanigans,) and how desperately unfair, scary and sad it was, and how I resisted by leaking to The New York Times instead of whistleblowing, which was the scary part when it made the front page and that administration started hunting for the leaker. In order to make the unpalatable palatable, it’s a satire stuffed with absurdity a la Dr Strangelove, and heavily footnoted a la David Foster Wallace, because nobody will believe it otherwise.
Satire is by definition a denunciation of something big and organized, like a government response. So, the satire is somewhat structural and the humor is embedded via many of the aforementioned elements. Since like you, for many years I never thought humor writing could be taught and then learned it can, I decided to share my route in this thread. It’s one of many routes, but seems to adhere to the Malcolm Gladwell axiom of spending ten thousand hours at something before you get really good at it. So good, like the writers we’ve all mentioned and admired throughout, that it becomes intuitive once more, and hard to explain, which is an irony I love.
Hey, Karen--wow. My husband was also USCG (Exxon Valdez, Katrina, BP oil spill), not a captain, though, more keeping things "afloat" here in DC. He also builds wooden boats. I'll mention you to him---he's probably already aware. Yay for you & good luck!
I think there are different kinds of funny, Mary. A McSweeney's piece is so different than, as you said, a Lorrie Moore, or a Joshua Ferris. Both are challenging in different ways, I think.
Thanks, Dave. And oh my! The interviews got incorporated into a presentation I did for sailors, just once, about 8 or 9 years ago, on blogging your voyage. I had kept a semi-humorous blog going while we crossed an ocean on a small sailboat (sending posts via ham radio) and it became somewhat popular, so I got asked to spill my guts when we returned. So, the interview isn't published anywhere. Most of the writers were puzzled by what makes something funny--they just groked it. A couple of them weren't actually humor writers (though Lord knows they tried), but were happy to provide their views.
But haven't you had something like that happen, you're bursting to say or do X but you know you'll pay? But you just to have to do it or say it. Read Tobias Wolff's Bullet to the Brain!
Sometimes reading other people's experiences -- as, in this case, George's with humor -- confirms my theory that I was manufactured on another planet and deposited here as an infant. When I think about my sense of humor, it's been almost entirely constructed, at first through reading the theory (I remember a book by Freud) and then by observing what made people laugh and emulating it.
I started with one joke, learning by trial and error how best to tell it. Next I strung several jokes together into a narrative. I experimented with short jokes, long jokes, stupid jokes, groaners. A personal triumph was inventing my own shaggy dog story, based on a repetitive series of threatening letters I’d received from the subscription department of New Times magazine. I went on to punning, double-entendres, repetition, timing, and incongruity. I learned to imitate foreign accents and to invent personae to speak in them. I tried visual humor, from making bizarre faces to head-slapping and other silly gestures.
As my repertoire expanded, I became more attuned to audience. Making up words with girlfriends gave us a private language. In Italy, I discovered that putting the wrong ending on a word made Italians laugh. Children giggled when I inserted made-up words in the middle of sentences. When I worked in construction, inserting expletives inside other words (“Unbef**kinglievable!”) helped me become one of the guys. Sometimes the quest was daunting. Finding out how to make one girlfriend laugh took five years. (She was partial to pratfalls and penis jokes.)
I started this project when I was a college freshman and by the time I graduated I was pretty good at it. Now, 50 years later, it's my go-to way to communicate. But what seems funny to me still (often) engenders a lot of blank stares.
I have wondered why it's hard for me to create, in writing, what now comes readily when I'm talking with people. After reading George's post, I think it's because I don't have a specific audience whose sense of humor I can play to. What to do with that insight is now To Be Determined.
I feel like I had a really underdeveloped sense of humor until I had a actor friend who was some kind of combination of Robin Williams, Steve Martin, Beckett and Wilde. Anything anyone said, he would come back immediately with a beautiful expansion. Wherever you are now, Charles Pike of Albuquerque and Chicago, thank you with all my heart!
This is great: "Finding out how to make one girlfriend laugh took five years. (She was partial to pratfalls and penis jokes.)"
Also, you constructed your sense of humor by observance and practice. That is so interesting. There's a book in that--a memoir. Write that book and imagine George as your audience. Or imagine Story Club members as your audience. We all want to read that book!
This is quite the thought provoking post. I can't help but do some introspection to try to see how it relates to me - I've also always been that class clown type (which has caused me more grief than wins), so I've always tried to be funny. And I agree, it's the spontaneous ones that blurt out in the moment that hit the best.
Last spring, I joined the satire newspaper at my university. I thought I'd be well suited, but I was a complete flop. I couldn't write funny, I couldn't conceive funny. My pitches generated nothing more than eye rolls and awkward laughs to break the tension. I never wrote an article that was published. It was a disaster. I was wondering how it could be possible. 28 years of trying to be funny, but can't be funny on command? I think your post may have given me some answers!
Humor writing has to be something entirely natural. Make yourself laugh first. Write something silly and fun! I did a whole novel like that and it's my proudest novel achievement to date.
It can get very involved. For one joke (and thankfully just one) I got down to the syllable timing of the way I wrote the line just to get the timing exactly how I wanted it. That's as deep as I can recall it getting
S J Perelman, as funny a writer who ever lived, thought that the perimeters of comedy were Will Rogers’ moist embrace of his audience with “I never met a man I didn’t like” and Oscar Wilde on the subject of English fox-hunters: “the unspeakable pursuing the inedible.” The latter is so pointed, so rich with juxtaposition--the essence of humor. The contrast between our lofty goals and our thieving ends, or luxury and squalor--that’s where the humor is, and it’s richest when everyone is trying to be nice and ignore the contrast.
Given what Wilde was up against & the time during which he was up against it, humor may well have been what got him through. Which is what I think, mostly, humor is: a way to survive. Some say humor is a sign of intelligence, and, okay, maybe so, but there are plenty of the stupid who can deliver a quip (recent e.g., Kevin McCarthy, as he set himself aflame before the nation--please don't make me quote; you get my point). I don't think you necessarily have to be smart to be funny so much as desperate, at which point your survival instinct kicks in, the one that wants you to be thought of at least less than a fool. You don't have to be intelligent, just not thought a fool. Or if not a fool, exactly, then at least not appearing so down-and-out. I think of Carol Burnett's remark, this in reflection of her dire growing up: humor is tragedy plus time. It's possible that she's not original to that remark, but she exemplifies it. She's been long one of my heroes (I can still see her on the old Garry Moore Show in my mind, and where she got her start!) because she could make me laugh. At a time when I didn't even know I needed to. Thus my definition of funny: make me laugh, and I'm yours!
Wonderful. Only in the last couple of weeks have I begun to permit humor in my work. I crack jokes in real life regularly, but it’s felt counterproductive in my quest to “be taken seriously.” But I’m learning that the serious and the humorous coexist and always have. It’s people who can smile in the midst of pain that I respect so deeply. Your thoughts enforce that theory!
Excellent deep dive! I have to disagree with the conclusion. Funny is a learned skill, and those who learn it can use it with predictable results (not 100% laughs, but certainly better than random). Find my free daily tips (often humor/comedy related) on Substack.
Thank you both - yourself and Mary - so much for the brief exchange below.
I can see, having checked out your books, why you disagree with George's conclusion Scott and so I can agree with you. At the same time I can see, from what he writes in this Newsletter and has touched in many others here in Story Club and also from what I've read of his stories, how George gets to his conclusion "No joke."
Here's the penny of realisation that's dropped for me: I've always, first and foremost, read George's stories as 'serious' albeit laced and hinged on surreal humour but now I'm appreciating that while his subjects are serious he couldn't deliver on them without his capacity for his kind of 'humour' sat right along 'serious' as equal co-pilots in his writing cockpit.
No way will I think of George as a writer of comedy (where being funny afresh is the primary purpose and aim) but I certainly feel I've nudged another inch towards understanding him as a writer of story (where creating fresh fiction is the primary purpose and aim).
I like this observation, Rob. Thank you. I believe there's a symbiotic relationship between humor and "serious" drama. They're like a binary quasar, where each depends on the other's gravity and would fly out of orbit without the other. They make beautiful music together yet are always separate.
'Gemini'; 'Yin & Yang'; 'Castor & Pollux'; 'Romulus & Remus'... through to the 'Everly Brothers'; 'Bacon & Eggs'; 'Nile Crocodile & Nile Plover'; 'Two Sides of the Same Coin'.... etcetera, etcetera, the message is the same and sticks in that, whatever the particulars of combination, you just can't have one without the other.
Scott Dikkers! I'm one of those here who said funny cannot be learned. But after reading the views of others here, I'm changing my mind. Also--i just purchased your book and eagerly await its arrival. Nice to see you here!
I associate humor with playfulness and I associate play with intelligence. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone on that, as in it's an accepted data point for measuring whether a living thing has a highly developed social capacity. Dolphins, playful. Snails, not so much. It's a higher form, above the survival level, somewhere higher up in Maslow's pyramid maybe.
Humor really is one of the greatest signs of intelligence. I struggle with stories that contain no humor; I don't feel traumatic passages as deeply if the author never gives me a chance to come up for air.
I’m doubly impressed with those who can be funny in more than one language.
Same! The true mark of fluency.
Being funny is a sign of intelligence. That said your intel doesn’t leave you when living in another language. The humor is different - hard to translate into another language.
I totally agree!
Long ago I was a reader for The Crescent Review, a literary magazine, long gone, out of North Carolina, I think. The editor, whose name I don't remember, gave me instructions, one of them about humor: if a story is funny, send it on to me. We don't get enough humor.
I'd agree with that. Not enough by way of story in contemporary America is funny. Talk about Chekhov being funny, though his plays are sometimes done dead serious. It's his own sense of humor. Tolstoy, yes, the moralist. Dostoevsky too can be funny, funnier, I think, even in those long, serious novels. Dmitri is just about to make love to Grushenka when he's arrested. Painfully funny. But I do think humor is a function of the personality of the writer. If it's not there, it's not going to make its way into a story. If it IS there, it will get into your first draft, at least. And I think it ought to be nurtured. Laughter heals.
Roberta, I remember The Crescent Review! I do! Nicely done, as I recall. As for finding the funny, one of the few actually funny short stories I can recall is from Allan Gurganus, also of North Carolina and entitled "Nativity, Caucasian" (first in Harper's, then collected in White People). One of the reasons truly funny might be so hard to find is that it relies so heavily on spontaneity which, I believe, can be hard to sustain when by its very nature a written piece requires revision after revision. Spontaneity, and with it funny, can thus be edited right out. Many, many stories & novels have funny bits, of course---and who couldn't name a line or two, or a scene. But the only truly funny novel I can think of that is funny all the way through, that would qualify as comic, is A Confederacy of Dunces, whose author was, tragically & ironically, anything but a man in the grip of a strong sense of humor. Lest this end on a down note, here's part of the opening of the Gurganus story: "I was born at a bridge party. This explains certain frills and soft spots in my character. I sometimes picture my own genes as so many crustless multicolored canapes spread upon a silver oval tray." Oh, the potential in that first line for funny! And it delivers.
I don't think funny has to be consistent, all the way through. But what about One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? That's laugh out loud. Catch 22. Twelve Chairs by the Russians Ilf and Petrov. There was a lot of funny stuff right after the revolution, oddly. Even Isaak Babel! I love the writers who can be funny and serious at the same time, like Lorrie Moore. Spontaneity is a certain kind of humor, but you can sustain it if, as George suggests, you keep the funny stuff in or insert it on revision. It's a matter of voice. (I don't know the Gurganus story, but I'm going to look for it.) Yeah. The Crescent Review was a good lit mag. Glad you remember it!
Interesting observation about contemporary American stories overall lack of humor (or attempts thereof). I haven't read far/wide enough to speak to that (and humor is so subjective), but it does occur to me that personally, I tend to favor the humor of long-dead writers, often British or Russian. I'm also a fan of Lorrie Moore for the same reason you mention, writers like Don DeLillo, Miranda July, Denis Johnson, Leonard Michaels, and others (Saunders as a personal favorite, obviously :))
On a different note, Noah Baumbach's blend of humor and pathos along with complex, authentic characters endlessly delights and floors me (as well as lots of other film/television), but still, it's interesting to ponder. If true, I wonder why it is the case.
I love Noah Baumbach's humor... though I'm wondering what you thought of his interpretation of White Noise, if you caught it on Netflix.
It was such a departure! I liked that he tried an adaptation of it, enjoyed the first half or so, but felt less engaged as it went on. I'm only reading the book now though, haha- halfway through. Is it possible to capture the voice/humor of a narrator of that sort in film? Anyways, what did you think of it?
Such a departure, for sure! And, you know, it wasn't necessarily my thing either (I too was all in on the first half, and then faded in the second), but I'm so so glad he did it. It was unlike anything I'd seen, and for that reason alone, I'm glad it exists. :)
So interesting, Kate, that you put Lorrie Moore in the funny category, which confirms our belief that humor is soooo subjective. I much admire her stories, too, and have all of them, but to me funny she is most definitely not. Witty, brilliant, edgy, even sardonic, but funny?? Nope. No laughs there. I know a lot of people thinks she's hilarious, so maybe I'm an outlier, but for all the reasons that I read her, none involves laughter. If I want a laugh, I go elsewhere.
Agree, actually - it's more about looking for that blend of humor (even if light) with the serious / pathos ..agreeing with the original poster and with you about Moore. Laugh-out-loud funny isn't the only flavor or prerequisite fortunately:)
The way Moore presents trouble invites me, at least, to laugh before I cry--maybe, as Chekhov put it, to laugh through tears. It's certainly a different kind of humor from the laughing out loud I enjoyed watching Fawlty Towers last week. (And my lover, who is recovering from a bad marriage, did not find Cleese's and Scales' bickering funny, which would speak to the relative nature of humor.) But the way Moore juxtaposes the situation of a child's mortal illness with the language of the doctors the child's mother has to deal with in "People Like That Are The Only People Here" makes me laugh, though I feel it in my gut, a painful laugh, as opposed to the enjoyment I got out of watching Prunella Scales nag John Cleese in the television show (which hit my lover in his gut, so go figure).
So, um, funny how many types of funny there are (wicked, slapstick, clever, witty, ironical, etc), how subjective humor can be (Babel?), and how much, finally, is owing to taste.
Babel: the description of a Cossack commander's legs as “girls sheathed to the neck in shining riding boots" in "My First Goose." That's funny. I see humor as a juxtaposition of two things that don't go together, but of course that's only one kind of humor.
OMG, I loved Confederacy of Dunces!
The writer asks George how he responds "to humor in the writers [he has] so generously shared with us so far?" I'm trying to understand that question. I would guess the response to humor would be to laugh or chuckle, no? But i don't think that's what the questioner means here. Do you mean does George like the sense of humor of some of the writers we've read here? Does he find their humor funny? We've read Hemingway (not funny), Chekhov (sometimes funny), Tolstoy (not funny), Grace Paley (funny), Dostoevsky (funnier than Tolstoy but not really funny), Hawkins (funny; also painful), Gogol (funny in an old-timey way), Saunders (funny), Messina (not funny), Munoz (not funny), Hurston (sometimes funny), Mansfield (not funny), Olsen (not funny), Babel (not funny), Berriault (not funny), Hsun (not funny). I am not holding tight to any of those quick knee-jerk reactions, by the way. They are just my memory of the stories and whether or not they had humor in them. So, the writers with humor would be Chekhov, Paley, Hawkins, Gogol, Saunders, and sometimes Hurston. Why do i find these writers funny and not the others? i would say that it comes down to the writer's use of voice, along with a story's chosen tone, and also the personality of the writers themselves. Babel could tell a joke (In the Basement cracked me up), but My First Goose isn't at all funny. I'd say Paley is all about voice, and her voice is so unique and inimitable--she's just infused with humor naturally. Chekhov--well, he could be deadly serious, but his output was massive and I think sometimes he just liked to get funny. Gogol--well, the Overcoat has a sad, funny thing running through it, and The Nose has its premise. I haven't read more of his work so i can't really say more. Hawkins also is all about voice. She's funny and tough and soft and sad, all at once. Hurston is funny in her longer works, in that she pokes fun at some of her characters. And Saunders? Don't get me started! That guy is a nut!
What I like about going over of all of this is that I'm realizing just how many stories we've read here, and just how many stories do and do not have humor in them. The thread that ties them all together is that they have all been amazing. Do I prefer the funny ones? Not always. But I'd say something with a touch of humor is more of my sweet spot than something deadly serious. I love getting sad over something sad, but I really, really, really love to laugh.
Thanks for the question, questioner!
There was Donald Barthelme’s The School. “We weren’t even supposed to have a puppy.”
Oh i forgot that we read that one! Thank you! Yes, that line is so funny.
Totally agree on that Saunders guy. Delightfully funny and observant...!
I think the only writers I like are those that use humor in some way. My favorite writing of all uses humor while dealing with dark and/or "serious" subjects. Saunders certainly fits that description. And take "An Honest Thief." I find the line "Why because folks do take in lodgers, to be sure," hilarious. My understanding is that Dostoevsky is funnier in the original Russian too.
Tolstoy is a puzzle to me. For some reason I have never responded to his writing, despite recognizing his skill. Is it a lack of humor? I'm not sure. He certainly uses humor, but it's of a lighter variety than Dostoevsky or Gogol. It seems less personal, if that makes sense.
None of this is to dispute anything you've said, but just that your musings got me musing :-)
I haven't read enough of any of the authors to definitively say anything about them! Regarding Tolstoy: have you read Anna Karenina? You've read everything(!), so i'm guessing you have. You didn't care for that book? I remember loving it, though it occurs to me now that it's been 35 years since I read it!
I'm a very slow reader and I've really read so little, but I did go on a major Russian literature kick for a while.
Yes, I tried Anna Karenina! I got halfway through and and just didn't care enough what happened to the main characters to continue. I feel like this is a blot on my character, but I don't know what to do about it. I must say that it joined company with some other "great" books that I abandoned halfway through, like The Count of Monte Cristo.
Not a blot on your character! There's no reason to finish a book that isn't working for you. I think different books speak to us at different times in our lives. Maybe in the future, you'll try that book again and love it. (I've abandoned all sorts of books, too.)
Of Mules and Men is pretty damned funny
Thanks, Richard. And there are some comic parts in Their Eyes Were Watching God, too. (Such a great book.)
I enjoyed reading this off-the-cuff synoptic reprise of the stories we've encountered and engaged with in Story Club. Incisive and insightful for sure. Not least because while I feel that I'm getting where your coming from in each of your opinions on the 'humour / not humour' dimension of each I'm also delighting in finding myself disagreeing with you in some cases.
For example: "My First Goose isn't at all funny". Really? My thought is that it is richly riddled with humourously absurd moments? I've read it as something along the lines of being 'a darkly satirical, viciously polemical take down of the perpetrators of senseless cyclical violence'... sorry about that being un-pithy... but I'm reaching for words... and, now may even go with... 'fearfully hilarious'.
It's not that I'm disagreeing with your view Mary (its yours, it is considered and you've every right to it) but much more that, through you and others sharing so readily, I'm sensing that I'm inching my way towards better understanding of what this 'humour' that gets mentioned in relation to mentioned of the stories is: here in Middle England its has, too often, eluded me.
Love this, Rob! Disagree away!
Humor is subjective. You may find that My First Goose has absurd moments (perhaps you are referring to the description of those boots...? Or the farting sequence...?), but overall, to me, it's a frightening story. And a sad one. I didn't find any humor in it--but that's probably just me.
You're so right... frightening and, more than, terrifying and sad and, even sadder, given what's a happening in the same vicinity today (imagine, 48 people attending a funeral wake in a village cafe in Ukraine's Kharkiv region yesterday. Maybe the evil bastard who ordered the targeted strike on civilians is named Savitsky?
Thing is this 'humour' dimension is a moveable feast isn't it? Not just in cross-cultural trans-Atlantic terms but in the way we react to reading the same text, in regard of 'humour / not humour' at different points in our lives?
Good chatting Mary... you do make the little grey cells thinking.
When my husband told me that his office was moving from NY to Miami we went for a drive and had a long conversation about what to do. Then at the end of the talk I said, can we please put this back in the box of things that won’t happen? But we couldn’t and a year later it did happen. A few months before moving, I registered us for an improv comedy course. It was my birthday gift to him—although he did not ask for this. The joke was on him. It was the best thing we could have done. All of a sudden we were actively practicing techniques for any scenario to be a little funnier. We learned the secret to getting laughs was that we had to respond authentically. Which seems a lot like what Ms. Williams was encouraging. And, scene.
Just made a similar comment re. comedy improv - so true!
I appreciate the idea of maintaining the mystery in humor without trying to penetrate and over analyze it so that it 100% "makes sense". Almost like a zen koan. Since I first saw the "pay it forward" sketch in the most recent season of Tim Robinson's Netflix show I Think You Should Leave, I've had his frantic drive through order of "55 BURGERS, 55 FRIES, 55 TACOS, 55 PIES, 55 COKES, 100 TATER TOTS, 100 PIZZAS, 100 TENDERS, 100 MEATBALLS, 100 COFFEES, 55 WINGS, 55 SHAKES, 55 PANCAKES, 55 PASTAS, 55 PEPPERS AND 155 TATERS" playing on a loop in my head at regular intervals as I contemplate the mystery of why specifically the numbers are so funny to me. 55 is funnier than 50, 60, 53, or 65. Why? I have no idea. To shift into 100s, back to 55s and end with a sole 155 - I say this with all sincerity - is like perfect, hilarious poetry to me. I can't explain it and I don't think I want to explain it. The mystery is too important to me. This is, incidentally, how I feel about G-d.
I think the 55 is about the rhythm of it, and yes you're right, that really works! I know a couple of comedians and they work on this idea of rhythm a lot, stuff like the rule of three but also just the basic rhythm of a sound of a word or phrase. And repetition. Very similar to the way poets do in fact. Also, stuff like call backs works brilliantly in other types of writing too, so prose writers have lots to learn from stand-ups, probably...
A common phrase in Ireland is to refer to 55 and a half thousand people being/doing somewhere/something . . . why 55.5 I have no idea but my dad (who was a very funny man0 always used that phrase and it is stuck in my head too.
This immediately reminds me of “shfifty five.” Do we all remember this?? To this day I repeat “girlfriends age: shfifty five” in my head.
I wonder if 55 is funny bc of that video and its popularity. By the end of “shfifty five” he’s just singing the number 55 as normal back and forth with the shfifty. It’s possible this was deeply engrained in the brains of millions of kids and teens and now 55 is funny. It’s a shared culture.
You got me thinking about the Number 55, Rod!
Here’s the video, hadn’t watched since I was maybe 12 haha. https://youtu.be/-XccUMOQ978?si=o0c7Cay6J1rUu8kb
Oh I don't even need to watch, merely reading that has unearthed a long dormant memory of the good old pre-YouTube days of flash videos.
To be funny, you must risk looking like an idiot. When you really bomb, the knowledge of your idiocy will act as an analgesic. Bullies bomb all the time, but they never have those “I am an idiot” moments that will help them bounce back. They just get worse, trapped in a foul bubble of unfunniness.
Incidentally, today at my doleful job, I got an email from a physician who had some business with my department. “I just wanted to f/u about what we were discussing...”
It took me five minutes to realize he meant ‘follow up.”
hysterical!
One hard up physician!
haha! I'm late to this comment, but "f/u" gets better with age I guess
Brilliant - but are you sure he meant follow up???
Lol.
Growing up my Dad often accused me of having no sense of humor. And I didn’t get it because I found so many things funny and I could make people laugh especially when I had a good quick observation. Now I’m the mom of a very serious kid and I know he has a wicked sense of humor. What makes my kid funny is he has sharp observations especially of incongruities that he delivers quickly. He uses reversal to upend expectations in ways that are particularly snappy. But he is still a serious human and in that way it’s even funnier when he cracks a joke.
I just finished Northranger Abbey and, good lord, Austen was hilarious. I laughed out loud multiple times.
So interesting that your Dad used to accuse you of not being funny--yet you could make people laugh. I think there's a story in there. And I agree, Austen is so funny.
Definitely a story! Yet, I think it's mostly that, like my own son, I was pretty serious and so when people said jokey things I would (annoyingly) want to dissect what was really meant. My own children now find me completely ridiculous and goofball-y.
I think deadly serious people are often the funniest, Kathryn. Did your Dad have a sense of humor I wonder? (Just curious).
This question is an interesting one because it really points out that what is funny is such a range. My dad was very funny in a variety of ways. Definitely full of practical jokes, but also also sort of silly and sweet. He wasn't stand up comedian funny, but he definitely understood and embraced the absurd.
Oh, yes, Welty's "P.O"---I'd mentioned a Gurganus story in an earlier post that I think is a hoot, but I'd forgotten what a gem this is. I think it's easier to sustain humor over the course of a shorter piece.
George, thank you for this post.
I've always admired writers who can write funny, (you are certainly one) and I once interviewed several funny writers to ask, "What makes something funny?" Amazingly, none of them could put their finger on it, and neither could I--we all just knew funny when we saw it. I think it has a lot to do with tension and release, and the unexpected. And not punching down. The founder of The Onion, with whom I've been studying humor writing for the last few years, has made a careful study of it and did indeed dissect this frog. Among many other helpful things in Scott Dikker's "How to Write Funny" book series are 11 "funny filters" that give an idea of where the humor might fall in a piece:
Irony – intended meaning exact opposite of literal meaning.
Character – comedic character acting on his or her traits.
Reference – reference something in real life to something that happened in the readers life.
Shock – usually sex, violence, death, drugs, swearing, bathroom humor, gross out humor.
Hyperbole – exaggerating something to an absurd extreme, something that’s impossible, breaks the realities of science.
Parody – mimic the thing you want to parody as much as possible.
Wordplay – using words other than their primary function, switching around, rhyming, puns, double entrendre.
Analogy – comparison of two disparate things.
Madcap – silly, crazy, nonsensical.
Metahumor – humor that makes fun of other humor or the idea of humor.
Misplaced Focus – you purposefully put your attention on the wrong thing.
While vaudevillian humor can be hilarious, I like the more subtle kind that sneaks up and thumps you on the back of the head. Humor is fun to study but also very subjective; what's funny to one person may not be to another, and it's also very contextual. The same joke may bomb out of context when previously it got guffaws inside it. The main thing I learned from studying with Scott is that you need to bounce your humor writing off another writer, because after awhile you can no longer see it.
I'm guessing this book is for people who want to be humor writers (right?): people who want to write jokes for stand up comics, or who want to compose "humor" pieces--a funny essay, an over-the-top piece for McSweeneys, or a "shouts and murmurs" piece for the New Yorker. (I could be wrong! I haven't read the book.) And it's probably excellent for that. This list is a great place to start for thinking up ideas for those sorts of outlets. But I think that's an entirely different kind of "funny" from humor that comes through in a short story or a piece of fiction. In order to be funny in a short story, I think you have to be a naturally funny person--you have to have that sort of gift. And I'm not sure it can be learned. (Just like I'm not sure writing can be learned.) Studied, yes. Intellectualized and analyzed, yes. But to create it--to be a Gary Shteyngart or Lorrie Moore or Joshua Ferris or Nick Hornby--I think you have to simply be a funny person and know how to match the tone of your story and the flow of your jokes to the tale you are telling. It's hard enough to learn how to write a short story. But learning how to write a FUNNY short story (not a joke story, but a story that has humor instilled inside of it)--that's a whole other ball game.
Hmm. No I don't think it need necessarily be a 'How - to' guide, though I've not read the book either. This list could just be a list of noticings... hey look I've noticed that humour sometimes, often even, springs out of these wells.
And any open and sincere noticing will prompt thoughts, hone our pattern-spotting apparatus, and enrich the experience of the world, right? Or it can do, so long as it's not taken to be a definitive or prescriptive ruling.
So, when humour appears and it's not quite in this list, then GREAT, we're open to it. Doesn't have to be a taxonomy necessarily, just an ongoing and developing appreciation for craft... just like we do all the time in SC about other aspects of story-telling.
The book is called "How to Write Funny," so I took it to be a "how to" guide. I think it's a great list! And I think it's probably a super fun book to read. Not dissing the book at all. As I read through it, my mind immediately popped to all sort of comics and movies. (In fact, I'll probably end up buying the book. It's very intriguing. And I'm a huge Onion fan.) My point, probably poorly articulated, is that it takes a certain kind of genius to write a funny short story or novel. And while we can analyze where the "funny" came from in a story, I'm not convinced such a thing can be taught. Hard enough to learn how to simply write a story at all--much less make it funny.
Hi, Mary,
The book is called How to Write Funny, (with sequels) and what I’ve learned from it and the frequent “Writers Room” zoom calls where we share and critique each others’ material is this: when I get an idea for a story into which I want to incorporate humor, which elements fit best? Do I want wordplay, irony, hyperbole or parody, or all of them (those are my favorites.) There are lenses you can use for writing humor, and it helps to know them. At least it has helped me. That’s the only reason I brought this up, because it has helped so much. And for practice and great fun, over the past 3 years I did get 20+ articles published in online humor mags that nobody’s ever heard of except other humor writers, but the fun and community and learning have been terrific. It can be learned, and humor chops can be sharpened.
Fantastic! I love that you've gotten your humor pieces published! And anything that helps us become the writers we want to be--that's also fantastic. I think i'll buy that book today and see what's in it. You've convinced me!
Let me know what you think: I might also want to buy it! (Though hardly anything seems funny today, as if humor died. But maybe it’s only playing dead.)
Hi, Mary.
I took the class to learn how to better incorporate humor into my fiction and non-fiction writing. I specifically asked about that before joining, and was welcomed among the short-sketch writers, stand-up comics, and cartoonists. Humor in fiction is different but it’s also not. The elements of humor are the same regardless of genre, and a joke or punch line can be edited and sharpened for maximum effect. Humor writing can also, to a pretty good extent, be learned, even later in life if you did not grow up among funny people—you can at least learn to recognize which element is in use. But you’re also right—I believe humor can’t be forced, it has to appear organic and spontaneous and in context, which is when it becomes almost intuitive, as when George writes it.
I’ve been learning how to incorporate humor into a serious manuscript I’m working on, and it has been helpful.
Hi Karen. Thank you for this. I read over my earlier comment, and I hope I didn't come off as horribly dismissive. i didn't mean to be! (Sometimes, I hit "post" too quickly, I think.) It's great that you've gotten so much out of that class and that it's helping you to infuse humor into your work. Maybe I should stop saying that humor can't be learned--others in these threads have also said they've learned humor as an adult. It's just such a foreign concept to me! Though i don't think I come off as very funny around here, I've written two comic novels, and I used to write humor pieces for public radio. I'm not saying I'm a comic genius by any stretch, but humor is my natural default state in my writing. And although I've become a better writer over time, my humor has just always been there. (Note: I'm guessing there are many people who have read or heard my work and didn't find me funny. I"m not for everybody.) I grew up in a very funny family--my siblings are so much funnier than i am. The thing is, humor in fiction is--to me--a different animal from writing jokes. It's more embedded. There are some punch lines, perhaps, but it's more of a rhythm thing. Can that rhythm thing be taught? Maybe so! Maybe through editing, a person can punch up their own writing, even if the humor doesn't come naturally to them. Sounds pretty hard, though. I can't imagine incorporating humor into a piece that doesn't already have that tone there to begin with. Anyway, interesting to think about and clearly I need to re-think my thoughts! Thanks for the conversation.
No worries, Mary. I’m really enjoying all the conversation threads on this topic. The reason I decided to get a bit more forensic about humor writing is because I’m working on a memoir of braided stories about when climate change denial first became embedded in federal government policy (as spokesperson for a wildlife agency, I had a catbird seat to the shenanigans,) and how desperately unfair, scary and sad it was, and how I resisted by leaking to The New York Times instead of whistleblowing, which was the scary part when it made the front page and that administration started hunting for the leaker. In order to make the unpalatable palatable, it’s a satire stuffed with absurdity a la Dr Strangelove, and heavily footnoted a la David Foster Wallace, because nobody will believe it otherwise.
Satire is by definition a denunciation of something big and organized, like a government response. So, the satire is somewhat structural and the humor is embedded via many of the aforementioned elements. Since like you, for many years I never thought humor writing could be taught and then learned it can, I decided to share my route in this thread. It’s one of many routes, but seems to adhere to the Malcolm Gladwell axiom of spending ten thousand hours at something before you get really good at it. So good, like the writers we’ve all mentioned and admired throughout, that it becomes intuitive once more, and hard to explain, which is an irony I love.
Hey, Karen--wow. My husband was also USCG (Exxon Valdez, Katrina, BP oil spill), not a captain, though, more keeping things "afloat" here in DC. He also builds wooden boats. I'll mention you to him---he's probably already aware. Yay for you & good luck!
Wow! And now I've looked you up online and....double wow! You are a remarkable person! Looking forward to that memoir!
I think there are different kinds of funny, Mary. A McSweeney's piece is so different than, as you said, a Lorrie Moore, or a Joshua Ferris. Both are challenging in different ways, I think.
So great! Thank you so much for this!!
This is great, Karen; the whole comment is gold. Where is this interview you did? Can we read it? :)
Thanks, Dave. And oh my! The interviews got incorporated into a presentation I did for sailors, just once, about 8 or 9 years ago, on blogging your voyage. I had kept a semi-humorous blog going while we crossed an ocean on a small sailboat (sending posts via ham radio) and it became somewhat popular, so I got asked to spill my guts when we returned. So, the interview isn't published anywhere. Most of the writers were puzzled by what makes something funny--they just groked it. A couple of them weren't actually humor writers (though Lord knows they tried), but were happy to provide their views.
Wow! Thanks for your thoughtful reply! A blogging voyage!! Sounds like fun!
My ears were burning. Nice conversation here, everybody!
That first girlfriend breakup story made me laugh out loud! Funny.
But haven't you had something like that happen, you're bursting to say or do X but you know you'll pay? But you just to have to do it or say it. Read Tobias Wolff's Bullet to the Brain!
Bookmarked!
I love that story!
Sometimes reading other people's experiences -- as, in this case, George's with humor -- confirms my theory that I was manufactured on another planet and deposited here as an infant. When I think about my sense of humor, it's been almost entirely constructed, at first through reading the theory (I remember a book by Freud) and then by observing what made people laugh and emulating it.
I started with one joke, learning by trial and error how best to tell it. Next I strung several jokes together into a narrative. I experimented with short jokes, long jokes, stupid jokes, groaners. A personal triumph was inventing my own shaggy dog story, based on a repetitive series of threatening letters I’d received from the subscription department of New Times magazine. I went on to punning, double-entendres, repetition, timing, and incongruity. I learned to imitate foreign accents and to invent personae to speak in them. I tried visual humor, from making bizarre faces to head-slapping and other silly gestures.
As my repertoire expanded, I became more attuned to audience. Making up words with girlfriends gave us a private language. In Italy, I discovered that putting the wrong ending on a word made Italians laugh. Children giggled when I inserted made-up words in the middle of sentences. When I worked in construction, inserting expletives inside other words (“Unbef**kinglievable!”) helped me become one of the guys. Sometimes the quest was daunting. Finding out how to make one girlfriend laugh took five years. (She was partial to pratfalls and penis jokes.)
I started this project when I was a college freshman and by the time I graduated I was pretty good at it. Now, 50 years later, it's my go-to way to communicate. But what seems funny to me still (often) engenders a lot of blank stares.
I have wondered why it's hard for me to create, in writing, what now comes readily when I'm talking with people. After reading George's post, I think it's because I don't have a specific audience whose sense of humor I can play to. What to do with that insight is now To Be Determined.
I feel like I had a really underdeveloped sense of humor until I had a actor friend who was some kind of combination of Robin Williams, Steve Martin, Beckett and Wilde. Anything anyone said, he would come back immediately with a beautiful expansion. Wherever you are now, Charles Pike of Albuquerque and Chicago, thank you with all my heart!
This is great: "Finding out how to make one girlfriend laugh took five years. (She was partial to pratfalls and penis jokes.)"
Also, you constructed your sense of humor by observance and practice. That is so interesting. There's a book in that--a memoir. Write that book and imagine George as your audience. Or imagine Story Club members as your audience. We all want to read that book!
What a kind thing to say! And it might actually work, too. Perhaps you can all be my Sheri Williams.
This is quite the thought provoking post. I can't help but do some introspection to try to see how it relates to me - I've also always been that class clown type (which has caused me more grief than wins), so I've always tried to be funny. And I agree, it's the spontaneous ones that blurt out in the moment that hit the best.
Last spring, I joined the satire newspaper at my university. I thought I'd be well suited, but I was a complete flop. I couldn't write funny, I couldn't conceive funny. My pitches generated nothing more than eye rolls and awkward laughs to break the tension. I never wrote an article that was published. It was a disaster. I was wondering how it could be possible. 28 years of trying to be funny, but can't be funny on command? I think your post may have given me some answers!
Humor writing has to be something entirely natural. Make yourself laugh first. Write something silly and fun! I did a whole novel like that and it's my proudest novel achievement to date.
Love this and it totally resonated! The editing process is interesting too, you find out what makes something funnier or less funny
It can get very involved. For one joke (and thankfully just one) I got down to the syllable timing of the way I wrote the line just to get the timing exactly how I wanted it. That's as deep as I can recall it getting
S J Perelman, as funny a writer who ever lived, thought that the perimeters of comedy were Will Rogers’ moist embrace of his audience with “I never met a man I didn’t like” and Oscar Wilde on the subject of English fox-hunters: “the unspeakable pursuing the inedible.” The latter is so pointed, so rich with juxtaposition--the essence of humor. The contrast between our lofty goals and our thieving ends, or luxury and squalor--that’s where the humor is, and it’s richest when everyone is trying to be nice and ignore the contrast.
Wilde was one of the most creative and funniest of all time.
'I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.'
Love it!
Given what Wilde was up against & the time during which he was up against it, humor may well have been what got him through. Which is what I think, mostly, humor is: a way to survive. Some say humor is a sign of intelligence, and, okay, maybe so, but there are plenty of the stupid who can deliver a quip (recent e.g., Kevin McCarthy, as he set himself aflame before the nation--please don't make me quote; you get my point). I don't think you necessarily have to be smart to be funny so much as desperate, at which point your survival instinct kicks in, the one that wants you to be thought of at least less than a fool. You don't have to be intelligent, just not thought a fool. Or if not a fool, exactly, then at least not appearing so down-and-out. I think of Carol Burnett's remark, this in reflection of her dire growing up: humor is tragedy plus time. It's possible that she's not original to that remark, but she exemplifies it. She's been long one of my heroes (I can still see her on the old Garry Moore Show in my mind, and where she got her start!) because she could make me laugh. At a time when I didn't even know I needed to. Thus my definition of funny: make me laugh, and I'm yours!
Ha! Now I know the path to your heart!
And I think, and happily believe, that that path is shared by many. Which is to say, we're not alone: make us laugh & we're all in.
I share that path!
Good thing, then, that I just received “Is This Anything?” by Jerry Seinfeld.
Wonderful. Only in the last couple of weeks have I begun to permit humor in my work. I crack jokes in real life regularly, but it’s felt counterproductive in my quest to “be taken seriously.” But I’m learning that the serious and the humorous coexist and always have. It’s people who can smile in the midst of pain that I respect so deeply. Your thoughts enforce that theory!
Miriam Toews (All My Puny Sorrows) is heartbreakingly funny.
I’ll check it out!
I'm sure you've read Lorrie Moore, but just in case--her stories are the definition of sadness and humor wrapped up together.
I actually haven’t. Thank you for the rec!
Excellent deep dive! I have to disagree with the conclusion. Funny is a learned skill, and those who learn it can use it with predictable results (not 100% laughs, but certainly better than random). Find my free daily tips (often humor/comedy related) on Substack.
Thank you both - yourself and Mary - so much for the brief exchange below.
I can see, having checked out your books, why you disagree with George's conclusion Scott and so I can agree with you. At the same time I can see, from what he writes in this Newsletter and has touched in many others here in Story Club and also from what I've read of his stories, how George gets to his conclusion "No joke."
Here's the penny of realisation that's dropped for me: I've always, first and foremost, read George's stories as 'serious' albeit laced and hinged on surreal humour but now I'm appreciating that while his subjects are serious he couldn't deliver on them without his capacity for his kind of 'humour' sat right along 'serious' as equal co-pilots in his writing cockpit.
No way will I think of George as a writer of comedy (where being funny afresh is the primary purpose and aim) but I certainly feel I've nudged another inch towards understanding him as a writer of story (where creating fresh fiction is the primary purpose and aim).
Again thanks both,
I like this observation, Rob. Thank you. I believe there's a symbiotic relationship between humor and "serious" drama. They're like a binary quasar, where each depends on the other's gravity and would fly out of orbit without the other. They make beautiful music together yet are always separate.
Yes. I think symbiosis is the very word,
'Gemini'; 'Yin & Yang'; 'Castor & Pollux'; 'Romulus & Remus'... through to the 'Everly Brothers'; 'Bacon & Eggs'; 'Nile Crocodile & Nile Plover'; 'Two Sides of the Same Coin'.... etcetera, etcetera, the message is the same and sticks in that, whatever the particulars of combination, you just can't have one without the other.
Yes! A great list of like analogies.
Scott Dikkers! I'm one of those here who said funny cannot be learned. But after reading the views of others here, I'm changing my mind. Also--i just purchased your book and eagerly await its arrival. Nice to see you here!
Delightful to meet you, Mary! I hope you enjoy the book.
I associate humor with playfulness and I associate play with intelligence. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone on that, as in it's an accepted data point for measuring whether a living thing has a highly developed social capacity. Dolphins, playful. Snails, not so much. It's a higher form, above the survival level, somewhere higher up in Maslow's pyramid maybe.
Reminding myself that all art, no matter how much work goes into it, is still at its most elemental form: play. (Come out and play!!)