Lapham's Quarterly - Winter 2014 - Comedy

Volume VII, Number 1

comedy

winter 2014

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.  —W. H. Auden, 1963

Dan Leno, king of the jesters, as Idle Jack in “Dick Whittington,” 1894.

editor

lewis h. lapham publisher

david rose executive editor

kira brunner don associate editors

elias altman • aidan flax-clark • michelle legro art director

timothy don

graphics designer

jason david brown executive assistant

ann k. gollin

circulation and accounting management

acme publishing services director of development

laurie eustis

development and editorial associate

anne-louise brittain deputy web editor

angela serratore editorial board

noga arikha • jack beatty • warren breckman • carl bromley • d. graham burnett richard cohen • simon critchley • john crowley • annie dillard • michael dirda barbara ehrenreich • peter foges • anthony gottlieb • anthony grafton • michael hudson jonathan lyons • john major • greil marcus • peter mayer • ben metcalf • karl meyer james miller • theodore rabb • ron rosenbaum frances stonor saunders • gregory shaya mark slouka • peter struck • jennifer szalai • michael m. thomas • jack weatherford curtis white • sean wilentz • brenda wineapple • simon winchester interns

olivia caroline geraci • hilary ilkay • john michael kilbane adjunct scholars

sebastian hendra • ioana pala • dan wilbur the american agora foundation board

thomas m. siebel, chairman lewis h. lapham, president arthur yorke allen, secretary larry berger • george david • robert r. gould • raymond a. lamontagne george lund • sandy gotham meehan • rebecca rapoport • jaqui e. safra additional principal support

carnegie corporation of new york • the gladys krieble delmas foundation • the dyson foundation ejmp fund for philanthropy • michael moritz and harriet heyman • newman’s own foundation the pinkerton foundation • thomas and stacey siebel foundation • the walbridge fund publisher emeritus

louisa daniels kearney

www.laphamsquarterly.org

Volume 7, No. 1. www.laphamsquarterly.org. Lapham’s Quarterly (ISSN 1935-7494) is published four times yearly (December, March, June, September) by the American Agora Foundation, 33 Irving Place, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10003. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Copyright © 2014 the American Agora Foundation. Nothing shown may be reproduced in any form without obtaining the permission of the creators and of any other person or company who may have copyright ownership. Printed in Canada. For newsstand sales inquiries, please contact [email protected]. Subscriber Services. Subscription: 1 year, $60; in Canada, $70; in all other countries, $100. All payments in U.S. Dollars. Direct all inquiries, address changes, subscription orders, etc., to: email: [email protected]; telephone: 877-890-3001; mail: Lapham’s Quarterly, PO Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834. Editorial and Business Office: 33 Irving Place, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10003. Postmaster: Send changes of address to Lapham’s Quarterly, PO Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834.

comedy Introductory program notes map

preamble

8. among the contributors 10. The Human Comedy

13. lewis h. lapham, The Solid Nonpareil

Voices in Time situational 2001: new york city

1913: los angeles 1659: paris

1945: palermo

c. 1000 bc: mesopotamia 1900: paris

1452: florence 1731: dublin

1988: baltimore c. 810: baghdad

1974: new york city 1518: rome

419 bc: athens

1838: springfield, il 1777: mannheim

1939: new york city c. 1690: sichuan

21. sarah silverman 25. charlie chaplin 27. molière

30. joseph heller

32. dialog of pessimism 35. henri bergson

37. poggio bracciolini 38. jonathan swift 40. david simon 42. abu nuwas

44. woody allen

49. baldassare castiglione 52. aristophanes

57. abraham lincoln

60. wolfgang amadeus mozart 61. james thurber 62. pu songling

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Voices in Time 1925: leningrad

1456: paris

1952: dublin

1830: eafield

1993: springfield, il

1932: new york city c. 1225: france

1981: new york city

1895: london

65. mikhail zoshchenko 67. françois villon

69. samuel beckett 71. charles lamb

73. david foster wallace 76. frances warfield 78. fabliau

80. jewish jokes 82. oscar wilde

observational 2005: new york city 1532: lyon

c. 975: england

1959: los angeles c. 1000: kyoto 1896: london

c. 300: greece

1995: new york city

1860: london

1923: new york city 1688: france

c. 330 bc: athens

1791: steventon 1921: baltimore

1974: los angeles 1856: london

1985: blacksmith 1748: bath

1940: ireland

c. 1576: aquitaine c. 205 bc: rome

1996: washington, dc 1927: new york city

1947: washington, dc

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L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY

87. kurt vonnegut

89. françois rabelais 90. the exeter book 91. groucho marx 93. sei shōnagon

94. lewis carroll

96. hierocles & philagrius 97. calvin trillin

99. herbert spencer

101. robert benchley

102. jean de la bruyère 106. aristotle

108. jane austen

110. h. l. mencken

113. steve martin 115. george eliot 117. don delillo

119. philip dormer stanhope 120. flann o’brien

122. michel de montaigne 125. plautus

128. chris rock

130. dorothy parker

131. harry s. truman

Voices in Time confrontational 2000: new york city

c. 1985: united states c. 1870: boston 1764: ferney

c. 1255: baghdad 1905: vienna

2002: somers, ny

1963: los angeles 1974: london c. 105: rome

1882: san francisco c. 1650: paris

c. 1180 bc: lemnos c. 1937: leningrad

1605: spain

135. arthur miller 138. carol leifer 140. mark twain 142. voltaire

144. the thousand and one nights 148. sigmund freud 152. billy collins 153. lenny bruce

158. mark forstater 159. juvenal

162. ambrose bierce

163. edmond rostand 165. homer

168. daniil kharms

170. miguel de cervantes Mosaic with theatrical masks, Rome, second century.

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Voices in Time c. 1958: washington, dc 1993: belfast

c. 360 bc: athens

c. 1030: constantinople 1842: russia

2007: liphook

1948: chicago

1555: paris

1875: london

1978: new york city

c. 1592: padua

172. stanley kubrick, terry southern & peter george 175. martin mcdonagh 179. plato

180. christopher of mytilene 182. nikolai gogol

186. nigel johnson-hill 187. langston hughes 189. morris bishop 191. george vasey

193. gloria steinem

194. william shakespeare

Further Remarks essays

Once upon a Time in the West

Split Personalities

199. ben tarnoff

214. andrew mcconnell stott

departments conversations miscellany

sources

208. hobbes, la rochefoucauld, rivers, baudelaire

212. laugh tracks, murderous clowns, horticulture 222. readings & art

Smiling mask with attached glass eye, Turkish, twentieth century. Many of the passages in this issue have been abbreviated without the use of ellipses; some punctuation has been modified, and while misspellings have been corrected, archaic grammar and word usage remains unchanged. The words are faithful to the original texts.

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L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY

art, photography, and illustrations Cover: Japanese theater mask, nineteenth century. IFC: Dan Leno, 1894. 5: Mosaic, Rome, second century. 6: Smiling mask with attached glass eye, Turkish, twentieth century. 8–9: Voltaire; Woody Allen, Molière; Dorothy Parker; Plautus; George Eliot; Charlie Chaplin; Daniil Kharms; Abu Nuwas; Ambrose Bierce; Aristotle; Sei Shōnagon; Baldassare Castiglione; Samuel Beckett; François Villon; Chris Rock; Lewis Carroll; Jonathan Swift. 12: Jimmy Armstrong, New Jersey, 1958. Photograph by Bruce Davidson. 17: Terracotta female head, sixth century. 19: The Joke, by Ethel Spowers, 1932. 20: Democritus, by Antoine Coypel, 1692. 24: Guard and child, Beijing, 1984. Photograph by Thomas Hoepker. 26: Genre Scene, by Giuseppe Bonito, c. 1740. 29: Bull farting at knight, c. 1275. 31: Italian boys, c. 1915. Photograph by A.W. Cutler. 34: For What Was I Created?, by William Holbrook Beard, 1886. 36: Fanny Brice and Bea Lillie, 1945. Photograph by Louise Dahl-Wolfe. 39: Comic masks, Hadrumetum, third century. 41: Parade: Pierrot Presents to the Audience His Companions Harlequin and Punchinello, by Octave Penguilly L’Haridon, 1846. 42: Thirty-five Expressive Heads, by Louis-Léopold Boilly, c. 1825. 45: “Madrid, Spain: Prado Museum,” 1995. Photograph by Elliott Erwitt. 47: “The Charge,” Japanese erotic scroll print. 48: Comic Relief. 51: Young women with satyr, by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, c. 1765. 52: Mumbai laughing club, 1996. Photograph by Steve McCurry. 55: A Singer and a Drinker, style of Caravaggio, c. 1600. 57: Undercover. 58: “There was an old Derry Down Derry,” by Edward Lear, 1875. 61: Friar Pedro Shoots El Maragato as His Horse Runs Off, by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, c. 1806. 65: California Suite, directed by Herbert Ross, 1978. 67: Th  e Zaparozhye Cossacks Writing a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan, by Ilya Repin, c. 1880. 68: Young man, India, 2007. Photograph by Prasanta Biswas. 70: Punked! 71: Still from “Clown Torture,” by Bruce Nauman, 1987. 72: Private Concert, The Wrong Note, by Vittorio Reggianini, c. 1890. 75: Teasing a Sleeping Girl, by Gaspare Traversi, c. 1760. 77: Entertainer, Meiji period, nineteenth century. 81: Two Clowns, by Walt Kuhn, 1940. 83: Steve Martin, Beverly Hills, 1981, by Annie Leibovitz. 84: Harlequin and Pierrot, by André Derain, 1924. 86: The Hairdresser, by Marc Chagall, 1921. 88: Happy Moments, by Pompeo Massani, c. 1890. 91: Toba-e: Fukubiki subject, by Keisai Eisen, c. 1810. 92: Stanczyk, by Jan Matejko, 1862. 94: Mona Lisa, Age Twelve, by Fernando Botero, 1959. 97: The Fun Police. 99: Studies of heads, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1485. 101: Monkeys as Judges of Art, by Gabriel Cornelius von Max, 1889. 103: “Having the Giggles,” France, 1905. 105: It’s All in the Delivery. 106: Actor Wearing a Comic Mask, by Paul Klee, 1903. 108: Young Man Wearing a Feathered Hat While Pointing at Something with His Right Hand, by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, c. 1670. 111: Crispin and Scapin, by Honoré Daumier, c. 1864. 112: Allegory of comedy, justice, and truth, by Giuseppe Borsato, c. 1837. 114: The Two Clowns, by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, c. 1600. 117: Sign, Bombay, 1988. Photograph by Steve McCurry. 118: Caricature of Pope Innocent XI, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1676.

121: Golconda, by René Magritte, 1953. 123: Old Woman Studying the Alphabet with a Laughing Girl, by Sofonisba Anguissola, c. 1555. 125: On the Borscht Belt. 126: Pornographic postcard from Pablo Picasso’s private collection. 128: Portrait head vessel, Peru, c. 400. 130: Interior with Merry Company, by Willem Pietersz Buytewech, c. 1623. 133: Titania Awakes, Surrounded by Attendant Fairies, Clinging Rapturously to Bottom, Still Wearing the Ass’s Head, by Henry Fuseli, c. 1793. 134: “The Magic Ring,” by Maxfield Parrish, 1902. 137: Scene from The Possessed Girl, by Dioskourides of Samos, c. 100 bc. 139: The Triumph of Ridicule, by Basset, 1773. 140: Towards the Corner, by Juan Muñoz, 1998. 143: The French and Italian Comic Actors of the Past Sixty Years and More, attributed to Verrio, 1670. 144: Body Talk. 147: John with Drawing of a Clown, by Francesco Caroto, c. 1520. 149: Banjo player, c. 1920. 151: Name Calling. 153: Portrait of the Artist with the Features of a Mocker, by Joseph Ducreux, c. 1793. 154: The Storyteller, by Eugenio Zampighi, c. 1900. 157: The Cameraman, directed by Edward Sedgwick, 1928. 159: A Caricature Group, by John Hamilton Mortimer, c. 1766. 161: The Journalists, by Hannah Höch, 1925. 162: The dwarf Yaksa, Maharashtra, India, c. 100 bc. 165: One Good Turn Deserves Another, by Edmé Gustave Brun, 1878. 167: “ The Soviet of Turkmenistan,” 1972. Photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson. 168: March of the Clowns, by Albert Bloch, 1941. 170: Benoît de Tyskiewicz, c. 1890. Self-portrait. 174: Four entertainers, China, c. 125. 177: Stock Characters. 178: “It Was Abadie Who Made the Sacre-Coeur, but God Made This!” by Adolphe Léon Willette, c. 1895. 181: Wall Street Bubbles—Always the Same, by Joseph Keppler Jr., 1901. 183: Laughter, by Charles Le Brun, c. 1645. 184: Laurel and Hardy, c. 1930. 187: American soldiers, Tunisia, 1943. Photograph by Robert Capa. 188: Feast in an Inn, by Jan Havicksz Steen, 1674. 190: Budai Heshang, by Liu Zhen, 1486. 192: Teacher Asleep, by André Henri Dargelas, c. 1860. 195: Caricature of Queen Victoria, by Aubrey Beardsley, c. 1893. 196: Girl holding condoms, Bangladesh. 198: Pie in the face. 200: Fountain, by Marcel Duchamp, 1964. 203: Girls in kimonos, Japan. 204: The Buffoon Sebastian de Morra, by Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez, c. 1646. 207: Dangerous Wit. 208: Thomas Hobbes; Victor Frankl. 209: La Rochefoucauld; Rob Delaney. 210: Quintilian; Joan Rivers. 211: St. John Chrysostom; Charles Baudelaire. 214: Higgledy-Piggledy, 1904. 216: Two Fools of Carnival, by Hendrik Hondius, 1642. 219: I Died Laughing. 221: Harpo Marx, c. 1930. IBC: Portrait of a Laughing Violinist, by Gerrit van Honthorst, 1624. The cover image for Volume VI, Number 4, “Death,” was miscaptioned. The caption should have read, “c. 1917 copy of a mask of Abraham Lincoln, by Clark Mills, made two months before the assassination of the President in 1865.”

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Among the Contributors

Writing about his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire (1694–1778) espoused the virtue of testifying to “how ridiculous are many things alleged to be respectable.” The book, whose authorship Voltaire disavowed, was banned by the Church. The novelist, poet, and dramatist once complained, “The greatest misfortune of a writer…is to be judged by fools.”

Woody Allen (1935–) has named Ingmar Bergman and the Marx Brothers as his two biggest influences. He sold his first jokes while in high school to a publicity firm, and later wrote for Sid Caesar and his own forty-four films, remarking in 1992, “I think being funny is not anyone’s first choice.”

Church authorities were so incensed by the plays of Molière (1622–1673) that they had production of Tartuffe halted for five years and ensured the permanent closing of Don Juan after fifteen performances. The actor and comic died after collapsing onstage during the fourth showing of his final play, The Imaginary Invalid.

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) described herself as a “plain, disagreeable little child with stringy hair” who was “fired” from her religious school for saying, “The Immaculate Conception was spontaneous combustion.” A lover of animals, she owned at various times a parakeet named Onan, a dog named Woodrow Wilson, and two unnamed baby alligators she sequestered in her bathtub.

The comedies of the playwright Plautus (c. 254–c. 184 bc) are the oldest surviving complete works of Latin literature. Adapted largely from older Greek material, they brought him financial success and a lasting reputation as one of ancient Rome’s greatest comedians.

Mary Ann Evans took the pseudonym George Eliot (1819–1880) in 1857 while trying to sell her first story, “The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton,” to a publisher in Edinburgh. The author of Middlemarch borrowed George from her lover G. H. Lewes and chose Eliot, she said, for being “a good, mouth-filling, easily pronounced word.”

English-born Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) signed his first American film deal for $150 per week. By 1917 he had signed a million-dollar contract for eight short films with complete creative control. By 1952 he’d left the U.S. a virtual exile, plagued by accusations of adultery and communist sympathies.

In 1937, six years after being arrested for his so-called anti-Soviet children’s stories, Daniil Kharms (1905–1942) wrote, “I am interested only in nonsense; only in that which has no practical meaning. Life interests me only in its most absurd manifestations.” He was arrested again in 1941, largely on account of his having been arrested the first time.

The Devil reportedly appeared to one lover of the Arabian poet Abu Nuwas (c. 755–c. 814) to warn him, “I will lead astray the community of Muhammad with this youth of yours; I will not be satisfied until I sow love for him in the hearts of all hypocrites and lovers on account of his sweet and pleasant verse.”

Before traveling to Mexico in 1913, newspaperman and shortstory writer Ambrose Bierce (1824–c. 1914) wrote in a letter to his niece, “If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life.” He was never heard from again.

Baldassare Castiglione (1478– 1529) began writing The Book of the Courtier, his treatise on gentlemanly virtues, in 1508 while serving the rulers of Urbino; it was not published until 1528. Castiglione covered half the printing costs, saving one copy for himself, “the pages gilded and well-pressed and covered with leather of some rich color.”

Chris Rock (1966–) began regularly performing standup comedy after dropping out of high school at the age of seventeen. He landed a role on Saturday Night Live from 1990 to 1993 and released his career-making HBO special Bring the Pain in 1996. Of his success, he has said, “I love being famous. It’s almost like being white.”

The biographer Diogenes Laertius relates that when Aristotle (384–322 bc) heard of someone insulting him behind his back, he said, “He may beat me too, if he likes, in my absence.” To an abuser who asked, “Have I not been jeering you properly?” the philosopher replied, “Not that I know of, for I have not been listening to you.”

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) wrote Waiting for Godot, a play that won him worldwide fame, “as a relaxation, to get away from the awful prose I was writing at that time,” the prose being his novels Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable. Unhappy in the public eye, he declined in 1969 to accept his Nobel Prize in Literature in person.

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) spent his first eleven years in “complete seclusion from the world,” amusing himself by adopting snails and toads for pets, befriending earthworms, and building a fake train car. His pseudonym he took in 1856, inverting his first name, Charles, and his matronymic, Lutwidge, then translating them into Latin and back into English.

Among the amusements listed by Sei Shōnagon (c. 966–c. 1017) in The Pillow Book, her description of Japanese court life in Kyoto, is witnessing “someone for some reason lose her temper and burst into tears, and roundly abuse whoever has struck her. Even the more exalted people in the palace join in the day’s fun.”

“I am François, they have caught me,” wrote François Villon (1431– c. 1463) in 1462, shortly before being banished from Paris for theft and then disappearing forever. The French lyric poet had fled the city once before, after he had run a priest through with a sword, and had also been arrested multiple times for fighting and stealing.

“The chief end I propose to myself in all my labors is to vex the world, rather than divert it,” wrote Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) in 1725. “And if I could compass with that design without hurting my own person or fortune, I would be the most indefatigable writer you have ever seen.”

The Human Comedy Human folly is played out on and off the world stage across time and place. This map highlights six of its theatrical forms, but everywhere it details humanity’s hypocrites, buffoons, lechers, lovers, schemers, and fools.

Variety shows of diverse, unrelated acts catering to male, working-class audiences; featured dancers, comedians, and magicians; with coarseness removed, shows later became popular family entertainment.

Lavish productions with bawdy, war-ofthe-sexes plots, prose dialog, and female performers; encouraged by King Charles II upon his return to the throne after era of Puritan Commonwealth.

Key Applied classical rules of dramatic realism such as a five-act structure and the “three unities” to the comedy of manners; Molière’s farces ridiculing hypocrisy are the pinnacle of the form.

Performed alongside tragedies during Great Dionysia festival in Athens; with choruses, dancing, and singing, actors in mask satirized public figures and current events; Aristophanes’ works are the only fully-extant examples.

Independent plays expanded from brief, comical interludes of Noh drama; implemented highly choreographed movements and intoned speech on a bare wooden stage; accompanied by flutes, drums, and vocal calls.

Largely improvised farces, often concerning thwarted young lovers, performed by touring troupes of male and female actors; included acrobatics and dance; masks worn to denote stock characters.

Map by Daupo

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LAPHAM’S QUARTERLY

Preamble

The Solid Nonpareil by Lewis H. Lapham Well, humor is the great thing, the saving thing, after all.  —Mark Twain

T

wain for as long as I’ve known him has been true to his word, and so I’m careful never to find myself too far out of his reach. The Library of America volumes of his Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays (1852–1910) stand behind my desk on a shelf with the dictionaries and the atlas. On days when the news both foreign and domestic is moving briskly from bad to worse, I look to one or another of Twain’s jests to spring the trap or lower a rope, to summon, as he is in the habit of doing, a blast of laughter to blow away the “peacock shams” of the world’s “colossal humbug.” Laughter was Twain’s stock in trade, and for thirty years as best-selling author and star attraction on America’s late-nineteenth-century lecture stage, he produced it in sufficient quantity to make bearable the acquaintance with grief that he knew to be generously distributed among all present in the Boston Lyceum or a Tennessee saloon, in a Newport drawing room as in a Nevada brothel. Whether the audience was sober or drunk, topped with top hats or snared in snakebitten boots, Twain understood it likely in need of a remedy to cover its losses. No other writer of his generation had seen as much of the young nation’s early sorrow, or become as familiar with its commonplace scenes of human depravity and squalor. As a boy on

Jimmy Armstrong the dwarf, Clyde Beatty Circus, New Jersey, 1958. Photograph by Bruce Davidson.

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the Missouri frontier in the 1830s he attended the flogging and lynching of fugitive slaves; in the California gold fields in the 1860s he kept company with underage murderers and overage whores; in New York City in the 1870s he supped at the Gilded Age banquets of financial swindle and political fraud, learning from his travels that “the hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel for us to know and touch them year after year without some mitigating influence.” Twain bottled the influence under whatever label drummed up a crowd—as comedy, burlesque, satire, parody, sarcasm, ridicule, wit—any or all of it presented as “the solid nonpareil,” guaranteed to fortify the blood and restore the spirit. Humor for Twain was the hero with a thousand faces, and so it shows itself to be in this issue of Lapham’s Quarterly, seen to be wearing a Japanese mask or a buddha’s smile, dancing to a tune called Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, striking poses rigged by Samuel Beckett, Dorothy Parker, Charlie Chaplin, and Molière. The text and illustration show but don’t tell, the purpose not to present a collection of the best tales ever told by a fool in a forest but to suggest that since man first knew himself as something other than an ape, he has looked to laughter to bind up the wound of that unfortunate discovery. A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on With Groucho Marx (Los Angeles, page 91) the affections. —George Eliot, 1876 I share the opinion that comedians “are a much rarer and far more valuable commodity than all the gold and precious stones in the world,” but the assaying of that commodity— of what does it consist in its coats of many colors, among them cocksure pink, shithouse brown, and dead-end black—is a question that I gladly leave to the French philosopher Henri Bergson (Paris, page 35), Twain’s contemporary who in 1900 took note of its primary components: “The comic does not exist outside the pale of what is strictly human…Laughter has no greater foe than emotion… Its appeal is to the intelligence, pure and simple…Our laughter is always the laughter of a group.” Which is to say that all jokes are inside jokes and the butts of them are us, the only animal that laughs, but also the only one that is laughed at. The weather isn’t amusing, neither is the sea. Wombats don’t do metaphor or standup. What is funny is man’s situation as a scrap of mortal flesh entertaining intimations of immortality, President Richard Nixon believing himself the avatar of William the Conqueror, President George W. Bush in the persona of a medieval pope preaching holy crusade against all the world’s evil. The confusion of realms is the substance of Shakespeare’s comedies (Padua, page 194)—as a romantic exchange of mistaken identities in As You Like It, in Measure for Measure as an argument for the forgiveness of sin: But man, proud man, Dressed in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he’s most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens, Would all themselves laugh mortal. 14 

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LAPHAM’S QUARTERLY

Spleens in the Elizabethan anatomy give rise to mirth because they also produce the melancholy springing from the bowels to remind man that although unaccountably invested with the power to conceive of himself as a vessel of pure and everlasting light, he was made, as were toads, of foul and perishable stuff. Apes play games in zoos and baobab trees, but, not knowing that they’re bound to die, they don’t discover ludicrous incongruities between the physical and the metaphysical, don’t invent, as does François Rabelais’ Gargantua (Lyon, page 89), “the most lordly, the most excellent” way to remove the smell and fear of death from the palace of his “jolly asshole,” by wiping it first with silk and velvet, lastly and most gloriously, with the neck of a “well-downed goose.” All humor is situational, but the forms of it that survive the traveling in time— Shakespeare’s romance and Rabelais’ bawdy as well as Juvenal’s satire (Rome, page 159) and Molière’s ridicule (Paris, page 27)—speak to the fundamental truth of the human predicament, which is that men die from time to time and worms do eat them. The jokes dependent upon a specific historical setting don’t have much of a shelf life; the voice between the lines gets lost, and with it the sharing of the knowledge of what is in or out of place. To look at the early-seventeenth-century A cheerful heart has a continual feast. painting Interior with Merry Company (page 128)  —Book of Proverbs, c. 350 bc or at a mosaic of strolling masked musicians from a wall in second-century-bc Pompeii (page 137) is to understand that a good time is being had by all, to infer that for as long as men have walked the earth, they have found in the joy of laughter a companion more faithful than the dog. But exactly what prompts the lace-trimmed Dutch girls to their lovely smiling, or whether the Roman drum is tapping out a cadence or a song, I cannot say. I wasn’t in the loop; four or twenty-one centuries out of touch, I don’t know who first said what to whom, or why the merriment is merry.

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his issue of the Quarterly relies on sources predominantly British or American, many of them drawn from within the frame of the last two centuries, because I can hear what isn’t being said. Usually, not always. Even in one’s own day and age it’s never a simple matter to catch the drift in the wind or judge the lay of the land. Lenny Bruce (Los Angeles, page 153) remarks on the collapse of his off-color nightclub act in front of a milk-white audience in Milwaukee—“They don’t laugh, they don’t heckle, they just stare at me in disbelief ”—and I’m reminded of my own first encounter, at the age of thirteen, with a silence casting me into an outer darkness in a galaxy far, far away. In the autumn of 1948 on my first Sunday at a Connecticut boarding school, the headmaster (a pious and confiding man, as grave as he was good) welcomed the returning and newly arriving students with an edifying sermon. Protestant but nondenominational, the chapel had been built to the design of an early-eighteenthcentury New England spiritual simplicity—white wood, unstained glass, straightbacked pews set in two sternly disciplined rows before an unobtrusive pulpit. The students were arranged alphabetically by class, seniors to the fore, preps, myself among them, fitted into the choir loft above the doors at the rear. My family having moved east from California only a few weeks prior to my being sent off to school, I’d never before seen a Connecticut landscape. 15

More to the point, I’d only twice been inside a church, for an uncle’s wedding and a police chief ’s funeral. The latter ceremony I’d attended with my grandfather during his tenure as mayor of San Francisco during the Second World War, one of the many occasions on which, between the ages of seven and eleven, I listened to him deliver an uplifting political speech. Out of the loop within the walls of the chapel, I assumed that the headmaster’s sermon was a canvassing for votes, whether for or from God I didn’t know, but either way a call to arms, and as I had been taught to do when an admiral or a parks commissioner completed his remarks, I stood to attention with the tribute of firm and supportive applause. The appalled silence in the chapel was as cold as a winter in Milwaukee. The entire school turned to stare in disbelief, the headmaster nearly missed his step down from the pulpit, the boys to my left and right edged away, as if from a longdead rat. Never mind that my intention was civil, my response meant to show respect. During the next four years at school, I never gained admission to the company of the elect. I’d blotted my copybook, been marked Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, down as an offensive humorist from the wrong not because it has been sober, responsible, side of the Hudson River. and cautious but because it has been playful, In the troubled sea of the world’s ambition, rebellious, and immature. men rise by gravity, sink by levity, and on my  —Tom Robbins, 1980 first Sunday in Connecticut I had placed myself too far below the salt to indulge the hope of an ascent to the high-minded end of the table—not to be trusted with the singing of the school song, or with the laughing at people who didn’t belong to beach clubs on Long Island. The sense of being off the team accompanied me to Yale College (I never saw the Harvard game) and shaped my perspective as a young newspaper reporter in the 1950s. A potentially free agent, not under contract to go along with the program—able to find fault with an official press release, put an awkward question to a department-store mogul—I was looked upon with suspicion by the wisdoms in office. The attitude I took for granted on the part of real-estate kingpins and ladies enshrined in boxes at the opera, but I didn’t recognize it as one adjustable to any and all occasions until the winter night in 1958 when the San Francisco chapter of Mensa International (a society composed of persons blessed with IQ test scores above the ninetyeighth percentile) staged a symposium meant to plumb to its utmost depths (intellectual, psychological, and physiological) the mystery of human gender. Wine and cheese to be served, everybody to remove his or her clothes before being admitted to the discussion. Dispatched by the San Francisco Examiner to report on the event, I didn’t make it past the coatracks on which the seekers of the naked truth draped their fig leaves. But even with the embodiments of genius, Mensa wasn’t taking any chances. Confronted with a display of for the most part unlovely and decomposing flesh, the doorkeepers distributed identifying wrist bracelets, blue silk for boys, pink velvet for girls, one of each for gays, lesbians, and transsexuals. What was wonderful was the utter seriousness of the proceeding. Nobody laughed or risked the semblance of a smile; the company of the elect looked with proud disdain upon the fully clothed reporters standing around in unpolished shoes. 16 

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Terracotta female head, Medma, Italy, sixth century bc.

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aughter follows from the misalignment of a reality and a virtual reality, and the getting of the joke is the recognition of which is which. The notions of what is true or beautiful or proper held sacred by the other people in the caucus or the clubhouse set up the punch line—the sight of something where it’s not supposed to be, the story going where it’s not supposed to go, Groucho Marx saying, “Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot and look like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.” Groucho’s appeal is to the faculty named by Bergson as “intelligence, pure and simple,” and I laugh out loud for the reason given by Arthur Schopenhauer: “simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real object.” Being in or out of the loop is not only a question of separations in space and time, it is also a matter of the distance between different sets or turns of mind. Sudden and happy perceptions of incongruity are not hard to come by in a society that worships its machines, regards the sales pitch and the self-promotion as its noblest forms of literary art. What Twain understood to be the world’s colossal humbug enjoys a high standing among people who define the worth of a thing as the price of a thing and therefore make of money, in and of itself a colossal humbug, the true and proper name for God. “There are,” said Twain, “certain sweet-smelling, sugarcoated lies current in the world which all politic men have apparently tacitly conspired together to support and perpetuate…We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going and then go with drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express, and another one—the one we use—which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy.” 17

It is the Mrs. Grundy of the opinion polls from whom President Barack Obama begs the favor of a sunny smile, to whom the poets who write the nation’s advertising copy sing their songs of love, for whom the Aspen Institute sponsors summer and winter festivals of think-tank discussion to reawaken the American spirit, redecorate the front parlor of the American soul. The exchanges of platitude at the higher altitudes of moral and social pretension Twain celebrated as festive occasions on which “taffy is being pulled.” Some of the best of it gets pulled at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York when it is being explained to a quorum of the monied elite (contented bankers, corporate lawyers, arms manufacturers) that American foreign policy, rightly understood, is a work of Christian charity and an expression of man’s goodwill to man. Nobody pulls the taffy better than Dr. Henry Kissinger, the White House National Security Advisor in 1970 who by way of an early Christmas greeting that year to the needy poor in Cambodia secured the delivery of thousands of tons of high explosive, but as often at the council as I’ve heard him say that the nuclear option trumps the China card, that the lines in the Middle Eastern sand connect the Temple of Jesters do oft prove prophets. Solomon to the Pentagon, that America under  —William Shakespeare, c. 1605 no circumstances is to be caught holding Neville Chamberlain’s umbrella, I seldom find the hint of a sign that the other gentlemen in the room know or care that Chicolini here really is an idiot. Even if the gentlemen had their doubts about Chicolini, where would be the percentage of letting them out of the bag? Chicolini is rich, and therefore Chicolini is wise. To think otherwise is an impiety; to say otherwise is a bad career move. Twain was careful to mind his manners when speaking from lecture platforms to crowds of Mrs. Grundys in both the western and eastern states. He bottled his ferocious ridicule in the writing (much of it in newspapers) that he likened to “painted fire,” bent to the task of burning down with a torch of words the pestilent hospitality tents of self-glorifying cant. He had in mind the health of the society on which in 1873 he bestowed the honorific “The Gilded Age” in recognition of its great contributions to the technologies of selfishness and greed, a society making itself sick with the consumption of too many sugarcoated lies and one that he understood not to be a society at all but a state of war. We have today a second Gilded Age more magnificent than the first, but our contemporary brigade of satirists doesn’t play with fire. The marketing directors who produce the commodity of humor for prime-time television aim to amuse the sheep, not shoot the elephants in the room. They prepare the sarcasm-lite in the form of freeze-dried sound bites meant to be dropped into boiling water at Gridiron dinners, Academy Award ceremonies, and Saturday Night Live. “There is a hell of a distance,” said Dorothy Parker, “between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it.” George Bernard Shaw seconded the motion: “My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.” Twain didn’t expect or intend his satire to correct the conduct of Boss Tweed, improve the morals of Commodore Vanderbilt, or stop the same-day deliveries of Congress from Washington to the banks in New York. Nor did he exclude himself from the distinguished company of angry apes rolling around in 18 

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The Joke, by Ethel Spowers, 1932.

the mud of their mortality. He knew himself made, like all other men, as “a poor, cheap, wormy thing…a sarcasm, the Creator’s prime miscarriage in inventions,” easily seduced by the “paltry materialisms and mean vanities” that made both himself and America great. A man at play with the life of his mind overriding the decay of his matter, his laughter the digging himself out of the dung heap of moralizing cowardice that is the consequence of ingesting too much boardwalk taffy. His purpose is that of a physician attending to the liberties of the people shriveled by the ambitions of the state, his belief that it is the courage of a democracy’s dissenting citizens that defends their commonwealth against the despotism of a plutocracy backed up with platitudes, billy clubs, surveillance cameras, and subprime loans. Which is why in times of trouble I reach for the saving grace of the nearby Twain. Laughter in all of its conjugations and declensions cannot help but breathe the air of freedom, and in the moment of delight and surprise that is my laughing out loud at his Extracts from Adam’s Diary or “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” I escape, if only briefly, from the muck of my own ignorance, vanity, and fear, bind up the festering wound inflicted on the day I was born with the consolation of the philosophy named by Charlie Chaplin: “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long shot.” 19

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Voices in Time

SituationAL 2001:

New York City

sarah silverman responds to a critic The second-worst disaster in American history preceded the first by exactly two months to the day. On July 11, 2001, I appeared on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Although you wouldn’t know it by looking on my IMDb page, it’s not listed there. It’s as if this gig never happened. The day that never happened went like this: I arrive at 30 Rock and meet with Frank, the segment producer, to go over the plan. He tells me there’s a problem with one of my jokes. The joke goes like this: “I got a jury duty form in the mail, and I don’t wanna do jury duty. So my friend said, ‘Write something really racist on the form so they won’t pick you, like “I hate niggers.”’ I was like, Jeez—I don’t want people to think I’m racist, I just wanna get out of jury duty. So I filled out the form, and I wrote ‘I love niggers.’” Frank says I can’t say “nigger” on the show, even though it’s obviously not a racist joke, it’s a joke about an idiot, me, trying to get out of jury duty. But no way could that word be uttered on NBC. Period. “What about saying ‘the N word’?” Frank suggests, but I tell him that won’t work. It has to be brutal. The N word is the opposite of brutal; it’s the phrase one uses when being delicate. He tries again: “What about substituting ‘dirty Jew’?” At first I like the idea but decide that because I actually am Jewish, it would dilute the humor. The more offensive the word, the more sharply it highlights the idiocy of the speaker. So I say, “Nah. ‘Dirty Jew’ makes it too soft, since I am a dirty Jew. How about ‘Chink’?” Democritus, by Antoine Coypel, 1692.

“No,” Frank says. “How about ‘Spic’? You can say ‘Spic.’” “How come I can say ‘Spic’ and not ‘Chink’? That doesn’t make sense. Fuck that—if I can say ‘Spic’ then I can say ‘Chink.’ I’m saying ‘Chink’—it’s a funnier-sounding word.” He doesn’t argue. Chink it is. I go out and sit on the couch with Conan to do the show. It turns out great. The joke about jury duty gets huge laughs. I go home to my sublet in the Village, feeling pleased with myself. The next morning I woke up to my cell phone ringing. I couldn’t get to it before voicemail picked up, but I saw the caller ID—it was Mom. “Hi, Honey, it’s Mom. I was just watching The View, and they were talking about you! They said that some guy from an Asian American watchdog group is very upset that you said ‘Chink’ and wants an apology, and then Lisa Ling agreed that that word is racist, and they played the clip from last night of you on Conan and you looked gorgeous! But I really wish you would wear earrings. Earrings always frame a face…” I was in shock. I went online and found the man my mother was talking about. His name was Guy Aoki, and he was from the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, or MANAA. I felt terrible that he was upset and wanted to explain myself, so I found Guy’s email address on his website and wrote him a long message. I really worked hard on it, too. I enlisted my sister Susan, who’s a rabbi, and her 21

husband—he’s a super-Jew with the superJewiest of names, Yosef Israel Abramowitz—to help me craft the email just right. After doing the Conan show, I flew back to LA and met with my then-manager, Geoff Cheddy, a curly-haired Jew with a goofy smile. Geoff sat me down and started talking: “I pitched you for an all-comedian Fear Factor.” “Are you fucking kidding me?? Do you know me at all? In a million fucking years I wouldn’t do—” “They don’t want you.” Suddenly, I wasn’t feeling so cocky. “They don’t want me on Fear Factor??” “They don’t want you on NBC. At all.” I was devastated. All of NBC? To be banished by an entire network is scary for a young comedian. It’s not that I wanted, per se, to be cast on a show where you’re forced to eat the maggotfilled rotting intestines of a dead yak, but when the people who cast the maggot-eating show don’t want you, that’s a whole new career low. Geoff went on to tell me that NBC had already released an apology for my behavior. As soon as Aoki complained, the network released this statement: “The joke was clearly inappropriate and the fact that it was not edited by our standards and practices department was a mistake. We have reviewed our procedures to ensure such an incident does not reoccur, and we will edit the joke out of any future repeats.” Wow. You can really tell that this message came straight from the network’s heart, and it’s not surprising. Of course mucky-mucks at NBC would be deeply dismayed and apologetic about my offensive joke and quick to apologize for it. After all, any network that shows people eating the maggot-filled rotting intestines of dead yaks—during primetime, no less—is a network devoted to the preservation of human dignity. Back at my apartment I picked up a message from one of the producers of Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, inviting me to defend myself on the show; Guy Aoki would be on the panel. I accepted, having yet to learn that there is nothing more pointless, and nothing less funny, than defending your own material. 22 

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I arrived alone at Television City studios, but I had two comic friends on my guest list— Doug Benson and Brian Posehn. I was ushered past the greenroom where Guy Aoki was sitting. He had black, pin-straight hair, cut in the exact bowl shape I had when I was five, and the same mustache I had till I was fifteen. (That’s when I started bleaching it—the thinking being that if it’s bright yellow, it’s invisible.) The segment producer came into my dressing room to prepare me for the show. The typical format of Politically Incorrect involved a discussion about topics in the news that day, ranging from politics to pop culture. But this show, I was told, would be almost entirely about us—Guy and me. My plan was to keep it light and jokey, but also sincere. The producer said Bill would ask me to repeat the joke in question. “No! Really? It will die like that! Can’t you play the clip from Conan?” “No. We can’t get the rights.” NBC had vowed never to rebroadcast the joke in any form, including clips. The only topic of tonight’s show was that joke, and there was no clip available. I would have to repeat the joke; it was the only way. Great. Before the producer left the room, she mentioned her annoyance over Guy Aoki’s request for extra seats in the audience. “Really?” I asked. “How many people does he have out there?” “Sixty.” “Sixteen??? He has sixteen people in the audience?? Are you fucking serious? I’m dead.” I had misheard her. Then she rallied: “Um, Sixtee.” That motherfucker had sixty pissed-off people in the audience, and all I had were two professional stoner-comedians in the green room. I had one more question: “How many seats are there in the audience all together?” “One hundred and twenty-five.” Kill me. Please. Please take my life. As it happened, there was no way to stop time, and before I knew it, this was happening: Bill Maher introduced Guy Aoki, me, David

Spade, and an actress named Anne-Marie Johnson, most famous for being on the spinoff of What’s Happening!! called What’s Happening Now! Right off the bat, Bill asked me to repeat the joke. I did my best, but I was pretty mojoless. The punch line was met with boos—sixty of them, as promised—which sent me spiraling downward and into a sinkhole of incoherence. Here’s a partial transcript I found on Guy Aoki’s Wikipedia page that pretty much says it all—feel free to wince at my enlistment of the word dude: Maher: So you are telling me, sir, that there is some joke that could use the word Chink done correctly, satirically, that would be okay. Aoki: I think it would definitely be okay. Maher: Give me an example— Aoki: No, I am just addressing one of the points she said, which was satire. I’m saying it wasn’t good satire, anyway. Maher: That’s implying that some joke would be of such good satire that she could have said “Chink.” Aoki: She could have said, “I hate Chinese people. I love Chinese people.” Would have gone, “Okay, funny joke, ha ha.” And that would have been over with. Silverman: That’s not the point of the joke. The joke is making fun— Anne-Marie Johnson: That’s the question. Where is the joke? [applause] Aoki: The point is you used a slur that you thought you could get away with on national television. Silverman: That’s true. Racism is so—exists, you know, and it’s not gonna go away. It’s not gonna go away through censorship. Especially censorship with comics.

Aoki: So we should just keep bad jokes and offend people over and over again. Silverman: You’re a douchebag, man. Aoki: [with mock surprise] Oh oh! Oh oh! Bill was pretty spectacular in his defense of me and, more important, in defense of comedy, subjectivity, and free speech. Spade was hilarious as my no-help-whatsoever friend on the panel. He said practically nothing until the third or fourth segment, when he eked out something like, “How come there aren’t any white-people parades?” Thanks, David. Anne-Marie was a typical C-list actress who was superpsyched to be on Politically Incorrect and show the world how smart she wasn’t. With all the religious and racial material I’ve done, the bulk of complaints and outcry has come from the advocates of what must be the hardest suffering of all minorities: uberrich, thin, young blonds. In June 2007, I was hired to host the MTV Movie Awards. As part of my duties, I went onstage at the top of the show and told jokes about celebrities and current events in pop culture. In general, I don’t do those kinds of jokes in my regular standup. The only time I really do that is when it’s required, like at a roast (and that is done with love), or at events like the Movie Awards. One of the biggest events in pop culture at that time was the impending lockup of Paris Hilton. To refresh your memory, Paris was sentenced to a brief stay at the LA county jail for drunk driving, then violating her parole and driving drunk again. Here’s what I said onstage about her (a great joke written by Jonathan Kimmel, with a tagline by me): “In a couple of days, Paris Hilton is going to jail. The judge says that it’s gonna be a no-frills thing, and that is ridiculous. As a matter of fact, I hear that in order to make her feel more comfortable in prison, the guards are gonna paint the bars to look like penises. I just worry that she’s gonna break her teeth on those things.” 23

Guard and child in Bugs Bunny mask in the Forbidden City, Beijing, 1984. Photograph by Thomas Hoepker.

What can’t be conveyed in the above quote is the audience’s reaction. When I said, “Paris Hilton is going to jail,” the crowd erupted into a sustained, almost primal frenzy of cheers and applause. Not even the announcement of free universal healthcare could have incited such passion. The camera trained on her coupled with the eruption of cheers at her impending imprisonment made my heart sink. This was not a jibe at the roast of an old salt. She was a Christian thrown to the lions in an arena of Romans cheering her imminent demise. I had no moral qualms, in theory, with joking about Paris’ incarceration—it’s what late-night talk-show hosts had been doing for weeks. But to set her up to be jeered to her face by thousands on live television during the most vulnerable, frightening moment of her life— needless to say, that took the fun out of the “all in good fun” essence I intended. Whether it was an innocent oversight, or a very calculating one, no one producing the show informed me until minutes before I went onstage that Paris would be in the audience. With that very late piece of information, I didn’t stop to concentrate, to seriously imagine how that whole moment might come together. The next morning I Googled myself and discovered that my joke had set the Internet ablaze. The Los Angeles Times described it as “a cruel beat-down on Hilton.” Even on my own unofficial website, one visitor, presumably a fan, posted, “That was one of the meanest things I have ever witnessed.” Everywhere I looked, I 24 

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saw words like cruel, mean, vicious, and nasty. Websites and blogs were consumed with the question of whether or not I had gone too far, of whether or not I was a bitch. Paris weighed in with an unequivocal yes. If Guy Aoki had stirred up just a fraction of this level of outrage with my “Chink” joke, he would still be jacking off to it now. In fact, I felt much worse about this than I did about upsetting Aoki. He’d misunderstood a joke. Paris was genuinely a victim of a joke. I felt horribly guilty. At the time, I was writing the second season of The Sarah Silverman Program, but I was so disturbed that I could not focus on work. I left the writers’ room and wrote a letter to Paris, who was now, on top of being hurt, in jail. It was surely one of the least important media controversies in history. And I was probably the only person specifically Googling the story, so most of it was probably just playing out in the space between my laptop and my eyeballs. But what I took away from it all was, if I ever did another MTV awards show, I needed to be more careful about the jokes I told. From The Bedwetter. In the foreword to this memoir, published in 2010, Silverman wrote, “When I first selected myself to write the foreword for my book, I was flattered, and deeply moved.” The comic and actress is well-known for her controversial jokes. “Everybody blames the Jews for killing Christ,” she said in a standup routine. “And then the Jews try to pass it off on the Romans. I’m one of the few people that believe it was the blacks.” The Sarah Silverman Program ran on Comedy Central from 2007 to 2010.

1913:

Los Angeles

charlie chaplin invents himself Mack Sennett was away on location with Mabel Normand as well as the Ford Sterling Company, so there was hardly anyone left in the studio. Mr. Henry Lehrman, Keystone’s top director after Sennett, was to start a new picture and wanted me to play a newspaper reporter. Lehrman was a vain man and very conscious of the fact that he had made some successful comedies of a mechanical nature; he used to say that he didn’t need personalities, that he got all his laughs from mechanical effects and film cutting. We had no story. It was to be a documentary about the printing press done with a few comedy touches. I wore a light frock coat, a top hat, and a handlebar mustache. When we started, I could see that Lehrman was groping for ideas. And of course, being a newcomer at Keystone, I was anxious to make suggestions. This was where I created antagonism with Lehrman. In a scene in which I had an interview with an editor of a newspaper, I crammed in every conceivable gag I could think of, even suggesting business for others in the cast. Although the picture was completed in three days, I thought we contrived some very funny gags. But when I saw the finished film, it broke my heart, for the cutter had butchered it beyond recognition, cutting into the middle of all my funny business. I was bewildered and wondered why they had done this. Henry Lehrman confessed years later that he had deliberately done it, because, as he put it, he thought I knew too much. The day after I finished with Lehrman, Sennett returned from location. Ford Sterling was on one set, Roscoe Arbuckle on another; the whole stage was crowded with three companies at work. I was in my street clothes and had nothing to do, so I stood where Sennett could see me. He was standing with Mabel, looking into a hotel lobby set, biting the end of a cigar. “We need some gags here,” he said, then turned to me. “Put on comedy makeup. Anything will do.”

I had no idea what makeup to put on. I did not like my getup as the press reporter. However, on the way to the wardrobe, I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane, and a derby hat. I wanted everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight; the hat small, and the shoes large. I was undecided whether to look old or young, but remembering Sennett had expected me to be a much older man, I added a small mustache, which, I reasoned, would add age without hiding my expression. I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on to the stage he was fully born. When I confronted Sennett, I assumed the character and strutted about, swinging my cane and parading before him. Gags and comedy ideas went racing through my mind. The secret of Mack Sennett’s success was his enthusiasm. He was a great audience and laughed genuinely at what he thought funny. He stood and giggled until his body began to shake. This encouraged me and I began to explain the character: “You know this fellow is many sided, a tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure. He would have you believe he is a scientist, a musician, a duke, a polo player. However, he is not above picking up cigarette butts or robbing a baby of its candy. And, of course, if the occasion warrants it, he will kick a lady in the rear—but only in extreme anger!” I carried on this way for ten minutes or more, keeping Sennett in continuous chuckles. “All right,” he said, “get on the set and see what you can do there.” As with the Lehrman film, I knew little of what the story was about, other than that Mabel Normand gets involved with her husband and a lover. In all comedy business, an attitude is most important, but it is not always easy to find an attitude. However, in the hotel lobby I felt I was an imposter posing as one of the guests, but in reality I was a tramp just wanting a little shelter. I entered and stumbled over the foot of 25

a lady. I turned and raised my hat apologetically, then turned and stumbled over a cuspidor, then turned and raised my hat to the cuspidor. Behind the camera they began to laugh. Quite a crowd had gathered there, not only the players of the other companies who left their sets to watch us, but also the stagehands, the carpenters, and the wardrobe department. That indeed was a compliment. And by the time we had finished rehearsing we had quite a large audience laughing. Very soon I saw Ford Sterling peering over the shoulders of others. When it was over, I knew I had made good. At the end of the day, when I went to the dressing room, Ford Sterling and Roscoe Arbuckle were taking off their makeup. Very little was said, but the atmosphere was charged with crosscurrents. Both Ford and Roscoe liked me, but I frankly felt they were undergoing some inner conflict. It was a long scene that ran seventy-five feet. Later Mr. Sennett and Mr. Lehrman debated whether to let it run its full length, as the average comedy scene rarely ran over ten. “If it’s Genre Scene, by Giuseppe Bonito, c. 1740.

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funny,” I said, “does length really matter?” They decided to let the scene run its full seventy-five feet. As the clothes had imbued me with the character, I then and there decided I would keep to this costume whatever happened. That evening I went home on the streetcar with one of the small-bit players. Said he, “Boy, you’ve started something; nobody ever got those kind of laughs on the set before, not even Ford Sterling—and you should have seen his face watching you, it was a study!” “Let’s hope they’ll laugh the same way in the theater,” I said, by way of suppressing my elation. From My Autobiography. Chaplin began this book’s first chapter, “I was born on April 16, 1889, at eight o’clock at night, in East Lane, Walworth,” and the childhood he then recounted was no less Dickensian, replete with Victorian workhouses, reversals of fortune, and a drunken father. Chaplin directed his first silent film in 1914 and his last one, Modern Times, in 1936—the last silent film to be produced for forty years. His first talkie, The Great Dictator, was released in 1940. It parodied Adolf Hitler, who had been born four days after Chaplin in 1889.

1659:

Paris

molière presents a fop Mascarille: [after seating himself, combing his hair, and adjusting his stockings] Well, ladies, and how do you find Paris? Magdelon: Dear me, what is there to say? It would be the very antipodes of reason not to confess that Paris is the great central office of marvels, the clearinghouse of good taste, wit, and gallantry. Mascarille: As for me, I insist that outside of Paris there is no salvation for people of breeding. Cathos: That is an incontestable truth. Mascarille: It’s a little muddy, of course, but we have the sedan chair. Magdelon: It is true that the sedan chair is a sweet sanctuary against the insults of the mud and bad weather. Mascarille: You receive many visits; what celebrated wit belongs to your circle? Magdelon: Alas! We are hardly known as yet, but we are becoming so, and we have a special friend who has promised to bring here all the gentlemen who write for The Wits’ Intelligencer. Cathos: And certain others who have been indicated to us as the final authorities on gracious living. Mascarille: I am the person to arrange that. They all come to see me, and I may say that I never rise in the morning without a half-dozen of the wits in attendance. Magdelon: Heavens, we shall be obliged to you, with a really perfervid obligation, if you will do us that kindness. For after all, one must be acquainted with all those gentlemen, if one wants to belong to the world of elegance. They are the ones who make and break reputations in Paris, and you know well that there is a certain individual whom you merely have to know personally to acquire

the reputation of being an insider, even if you have no other qualifications. But personally, what I regard as most important is that by means of these feasts of wit and soul one learns hundreds of things that are absolutely essential, the very quintessence of smartness. Thus one finds out every day the chitchat of the gallant world and all the quips and verses that are being passed around. We learn at just the right moment that so-and-so has composed the neatest little thing on such-andsuch a subject; and a certain lady has supplied the words for a new tune; and a gentleman has written a madrigal on gaining a lady’s favors; and another has composed some stanzas on an infidelity; Monsieur Blank wrote last night an epigram in verse to Mademoiselle Dash, and she sent him the reply this morning about eight; an author has a certain plot for a new book; another has reached part three in his new novel; and another’s works have just gone to press. That is what brings you regard in society, and if you don’t know that sort of thing, I wouldn’t give a penny for all the wit you might have. Cathos: In fact, I think anyone who makes the slightest claim to smartness is quite too ridiculous if he doesn’t know the most trifling little quatrain which has just been written, and for my part, I should be abominably ashamed if someone should chance to ask me if I had seen something new, and I hadn’t seen it. Mascarille: It is certainly shaming not to have the first sight of everything which is being turned out. But don’t distress yourselves. I am thinking of establishing in your house an Academy of the Wits, and I promise you that not a scrap of verse will turn up in all Paris without your knowing it by heart before anyone else. Why, for myself, not to boast, I toss them off when I’m in the mood. You will hear quoted in the most exclusive coteries of Paris two hundred songs of mine, the same number of sonnets, four hundred epigrams, and more than a thousand limericks, not counting the enigmas and the portraits. 27

Magdelon: I’ll admit that I’m stupendously fond of portraits; I can’t think of anything smarter.

Mascarille: Everything I do has a certain dash; there’s nothing pedantic about it.

Mascarille: Portraits are hard; they require depth, depth. You will see some of mine that won’t displease you.

Magdelon: Oh, it’s a thousand leagues from the pedantic!

Cathos: As for me, I love enigmas definitely monstrously. Mascarille: A good exercise for the brains. I popped off four this morning, which I’ll give you to guess. Magdelon: Limericks are agreeable, when they’re deftly done. Mascarille: They’re my specialty! I’m busy now putting the whole of Roman history into limerick form. Magdelon: Oh, certainly that’s immoderately lovely! Reserve a copy for me, if you have it printed. Mascarille: I promise you each a copy, very handsomely bound. Publication is beneath my rank; I only do it to help out the booksellers, who simply persecute me. Magdelon: I should think it would be a great pleasure to see oneself in print.

Cathos: Superb! Magdelon: Nothing could possibly be finer. Mascarille: “You stole my heart,” that is, you robbed me, you carried it away. “Stop, thief ! Stop, thief ! Stop, thief ! Stop, thief ! Stop, thief !” Wouldn’t you say it was a man shouting and running after a robber to try to catch him? “Stop, thief ! Stop, thief ! Stop, thief ! Stop, thief ! Stop, thief !” [He rises, runs around the stage, and collapses in his chair.]

Mascarille: Yes, rather. But while I think of it, I must tell you an impromptu I did yesterday when I was visiting a friend of mine, a duchess. I’m devilishly good at impromptus.

Magdelon: One must admit that it is extremely witty and gallant.

Cathos: The impromptu is the absolute touchstone of wit.

Cathos: You’ve studied music?

Mascarille: Then listen. Magdelon: We are all ears. Mascarille: Oh, oh! I was so carefree and imprudent! I was just gazing at you, as who wouldn’t? You stole my heart, engulfing me in grief; Stop thief! Stop thief! Stop thief! Stop thief! Stop thief! Cathos: Dear heavens! That’s the last word in the gallant style! 28 

Mascarille: Don’t you rather like “I was so carefree and imprudent”? Carefree and imprudent, taken off my guard, so to speak; a perfectly every­day turn of speech, carefree and imprudent. “I was just gazing at you,” that is, innocently, respectfully, like an unhappy little sheep. “As who wouldn’t?” That is, the most natural thing in the world, I observe you, I contemplate you, I gaze upon you, as who wouldn’t? “You stole my heart, engulfing me in grief.” How do you like “engulfing me in grief ”?

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Mascarille: I must sing you the tune I’ve composed for it. Mascarille: What, me? Not at all. Cathos: How is it possible, then— Mascarille: People of quality know everything without ever having learned anything. Magdelon: He’s perfectly right, my dear. Mascarille: See if the tune suits your taste. [clears his throat] La, la, la, la, la. The brutality of the season has furiously outraged the delicacy of my voice. But no matter; it’s just an offhand performance. [sings]

Bull farting at a knight, manuscript illumination from Aelian’s On the Nature of Animals, c. 1275.

Cathos: Oh, what passion in that tune! I don’t know why I don’t die of it. Magdelon: It’s the positive cream of art, the cream of the cream, or even the cream of the cream of the cream. I assure you, it’s marvelous; I am enchanted with both words and music. Cathos: I’ve never heard anything quite so powerful. Mascarille: Everything I do comes to me naturally; I’ve never studied. Magdelon: Nature has been your doting mother, and you are her spoiled child. Mascarille: Tell me, how do you pass your time? Cathos: Ah, we barely do. Magdelon: Till now, we have been enduring a ghastly starvation of amusement. Mascarille: I shall be happy to take you to the theater one of these days, if you like. As it happens, they are about to put on a new play that I should be happy to have you attend with me.

Magdelon: That’s an offer not to be refused. Mascarille: But I must ask you to applaud properly when we are there, for I have promised to help put the play over; the author came to request it just this morning. It’s the custom here for the authors to come and read their new plays to us gentlemen of quality, to persuade us to approve them and give them some advance reputation. You may well suppose that when we say something, the commoners in the pit won’t dare to contradict us. For my part, I am very scrupulous about it, and when I’ve promised some playwright, I always shout, “Beautiful! Beautiful!” before they’ve lit the footlights. Magdelon: No doubt about it, Paris is a wonderful place. From The Precious Damsels. Born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin in Paris in 1622, the dramatist renounced his inherited right to a royal appointment in 1643, and one year later helped to found a theater company for which he served as casting director. He then adopted Molière as his stage name. In the mid-1660s, the Catholic Church denounced his comedies Don Juan and Tartuffe. In a public letter defending the latter, Molière wrote, “The comic is the outward and visible form that nature’s bounty has attached to everything unreasonable, so that we should see, and avoid, it.”

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1945:

Palermo

joseph heller explains the logic Milo insisted to Orr and Yossarian on leaving at once for Malta. “We’re sleepy,” Orr whined. “That’s your own fault,” Milo censured both of them self-righteously. “If you two had spent the night in your hotel room instead of with these immoral girls, you’d both feel as good as I do today.” “You told us to go with them,” Yossarian retorted accusingly. “And we didn’t have a hotel room. You were the only one who could get a hotel room.” Wrinkle not thy face with too much laughter, lest thou become ridiculous; neither wanton thy heart with too much mirth, lest thou become vain: the suburbs of folly is vain mirth, and the profuseness of laughter is the city of fools.  —Francis Quarles, 1640 “That wasn’t my fault, either,” Milo explained haughtily. “How was I supposed to know all the buyers would be in town for the chickpea harvest?” “You knew it,” Yossarian charged. “That explains why we’re here in Sicily instead of Naples. You’ve probably got the whole damned plane filled with chickpeas already.” “Shhhhhh!” Milo cautioned sternly, with a meaningful glance toward Orr. “Remember your mission.” The bomb bay, the rear and tail sections of the plane, and most of the top turret gunner’s section were all filled with bushels of chickpeas when they arrived at the airfield to take off for Malta. Yossarian’s mission was to distract Orr from observing where Milo bought his eggs, even though Orr was a member of Milo’s syndicate and, like every other member of Milo’s syndicate, owned a share. His mission was silly, Yossarian felt, since it was common knowledge 30 

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that Milo bought his eggs in Malta for seven cents apiece and sold them to the mess halls in his syndicate for five cents apiece. “I just don’t trust him,” Milo brooded in the plane, with a backward nod toward Orr, who was curled up like a tangled rope on the low bushels of chickpeas, trying torturedly to sleep. “And I’d just as soon buy my eggs when he’s not around to learn my business secrets. What else don’t you understand?” Yossarian was riding beside him in the copilot’s seat. “I don’t understand why you buy eggs for seven cents apiece in Malta and sell them for five cents.” “I do it to make a profit.” “But how can you make a profit? You lose two cents an egg.” “But I make a profit of three and a quarter cents an egg by selling them for four and a quarter cents an egg to the people in Malta I buy them from for seven cents an egg. Of course, I don’t make the profit. The syndicate makes the profit. And everybody has a share.” Yossarian felt he was beginning to understand. “And the people you sell the eggs to at four and a quarter cents apiece make a profit of two and three quarter cents apiece when they sell them back to you at seven cents apiece. Is that right? Why don’t you sell the eggs directly to you and eliminate the people you buy them from?” “Because I’m the people I buy them from,” Milo explained. “I make a profit of three and a quarter cents apiece when I sell them to me and a profit of two and three quarter cents apiece when I buy them back from me. That’s a total profit of six cents an egg. I lose only two cents an egg when I sell them to the mess halls at five cents apiece, and that’s how I can make a profit buying eggs for seven cents apiece and selling them for five cents apiece. I pay only one cent apiece at the hen when I buy them in Sicily.” “In Malta,” Yossarian corrected. “You buy your eggs in Malta, not Sicily.” Milo chortled proudly. “I don’t buy eggs in Malta,” he confessed, with an air of slight and clandestine amusement that was the only departure from industrious sobriety Yossarian had

Italian boys sitting and posing for the camera as they smile and laugh, c. 1915. Photograph by A. W. Cutler.

even seen him make. “I buy them in Sicily for one cent apiece and transfer them to Malta secretly at four and a half cents apiece in order to get the price of eggs up to seven cents apiece when people come to Malta looking for them.” “Why do people come to Malta for eggs when they’re so expensive there?” “Because they’ve always done it that way.” “Why don’t they look for eggs in Sicily?” “Because they’ve never done it that way.” “Now I really don’t understand. Why don’t you sell your mess halls the eggs for seven cents apiece instead of for five cents apiece?” “Because my mess halls would have no need for me then. Anyone can buy seven-centsapiece eggs for seven cents apiece.” “Why don’t they bypass you and buy the eggs directly from you in Malta at four and a quarter cents apiece?” “Because I wouldn’t sell it to them.” “Why wouldn’t you sell it to them?” “Because then there wouldn’t be as much room for a profit. At least this way I can make a bit for myself as a middleman.”

“Then you do make a profit for yourself,” Yossarian declared. “Of course I do. But it all goes to the syndicate. And everybody has a share. Don’t you understand? It’s exactly what happens with those plum tomatoes I sell to Colonel Cathcart.” “Buy,” Yossarian corrected him. “You don’t sell plum tomatoes to Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn. You buy plum tomatoes from them.” “No, sell,” Milo corrected Yossarian. “I distribute my plum tomatoes in markets all over Pianosa under an assumed name, so that Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn can buy them up from me under their assumed names at four cents apiece and sell them back to me the next day for the syndicate at five cents apiece. They make a profit of one cent apiece, I make a profit of three and a half cents apiece, and everybody comes out ahead.” “Everybody but the syndicate,” said Yossarian with a snort. “The syndicate is paying five cents apiece for plum tomatoes that cost you only half a cent apiece. How does the syndicate benefit?” 31

c. 1000 bc: Mesopotamia

national-security adviser

Slave, listen to me. Here I am, sir, here I am. I will lead a revolution. So lead, sir, lead. Unless you lead a revolution, where will your clothes come from? Who will enable you to fill your belly? No, slave, I will by no means lead a revolution. The man who leads a revolution is either killed or flayed, or has his eyes put out, or is arrested, or is thrown in jail. Slave, listen to me. Here I am, sir, here I am. I am going to love a woman. So love, sir, love. The man who loves a woman forgets sorrow and fear. No, slave, I will by no means love a woman! Do not love, sir, do not love. Woman is a pitfall—a pitfall, a hole, a ditch. Woman is a sharp iron dagger that cuts a man’s throat! Slave, listen to me. Here I am, sir, here I am. I am going to make loans as a creditor. So make loans, sir, make loans. The man who makes loans as a creditor—his grain remains his grain, while his interest is enormous. No, slave, I will by no means make loans as a creditor. Making loans is like loving a woman; getting them back is like having children. They will eat your grain, curse you without ceasing, and deprive you of the interest on your grain. Slave, listen to me. Here I am, sir, here I am. What, then, is good? To have my neck and your neck broken and to be thrown into the river is good. No, slave, I will kill you and send you first. And my master would certainly not outlive me by even three days. From “The Dialog of Pessimism.” Little is known about the provenance of this work, which some scholars have classified with other similar texts, such as the Theodicy and “Advice to a Prince,” as Babylonian wisdom literature. Slavery was common in ancient Mesopotamia, and in the eighteenth-century-bc Code of Hammurabi there was a provision, similar to the manumission laws in the Old Testament, that stipulated a man could settle a debt if he or a family member became a slave, serving the creditor for a term of three years.

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“The syndicate benefits when I benefit,” Milo explained, “because everybody has a share. And the syndicate gets Colonel Cathcart’s and Colonel Korn’s support so that they’ll let me go out on trips like this one. You’ll see how much profit that can mean in about fifteen minutes when we land in Palermo.” “Malta,” Yossarian corrected him. “We’re flying to Malta now, not Palermo.” “No, we’re flying to Palermo,” Milo answered. “There’s an endive exporter in Palermo I have to see for a minute about a shipment of mushrooms to Bern that were damaged by mold.” “Milo, how do you do it?” Yossarian inquired with laughing amazement and admiration. “You fill out a flight plan for one place and then you go to another. Don’t the people in the control towers ever raise hell?” “They all belong to the syndicate.” Milo said. “And they know that what’s good for the syndicate is good for the country, because that’s what makes Sammy run. The men in the control towers have a share, too, and that’s why they always have to do whatever they can to help the syndicate.” “Do I have a share?” “Everybody has a share.” “Does Orr have a share?” “Everybody has a share.” “And Hungry Joe? He has a share too?” “Everybody has a share.” “Well, I’ll be damned,” mused Yossarian, deeply impressed with the idea of a share for the very first time. Milo turned toward him with a faint glimmer of mischief. “I have a sure-fire plan for cheating the federal government out of six thousand dollars. We can make three thousand dollars apiece without any risk to either of us. Are you interested?” “No.” Milo looked at Yossarian with profound emotion. “That’s what I like about you,” he exclaimed. “You’re honest! You’re the only one I know that I can really trust. That’s why I wish you’d try to be of more help to me. I really was

disappointed when you ran off with those two tramps in Catania yesterday.” Yossarian stared at Milo in quizzical disbelief. “Milo, you told me to go with them. Don’t you remember?” “That wasn’t my fault,” Milo answered with dignity. “I had to get rid of Orr some way once we reached town. It will be a lot different in Palermo. When we land in Palermo, I want you and Orr to leave with the girls right from the airport.” “With what girls?” “I radioed ahead and made arrangements with a four-year-old pimp to supply you and Orr with two eight-year-old virgins who are half Spanish. He’ll be waiting at the airport in a limousine. Go right in as soon as you step out of the plane.” “Nothing doing,” said Yossarian, shaking his head. “The only place I’m going is to sleep.” Milo turned livid with indignation, his slim long nose flickering spasmodically between his black eyebrows and his unbalanced orange-brown mustache like the pale, thin flame of a single candle. “Yossarian, remember your mission,” he reminded reverently. “To hell with my mission,” Yossarian responded indifferently. “And to hell with the syndicate too, even though I do have a share. I don’t want any eight-year-old virgins, even if they are half Spanish.” “I don’t blame you. But these eight-year-old virgins are really only thirty-two. And they’re not really half Spanish but only one-third Estonian.” “I don’t care for any virgins.” “And they’re not even virgins,” Milo continued persuasively. “The one I picked out for you was married for a short time to an elderly schoolteacher who slept with her only on Sundays, so she’s really almost as good as new.” But Orr was sleepy—and Yossarian and Orr were both at Milo’s side when they rode into the city of Palermo from the airport and discovered that there was no room for the two of them at the hotel there either, and, more important, that Milo was mayor. The weird, implausible reception for Milo began at the airfield, where civilian laborers who

recognized him halted in their duties respectfully to gaze at him with full expressions of controlled exuberance and adulation. News of his arrival preceded him into the city, and the outskirts were already crowded with cheering citizens as they sped by in their small uncovered truck. Yossarian and Orr were mystified and mute and pressed close against Milo for security. Inside the city, the welcome for Milo grew louder as the truck slowed and eased deeper toward the middle of town. Small boys and girls had been released from school and were lining the sidewalks in new clothes, waving I used to think that everyone was just being funny. But now I don’t know. I mean, how can you tell? —Andy Warhol, 1970 tiny flags. Yossarian and Orr were absolutely speechless now. The streets were jammed with joyous throngs, and strung overhead were huge banners bearing Milo’s picture. Milo had posed for these pictures in a drab peasant’s blouse with a high round collar, and his scrupulous, paternal countenance was tolerant, wise, critical, and strong as he stared out at the populace omnisciently with his undisciplined mustache and disunited eyes. Sinking invalids blew kisses to him from windows. Aproned shopkeepers cheered ecstatically from the narrow doorways of their shops. Tubas crumped. Here and there a person fell and was trampled to death. Sobbing old women swarmed through each other frantically around the slow-moving truck to touch Milo’s shoulder or press his hand. Milo bore the tumultuous celebration with benevolent grace. He waved back to everyone in elegant reciprocation and showered generous handfuls of foil-covered Hershey kisses to the rejoicing multitudes. Lines of lusty young boys and girls skipped along behind him with their arms linked, chanting in hoarse and glassy-eyed adoration, “Mi-lo! Mi-lo! Mi-lo!” Now that his secret was out, Milo relaxed with Yossarian and Orr and inflated opulently with a vast, shy pride. His cheeks turned 33

flesh colored. Milo had been elected mayor of Palermo—and of nearby Carini, Monreale, Bagheria, Termini Imerese, Cefalù, Mistretta, and Nicosia as well—because he had brought Scotch to Sicily. Yossarian was amazed. “The people here like to drink Scotch that much?” “They don’t drink any of the Scotch,” Milo explained. “Scotch is very expensive, and these people here are very poor.” “Then why do you import it to Sicily if nobody drinks any?” “To build up a price. I move the Scotch here from Malta to make more room for profit when I sell it back to me for somebody else. I created a whole new industry here. Today Sicily is the third-largest exporter of Scotch in the world, and that’s why they elected me mayor.”

“How about getting us a hotel room if you’re such a hotshot?” Orr grumbled impertinently in a voice slurred with fatigue. Milo responded contritely. “That’s just what I’m going to do,” he promised. “I’m really sorry about forgetting to radio ahead for hotel rooms for you two. Come along to my office and I’ll speak to my deputy mayor about it right now.” From Catch-22. Heller flew sixty missions over France and Italy while serving in the Air Force during World War II, an experience that informed this novel, originally titled Catch-18 but renamed after it was discovered that Leon Uris’ novel, also to be published in 1961, was called Mila 18. After publishing four more novels in the 1970s and 1980s, among them Something Happened, Heller said in 1993, “When I read something saying I’ve not done anything as good as Catch-22, I’m tempted to reply, ‘Who has?’” He died at the age of seventy-six in 1999.

For What Was I Created? (detail), by William Holbrook Beard, 1886.

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1900:

Paris

the human element The first point to which attention should be called is that the comic does not exist outside the pale of what is strictly human. A landscape may be beautiful, charming, and sublime, or insignificant and ugly; it will never be laughable. You may laugh at an animal, but only because you have detected in it some human attitude or expression. You may laugh at a hat, but what you are making fun of, in this case, is not the piece of felt or straw but the shape that men have given it—the human caprice whose mold it has assumed. It is strange that so important a fact, and such a simple one, too, has not attracted to a greater degree the attention of philosophers. Several have defined man as “an animal which laughs.” They might equally well have defined him as an animal which is laughed at; for if any other animal, or some lifeless object, produces the same effect, it is always because of some resemblance to man, of the stamp he gives it or the use he puts it to. Here I would point out, as a symptom equally worthy of notice, the absence of feeling which usually accompanies laughter. It seems as though the comic could not produce its disturbing effect unless it fell, so to say, on the surface of a soul that is thoroughly calm and unruffled. Indifference is its natural environment, for laughter has no greater foe than emotion. I do not mean that we could not laugh at a person who inspires us with pity, for instance, or even with affection, but in such a case we must, for the moment, put our affection out of court and impose silence upon our pity. In a society composed of pure intelligences there would probably be no more tears, though perhaps there would still be laughter; whereas highly emotional souls, in tune and unison with life, in whom every event would be sentimentally prolonged and reechoed, would neither know nor understand laughter. Try for a moment to become interested in everything that is being said and done; act, in imagination,

with those who act, and feel with those who feel; in a word, give your sympathy its widest expansion—as though at the touch of a fairy wand you will see the flimsiest of objects assume importance and a gloomy hue spread over everything. Now step aside, look upon life as a disinterested spectator: many a drama will turn into a comedy. It is enough for us to stop our ears to the sound of music in a room where dancing is going on for the dancers at once to appear ridiculous. How many human actions would stand a similar test? Should we not see many of them suddenly pass from grave to gay, The stupidest book in the world is a book of jokes, and the stupidest man in the world is one who surrenders himself to the single purpose of making men laugh.  —Josiah Gilbert Holland, 1876 on isolating them from the accompanying music of sentiment? To produce the whole of its effect, then, the comic demands something like a momentary anesthesia of the heart. Its appeal is to intelligence, pure and simple. This intelligence, however, must always remain in touch with other intelligences. And here is the third fact to which attention should be drawn. You would hardly appreciate the comic if you felt yourself isolated from others. Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo. Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate, clear, well-defined sound; it is something which would fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to another, something beginning with a crash, to continue in successive rumblings, like thunder in a mountain. Still, this reverberation cannot go on forever. It can travel within as wide a circle as you please: the circle remains, nonetheless, a closed one. Our laughter is always the laughter of a group. It may, perchance, have happened to you, when seated in a railway carriage or at table d’hôte, to hear travelers relating to one another stories which must have been comic to them, for they laughed heartily. Had you been one of their company, you would 35

Fanny Brice and Bea Lillie, 1945. Photograph by Louise Dahl-Wolfe.

have laughed like them, but as you were not, you had no desire whatever to do so. A man who was once asked why he did not weep at a sermon, when everybody else was shedding tears, replied, “I don’t belong to the parish!” What that man thought of tears would be still more true of laughter. However spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary. How often has it been said that the fuller the theater, the more uncontrolled the laughter of the audience! On the other hand, how often has the remark been made that many comic effects are incapable of translation from one language to another, because they refer to the customs and ideas of a particular social group! It is through not understanding the importance of this double fact that the comic has been looked upon as a mere curiosity in which the mind finds amusement, and laughter itself as a strange, isolated phenomenon, without any bearing on the rest of human activity. Hence those definitions which 36 

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tend to make the comic into an abstract relation between ideas: “an intellectual contrast,” “a palpable absurdity,” etc.—definitions which, even were they really suitable to every form of the comic, would not in the least explain why the comic makes us laugh. To understand laughter, we must put it back into its natural environment, which is society, and above all must we determine the utility of its function, which is a social one. Laughter must answer to certain requirements of life in common. It must have a social signification. Henri Bergson, from Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Born in Paris in 1859 to Jewish parents, Bergson published Time and Free Will in 1899, Matter and Memory in 1896, and Creative Evolution in 1907. He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature. Although drawn to Roman Catholicism, Bergson died in 1941 having never joined the church, stating in his will, “I would have become a convert, had I not seen in preparation for years the formidable wave of anti-Semitism which is to break upon the world. I wanted to remain among those who tomorrow will be persecuted.”

1452:

Florence

have you heard the one about the doltish venetian? Amusing Remark by a Young Woman in Labor In Florence, a young woman, somewhat of a simpleton, was on the point of being delivered. She had long been enduring acute pain, and the midwife, candle in hand, inspected her private parts, in order to ascertain if the child was coming. “Look also on the other side,” said the poor creature. “My husband has sometimes taken that road.” A Doltish Venetian Made a Fool of by an Itinerant Quack We laughed heartily at a story Giannino told us. He related that an itinerant quack came to Venice, on whose sign was pictured a Priapus divided at certain intervals by band strings. A certain Venetian came up and inquired the meaning of those partitions. The quack, for the fun of the thing, replied that his member was endowed with such a peculiar property, that if, with a woman, he used but the first part, he begot merchants; if the second, soldiers; up to the third, generals; up to the fourth, popes—his fee being proportionate to the rank and quality ordered. The dolt took his word for it and, after a conference with his wife, brought him to his house and bargained for a soldier. As soon as the quack had set about the job, the husband made a pretense of withdrawing, but hid himself behind the bed: when he saw the pair hard at work manufacturing the agreed-upon soldier, he rushed forward, giving the man’s backside a vigorous push, so as to secure the advantage even of the fourth division. “By God’s holy gospel,” he shouted. “This will be a pope!” fancying he had diddled the fellow. A Mountaineer Who Thought of Marrying a Girl A mountaineer, of the village of Pergola, was inclined to marry the quite youthful daughter of one of his neighbors, but after close inspec-

tion, he found her too young, too delicate, and refused. “She is riper than you think,” said the stupid father, “for she has already had three children by the vicar’s clerk.” Conclusion I think I should not omit to mention the place where most of the above tales were related, I might almost say, acted. That place is our Bugiale, a sort of laboratory for fibs, which the pope’s secretaries had formerly instituted for their amusement. Until the reign of Pope Martin we were wont to select, within the precincts of the court, a secluded room where we collected the news of the day, and conversed on various subjects, mostly with a view to relaxation, but sometimes also with serious intent. There nobody was spared, and whatever met with our disapprobation was freely censured; oftentimes the pope himself was the first subject matter of our criticism, so that many people attended our parties, lest they should themselves be the objects of our first chapter. Foremost among the relaters were Razello of Bologna, many of whose contributions are found in our tales; Antonio Lusco, a most witty man, whom we have frequently referred to; and the Roman Cincio, who was also very fond of a joke; I have also added some good things of my own. Now that those boon companions have departed this life, the Bugiale has come to an end: whether men or the times are to be held responsible, it is a fact that genial talk and merry confabulation have gone out of fashion. Poggio Bracciolini, from Jocose Tales. During his fifty years serving as secretary to eight successive popes, Bracciolini hunted for manuscripts in European monasteries: in one he discovered Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory—tucked away in a place “into which one would not cast a criminal condemned to death”—and in another Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things. Both books had been thought to be lost for hundreds of years. He wrote to a fellow scholar and copyist in 1429, “ You have now kept the Lucretius for twelve years…and the Petronius Arbiter for seven or more; it seems to me that your tomb will be finished sooner than your books will be copied.”

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1731:

Dublin

parthian shot The time is not remote, when I Must by the course of nature die: When I foresee my special friends, Will try to find their private ends: Though it is hardly understood, Which way my death can do them good. Yet, thus methinks, I hear ’em speak; See, how the dean begins to break: Poor gentleman, he droops apace, You plainly find it in his face: That old vertigo in his head, Will never leave him till he’s dead: Besides, his memory decays, He recollects not what he says; He cannot call his friends to mind; Forgets the place where last he dined: Plies you with stories o’er and o’er, He told them fifty times before. How does he fancy we can sit, To hear his out-of-fashioned wit? But he takes up with younger folks, Who for his wine will bear his jokes: Faith, he must make his stories shorter, Or change his comrades once a quarter: In half the time, he talks them round; There must another set be found. For poetry, he’s past his prime, He takes an hour to find a rhyme: His fire is out, his wit decayed, His fancy sunk, his muse a jade. I’d have him throw away his pen; But there’s no talking to some men. And then their tenderness appears, By adding largely to my years: “He’s older than he would be reckoned And well remembers Charles the Second. “He hardly drinks a pint of wine; And that, I doubt, is no good sign. His stomach too begins to fail: Last year we thought him strong and hale; But now, he’s quite another thing; I wish he may hold out till spring.” 38 

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Three Roman comic masks, from left to right: prostitute, angry old man, slave. Floor mosaic, Hadrumetum, third century.

Then hug themselves, and reason thus; “It is not yet so bad with us.” In such a case they talk in tropes, And by their fears express their hopes: Some great misfortune to portend, No enemy can match a friend; With all the kindness they profess, The merit of a lucky guess, (When daily “how-d’ye’s” come of course, And servants answer, “Worse and worse”) Would please ’em better than to tell, That, God be praised, the dean is well. Then he who prophesied the best, Approves his foresight to the rest: “You know, I always feared the worst, And often told you so at first.” He’d rather choose that I should die, Than his prediction prove a lie. Not one foretells I shall recover; But, all agree, to give me over. Jonathan Swift, from “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift.” In late 1731 Swift mentioned his writing of this poem to his friends Alexander Pope and John Gay, describing it to the latter as “on a pleasant subject, only to tell what my friends and enemies will say on me after I am dead.” One couplet of the poem reads, “Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay /A week, and Arbuthnot a day.” Having been ordained an Anglican priest in 1695 at the age of twentyseven, Swift published A Tale of a Tub in 1704, Gulliver’s Travels in 1726, and A Modest Proposal in 1729. He died in 1745 at the age of seventy-seven.

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1988:

Baltimore

keystone cops Tuesday, January 19 Pulling one hand from the warmth of a pocket, Jay Landsman squats down to grab the dead man’s chin, pushing the head to one side until the wound becomes visible as a small, ovate hole, oozing red and white. “Here’s your problem,” he said. “He’s got a slow leak.” Wit enables us to act rudely with impunity.  —La Rochefoucauld, 1678 “A leak?” says Tom Pellegrini, picking up on it. “A slow one.” “You can fix those.” “Sure you can,” Landsman agrees. “They got these home repair kits now…” “Like with tires.” “Just like with tires,” Landsman says. “Comes with a patch and everything else you need. Now a bigger wound, like from a .38, you’re gonna have to get a new head. This one you could fix.” Landsman looks up, his face the very picture of earnest concern. Sweet Jesus, thinks Pellegrini, nothing like working murders with a mental case. One in the morning, heart of the ghetto, half a dozen uniforms watching their breath freeze over another dead man—what better time and place for some vintage Landsman, delivered in perfect deadpan until even the shift commander is laughing hard in the blue strobe of the emergency lights. Not that a Western District midnight shift is the world’s toughest audience; you don’t ride a radio car for any length of time in Sector One or Two without cultivating a diseased sense of humor. “Anyone know this guy?” asks Landsman. “Anyone get to talk to him?” “Fuck no,” says a uniform. “He was ten40 

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seven when we got here.” Ten-seven. The police communication code for “out of service” artlessly applied to a human life. Beautiful. Pellegrini smiles, content in the knowledge that nothing in this world can come between a cop and his attitude. “Anyone go through his pockets?” asks Landsman. “Not yet.” “Where the fuck are his pockets?” “He’s wearing pants under the sweatsuit.” Pellegrini watches Landsman straddle the body, one foot on either side of the dead man’s waist, and begin tugging violently at the sweatpants. The awkward effort jerks the body a few inches across the sidewalk, leaving a thin film of matted blood and brain matter where the head wound scrapes the pavement. Landsman forces a meaty hand inside a front pocket. “Watch for needles,” says a uniform. “Hey,” says Landsman. “Anyone in this crowd gets AIDS, no one’s gonna believe it came from a fucking needle.” The sergeant pulls his hand from the dead man’s right front pocket, causing perhaps a dollar in change to fall to the sidewalk. “No wallet in front. I’m gonna wait and let the ME roll him. Somebody’s called the ME, right?” “Should be on the way,” says a second uniform, taking notes for the top sheet of an incident report. “How many times is he hit?” Landsman points to the head wound, then lifts a shoulder blade to reveal a ragged hole in the upper back of the dead man’s leather jacket. “Once in the head, once in the back.” Landsman pauses, and Pellegrini watches him go deadpan once again. “It could be more.” The uniform puts pen to paper. “There is a possibility,” says Landsman, doing his best to look professorial, “a good possibility, he was shot twice through the same bullet hole.” “No shit,” says the uniform, believing. A mental case. They give him a gun, a badge and sergeant’s stripes, and deal him out into the streets of Baltimore, a city with

Parade: Pierrot Presents to the Audience His Companions Harlequin and Punchinello (detail), by Octave Penguilly L’Haridon, 1846.

more than its share of violence, filth, and despair. Then they surround him with a chorus of blue-jacketed straight men and let him play the role of the lone, wayward joker that somehow slipped into the deck. Jay Landsman, of the sidelong smile and pockmarked face, who tells the mothers of wanted men that all the commotion is nothing to be upset about, just a routine murder warrant. Landsman, who leaves empty liquor bottles in the other sergeants’ desks and never fails to turn out the men’s-room light when a ranking officer is indisposed. Landsman, who rides a headquarters elevator with the police commissioner and leaves complaining that some son of a bitch stole his wallet. Jay Landsman, who as a Southwestern patrolman parked his radio car at Edmondson and Hilton, then used a Quaker Oatmeal box covered in aluminum foil as a radar gun. “I’m just giving you a warning this time,” he would tell grateful motorists. “Remember, only you can prevent forest fires.” And now, but for the fact that Landsman can no longer keep a straight face, there might well be an incident report tracked to Central Records in the department mail, complaint number 88-7A37548, indicating that said victim appeared to be shot once in the head and twice in the back through the same bullet hole.

“No, hey, I’m joking,” he says. “We won’t know anything for sure until the autopsy.” He looks at Pellegrini. “Hey, Phyllis, I’m gonna let the ME roll him.” Pellegrini manages a half smile. He’s been Phyllis to his squad sergeant ever since that long afternoon at Riker’s Island in New York, when a jail matron refused to honor a writ and release a female prisoner into the custody of two male detectives from Baltimore; the regulations required a policewoman for the escort. After a sufficient amount of debate, Landsman grabbed Pellegrini, a thick-framed Italian born to Allegheny coalminer stock, and pushed him forward. “Meet Phyllis Pellegrini,” Landsman said, signing for the prisoner. “She’s my partner.” “How do you do?” Pellegrini said with no hesitation. “You’re not a woman,” said the matron. “But I used to be.” David Simon, from Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. This 1991 book derived from the year Simon, a Baltimore Sun reporter, spent covering the homicide department of the city’s police force. The subject matter was adapted for NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Streets, on the air between 1993 and 1999. Simon’s show The Wire, in which the real-life detective Jay Landsman played Lieutenant Dennis Mello, was on HBO for five seasons. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010, the same year that his subsequent HBO series, Treme, premiered.

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c. 810:

Baghdad

wet dreams Young men assembled, sterling coins at the count,  To whom chance time delivered me. “Sunday is close,” they said, so I ambled to the promised location  And was the first to arrive, Dressed like a preacher, in full-covering robes   Kept fast by a plaited cord. When they had purchased what they wanted,   Eager to slake their desire, I approached and offered, “I’ll carry this stuff;  I have the necessary saddlebags: My ropes are sturdy, and I am brisk and dependable.”   “Take it,” they said, “You seem to be what you claim,  And we’ll reward you according to your efforts.” So I advanced in their company  And was told to climb with them to the spot we were making for. There vessels were unveiled for them (like wives exposed for the first time)   While a bird warbled in a melancholy strain. Thirty-five Expressive Heads, by Louis-Léopold Boilly, c. 1825.

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I skipped up to the glasses and polished them,   Leaving them like dazzling snow; My dexterity impressed the beardless young men   (Though with my skill I intended no good for them); I served them without respite wine mixed with water   —It was as warming and bright as kindled fire— Until I noticed their heads incline,   Bent and crooked with drunkenness And their tongues tied and heavy;   They now either slept or reclined. I got up, trembling, to have sex with them   (All those who creep stealthily tremble at the thought!); Their trouser bands stymied my pleasure at first   But then, with subtle art, I untied them To reveal each man’s quivering backside  Oscillating supply like a green bough. O, for this night which I spent enraptured  In continual enjoyment and excess, Making from this to that man,   Screwing whomever I could find in the house Until the first one awoke and got up   Feeling bruised at the thighs. Then I rose with fear to wake up the others,   Saying, “Do you feel the same thing as me? Is this sweat we’ve all been stained with?”   They said, “It looks more like butter.” And when I saw them now alert  I went off to relieve myself. And when they all came to life anew  I joined them, as the cups passed briskly around, Draped in the finest colored robes,  All spanking new. I was asked, “Who are you?” And replied, “Your servant;   From whom you need fear no rude behavior.” Abu Nuwas, “Turning the Tables.” Born sometime in the mideighth century, “He of the Dangling Locks” is most famous for his poems in praise of wine, although he also extolled the pleasures of love, hunting, and general debauchery. There is a story in The Thousand and One Nights in which a caliph sends his eunuch to bring Nuwas to him. Found drunk at a tavern and unable to settle his debt to a young boy, the poet is still capable of versifying extemporaneously about the boy’s beauty. The amused caliph heard of it and promptly settled Abu Nuwas’ debt.

43

1974:

New York City

woody allen, private eye One thing about being a private investigator, you’ve got to learn to go with your hunches. That’s why when a quivering pat of butter named Word Babcock walked into my office and laid his cards on the table, I should have trusted the cold chill that shot up my spine. “Kaiser?” he said. “Kaiser Lupowitz?” “That’s what it says on my license,” I owned up. “You’ve got to help me. I’m being blackmailed. Please!” He was shaking like the lead singer in a rumba band. I pushed a glass across the desk top and a bottle of rye I keep handy for nonmedicinal purposes. “Suppose you relax and tell me all about it.” “You…you won’t tell my wife?” “Level with me, Word. I can’t make any promises.” He tried pouring a drink, but you could hear the clicking sound across the street, and most of the stuff wound up in his shoes. “I’m a working guy,” he said. “Mechanical maintenance. I build and service joy buzzers. You know—those little fun gimmicks that give people a shock when they shake hands?” “So?” “A lot of your executives like ’em. Particularly down on Wall Street.” “Get to the point.” “I’m on the road a lot. You know how it is—lonely. Oh, not what you’re thinking. See, Kaiser, I’m basically an intellectual. Sure, a guy can meet all the bimbos he wants. But the really brainy women—they’re not so easy to find on short notice.” “Keep talking.” “Well, I heard of this young girl. Eighteen years old. A Vassar student. For a price, she’ll come over and discuss any subject—Proust, Yeats, anthropology. Exchange of ideas. You see what I’m driving at?” “Not exactly.” 44 

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“I mean, my wife is great, don’t get me wrong. But she won’t discuss Pound with me. Or Eliot. I didn’t know that when I married her. See, I need a woman who’s mentally stimulating, Kaiser. And I’m willing to pay for it. I don’t want an involvement—I want a quick intellectual experience, then I want the girl to leave. Christ, Kaiser, I’m a happily married man.” “How long has this been going on?” “Six months. Whenever I have that craving, I call Flossie. She’s a madam with a master’s in comparative lit. She sends me over an intellectual, see?” So he was one of those guys whose weakness was really bright women. I felt sorry for the poor sap. I figured there must be a lot of jokers in his position, who were starved for a little intellectual communication with the opposite sex and would pay through the nose for it. “Now she’s threatening to tell my wife,” he said. “Who is?” “Flossie. They bugged the motel room. They got tapes of me discussing ‘The Waste Land’ and Styles of Radical Will, and, well, really getting into some issues. They want ten grand or they go to Carla. Kaiser, you’ve got to help me! Carla would die if she knew she didn’t turn me on up here.” The old call-girl racket. I had heard rumors that the boys at headquarters were on to something involving a group of educated women, but so far they were stymied. “Get Flossie on the phone for me.” “What?” “I’ll take your case, Word. But I get fifty dollars a day, plus expenses. You’ll have to repair a lot of joy buzzers.” “It won’t be ten G’s worth, I’m sure of that,” he said with a grin, and picked up the phone and dialed a number. I took it from him and winked. I was beginning to like him. Seconds later, a silky voice answered, and I told her what was on my mind. “I understand you can help me set up an hour of good chat,” I said. “Sure, honey. What do you have in mind?”

“I’d like to discuss Melville.” “Moby-Dick or the shorter novels?” “What’s the difference?” “The price. That’s all. Symbolism’s extra.” “What’ll it run me?” “Fifty, maybe a hundred for Moby-Dick. You want a comparative discussion—Melville and Hawthorne? That could be arranged for a hundred.” “The dough’s fine,” I told her and gave her the number of a room at the Plaza. “You want a blond or a brunette?” “Surprise me,” I said, and hung up. I shaved and grabbed some black coffee while I checked over the Monarch College Outline series. Hardly an hour had passed before there was a knock on my door. I opened it, and standing there was a young redhead who was packed into her slacks like two big scoops of vanilla ice cream. “Hi, I’m Sherry.” They really knew how to appeal to your fantasies. Long, straight hair, leather bag, silver earrings, no makeup.

“I’m surprised you weren’t stopped, walking into the hotel dressed like that,” I said. “The house dick can usually spot an intellectual.” “A five spot cools him.” “Shall we begin?” I said, motioning her to the couch. She lit a cigarette and got right to it. “I think we could start by approaching Billy Budd as Melville’s justification of the ways of God to man, n’est-ce pas?” “Interestingly, though, not in a Miltonian sense.” I was bluffing. I wanted to see if she’d go for it. “No. Paradise Lost lacked the substructure of pessimism.” She did. “Right, right. God, you’re right,” I murmured. “I think Melville reaffirmed the virtues of innocence in a naive yet sophisticated sense— don’t you agree?” I let her go on. She was barely nineteen years old, but already she had developed the hardened facility of the pseudointellectual. She rattled off her ideas glibly, but it was all

“Madrid, Spain: Prado Museum,” 1995. Photograph by Elliott Erwitt.

45

mechanical. Whenever I offered an insight, she faked a response: “Oh yes, Kaiser. Yes, baby, that’s deep. A Platonic comprehension of Christianity—why didn’t I see it before?” We talked for about an hour and then she said she had to go. She stood up and I laid a C note on her. “Thanks, honey.” “There’s plenty more where that came from.” “What are you trying to say?” I had piqued her curiosity. She sat down again. “Suppose I wanted to—have a party?” I said. “Like, what kind of a party?” I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?”  —Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 225 bc “Suppose I wanted Noam Chomsky explained to me by two girls?” “Oh, wow.” “If you’d rather forget it…” “You’d have to speak with Flossie,” she said. “It’d cost you.” Now was the time to tighten the screws. I flashed my private-investigator’s badge and informed her it was a bust. “What!” “I’m fuzz, sugar, and discussing Melville for money is an 802. You can do time.” “You louse!” “Better come clean, baby. Unless you want to tell your story down at Alfred Kazin’s office, and I don’t think he’d be too happy to hear it.” She began to cry. “Don’t turn me in, Kaiser,” she said. “I needed the money to complete my master’s. I’ve been turned down for a grant. Twice. Oh, Christ…” It all poured out—the whole story. Central Park West upbringing, socialist summer camps, Brandeis. She was every dame you saw waiting in line at the Elgin or the Thalia, or penciling the words Yes, very true into the margin of some book on Kant. Only somewhere along the line, 46 

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she had made a wrong turn. “I needed cash. A girlfriend said she knew a married guy whose wife wasn’t very profound. He was into Blake. She couldn’t hack it. I said sure, for a price I’d talk Blake with him. I was nervous at first. I faked a lot of it. He didn’t care. My friend said there were others. Oh, I’ve been busted before. I got caught reading Commentary in a parked car, and I was once stopped and frisked at Tanglewood. Once more and I’m a three-time loser.” “Then take me to Flossie.” She bit her lip and said, “The Hunter College Book Store is a front.” “Yes?” “Like those bookie joints that have barbershops outside for show. You’ll see.” I made a quick call to headquarters and then said to her, “Okay, sugar. You’re off the hook. But don’t leave town.” She tilted her face up toward mine gratefully. “I can get you photographs of Dwight Macdonald reading,” she said. “Some other time.” I walked into the Hunter College Book Store. The salesman, a young man with sensitive eyes, came up to me. “Can I help you?” he said. “I’m looking for a special edition of Advertisements for Myself. I understand the author had several thousand gold-leaf copies printed up for friends.” “I’ll have to check,” he said. “We have a WATS line to Mailer’s house.” I fixed him with a look. “Sherry sent me,” I said. “Oh, in that case, go on back.” he said. He pressed a button. A wall of books opened, and I walked like a lamb into that bustling pleasure palace known as Flossie’s. Red-flocked wallpaper and a Victorian decor set the tone. Pale, nervous girls with black-rimmed glasses and blunt-cut hair lolled around on sofas, riffling Penguin Classics provocatively. A blond with a big smile winked at me, nodded toward a room upstairs, and said, “Wallace Stevens, eh?” But it wasn’t just intellectual experiences—they were peddling

“The Charge,” a phallic contest, Japanese erotic scroll print.

emotional ones, too. For fifty bucks, I learned, you could “relate without getting close.” For a hundred, a girl would lend you her Bartók records, have dinner, and then let you watch while she had an anxiety attack. For one-fifty, you could listen to FM radio with twins. For three bills, you got the works: a thin Jewish brunette would pretend to pick you up at the Museum of Modern Art, let you read her master’s, get you involved in a screaming quarrel at Elaine’s over Freud’s conception of women, and then fake a suicide of your choosing—the perfect evening, for some guys. Nice racket. Great town, New York. “Like what you see?” a voice said behind me. I turned and suddenly found myself standing face to face with the business end of a .38. I’m a guy with a strong stomach, but this time it did a backflip. It was Flossie, all right. The voice was the same, but Flossie was a man. His face was hidden by a mask. “You’ll never believe this,” he said, “but I don’t even have a college degree. I was thrown out for low grades.” “Is that why you wear that mask?” “I devised a complicated scheme to take over The New York Review of Books, but it meant I had to pass for Lionel Trilling. I went to Mexico for an operation. There’s a doctor in Juárez who gives people Trilling’s features—

for a price. Something went wrong. I came out looking like Auden, with Mary McCarthy’s voice. That’s when I started working the other side of the law.” Quickly, before he could tighten his finger on the trigger, I went into action. Heaving forward, I snapped my elbow across his jaw and grabbed the gun as he fell back. He hit the ground like a ton of bricks. He was still whimpering when the police showed up. “Nice work, Kaiser,” Sergeant Holmes said. “When we’re through with this guy, the FBI wants to have a talk with him. A little matter involving some gamblers and an annotated copy of Dante’s Inferno. Take him away, boys.” Later that night, I looked up an old account of mine named Gloria. She was blond. She had graduated cum laude. The difference was she majored in physical education. It felt good. “The Whore of Mensa.” Born Allen Konigsberg in New York City in 1935, the author at the age of seventeen began using Woody Allen as a pen name for submitting jokes and one-liners to various newspapers. By the age of twenty-three, he was writing for Sid Caesar and had signed with managers Jack Rollins and Charles Joffe, who went on to produce most of his films. Take the Money and Run was released in 1969, Manhattan in 1979, and Crimes and Misdemeanors in 1989. Allen once quipped, “Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.”

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Comic Relief

Clowns, jesters, and other performers Publilius Syrus

Name

Richard Tarlton

Lifespan

first century bc

Lifespan

died 1588

Occupation

Mime writer and actor in Rome

Occupation

Actor and jester at court of Elizabeth I

Career

Came to Rome as slave and soon won freedom by dint of wit; performed sketches and imitations around Italy; invited to appear at Julius Caesar’s games in 46 bc, where he challenged other mime writers to an improv competition and was judged victor.

Career

Legacy

Credited with various moral maxims, among them, “A rolling stone gathers no moss” and “The error repeated is a fault”; referred to or quoted by Seneca the Younger, Petronius, and St. Jerome.

Legacy

Career

Legacy

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Name

Specialized in song-and-dance acts; founding member of Queen’s Men acting company; could provoke laughter just by peeking face around curtain; eventually queen found his jokes about Robert Dudley and Walter Raleigh too risqué.

Possible inspiration for Shakespeare’s Yorick in Hamlet; image of him as small man in big breeches and a staff appeared outside English inns and pubs; authors published books using his name, Tarlton’s News out of Purgatory and Tarlton’s Jests.

Name

Joseph Grimaldi

Name

Dan Rice

Lifespan

1778–1837

Lifespan

1823–1900

Occupation

Clown and pantomimist in London

Occupation

American circus owner and performer

Debuted as dancer at age two; created new type of clown by combining characters of rogue and simpleton; played two parts in wildly successful Harlequin and Mother Goose; joked later in career, “I make you laugh at night but am Grim-all-day.” Initiated pantomime-clown style of painting face white and reddening cheeks; persona of “Joey” became a synonym for clown; his memoir was written by Charles Dickens and published in 1838.

Name

Charles Adrien Wettach aka Grock

Lifespan

1880–1959

Career

Legacy

Became showman as part owner of “educated” pig; appeared as “The Yankee Samson” at P. T. Barnum’s New York museum; performed in chin whiskers, top hat, and red-white-and-blue-striped tights as “The King of American Clowns” across U.S.

Thomas Nast is believed to have based his portrait of Uncle Sam on Rice; it is also claimed that Rice’s offer to let presidential candidate Zachary Taylor join his circus bandwagon led to the phrase “jump on the bandwagon.”

Name

Edgar Bergen

Lifespan

1903–1978

Occupation Swiss clown and musician

Occupation

American actor and ventriloquist

Career

Performed in cabaret with father, then as a tumbler and musician in circus; took name when partnered with clown Brick in 1903, performing in France, Africa, and South America; best known for slapstick blunders with musical instruments.

Career

Toured for ten years with ventriloquist dummy Charlie Mack; renamed dummy Charlie McCarthy, giving it top hat and monocle, and became radio sensation as straight man to McCarthy; their dialog often seemed to overlap.

Legacy

Starred in films, among them Grock (1931) and Clear the Ring (1949); inspired an annual competition for young circus performers in Switzerland called the Grock d’Or.

Legacy

Bergen, McCarthy, and W. C. Fields starred in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939); McCarthy’s sexualized talk on NBC radio with Mae West got her banned from NBC for ten years; Bergen’s daughter, Candice, became famous actress.

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1518:

Rome

baldassare castiglione on the ways of wit “Of the many kinds of witticisms we laugh at,” said Bernardo, “there are comparisons, such as the one our Pistoia wrote to Serafino: ‘Send back the big portmanteau that looks like you,’ for, if you remember, Serafino did very much resemble a portmanteau. And then there are some who like to compare men and women to horses, dogs, birds, and even chests, chairs, wagons, and chandeliers; and the result is sometimes very felicitous, though occasionally the joke falls flat. In this regard one must pay attention to place, time, and persons, and all the other circumstances we have so often mentioned.” Then Signor Gaspare Pallavicino added, “It was an agreeable comparison that our Signor Giovanni Gonzaga made between Alexander the Great and his own son, Signor Alessandro.” “I do not know that one,” replied Bernardo. “Well,” said Signor Gaspare, “Giovanni was playing at three dice and, as was usual for him, had lost many ducats and was still losing, and his son, Signor Alessandro, who though still a child plays no less eagerly than his father, stood watching him very attentively, and seemed very downcast. Then the count of Pianella, who was there with many other gentlemen, remarked, ‘Look, sir, how disconsolate Signor Alessandro is because of your losing, and how he is fretting for you to win so that he can have something from the winnings. So let him out of his misery and before you lose the rest of your money give him at least a ducat so that he too can go and play with his friends.’ Then Signor Giovanni replied, ‘You are deceiving yourself, for Alessandro is not thinking of anything so trifling. On the contrary, just as we read that when Alexander the Great heard, as a child, that his father Philip had won a great battle and taken a certain kingdom, he started to cry because, he explained, he feared his father would conquer so many countries that there would be none left for him, so now my son, Alessandro, is sad

and tearful at seeing his father losing, because he fears I may lose so much that there will be nothing left for him to lose.’” After everyone had laughed at this for a moment, Bernardo resumed, “We should also avoid irreligious jokes, for these can turn an attempt at wit into blasphemy, and then we find ourselves growing more and more ingenious in the way we blaspheme—and thereby a man seems to be seeking glory from something for which he deserves not merely condemnation but also severe punishment. This is an abominable thing, and therefore those who wish to appear amusing by Laugh if you are wise, girl, laugh.  —Martial, c. 86 showing little reverence for the Almighty ought to be driven out of good society. The same holds for those whose speech is obscene and foul, who show no respect for the presence of ladies, and who are constantly searching for witticisms and quips merely for the pleasure of making them blush for shame. For example, earlier this year in Ferrara, in the presence of many ladies at a banquet, there happened to be a Florentine and a Sienese who, as you know, are usually at odds with each other. In order to taunt the Florentine, the Sienese said, ‘We have married Siena to the emperor, and we have given him Florence as the dowry.’ And he said this because at the time it was reported that the Sienese had given a certain amount of money to the emperor, and he had taken Siena under his protection. Then, without hesitating, the Florentine retorted, ‘Siena will first be ridden’ (meaning this in the French sense, though he used the Italian word), ‘then the dowry will be settled at leisure.’ As you see, the joke was very clever, but as ladies were present, it was also indecent and unseemly.” Then Signor Gaspare Pallavicino remarked, “Women take pleasure in hearing nothing else, and yet you want to deprive them of it. And as for me, I have found myself blushing for shame far more because of words said by women than by men.” 49

“I am not speaking of women of that sort,” replied Bernardo, “but of virtuous women whom every gentleman should honor and respect.” Answered Gaspare, “You would need to discover a very subtle way of recognizing them, seeing that most times those who appear the best are in fact the worst.” Then Bernardo, with a laugh, said, “If it were not for the presence of our Signor Magnifico, who is universally recognized to be the protector of women, I should undertake the task of refuting you; but I do not want to usurp his place.” And then Signora Emilia, laughing as well, added, “Women have no need of a defender against a critic of so little authority. So No man ever distinguished himself who could not bear to be laughed at.  —Maria Edgeworth, 1809 leave Signor Gaspare to his perverse opinion, which is caused more by the fact that he has never found a woman to look at him than by any frailty that exists in women themselves, and continue with your discussion of pleasantries.” Then Bernardo went on. “Indeed, madam, it seems to me that I have now spoken of the many possible sources of clever witticisms, all of which are enhanced by being part of an entertaining story. But there are many others I could mention: as when, for example, by overstatement or understatement, things are said that are miles away from the truth. Of this kind was what Mario da Volterra said of a certain prelate: he was so conscious of his great stature that when he entered St. Peter’s he would stoop so as not to knock his head on the beam of the door. And our Magnifico here once said that his servant Volpino was so lean and thin that one morning, when he was blowing on his fire to make it go, he was wafted up the chimney by the smoke; but he had been fortunate enough to be forced crosswise against one of the little openings and so escape disappearing altogether. Then again, Agostino Bevazzano told the story of the miser who in desperation after he had refused to sell 50 

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his grain for a good price, and then seen the price tumble, hanged himself from a rafter in his bedroom; however, a servant heard the noise, ran in to see his master hanging there, and quickly cut the rope, saving him from death. Subsequently, after the miser had recovered, he insisted that the servant pay him for the rope. The same kind of joke was what Lorenzo de’ Medici said to a very tedious clown: ‘You couldn’t make me laugh if you tickled me.’ And in the same vein he replied to another buffoon who, one morning, had found him in bed late and reproached him for sleeping so long in these words: ‘I’ve already been to the new market and the old, and outside the San Gallo Gate and around the walls for exercise, and I’ve done a thousand other things besides, and here you are still asleep!’ Lorenzo retorted, ‘What I have dreamed in an hour is worth more than what you’ve done in four.’ “A very sophisticated kind of joke relies on a certain amount of dissimulation, when one says one thing and means another. I do not mean saying the exact opposite, such as calling a dwarf a giant, or a Negro white, or a very ugly man extremely handsome; for these are contraries that are only too obvious, even though they, too, may sometimes raise a laugh. I mean when speaking gravely and seriously, one says in an amusing way what is not really meant. For example, it was said by Don Giovanni di Cardona concerning a person who wanted to leave Rome, ‘In my opinion, he is making the wrong decision, because he’s such a rascal that if he stayed in Rome, given time he’d become a cardinal.’ Alfonso Santa Croce made a joke of the same kind, shortly after he had been subjected to various outrages at the hands of the cardinal of Pavia, when he was strolling with certain gentlemen outside Bologna near the place of public execution and noticed a man who had recently been hanged; for he turned toward the corpse with a reflective expression and remarked in a voice loud enough for all to hear, ‘Happy you, who do not have to deal with the Cardinal of Pavia!’ “This sort of joke, with an element of irony, is very suitable on the lips of men of some importance, for it is both grave and pungent and

Young women amusing themselves with a satyr, by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, c. 1765.

can be used whether talking of amusing or serious matters. For this reason it was popular among those of the ancient world, including very distinguished figures, such as Cato and Scipio Africanus the Younger, but the philosopher Socrates is said to have been the most witty in this regard. “It is also splendid when a person is stung regarding the same thing in which he has previously scored over his companion. Thus when at the court of Spain, Alonso Carrillo was guilty of some youthful misdemeanors, on the orders of the king, he was thrown into prison for the night. The following day he was released, and that morning he made his way to the palace, where, as he entered the hall and encountered many lords and ladies laughing at his imprisonment, Signora Bobadilla said, ‘Signor Alonso, I am very grieved by this misadventure of yours, for all those who know you thought the king should have had you hanged.’ Then straightaway Alonso retorted, ‘Madam, I was also very afraid of that, but then I formed the hope that you would ask to marry me.’ You see how sharp and witty this

answer was, since in Spain, as in many places elsewhere, it is the custom that when a man is on his way to the gallows, his life is spared if a common whore asks to marry him. This was also the kind of answer given by Raphael, the painter, to two cardinals with whom he was friendly and who, in his presence, in order to get him to talk, found fault with a painting of his which contained Peter and Paul, by commenting that the two figures were too red in the face. Immediately, Raphael retorted, ‘My lords, you should not be surprised, for I did this very deliberately, as we may well believe that St. Peter and St. Paul are as red in heaven as you see them here, for shame that the Church should be governed by such as you.’ ” From The Book of the Courtier. Castiglione, a nobleman, knew whereof he spoke—a courtier himself, he entered into the service of Francesco Gonzaga, the marquis of Mantua, in 1499 and of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, the duke of Urbino, in 1504. Later, in Rome, he served Pope Julius II and befriended the painter Raphael. Castiglione’s book was translated into Spanish in 1534, French in 1537, and English in 1561. Francis Bacon and Thomas Cromwell were among its early readers in the English language.

51

419 bc:

Athens

thrice-happy socrates Strepsiades: I’ll wing a prayer and go off to the Thinkpot for training. But how is an old relic like me, forgetful and lumbering, going to master the art of logic chopping and hairsplitting? [starts walking] But I’ve got to go. [He reaches the hut of the Thinkpot and stands wavering outside.] Why am I shilly-shallying like this? Why don’t I just knock on the door? [He bangs on the door, shouting.] Hey, boy! Boyakins! First Pupil: [from inside] Go to blazes, whoever’s banging on my door! [He opens the door.] Strepsiades: Strepsiades, son of Phidon, from Cicynna. First Pupil: A real dumbo, by God! Kicking the door down and causing a thought to miscarry! Strepsiades: Please excuse me. My home’s in the country, but do tell me about the thought that’s got miscarried. First Pupil: To tell anyone not a pupil is a sacrilege. Gathering of one of Mumbai’s thirty-seven laughing clubs, 1996. Photograph by Steve McCurry.

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Strepsiades: Oh don’t bother! I’ve really come to the Thinkpot to be a pupil myself. First Pupil: All right, I’ll tell you but you’ve got to realize this is holy stuff—hush-hush. Socrates has just been asking Chaerephon on how many of its own feet a flea can jump. You see, a flea just bit Chaerephon’s eyebrow and then jumped onto Socrates’ pate. Strepsiades: And Socrates is measuring the terrain? First Pupil: Yes, he melted some wax, took the flea, and dipped its feet in it, so when the wax cooled the flea had fancy Persian slippers on. These he removed to measure the distance. Strepsiades: Lord above, what subtlety! First Pupil: Like to hear another brilliant idea of Socrates? Strepsiades: Another? I can’t wait. First Pupil: Chaerephon of Sphertus asked him what his position on gnats was: do they whine from their mouths or their bottoms? Strepsiades: So? What did he say about the gnat? First Pupil: The gnat’s inside is narrow, he affirmed, so the air gets pressed through a restricted space rumpward, and because of the force of the wind the asshole’s opening to the narrow passage lets out a tune. Strepsiades: Anyone with such an intimate knowledge of a gnat’s inside has to be an invincible defendant. And we think Thales was a marvel! [They walk to the entrance of the Thinkpot.] Open up, open up, open the Thinkpot and show me this Socrates at once; I’m crazy to know more. [First pupil opens the door; a number of intent students are revealed in various contorted positions.] Great Hercules, where did you dig up this menagerie? And those over there—why are they staring at the ground? First Pupil: They’re investigating the nether sphere. Strepsiades: Oh, it’s bulbs they’re after! Don’t give it a thought. [He turns to the other pupils.] I know where there are lovely fat ones. [He turns back to the first pupil.] And these here, what are they all doing doubled up? 53

First Pupil: They’re trying to see what’s underneath hell. Strepsiades: With bottoms gazing at the heavens? First Pupil: Yes, independently studying the stars. [He turns to the other pupils.] Inside with you—he mustn’t find you here. [Strepsiades and the pupils are hustled inside; lying around outside the Thinkpot are piles of instruments and maps.] Strepsiades: Good Lord! What on earth are those? First Pupil: Well, this here is for astronomy. Strepsiades: And what’s this thing used for? First Pupil: For measuring land. Strepsiades: You mean land for allotments? First Pupil: No, just land in general. Strepsiades: My word, how clever! And democratic, too! First Pupil: And see, here is a map of the entire world— look, there’s Athens. Strepsiades: [gazing intently] Nonsense! I don’t believe it. I can’t see any jury sitting. First Pupil: Be that as it may…here lies Attica— there’s no doubt about it. Strepsiades: Then where are the people from my village—Cicynna? First Pupil: Over there…and here, as you see, is Euboea— in a great long stretch. Strepsiades: Don’t I know it! We and Pericles did the stretching… Good heavens, who’s that man hanging in a basket? First Pupil: Him. Strepsiades: Who’s him? First Pupil: Why, Socrates. Strepsiades: Hi, Socrates! [turns to first pupil] Go on, shout to him for me. First Pupil: Shout yourself. I don’t have time. [First pupil hurries back into the Thinkpot.] Strepsiades: Oh Socrates! My own little Socrakitten! Socrates: Ephemeral thing! Do you address me? Strepsiades: Yes, and for a start, do tell me what you’re doing. 54 

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A Singer and a Drinker (detail), in the style of Caravaggio, c. 1600.

Socrates: I tread the air and scrutinize the sun. Strepsiades: Looking down on the gods from a basket? Why not look up at them from the ground? Socrates: Because to glean accurate knowledge of the heavens I have to suspend thought and meld my cerebral vibrations with the homogenous air. If I’d been down here and looked up here I wouldn’t have discovered a thing. The earth, you see, is forced to attract the moisture of thought. Watercress does the same. Strepsiades: You don’t say! The mind draws moisture into watercress? Oh Socrakitty, do come down to me at once and teach me all I’ve come to learn. Socrates: [descending] So what have you come for? Strepsiades: A yearning to learn how to speak. I’m being harassed and stripped and plundered by the most vulturine creditors. So teach me one of your two Arguments: the one that lets you off a debt. I’ll pay cash down—I swear by the gods— whatever your fee. Socrates: You’ll swear by the gods, will you? Get this straight: the gods aren’t legal tender here. Strepsiades: So what do you swear by: minted iron, like in Byzantium? 55

Socrates: Do you really want to know the real truth about the gods? Strepsiades: Absolutely! If that’s possible. Socrates: And to converse with the Clouds—our very own deities? Strepsiades: Totally. Socrates: Then seat yourself on this sacred couch. Strepsiades: Right! I’m sitting. Socrates: Now take in your hands this wreath. Strepsiades: The wreath? Oh dear, you’re not going to sacrifice me, Socrates, like Athamas? Socrates: Of course not! We do this for all initiates. Strepsiades: And what does it do for me? Socrates: In speaking you’ll become as smooth as a salesman, voluble as a rattle, insidious as pollen. Now don’t move. Strepsiades: [He sees Socrates taking a handful of flour from a bag.] No, by Zeus, you won’t fool me: pollenized by sprinkled flour! Socrates: [taking up a wand and incanting, priestlike] Let the dotard hold his tongue And listen to my orison. O lord and king, unmeasured Air Who holds the earth up everywhere, And you the sparkling atmosphere, And Clouds, you holy goddesses Of lightning’s thunderous prodigies: Arouse yourselves on high, appear To the contemplator here. Strepsiades: [hurriedly throwing a cloak over his head] Not yet, not yet, until I’m cloaked And keep myself from being soaked. To think I left the house with not Even a cap on! What a clot! Aristophanes, from The Clouds. In addition to this sendup of Socrates, Aristophanes often took current events and his contemporaries as subjects for plays—he attacked the influential politician Cleon in The Knights, satirized the Peloponnesian War by portraying a peace treaty brokered by Athenian and Spartan women in Lysistrata, and condemned the tragedian Euripides to death in The Women at the Thesmophoria Festival. He is thought to have written some forty plays, eleven of which are extant, and he died around 388 bc.

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1838:

Springfield, IL

abraham lincoln loses the girl Dear Madam, Without apologizing for being egotistical, I shall make the history of so much of my life as has elapsed since I saw you the subject of this letter. And, by the way, I now discover that in order to give a full and intelligible account of the things I have done and suffered since I saw you, I shall necessarily have to relate some that happened before. It was, then, in the autumn of 1836 that a married lady of my acquaintance, and who was

a great friend of mine, being about to pay a visit to her father and other relatives residing in Kentucky, proposed to me that on her return, she would bring a sister of hers with her, on condition that I would engage to become her brotherin-law with all convenient dispatch. I, of course, accepted the proposal, for you know I could not have done otherwise had I really been averse to it; but privately, between you and me, I was most confoundedly well-pleased with the project. I had seen the said sister some three years before, thought her intelligent and agreeable, and saw no good objection to plodding life through hand in hand with her. Time passed on, the lady took her journey, and in due time returned,

Undercover

Pen and stage names 1. Adam Foulweather

9

A. François Rabelais [page 89]

2. Mark Twain [page 140]

B. Brian Ó Nualláin

3. Tom Tomorrow

C. Georges Remi

4. C. P. West

D. Alexander Pope

5. Guy Fawkes

E. François-Marie Arouet

6. Mrs. Silence Dogood

F. Benjamin Franklin

7. Astrea

G. Thomas Nashe

8. Flann O’Brien [page 120]

H. Robert Benchley [page 101]

9. Alcofribas Nasier

I. Henry Fielding

10. O. Henry

J. P. G. Wodehouse

11. Martinus Scriblerus

K. Dan Perkins

12. Isaac Bickerstaff

L. Ambrose Bierce [page 162]

13. Conny Keyber

M. Aphra Behn

14. Dod Grile

N. Samuel Langhorne Clemens

15. Molière [page 27]

O. Washington Irving

16. Diedrich Knickerbocker

P. Jonathan Swift [page 38]

17. Hergé

Q. William Sydney Porter

18. Voltaire [page 142]

R. Jean-Baptise Poquelin

Answers:

A, 9; B, 8; C, 17; D, 11; E, 18; F, 6; G, 1; H, 5; I, 13; J, 4; K, 3; L, 14; M, 7; N, 2; O, 16; P, 12; Q, 10; R, 15

57

“There was an old Derry Down Derry,” 1875 colored illustration from A Book of Nonsense, by Edward Lear.

sister in company, sure enough. This astonished me a little, for it appeared to me that her coming so readily showed that she was a trifle too willing, but on reflection it occurred to me that she might have been prevailed on by her married sister to come, without anything concerning me ever having been mentioned to her, and so I concluded that if no other objection presented itself, I would consent to waive this. All this occurred to me on hearing of her arrival in the neighborhood—for, be it remembered, I had not yet seen her, except about three years previous, as above mentioned. In a few days we had an interview, and although I had seen her before, she did not look as my imagination had pictured her. I knew she was oversize, but she now appeared a fair match for Falstaff. I knew she was called an “old maid,” and I felt no doubt of the truth of at least half of the appellation, but now, when I beheld her, I could not for my life avoid thinking of my mother; and this, not from withered features— for her skin was too full of fat to permit of its 58 

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contracting into wrinkles—but from her want of teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general, and from a kind of notion that ran in my head that nothing could have commenced at the size of infancy and reached her present bulk in less than thirty-five or forty years. And, in short, I was not at all pleased with her. But what could I do? I had told her sister that I would take her for better or for worse, and I made a point of honor and conscience in all things to stick to my word, especially if others had been induced to act on it, which in this case I had no doubt they had, for I was now fairly convinced that no other man on earth would have her, and hence the conclusion that they were bent on holding me to my bargain. “Well,” thought I, “I have said it, and, be the consequences what they may, it shall not be my fault if I fail to do it.” At once I determined to consider her my wife, and this done, all my powers of discovery were put to work in search of perfections in her which might be fairly set off against her defects. I tried to imagine her

handsome, which, but for her unfortunate corpulency, was actually true. Exclusive of this, no woman that I have ever seen has a finer face. I also tried to convince myself that the mind was much more to be valued than the person, and in this she was not inferior, as I could discover, to any with whom I had been acquainted. Shortly after this, without attempting to come to any positive understanding with her, I set out for Vandalia, when and where you first saw me. During my stay there I had letters from her which did not change my opinion of either her intellect or intention but, on the contrary, confirmed it in both. All this while, although I was fixed “firm as the surge-repelling rock” in my resolution, I found I was continually repenting the rashness which had led me to make it. Through life I have been in no bondage, either real or imaginary, from the thralldom of which I so much desired to be free. After my return home I saw nothing to change my opinion of her in any particular. She was the same, and so was I. I now spent my time in planning how I might get along in life after my contemplated change of circumstances should have taken place, and how I might procrastinate the evil day for a time, which I really dreaded as much, perhaps more, than an Irishman does the halter. After all my sufferings upon this deeply interesting subject, here I am, wholly, unexpectedly, completely out of the “scrape,” and I now want to know if you can guess how I got out of it—out, clear, in every sense of the term—no violation of word, honor, or conscience. I don’t believe you can guess, and so I might as well tell you at once. As the lawyer says, it was done in the manner following, to wit: after I had delayed the matter as long as I thought I could in honor do (which, by the way, had brought me round into the last fall), I concluded I might as well bring it to a consummation without further delay, and so I mustered my resolution and made the proposal to her direct; but, shocking to relate, she answered, No. At first I supposed she did it through an affectation of modesty, which I thought but ill became her under the

peculiar circumstances of her case, but on my renewal of the charge I found she repelled it with greater firmness than before. I tried it again and again, but with the same success, or rather with the same want of success. I finally was forced to give it up, at which I very unexpectedly found myself mortified almost beyond endurance. I was mortified, it seemed to me, in a hundred different ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the reflection that I had so long been too stupid to discover her intentions, and at the same time never doubting that I understood them perfectly—and also that she, whom I had taught myself to believe nobody else would have, had actually rejected me with And it is well-known that beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of humor.  —W. Somerset Maugham, 1930 all my fancied greatness. And, to cap the whole, I then for the first time began to suspect that I was really a little in love with her. But let it all go! I’ll try and outlive it. Others have been made fools of by the girls, but this can never with truth be said of me. I most emphatically, in this instance, made a fool of myself. I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason—I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me. When you receive this, write me a long yarn about something to amuse me. Give my respects to Mr. Browning. From a letter to Mrs. O. H. Browning. Judged by one Lincoln biographer to be “the most ludicrous” he ever wrote, this letter, composed while Lincoln was an Illinois state representative, was sent on April Fool’s Day. However, the storyline hews closely to the facts of his courtship with Mary Owens, who later recollected, “I thought Mr. Lincoln was deficient in those little links which make up the chain of woman’s happiness—at least it was so in my case.” It is said that when Mrs. Browning asked the president if she could share the letter with a biographer, he denied permission because it contained too much truth.

59

1777:

Mannheim

in the toilet Dearest cozz buzz! I have received reprieved your highly esteemed writing biting, and I have noted doted that my Uncle Garfuncle, my Aunt Slant, and you too, are all well mell. We, too, thank god, are in good fettle kettle. Today I got a letter setter from my Papa Haha safely into my paws claws. I hope you too have gotten rotten my note quote that I wrote to you from Mannheim. So much the better, better the much so! But now for something more sensuble. The comic man is happy under any fate, and he says funny things at funerals and when the bailiffs are in the house or the hero is waiting to be hanged.  —Jerome K. Jerome, 1889 So sorry to hear that Herr Abbate Salate has had another stroke choke. But I hope with the help of God fraud the consequences will not be dire mire. You are writing fighting that you’ll keep your criminal promise which you gave me before my departure from Augspurg, and will do it soon moon. Well, I will most certainly find that regretable. You write further, indeed you let it all out, you expose yourself, you let yourself be heard, you give me notice, you declare yourself, you indicate to me, you bring me the news, you announce onto me, you state in broad daylight, you demand, you desire, you wish, you want, you like, you command that I, too, should could send you my portrait. Eh bien, I shall mail fail it for sure. Oui, by the love of my skin, I shit on your nose, so it runs down your chin. I now wish you a good night, shit in your bed with all your might, sleep with peace on your mind, and try to kiss your own behind; I now go off to never-never land and sleep as much as I can stand. Tomorrow we’ll speak freak sensubly with each other. Things I must 60 

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you tell a lot of, believe it you hardly can, but hear tomorrow it already will you, be well in the meantime. Oh my ass burns like fire! What on earth is the meaning of this!—maybe muck wants to come out? Yes, yes, muck, I know you, see you, taste you—and—what’s this—is it possible? Ye Gods!—Oh ear of mine, are you deceiving me? Now I must relate to you a sad story that happened just this minute. As I’m in the middle of my best writing, I hear a noise in the street. I stop writing—get up, go to the window— and—the noise is gone—I sit down again, start writing once more—I have barely written ten words when I hear the noise again—I rise— but as I rise, I can still hear something but very faint—it smells like something burning— wherever I go it stinks, when I look out the window, the smell goes away, when I turn my head back to the room, the smell comes back— finally my mama says to me: I bet you let one go?—I don’t think so, Mama. Yes, yes, I’m quite certain. I put it to the test, stick my finger in my ass, then put it to my nose, and—ecce provatum est! Mama was right! Now farewell, I kiss you ten thousand times and I remain as always your Old young Sauschwanz Wolfgang Amadé Rosenkranz. From us two travelers a thousand Regards to my uncle and aunt. To every good friend I send My greet feet; addio nitwit. Love true true true until the grave, If I live that long and do behave. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, from a letter to Maria Anna Thekla Mozart. Between 1777 and 1781, while in his twenties, Mozart wrote twelve letters to this cousin—the early ones are often alliterative and obscene—during which time he and his father were seeking out a new post for him; he had been installed at the Salzburg court since the age of thirteen. In 1785 Franz Joseph Haydn said to Mozart’s father, “ Your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.” The Magic Flute premiered on September 30, 1791; less than three months later, Mozart was dead at the age of thirty-five.

1939:

New York City

james thurber summons an archetype “We’re going through!” The commander’s voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his fulldress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. “We can’t make it, sir. It’s spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me.” “I’m not asking you, Lieutenant Berg,” said the commander. “Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8,500! We’re going through!” The pounding of the cylinders increased: tapocketa-pocketapocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. “Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” he shouted. “Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” repeated Lieutenant Berg. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!” shouted the commander. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!”

The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. “The old man’ll get us through,” they said to one another. “The old man ain’t afraid of hell!”… “Not so fast! You’re driving too fast!” said Mrs. Mitty. “What are you driving so fast for?” “Hmm?” said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. “You were up to fifty-five,” she said. “You know I don’t like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five.” Walter Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind. “You’re tensed up again,” said Mrs. Mitty. “It’s one of your days. I wish you’d let Dr. Renshaw look you over.” Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have her

Friar Pedro Shoots El Maragato as His Horse Runs Off, by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, c. 1806.

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hair done. “Remember to get those overshoes while I’m having my hair done,” she said. “I don’t need overshoes,” said Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag. “We’ve been all through that,” she said, getting out of the car. “You’re not a young man any longer.” He raced the engine a little. “Why don’t you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?” Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out

c. 1690: Sichuan deadly joke

The schoolmaster Sun Jingxia once told this story. A certain fellow of the locality, let us call him X, was killed by bandits during one of their raids. His head flopped down on to his chest. When the bandits had gone and the family came to recover the corpse for burial, they detected the faintest trace of breathing, and on closer examination saw that the man’s windpipe was not quite severed. A finger’s breadth remained. So they carried him home, supporting the head carefully, and after a day and a night, he began to make a moaning noise. They fed him minute quantities of food with a spoon and chopsticks, and after six months he was fully recovered. Ten years later, he was sitting talking with two or three of his friends when one of them cracked a hilarious joke and they all burst out laughing. X was rocking backward and forward in a fit of hysterical laughter, when suddenly the old sword wound burst open, and his head fell to the ground in a pool of blood. His friends examined him, and this time he was well and truly dead. His father decided to bring charges against the man who had told the joke. But the joker’s friends collected some money together and succeeded in buying him off. The father buried his son and dropped the charges. Pu Songling, from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. Having passed the first civilservice examination at the age of eighteen in the late 1650s, Pu failed to obtain a government post, so he became a private tutor for a local family in 1679. By that time the self-titled “historian of the strange” had collected the majority of the 431 tales that comprise his book. At odds with the prevailing literary tastes of the day, the work was not celebrated until some fifty years after his death.

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the gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took them off again. “Pick it up, brother!” snapped a cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead. He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital on his way to the parking lot. …“It’s the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan,” said the pretty nurse. “Yes?” said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. “Who has the case?” “Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow, but there are two specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York and Mr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over.” A door opened down a long, cool corridor, and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard. “Hello, Mitty,” he said. “We’re having the devil’s own time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you’d take a look at him.” “Glad to,” said Mitty. In the operating room there were whispered introductions: “Dr. Remington, Dr. Mitty. Mr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty.” “I’ve read your book on streptothricosis,” said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands. “A brilliant performance, sir.” “Thank you,” said Walter Mitty. “Didn’t know you were in the States, Mitty,” grumbled Remington. “Coals to Newcastle, bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary.” “You are very kind,” said Mitty. A huge, complicated machine, connected to the operating table, with many tubes and wires, began at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. “The new anesthetizer is giving way!” shouted an intern. “There is no one in the East who knows how to fix it!” “Quiet, man!” said Mitty, in a low, cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep. He began fingering delicately a row of glistening dials. “Give me a fountain pen!” he snapped. Someone handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine and inserted the pen in its place. “That will hold for ten minutes, “ he said. “Get on with the operation.” A nurse hurried over and whispered

to Renshaw, and Mitty saw the man turn pale. “Coreopsis has set in,” said Renshaw nervously. “If you would take over, Mitty?” Mitty looked at him and at the craven figure of Benbow, who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of the two great specialists. “If you wish,” he said. They slipped a white gown on him; he adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed him shining… “Back it up, Mac! Look out for that Buick!” Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes. “Wrong lane, Mac,” said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Mitty closely. “Gee. Yeah,” muttered Mitty. He began cautiously to back out of the lane marked exit only. “Leave her sit there,” said the attendant. “I’ll put her away.” Mitty got out of the car. “Hey, better leave the key.” “Oh,” said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key. The attendant vaulted into the car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged. They’re so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main Street; they think they know everything. Once he had tried to take his chains off, outside New Milford, and he had got them wound around the axles. A man had had to come out in a wrecking car and unwind them, a young, grinning garage man. Since then Mrs. Mitty always made him drive to a garage to have the chains taken off. The next time, he thought, I’ll wear my right arm in a sling; they won’t grin at me then. I’ll have my right arm in a sling and they’ll see I couldn’t possibly take the chains off myself. He kicked at the slush on the sidewalk. “Overshoes,” he said to himself, and he began looking for a shoe store. When he came out into the street again, with the overshoes in a box under his arm, Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing was his wife had told him to get. She had told him twice, before they set out from their house for Waterbury. In a way he hated these weekly trips to town—he was always getting something wrong. Kleenex, he thought, Squibb’s, razor blades? No. Toothpaste, toothbrush, bicarbonate, carborundum, initiative, and referendum? He gave it up. But she would remember it. “Where’s the what’s-its-name?”

she would ask. “Don’t tell me you forgot the what’s-its-name.” A newsboy went by shouting something about the Waterbury trial. …“Perhaps this will refresh your memory.” The district attorney suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand. “Have you ever seen this before?” Walter Mitty took the gun and examined it expertly. “This is my Webley-Vickers 50.80,” he said calmly. An excited buzz ran around the courtroom. The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils, but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.  —Thomas Carlyle, 1833 The judge rapped for order. “You are a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I believe?” said the district attorney, insinuatingly. “Objection!” shouted Mitty’s attorney. “We have shown that the defendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that he wore his right arm in a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July.” Walter Mitty raised his hand briefly, and the bickering attorneys were stilled. “With any known make of gun,” he said evenly, “I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand.” Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. A woman’s scream rose above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-haired girl was in Walter Mitty’s arms. The district attorney struck at her savagely. Without rising from his chair, Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin. “You miserable cur!”… “Puppy biscuit,” said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking, and the building of Waterbury rose up out of the misty courtroom and surrounded him again. A woman who was passing laughed. “He said puppy biscuit,” she said to her companion. “That man said puppy biscuit to himself.” Walter Mitty hurried on. He went into an A&P, not the first one he came to but a smaller one farther up the street. “I want some biscuit for small, young dogs,” he said to the clerk. “Any special brand, sir?” The greatest pistol shot in the world thought 63

a moment. “It says ‘Puppies Bark for It’ on the box,” said Walter Mitty. His wife would be through at the hairdresser’s in fifteen minutes, Mitty saw in looking at his watch, unless they had trouble drying it; sometimes they had trouble drying it. She didn’t like to get to the hotel first; she would want him to be there waiting for her as usual. He found a big leather chair in the lobby, facing a window, and he put the overshoes and the puppy biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked up an old copy of Liberty and sank down into the chair. “Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?” Walter Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets. There is nothing sillier than a silly laugh.  —Catullus, c. 60 bc …“The cannonading has got the wind up in young Raleigh, sir,” said the sergeant. Captain Mitty looked up at him through tousled hair. “Get him to bed,” he said wearily. “With the others. I’ll fly alone.” “But you can’t, sir,” said the sergeant anxiously. “It takes two men to handle that bomber, and the Archies are pounding hell out of the air. Von Richtman’s circus is between here and Saulier.” “Somebody’s got to get that ammunition dump,” said Mitty. “I’m going over. Spot of brandy?” He poured a drink for the sergeant and one for himself. War thundered and whined around the dugout and battered at the door. There was a rending of wood and splinters flew through the room. “A bit of a near thing,” said Captain Mitty carelessly. “The box barrage is closing in,” said the sergeant. “We only live once, Sergeant,” said Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. “Or do we?” He poured another brandy and tossed it off. “I never see a man could hold his brandy like you, sir,” said the sergeant. “Begging your pardon, sir.” Captain Mitty stood up and strapped on his huge Webley-Vickers automatic. “It’s forty kilometers through hell, sir,” said the sergeant. Mitty finished one last brandy. “After all,” he said softly, “what isn’t?” The pounding of the 64 

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cannon increased; there was the rat-a-tattatting of machine guns, and from somewhere came the menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flamethrowers. Walter Mitty walked to the door of the dugout humming “Auprès de Ma Blonde.” He turned and waved to the sergeant. “Cheerio!” he said… Something struck his shoulder. “I’ve been looking all over this hotel for you,” said Mrs. Mitty. “Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to find you?” “Things close in,” said Walter Mitty vaguely. “What?” Mrs. Mitty said. “Did you get the what’s-its-name? The puppy biscuit? What’s in that box?” “Overshoes,” said Mitty. “Couldn’t you have put them on in the store?” “I was thinking,” said Walter Mitty. “Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?” She looked at him. “I’m going to take your temperature when I get you home,” she said. They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot. At the drugstore on the corner she said, “Wait here for me. I forgot something. I won’t be a minute.” She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of the drugstore, smoking…He put his shoulders back and his heels together. “To hell with the handkerchief,” said Walter Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” At the age of thirtytwo in 1927, Thurber published his first story in The New Yorker and befriended one of its editors, E. B. White, who recommended Thurber to the magazine’s founder, Harold Ross. Thurber and White went on to share a cubicle at the office and cowrite the Talk of the Town feature. In 1933 Thurber published My Life and Hard Times—critic Dwight Macdonald judged it “the best humor to come out of the post– World War I period”—and in 1959 The Years with Ross. He died two years later.

Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor in a scene from California Suite, directed by Herbert Ross, 1978.

1925:

Leningrad

rent control The other day, citizens, I saw a cartload of bricks going down the road. I’m not joking! You know, my heart palpitated with joy. It must mean we’re building something, citizens. They don’t just transport bricks for no reason at all. They must be building a nice little house somewhere. They’ve started, touch wood. In maybe twenty years’ time, and who knows, even less, every citizen will probably have a whole room to himself. And if the population doesn’t grow too quickly and they allow everyone to have abortions, then two rooms. Or might even be three. With a bathroom. What a life we’ll lead then, eh, citizens! In one room we’ll sleep, say, in another receive guests, and in a third something else…Who knows? With all that freedom, we’ll find something to be getting on with. But just now things are a bit difficult with floor space. There’s not a lot of it about, on account of the housing crisis.

I was living in Moscow, comrades. I’ve only just returned from there. I myself have undergone this crisis. So I arrived in Moscow, you see. I was walking around the streets with my stuff. And there was nowhere. Not just nowhere to stay, but nowhere even to put my stuff. Can you imagine, two weeks I was walking around the streets with my stuff. I grew a beard and gradually lost my stuff. So there I was, you see, walking around light, without any stuff. Hunting for accommodation. Finally, in one building, some man came down the stairs, “For thirty rubles,” he said, “I can fix you up in the bathroom. The apartment,” he said, “is fit for royalty…three toilets… a bath…You can live there, in the bathroom, to your heart’s content,” he said. “There’s no windows, I’ll grant you that, but there is a door. And running water’s freely available. If you want,” he said, “you can run yourself a bath full of water and dive around all day long.” I said, “Esteemed comrade, I’m not a fish,” I said. “I don’t require diving facilities. I’d rather,” I said, “live on dry land. Knock a bit off,” I said, “for the damp.” 65

He said, “I can’t, comrade. I’d love to, but I can’t. It doesn’t depend on me alone. It’s a communal apartment. And there’s been a fixed price agreed for the bathroom.” “What choice do I have then?” I said. “All right. Extract,” I said, “thirty from me, then, and let me get in there straightaway,” I said. “I’ve been walking the pavement for three weeks,” I said, “and I might get tired otherwise.” All right then. They let me in. I began living there. Professed wits, though they are generally courted for the amusement they afford, are seldom respected for the qualities they possess.  —Sydney Smith, 1850 And the bath really was fit for royalty. All over the place, wherever you put your foot, there was the marble bath, boiler, and taps. Mind you, there was nowhere to sit. You could just about sit on the side of the bath, but you kept falling down, straight into the marble bath. So I put down some planks as floorboards, and went on living there. After a month, though, I got married. I met a young, kindhearted wife. You know. Without a room of her own. I thought she’d reject me on account of the bath, and I’d never know conjugal bliss and comfort, but not her, she didn’t reject me. Just gave a little frown and answered, “So what,” she said, “living in a bath doesn’t make you a bad person. If it comes to it,” she said, “we can always put up a partition. Here for example,” she said, “we could have my boudoir, and over there we’d have the dining room…” I said, “We could put up a partition, citizen. The only thing is the tenants,” I said. “The bastards won’t let us. That’s what they keep on saying: no alterations.” All right then. So we carried on living there as before. In less than a year, me and the wife had a tiny baby. We called him Volodya and carried on 66 

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with life. We could always give him a bath, and carry on living. You know, it was even working out pretty well. The baby, you see, was getting a bath every day and never once caught a cold. The only inconvenient thing was in the evenings the tenants of the communal apartment kept on barging into the bathroom to take baths. While this went on, the whole family had to be moved out into the corridor. So I asked the tenants, “Citizens,” I said, “take your baths on a Saturday. Come on,” I said, “you can’t have a bath every day. When are we going to have a life?” I said. “You’ve got to see it from our point of view.” But the bastards, there were thirty-two of them, all swearing. And they threatened to smash my face in if I started making trouble. Well, what can you do? You can’t do anything. We carried on living there as before. After a while my wife’s mum turned up in our bath from the provinces. She settled in behind the boiler. “I’ve been dreaming for so long,” she said, “of cradling my grandson in my arms. You can’t,” she said, “deny me that entertainment.” I said, “I’m not denying it. Go on, granny,” I said, “cradle away. You can even,” I said, “fill up the bath and dive in with your grandson.” So I said to my wife, “Look, citizen, if you’ve got any more relatives coming to stay with you, then tell me now, and put me out of my misery.” She said, “No, only my brother for Christmas…” I left Moscow without waiting for her brother. I send my family money by post. Mikhail Zoshchenko, “The Crisis.” Zoshchenko volunteered to fight in World War I and was gassed on the German front, causing him permanent heart and liver damage. He then fought in the Red Army during the Russian Revolution. Zoshchenko published Sentimental Tales in 1929, Youth Restored in 1933, and The Blue Book in 1935. Within months of publishing his story “The Adventures of a Monkey” in 1946, Zoshchenko was denounced by Soviet authorities as the “scum of literature” and, along with poet Anna Akhmatova, was expelled from the Soviet Writers’ Union.

1456:

Paris

last testament

I leave it to priests to drive it home, in spite of the Carmelites’ bull.

Item, to Master Ythier Merchant, to whom I am deeply in debt, and also to Master Jean de Horn, I leave my shaft of trenchant steel which is currently held in hock against a bar tab of seven sous. I hereby record my wish that they be the ones who get the shaft.

And to Master Robert Valley, poor office clerk in parliament, who can’t tell a hill from a valley, I will, as principal bequest, that he be given, free and clear, my breeches, now down by the anklets, for they’ll make a fitting coif for his girl, Jeannie de Thousands.

Item, I leave to St. Amant the white horse, along with the mule; and to Blaru, my precious jewels and the striped ass, bucking. As for the Church decree that says “…everyone of both sexes…”

Because he is a man of high station he ought to be better endowed, as the Holy Spirit often allows, seeing as he’s wholly empty upstairs. Therefore I have resolved, since he has no more brains than a cupboard,

The Zaparozhye Cossacks Writing a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan (detail), by Ilya Repin, c. 1880.

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Young man with painted face laughing during Holi festival, Kokata, India, 2007. Photograph by Prasanta Biswas.

that he should have The Art of Memory, once it’s retrieved from Master Witless. Item, to Perrenet Merchant, known as the Bastard of the Bar: because he is a good merchant, I leave him three bundles of straw to spread out on the ground for doing the amorous business at which he earns his living— for that’s the only trade he knows. Item, I leave and give outright my gloves and my silken hood-cape to my good friend Jack Hardon; all the acorns from a willow grove and every day a big fat goose and a chicken in its greasy prime; ten tuns of wine as white as chalk, and two lawsuits, to keep him thin. Item, I bequeath to the poorhouse my bed frame strung with spiderwebs. To those who flop under market stalls, 68 

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trembling there with faces clenched, wasted, hairy, chilled deep through, their trousers short, their smocks worn thin, frozen, beaten, wracked with flu— a fist in the eye for each. Item, I bequeath to my barber the snipped-off scraps of my hair, freely and unconditionally; to the cobbler, my old shoes, and to the ragman my old clothes, in whatever shape they’re in; for less than they cost me new, I charitably leave these to them. François Villon, from “Bequests.” The record of the poet’s life is incomplete: nothing is known of the years between when Villon received a master of arts degree from the University of Paris in 1452 and when he killed a priest in 1455. Although pardoned for this crime by Charles VII, Villon was on the lam later in the year for a heist of the Collège de Navarre’s savings. It was around this time that he composed his bequests. In 1463 Villon petitioned for clemency while awaiting death by hanging for another conviction, and his sentence was commuted to banishment from Paris. Nothing else is known of his life.

1952:

Dublin

filling in the blanks

Estragon: If it hangs you, it’ll hang anything. Vladimir: But am I heavier than you?

Vladimir: What do we do now?

Estragon: So you tell me. I don’t know. There’s an even chance. Or nearly.

Estragon: Wait.

Vladimir: Well? What do we do?

Vladimir: Yes, but while waiting.

Estragon: Don’t let’s do anything. It’s safer.

Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?

Vladimir: Let’s wait and see what he says.

Vladimir: Hmm. It’d give us an erection.

Estragon: Who?

Estragon: [highly excited] An erection!

Vladimir: Godot.

Vladimir: With all that follows. Where it falls, mandrakes grow. That’s why they shriek when you pull them up. Did you not know that?

Estragon: Good idea.

Estragon: Let’s hang ourselves immediately!

Estragon: On the other hand it might be better to strike the iron before it freezes.

Vladimir: From a bough? [They go toward the tree.] I wouldn’t trust it.

Vladimir: Let’s wait till we know exactly how we stand.

Estragon: We can always try.

Vladimir: I’m curious to hear what he has to offer. Then we’ll take it or leave it.

Vladimir: Go ahead.

Estragon: What exactly did we ask him for?

Estragon: After you.

Vladimir: Were you not there?

Vladimir: No no, you first. Estragon: Why me? Vladimir: You’re lighter than I am. Estragon: Just so! Vladimir: I don’t understand. Estragon: Use your intelligence, can’t you? [Vladimir uses his intelligence.]

Estragon: I can’t have been listening. Vladimir: Oh…Nothing very definite. Estragon: A kind of prayer. Vladimir: Precisely. Estragon: A vague supplication. Vladimir: Exactly. Estragon: And what did he reply?

Vladimir: [finally] I remain in the dark.

Vladimir: That he’d see.

Estragon: This is how it is. [He reflects.] The bough…the bough…[angrily] Use your head, can’t you?

Vladimir: That he’d have to think it over.

Vladimir: You’re my only hope. Estragon: [with effort] Gogo light—bough not break—Gogo dead. Didi heavy—bough break—Didi alone. Whereas— Vladimir: I hadn’t thought of that.

Estragon: That he couldn’t promise anything. Estragon: In the quiet of his home. Vladimir: Consult his family. Estragon: His friends. Vladimir: His agents. Estragon: His correspondents. 69

Punked!

Hoaxes and stunts

Estragon: His bank account.

The Trojan Horse, c. 1250 bc Pranksters: Greeks During the Trojan War, Greeks pretend to sail away and leave behind large wooden horse, which Trojans take into their city as an offering to Athena; there are Greeks inside who emerge at night, open the gates for the rest of the Greek army, and end the ten-year siege.

Vladimir: Before taking a decision.

Death of John Partridge, 1708 Prankster: Isaac Bickerstaff ( Jonathan Swift) To ridicule almanac writer John Partridge, Swift predicts death in almanac, confirming it on forecasted day, March 29; Partridge publishes statement that he is alive on April Fool’s Day, but Swift replies that surely no living man could have written the foolishness in Partridge’s last almanac. Perpetual Motion, 1813 Prankster: Charles Redheffer Redheffer claims invention of a machine that can run indefinitely without further source of energy, exhibiting it to the public for a price; engineer Robert Fulton reveals that it is powered by an old bearded man in the attic with a hand crank.

Estragon: It’s the normal thing. Vladimir: Is it not? Estragon: I think it is. Vladimir: I think so too. [silence] Estragon: [anxious] And we? Vladimir: I beg your pardon? Estragon: I said, And we? Vladimir: I don’t understand. Estragon: Where do we come in?

Great Moon Hoax, 1835 Prankster: the New York Sun Several articles report that well-known astronomer John Herschel has discovered winged man-bats on the moon; the paper’s sales soar, and Herschel is plagued with questions about moon-men for years.

Vladimir: Come in?

Feejee Mermaid, 1842 Prankster: P. T. Barnum Barnum runs newspaper advertisements with image of a bare-chested mermaid at his museum; the mermaid is later exposed as the torso of a monkey sewn onto the tail of a fish.

Estragon: As bad as that?

Cottingley Fairies, 1917 Pranksters: Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths Cousins take photographs of themselves playing with fairies, and Arthur Conan Doyle reprints images in an article, arguing that they are proof that fairies exist; cousins confess in 1981 that they were faked using cardboard cutouts. The War of the Worlds, 1938 Prankster: Orson Welles Welles adapts H. G. Wells’ novel for radio as a series of news bulletins; many listeners think that the story of an alien invasion is real, especially in New Jersey, the site of supposed landing, where families hide in their basements. The Dickens–Dostoevsky Hoax, 2002 Prankster: A. D. Harvey Harvey publishes article in scholarly journal that describes an 1862 meeting in London between Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoevsky, which is subsequently cited by scholars; in 2012 professor Eric Naiman reveals how Harvey, with a variety of pseudonyms, made it up and covered his tracks.

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Estragon: Take your time. Vladimir: Come in? On our hands and knees. Vladimir: Your Worship wishes to assert his prerogatives? Estragon: We’ve no rights anymore? [Laugh of Vladimir, stifled as before, less the smile.] Vladimir: You’d make me laugh if it wasn’t prohibited. Estragon: We’ve lost our rights? Vladimir: [distinctly] We got rid of them. Samuel Beckett, from Waiting for Godot. Living in Paris during World War II, Beckett worked as a farmhand, wrote the novel Watt, and was a member of the French Resistance—he was later awarded the Croix de Guerre for his service. He published Molloy and Malone Dies in 1951 and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969. A friend once said to him, “ You sit there saying nothing while the world is going to pieces. What do you want? What do you want to do?” Beckett replied, “Walter, all I want to do is sit on my ass and fart and think of Dante.”

1830:

Eafield

non-apology Dear Sir, It is an observation of a wise man that “moderation is best in all things.” I cannot agree with him “in liquor.” There is a smoothness and oiliness in wine that makes it go down by a natural channel, which I am positive was made for that descending. Else, why does not wine choke us? Could Nature have made that sloping lane not to facilitate the downgoing? She does nothing in vain. You know that better than I. You know how often she has helped you at a dead lift, and how much better entitled she is to a fee than yourself sometimes, when you carry off the credit. Still there is something due to manners and customs, and I should apologize to you and Mrs. Asbury for being absolutely carried home upon a man’s shoulders through Silver Street, up Parson’s Lane, by the Chapels (which might have taught me better), and then to be deposited like a dead log at Gaffar Westwood’s, who it seems does not

“insure” against intoxication. Not that the mode of conveyance is objectionable. On the contrary, it is more easy than a one-horse chaise. Ariel in The Tempest says, “On a bat’s back do I fly,/after sunset merrily.” Now, I take it that Ariel must sometimes have stayed out late of nights. Indeed, he pretends that “where the bee sucks, there lurks he,” as much as to say that his suction is as innocent as that little innocent (but damnably stinging when he is provoked) winged creature. But I take it that Ariel was fond of metheglin, of which the bees are notorious brewers. But then you will say, What a shocking sight to see a middle-aged gentleman-and-a-half riding upon a gentleman’s back up Parson’s Lane at midnight. Exactly the time for that sort of conveyance, when nobody can see him, nobody but heaven and his own conscience; now, heaven makes fools, and don’t expect much from her own creation; and as for conscience, she and I have long since come to a compromise. I have given up false modesty, and she allows me to abate a little of the true. I like to be liked, but I don’t care about being respected. I don’t respect myself. But, as I was saying, I

Still from “Clown Torture: Dirty Joke,” sixty-minute loop, video installation by Bruce Nauman, 1987.

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Private Concert,The Wrong Note (detail), by Vittorio Reggianini, c. 1890.

thought he would have let me down just as we got to Lieutenant Barker’s coal shed (or emporium) but by a cunning jerk I eased myself and righted my posture. I protest, I thought myself in a palanquin, and never felt myself so grandly carried. It was a slave under me. There was I, all but my reason. And what is reason? And what is the loss of it? And how often in a day do we do without it, just as well? Reason is only counting, two and two makes four. And if on my passage home, I thought it made five, what matter? Two and two will just make four, as it always did, before I took the finishing glass that did my business. My sister has begged me to write an apology to Mrs. A and you for disgracing your party; now it does seem to me that I rather honored your party, for everyone that was not drunk (and one or two of the ladies, I am sure, were not) must have been set off greatly in the contrast to me. I was the scapegoat. The soberer they seemed. By the way, is magnesia good on these occasions? I am no licentiate, but know enough of simples to beg you to send me a draft after this model. But still you will say (or the men and maids at your house will say) that it is not a seemly sight for an old gentleman to go home pickaback. Well, maybe it is not. But I never studied grace. I take it to be a mere superficial accomplishment. I regard more the internal acquisitions. The great object after supper is to get home, and whether that is 72 

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obtained in a horizontal posture or perpendicular (as foolish men and apes affect for dignity) I think is little to the purpose. The end is always greater than the means. Here I am, able to compose a sensible rational apology, and what signifies how I got here? I have just sense enough to remember I was very happy last night, and to thank our kind host and hostess, and that’s sense enough, I hope. N.B. What is good for a desperate headache? Why, patience, and a determination not to mind being miserable all day long. And that I have made my mind up to. So, here goes. It is better than not being alive at all, which I might have been, had your man toppled me down at Lieutenant Barker’s coal shed. My sister sends her sober compliments to Mrs. A. She is not much the worse. Yours truly, Charles Lamb, from a letter to James Vale Asbury. Lamb began writing personal and critical essays for London Magazine under a pseudonym in 1820, collecting the works into the books Elia in 1823 and The Last Essays of Elia in 1833. He wrote to his friend William Wordsworth in 1801, “Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don’t much care if I never see a mountain in my life.” Twentynine years later, he wrote to the same correspondent, “What have I gained by health? Intolerable dullness. What by early hours and moderate meals?—a total blank.” Lamb died in 1834.

1993:

Springfield, IL

david foster wallace at the fair 08/13/1150h. Since my Native Companion was lured here by me to the Illinois State Fair for the day by the promise of free access to sphincter-loosening high-velocity rides, we make a quick descent into Happy Hollow, where they’re all kept. Most of the rides aren’t even twirling hellishly yet. Guys with ratchet wrenches are still cranking away at the Ring of Fire. The giant Gondola Ferris wheel is only half assembled, and its seat-draped lower half resembles a hideous molary grin. It’s over 100 degrees in the sun, easy. The Happy Hollow Carnival area’s a kind of rectangular basin that extends east-west from near the main gate out to the steep pathless hillside just below Livestock. The midway is made of dirt and flanked by carnival-game booths and ticket booths and rides. There’s a merry-go-round and a couple of sane-paced kids’ rides, but most of the rides down here look like genuine Near-Death Experiences. On this first morning the Hollow seems to be open only technically, and the ticket booths are unmanned, though heartbreaking little streams of AC’d air are blowing out through money slots in the booths’ glass. Attendance is sparse, and I notice none of the ag-pros or farm people are anywhere in sight down here. What there are are carnies. A lot of them slouch and slump in awnings’ shade. Every one of them seems to chain-smoke. The Tilt-a-Whirl operator’s got his boots up on his control panel reading a motorcycle-and-naked-lady magazine while two guys attach enormous rubber hoses to the ride’s guts. We sidle over for a chat. The operator’s twenty-four and from Bee Branch, Arkansas, and has an earring and a huge tattoo of a motorcycle with naked lady on his triceps. He’s way more interested in chatting with Native Companion than with me. He’s been at this gig five years, touring with this one here same company here. Couldn’t rightly say if he liked it or not, the gig: like as compared to what? Broke

in the trade on the Toss-a-Quarter-Onto-thePlates game and got, like, transferred over to the Tilt-a-Whirl in ’91. He smokes Marlboro 100’s but wears a cap that says winston. He wants to know if Native Companion’d like to take a quick walk back across the Hollow and see something way out of the usual range of what she’s used to. All around us are booths for various carny-type games. All the carny-game barkers have headset microphones; some are saying “testing” and reciting their pitches’ lines in tentative warmup ways. A lot of the pitches seem frankly sexual: “You got to get it up to get it in”; “Take it out and lay ’er down, only a dollar”; “Make it stand up. Two dollars, five Laughter always arises from a gaiety of disposition, absolutely incompatible with contempt and indignation.  —Voltaire, 1736 chances. Make it stand up.” In the booths, rows of stuffed animals hang by their feet like game put out to cure. One barker’s testing his mike by saying “testes” instead of “testing.” It smells like machine grease and hair tonic down here, and there’s already a spoiled, garbagey smell. My media guide says 1993’s Happy Hollow is contracted to “one of the largest owners of amusement attractions in the country,” one Blomsness and Thebault All-Star Amusement Enterprises of Crystal Lake, Illinois, up near Chicago. But the carnies themselves all seem to be from the middle South—Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma. They are visibly unimpressed by the press credentials clipped to my shirt. They tend to look at Native Companion like she’s food, which she ignores. I promptly lose four dollars trying to “get it up and in” by tossing miniature basketballs into angled straw baskets in such a way that they don’t bounce back out. The game’s barker can toss the balls behind his back and get them to stay in, but he’s right up next to the baskets. My shots carom out from eight feet away—the straw baskets look soft, but their bottoms make a suspicious steely sound when the balls hit. 73

It’s so hot that we move in quick, staggered vectors between areas of shade. I decline to take my shirt off because there’d be no way to display my credentials. We zigzag gradually westward across the Hollow. I am keen to hit the Junior Beef Show, which starts at 1300h. Then there are, of course, the Dessert Competition tents. One of the fully assembled rides near the Hollow’s west end is something called The Zipper. It’s riderless but in furious motion, a kind of Ferris wheel on amphetamines. Individual caged cars are hinged to spin on their Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important.  —Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1948 own axes as they go around in a tight vertical ellipse. The machine looks less like a zipper than the head of a chainsaw. Its off-white paint is chipped, and it sounds like a shimmying V-12, and in general it’s something I’d run a mile in tight shoes to avoid riding. But Native Companion starts clapping and hopping around excitedly as we approach The Zipper. (This is a person who bungee jumps, to give you an idea.) And the operator at the controls sees her, waves back, and shouts down to Git on over and git some if she’s a mind to. He claims they want to test The Zipper somehow. He’s up on a kind of steel platform, elbowing a colleague next to him in a way I don’t much like. We have no tickets, I point out, and none of the cash-for-ticket booths are manned. By now we’re somehow at the base of the stairway up to the platform and control panel. The operator says without looking at me that the matter of tickets this early on opening day, “Ain’t no sweat off my balls.” The operator’s colleague conducts Native Companion up the waffledsteel steps and straps her into a cage, upping a thumb at the operator, who gives a sort of 74 

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rebel yell and pulls a lever. Native C’s cage begins to ascend. Pathetic little fingers appear in the cage’s mesh. The Zipper operator is ageless and burned-brown and has a mustache waxed to wicked points like steers’ horns, rolling a Drum cigarette with one hand as he nudges levers upward and the ellipse speeds up and the individual cages start to spin independently on their hinges. Native Companion is a blur of color inside her cage, but the operator and colleague (whose jeans have worked down his hips to the point where the top of his butt crack is clearly visible) watch studiously as her spinning cage and the clanking empty cages circle the ellipse approximately once a second. I have a particular longstanding fear of things that spin independently inside a larger spin. I can barely even watch this. The Zipper is the color of unbrushed teeth, with big scabs of rust. The operator and colleague sit on a little steel bench before a panel full of black-knobbed levers. Do testicles themselves sweat? They’re supposed to be very temperature sensitive. The colleague spits Skoal into a can he holds and tells the operator, “Well, then take her to eight then, you pussy.” The Zipper begins to whine and the thing to spin so fast that a detached car would surely be hurled into orbit. The colleague has a small American flag folded into a bandanna around his head. The empty cages shudder and clank as they whirl, spinning independently. One long scream, wobbled by Doppler, is coming from Native C’s cage, which is going around and around on its hinges while a shape inside tumbles like stuff in a dryer. My particular neurological makeup (extremely sensitive: carsick, airsick, heightsick; my sister likes to say I’m “lifesick”) makes even just watching this an act of enormous personal courage. The scream goes on and on. Then the operator stops the ride abruptly with Native C’s car at the top, so she’s hanging upside down inside the cage. I call up, Is she okay, but the response is just high-pitched noises. I see the two carnies gazing upward very intently, shading their eyes. The operator’s stroking his mustache contemplatively. The cage’s inversion has made Native

Companion’s dress fall up. They’re ogling her nethers, obviously. As they laugh, the sound literally sounds like “tee hee hee hee.” A less sensitive neurological specimen probably would have stepped in at this point and stopped the whole grotesque exercise. My own makeup leans more toward disassociation when under stress. A mother in shorts is trying to get a stroller up the steps of the funhouse. A kid in a Jurassic Park T-shirt is licking an enormous flat lollipop with a hypnotic spiral on it. A sign at a gas station we passed on the way here was handlettered and said blu-block sunglasses— like seen on tv. A Shell station off I-55 near Elkhart sold cans of snuff out of a vending machine. Fifteen percent of the female fair-goers here have their hair in curlers. Twenty-five percent are clinically fat. Midwestern fat people

have no compunction about wearing shorts or halter tops. Now the operator’s joggling the choke lever so The Zipper stutters back and forth, forward and backward, making NC’s top car spin around and around on its hinges. His colleague’s T-shirt has a stoned Ninja Turtle on it, toking on a joint. There’s a distended A-sharp scream from the whirling cage, as if Native C’s getting slow-roasted. I summon saliva to step in and really say something stern, but at this point they start bringing her down. The operator is deft at his panel; the car’s descent is almost fluffy. His hands on the levers are a kind of parody of tender care. The descent takes forever—ominous silence from Native Companion’s car. The two carnies are laughing and slapping their knee. I clear my throat twice. There’s a trundly sound as Native Companion’s Teasing a Sleeping Girl, by Gaspare Traversi, c. 1760.

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car gets locked down at the platform. Jiggles of movement in the cage, and the door’s latch slowly turns. I expect whatever husk of a human being emerges from the car to be hunched and sheet-white, dribbling fluids. Instead she sort of bounds out: “That was fucking great. Joo see that? Son bitch spun that car sixteen times, joo see it?” This woman is native Midwestern, from my hometown in rural Illinois. My prom date a dozen years ago. Now married, with three children, she teaches water aerobics to the obese and infirm. Her color is high. Her dress looks like the world’s worst case of static cling. She’s

still got her chewing gum in, for God’s sake. She turns to the carnies: “You sons bitches that was fucking great. Assholes.” The colleague is half draped over the operator; they’re roaring with laughter. Native Companion has her hands on her hips sternly, but she’s grinning. Am I the only one who was in touch with the manifestly overt sexual-harassment element in this whole episode? She takes the steel stairs down three at a time and starts up the hillside toward the food booths. There is no sanctioned path up the incredibly steep hill on the Hollow’s western side. Behind us the operator calls out, “They don’t call me King of The Zipper for nuthin’,

1932: New York City nonfenfe

I ordered ham and eggs, as I always do at the diner, and then, as I always do, looked around for pamphlets. There was one handy. “Echoes from Colonial Days,” it was called, “being a little fouvenir iffued from time to time for the benefit of the guefts of The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company as a reminder of pleafant moments fpent…” Involuntarily, my lips began to move. I reached for a pencil. But the man across from me already had his pencil out. He had written, “Oh, fay can you fee?” I said, “Fing Fomething Fimple.” “Filly, ifn’t it?” he said, and kept on writing. I wrote, “Fing a Fong of Fixpence.” “Oh, ftop the fongs,” he said. “Too eafy.” He wrote, “The Courtfhip of Miles Ftandifh,” “I fee a fquirrel,” “I undereftimate ftatefmanfhip,” “My fifter feems fuperfenfitive,” and seeing that I did not appreciate the last one, which he evidently thought very fine, he wrote, “Forry to fee you fo ftupid.” I ate my lunch grouchily. How could I help it if he was in practice and I was not? He had probably taken this train before. “Pafs the falt,” I said. “Pleafe pafs the falt,” he triumphed. I paid no attention. “Waiter!” I said. The waiter did not budge. “You muft fpeak the language,” said the man opposite me. He called out, “Fay! Fteward!” The waiter jumped to attention. “Fir?” he said. “Pleafe fill the faltcellar.”

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“The faltfhaker fhall be replenifhed inftantly,” replied the waiter, with a superior gleam in his eyes. I smiled and my companion unbent a little. “Let’s try for hard ones,” he invited. “Fure,” I said. “Farcafm,” he said. “Fubftance.” “Fubfiftence,” he scored. “Fcythe.” “S’s inside now,” he ruled. “Perfuafive,” I said instantly. “Languifh.” “Bafilifk.” “Quiefcent.” “Nonfenfe,” I finished. “Fon of a fpeckled fea monfter.” “Ftepfon of a poifonous fnake!” he cried. “You don’t fay fo!” I retorted. “I do fo fay fo!” he replied, getting up and leaving the diner. “Fool!” I called after him, fniffling. Frances Warfield, “Fpafm.” Warfield contributed light pieces like this one to The New Yorker in the 1920s and into the 1930s, when she began to experience hearing loss. About people whose lips it was hard to read, she wrote, “The deadpans, the mealymouths, the shybirds, I called them. The people who mumble; the people who race; the people who fidget, cover their mouths, turn their backs… The men with mustaches. I wanted to murder the men with mustaches.” After two operations, she regained her hearing in the 1940s and published her memoir, Keep Listening.

sweet thang.” She snorts and calls back over her shoulder, “Oh, you and whose fucking platoon?” and there’s more laughter behind us. I’m having a hard time keeping up on the slope. “Did you hear that?” I ask her. “Jesus, I thought I bought it for sure at the end that was so great. Fucking cornholers. But’d you see that one spin up top at the end, though?” “Did you hear that Zipper King comment?” I say. She has her hand around my elbow and is helping me up the hillside’s slick grass. “Did you sense something kind of sexual-harassmentish going on through that whole little sick exercise?” “Oh for fuck’s sake, Slug, it was fun.” (Ignore the nickname.) “Son of a bitch spun that car eighteen times.” “They were looking up your dress. You couldn’t see them, maybe. They hung you upside down at a great height and made your dress fall up and ogled you. They shaded their eyes and made comments to each other. I saw the whole thing.” “Oh for fuck’s sake.” I slip a little bit and she catches my arm. “So this doesn’t bother you? As a Midwesterner, you’re unbothered? Or did you just not have an accurate sense of what was going on back there?” “So if I noticed or I didn’t, why does it have to be my deal? What, because there’s assholes in the world I don’t get to ride on The Zipper? I don’t get to ever spin? Maybe I shouldn’t ever go to the pool or ever get all girled up, just out of fear of assholes?” Her color is still high. “So I’m curious, then, about what it would have taken back there, say, to have gotten you to lodge some sort of complaint with the fair’s management.” “You’re so fucking innocent, Slug,” she says. (The nickname’s a long story; ignore it.) “Assholes are just assholes. What’s getting hot and bothered going to do about it except keep me from getting to have fun?” She has her hand on my elbow this whole time—the hillside’s a bitch.

Entertainer, ivory okimono, Japanese school, Meiji period, nineteenth century.

“This is potentially key,” I’m saying. “This may be just the sort of regional politico-sexual contrast the swanky East Coast magazine is keen for. The core value informing a kind of willed politico-sexual stoicism on your part is your prototypically Midwestern appreciation of fun—” “Buy me some pork skins, you dipshit.” From “Getting Away from Pretty Much Being Away from It All.” Wallace wrote this essay about his time on assignment for Harper’s Magazine. “Why exactly a swanky East Coast magazine is interested in the Illinois State Fair remains unclear to me,” he wrote, then venturing that it was the desire for some “pith-helmeted anthropological reporting on something rural and heartlandish.” He published the novel Infinite Jest in 1996 and the collection of essays Consider the Lobster in 2005. He committed suicide at the age of forty-six in 2008.

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c. 1225:

France

goodbye to all that A short exemplum about Roger, the suave, enfranchised master carver, I now propose to undertake. He had the skill one needs to make statues and crucifixes; he, no mere apprentice, artfully carved sculptures in the finest fashion. His wife, carried away by passion, had taken a priest as her lover. Her husband told her as a cover he had to go to market, so he’d bring a statuette in tow to drop off for a tidy profit, and she agreed promptly enough—it elated her to see him leave, and he was not slow to perceive her joyful look, by which he knew she had in mind to be untrue, which was, for her, by now tradition. Then he lifts up into position a crucifix as a pretext and steps out of the house, and next goes into town and cools his heels and waits around until he feels that it’s time for their tête-à-tête. Shaking from spite and all irate, he hurries home. When he got back, he looked in on them through a crack and saw them sitting down to dine. He called out, but it took some time before someone let him inside. The priest had no place he could hide. He said, “Lord! What shall I do now?” The lady said, “I’ll tell you how. Go in the shop, take off your clothes, and, standing still, assume a pose among my husband’s holy carvings.” Right willingly, or with misgivings, the priest obeyed her then and there: Without his clothes, completely bare, among the images he stood as if he’d been carved out of wood. Seeing he isn’t in the room, the good man is led to assume 78 

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he’s hidden with his sculpted figures. Being intelligent, he figures that first he’ll drink and have a bite as if he thinks things are all right. After his dinner, when he’d done, he went and got a whetting stone and started sharpening a knife. The sturdy carver told his wife, “Now, lady, light a candle quickly and come into the workshop with me, where I’ve some business to prepare.” No word of protest did she dare, but with her husband made her way directly to his atelier, holding a candle to give light. The master carver soon caught sight of the priest with his arms stretched out, whom he could spot beyond a doubt, seeing his hanging balls and cock. “Lady,” he says, “I’ve made a shocking image here by not omitting those virile members. How unfitting! I must have had too much to drink. Some light! I’ll fix it in a wink.” The terrified priest never stirred. The husband, you can take my word, cut off the prelate’s genitalia and left him nothing, without failure, to warrant further amputation. The priest, feeling the laceration, took to his heels and ran away. The worthy man without delay cried after him with piercing shrieks, “Good people, catch my crucifix, which is escaping down the street!” An anonymous fabliau. This is one of around 160 extant fabliaux, or short verse tales, which date from approximately 1175 to 1350 and were popularized by professional storytellers in medieval France, who would either read them aloud or recite them from memory. Most of the tales are coarse in tone and subject matter: there is one about a mourner who has sexual intercourse at a gravesite, another about a wife who is granted her wish to be surrounded by penises. Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Reeve’s Tale” is known to have been based on a fabliau.

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1981:

New York City

freedman? lowenthal? fishman? Two Jews had a plan to assassinate Hitler. They learned that he drove by a certain corner at noon each day, and they waited for him there with their guns well-hidden. At exactly noon they were ready to shoot, but there was no sign of Hitler. Five minutes later, nothing. Another five minutes went by, but no sign of Hitler. By twelve-fifteen they had started to give up hope. “My goodness,” said one of the men. “I hope nothing’s happened to him.” Katz is sitting naked in his room, wearing only a top hat, when Cohen walks in. “Why are you sitting here naked?” “It’s all right,” says, Katz. “Nobody comes to visit.” “But why the hat?” “Well, maybe somebody will come.” Two immigrants meet on the street. “How’s by you?” asks one. “Could be worse. And you?” “Surviving. But I’ve been sick a lot this year, and it’s costing me a fortune. In the past five months, I’ve spent over three hundred dollars on doctors and medicine.” “Ach, back home on that kind of money you could be sick for two years.” Four friends are sitting in a restaurant in Moscow. For a long time, nobody says a word. Finally, one man groans, “Oy.” “Oy vey,” says a second man. “Nu,” says the third. At this, the fourth man gets up from his chair and says, “Listen, if you fellows don’t stop talking politics, I’m leaving!” Two Jews are walking through an anti-Semitic neighborhood one evening, when they notice that they are being followed by a pair of hoodlums. 80 

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“Sam,” says his friend, “we better get out of here. There are two of them and we’re alone!” A Jewish tailor walks by a tsarist police inspector in the street. The inspector is furious that the Jew has neglected to doff his hat in the required manner. “Jew!” he cries out. “What do you mean by this insolence? Where are you from?” “From Minsk,” replies the Jew meekly. “And what about your hat?” the inspector demands. “Also from Minsk,” replies the Jew. An Orthodox Jew converts to Catholicism and is invited to preach the Sunday sermon. He stands up proudly and begins: “Fellow goyim…” A Hasid comes to see his rabbi: “Rabbi, I have had a dream in which I am the leader of three hundred Hasidim.” The Rabbi replies, “Come back when three hundred Hasidim have a dream that you are their leader.” Two members of a congregation are talking. “Our cantor is magnificent,” says the first. “No big deal,” says the second man. “If I had his voice, I’d sing just as well.” A shadchan [marriage broker] is trying to impress a young man with the wealth of the bride’s family. The boy, however, is skeptical, and asks, “Don’t you think they might have borrowed the silverware in order to make a good impression?” “Nonsense,” cries the shadchan. “Who would lend any silverware to such thieves?” Gittleman returned home from a business trip to discover that his wife had been unfaithful during his absence. “Who was it?” he roared. “That bastard Freedman?” “No,” replied his wife. “It wasn’t Freedman.” “Was it Lowenthal, that creep?” “No, it wasn’t him.”

Two Clowns, by Walt Kuhn, 1940.

“I know—it must have been that idiot Fishman.” “No, it wasn’t Fishman either.” Gittleman was furious. “Whatsa matter?” he cried. “None of my friends good enough for you?” Rubenstein is slandered at great length by one man. “How do you know so much about him?” asks the stranger. “Rubenstein?” the man replies. “We’ve been best friends for years!” Two attractive young Jewish women in their midtwenties were waiting at the bus stop, comparing their weekends. “On Saturday I pretended I was a Gentile nurse,” said the first. “How did you do that?” asked her friend. “I slept with a Jewish doctor.”

Dave was at death’s door, and the family was gathered around him. “Sarah, my wife, you’re here at the bedside?” “Yes, Dave, of course I’m here.” “And Bernie, my oldest son, are you here?” “Yes, Dad.” “And Rachel, my daughter, are you here?” “Yes, Father, at the foot of the bed.” “And Sam, my youngest, are you here too?” “Right here, Pop.” “Well, then,” said the merchant, “if all of you are here, who’s minding the store?” From The Big Book of Jewish Humor, edited by William Novak and Moshe Waldoks. This work contains traditional jokes as well as excerpts from writers such as Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. In their introduction Novak and Waldoks observe that Jewish humor is “fascinated by the intricacies of the mind and by logic, and the short if ellipitcal path separating the rational from the absurd…For some of the jokes, the appropriate response is not laughter but rather a bitter nod and commiserating sigh of recognition.”

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1895:

London

oscar wilde arranges an interview Gwendolen: I am engaged to Mr. Worthing, Mama. Lady Bracknell: Pardon me, you are not engaged to anyone. When you do become engaged to someone, I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact. An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself…And now I have a few questions to put to you, Mr. Worthing. While I am making these inquiries, you, Gwendolen, will wait for me below in the carriage. Gwendolen: [reproachfully] Mama! Lady Bracknell: In the carriage, Gwendolen! [Gwendolen goes to the door. She and Jack Worthing blow kisses to each other behind Lady Bracknell’s back. Lady Bracknell looks vaguely about as if she could not understand what the noise was. Finally turns round.] Gwendolen, the carriage! Gwendolen: Yes, Mama. [goes out, looking back at Jack] Lady Bracknell: [sitting down] You can take a seat, Mr. Worthing. [looks in her pocket for notebook and pencil] Jack: Thank you, Lady Bracknell, I prefer standing. Lady Bracknell: [pencil and notebook in hand] I feel bound to tell you that you are not down on my list of eligible young men, although I have the same list as the dear duchess of Bolton has. We work together, in fact. However, I am quite ready to enter your name, should your answers be what a really affectionate mother requires. Do you smoke? 82 

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Jack: Well, yes, I must admit I smoke. Lady Bracknell: I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is. How old are you? Jack: Twenty-nine. Lady Bracknell: A very good age to be married at. I have always been of the opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing. Which do you know? Jack: [after some hesitation] I know nothing, Lady Bracknell. Lady Bracknell: I am pleased to hear it. I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square. What is your income? Jack: Between seven and eight thousand a year. Lady Bracknell: [makes a note in her book] In land, or in investments? Jack: In investments, chiefly. Lady Bracknell: That is satisfactory. What between the duties expected of one during one’s lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one’s death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up. That’s all that can be said about land. Jack: I have a country house with some land, of course, attached to it, about fifteen hundred acres, I believe; but I don’t depend on that for

Steve Martin, Beverly Hills, 1981, edition 5/40 (silver dye-bleach photograph), by Annie Leibovitz.

my real income. In fact, as far as I can make out, the poachers are the only people who make anything out of it. Lady Bracknell: A country house! How many bedrooms? Well, that point can be cleared up afterward. You have a townhouse, I hope? A girl with a simple, unspoiled nature, like Gwendolen, could hardly be expected to reside in the country. Jack: Well, I own a house in Belgrave Square, but it is let by the year to Lady Bloxham. Of course, I can get it back whenever I like, at six months’ notice.

Lady Bracknell: Lady Bloxham? I don’t know her. Jack: Oh, she goes about very little. She is a lady considerably advanced in years. Lady Bracknell: Ah, nowadays that is no guarantee of respectability of character. What number in Belgrave Square? Jack: 149. Lady Bracknell: [shaking her head] The unfashionable side. I thought there was something. However, that could easily be altered. 83

Jack: Do you mean the fashion, or the side?

Jack: I have lost both my parents.

Lady Bracknell: [sternly] Both, if necessary, I presume. What are your politics?

Lady Bracknell: Both?…That seems like carelessness. Who was your father? He was evidently a man of some wealth. Was he born in what the radical papers call the purple of commerce, or did he rise from the ranks of the aristocracy?

Jack: Well, I am afraid I really have none. I am a Liberal Unionist. Lady Bracknell: Oh, they count as Tories. They dine with us. Or come in the evening, at any rate. Now to minor matters. Are your parents living? Harlequin and Pierrot, by André Derain, 1924.

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Jack: I am afraid I really don’t know. The fact is, Lady Bracknell, I said I had lost my parents. It would be nearer the truth to say that

my parents seem to have lost me…I don’t actually know who I am by birth. I was…Well, I was found. Lady Bracknell: Found! Jack: The late Mr. Thomas Cardew, an old gentleman of a very charitable and kindly disposition, found me, and gave me the name of Worthing, because he happened to have a first-class ticket for Worthing in his pocket at the time. Worthing is a place in Sussex. It is a seaside resort. Lady Bracknell: Where did the charitable gentleman who had a first-class ticket for this seaside resort find you? Jack: [gravely] In a handbag. Lady Bracknell: A handbag? Jack: [very seriously] Yes, Lady Bracknell. I was in a handbag—a somewhat large, black leather handbag, with handles to it—an ordinary handbag, in fact. Lady Bracknell: In what locality did this Mr. James, or Thomas, Cardew come across this ordinary handbag? Jack: In the cloakroom at Victoria Station. It was given to him in mistake for his own. Lady Bracknell: The cloakroom at Victoria Station? Jack: Yes. The Brighton line. Lady Bracknell: The line is immaterial. Mr. Worthing, I confess I feel somewhat bewildered by what you have just told me. To be born, or at any rate bred, in a handbag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that remind one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. And I presume you know

what that unfortunate movement led to? As for the particular locality in which the handbag was found, a cloakroom at a railway station might serve to conceal a social indiscretion— has probably, indeed, been used for that purpose before now—but it could hardly be regarded as an assured basis for a recognized position in good society. Jack: May I ask you then what you would advise me to do? I need hardly say I would do anything in the world to ensure Gwendolen’s happiness. Lady Bracknell: I would strongly advise you, Mr. Worthing, to try and acquire some relations as soon as possible, and to make a definite effort to produce at any rate one parent, of either sex, before the season is quite over. Jack: Well, I don’t see how I could possibly manage to do that. I can produce the handbag at any moment. It is in my dressing room at home. I really think that should satisfy you, Lady Bracknell. Lady Bracknell: Me, sir! What has it to do with me? You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter—a girl brought up with the utmost care—to marry into a cloakroom and form an alliance with a parcel? Good morning, Mr. Worthing! [Lady Bracknell sweeps out in majestic indignation.] From The Importance of Being Earnest. Wilde welcomed the satirical portrait of himself in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience—“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”—and the play’s producer arranged an American lecture tour for him in 1882: “Nothing, except my genius,” he is said to have replied when asked if he had anything to declare at customs. He published his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, in 1891. Convicted of charges of gross indecency in 1895, Wilde was sentenced to two years of servitude with hard labor.

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Voices in Time

Observational 2005:

New York City

kurt vonnegut finds the humor As a kid I was the youngest member of my family, and the youngest child in any family is always a joke maker, because a joke is the only way he can enter into an adult conversation. My sister was five years older than I was, my brother was nine years older than I was, and my parents were both talkers. So at the dinner table when I was very young, I was boring to all those other people. They did not want to hear about the dumb childish news of my days. They wanted to talk about really important stuff that happened in high school or maybe in college or at work. So the only way I could get into a conversation was to say something funny. I think I must have done it accidentally at first, just accidentally made a pun that stopped the conversation, something of that sort. And then I found out that a joke was a way to break into an adult conversation. I grew up at a time when comedy in this country was superb—it was the Great Depression. There were large numbers of absolutely top comedians on radio. And without intending to, I really studied them. I would listen to comedy at least an hour a night all through my The Hairdresser, by Marc Chagall, 1921.

youth, and I got very interested in what jokes were and how they worked. When I’m being funny, I try not to offend. I don’t think much of what I’ve done has been in really ghastly taste. I don’t think I have embarrassed many people, or distressed them. The only shocks I use are an occasional obscene word. Some things aren’t funny. I can’t imagine a humorous book or skit about Auschwitz, for instance. And it’s not possible for me to make a joke about the death of John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr. Otherwise I can’t think of any subject that I would steer away from, that I could do nothing with. Total catastrophes are terribly amusing, as Voltaire [Ferney, page 142] demonstrated. You know, the Lisbon earthquake is funny. I saw the destruction of Dresden. I saw the city before and then came out of an air-raid shelter and saw it afterward, and certainly one response was laughter. God knows, that’s the soul seeking some relief. Any subject is subject to laughter, and I suppose there was laughter of a very ghastly kind by victims in Auschwitz. 87

Happy Moments, by Pompeo Massani, c. 1890.

Humor is an almost physiological response to fear. Freud [Vienna, page 148] said that humor is a response to frustration—one of several. A dog, he said, when he can’t get out a gate, will scratch and start digging and making meaningless gestures, perhaps growling or whatever, to deal with frustration or surprise or fear. And a great deal of laughter is induced by fear. I was working on a funny television series years ago. We were trying to put a show together that, as a basic principle, mentioned death in every episode—and this ingredient would make any laughter deeper without the audience’s realizing how we were inducing belly laughs. There is a superficial sort of laughter. Bob Hope, for example, was not really a humorist. He was a comedian with very thin stuff, never mentioning anything troubling. I used to laugh my head off at Laurel and Hardy. There is terrible tragedy there somehow. These men are too sweet to survive in this world and are in terrible danger all the time. They could be so easily killed. Even the simplest jokes are based on tiny twinges of fear, such as the question, “What is the white stuff in bird poop?” The auditor, as though called upon to recite in school, is momentarily afraid of saying something stupid. 88 

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When the auditor hears the answer, which is, “That’s bird poop, too,” he or she dispels the automatic fear with laughter. He or she has not been tested after all. “Why do firemen wear red suspenders?” And “Why did they bury George Washington on the side of a hill?” And on and on. True enough, there are such things as laughless jokes, what Freud called gallows humor. There are real-life situations so hopeless that no relief is imaginable. While we were being bombed in Dresden, sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one soldier said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.” Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it. At least we were still alive! He proved it. From A Man Without a Country. During the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, Vonnegut was captured by German troops—“We were in this gully about as deep as a World War I trench. There was snow all around. Somebody said we were probably in Luxembourg. We were out of food,” he later recalled—and survived the firebombing of Dresden while a prisoner of war. He published his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952 and his sixth, Slaughterhouse-Five, in 1969. Vonnegut died at the age of eighty-four in 2007.

1532: Lyon on the fundamentals About the end of Gargantua’s fifth year, Grandgousier visited his son, and he was filled with joy, as such a father would be at the sight of such a child. While he kissed and embraced him, he asked the boy various childish questions of one kind and another, and he drank quite a bit, too, with him and his governesses, of whom he most earnestly inquired whether they had kept him sweet and clean. To this Gargantua answered that he had taken these precautions himself and that there was not a cleaner boy in all the land. “How’d you do that?” asked Grandgousier. “By long and curious experiments,” replied Gargantua. “I have invented a method of wiping my ass which is the most lordly, the most excellent, and the most convenient that ever was seen.” “What’s that?” asked Grandgousier. “I shall tell you in a moment,” said Gargantua. “Once I wiped myself on a lady’s velvet mask, and I found it good. For the softness of the silk was most voluptuous to my fundament. Another time on a lady’s neckerchief, another time on some earflaps of crimson satin. But there were a lot of turdy gilt spangles on them, and they took all the skin off my bottom. May St. Anthony’s Fire burn the bum gut of the goldsmith who made them and of the lady who wore them! That trouble passed when I wiped myself on a page’s bonnet, all feathered in the Swiss fashion. “Then, as I was shitting behind a bush, I found a March-born cat; I wiped myself on him, but his claws exulcerated my whole perineum. I healed myself of that next day by wiping myself on my mother’s gloves, which were well scented with perfumes. Then I wiped myself with sage, fennel, anise, marjoram, roses, gourd leaves, cabbage, beets, vine shoots, marsh mallow, mullein—which is red as your bum—lettuces, and spinach leaves. Then with dog’s mercury, persicaria, nettles, and comfrey. But that gave me the bloody flux of Lombardy, from which I was cured by wiping myself with my codpiece.

“Then I wiped myself on the sheets, the coverlet, the curtains, with a cushion, with the hangings, with a green cloth, with a tablecloth, with a napkin, with a handkerchief, with an overall. And I found more pleasure in all those than mangy dogs do when they are combed.” “Yes,” said Grandgousier. “But which wiper did you find the best?” “I was coming to that,” said Gargantua. “You shall soon hear the whole story. I wiped myself with hay, with straw, with litter, with cow’s hair, with wool, with paper. But, ‘Who his foul bum with paper wipes /Will on his bollocks leave some chips.’” “What, my little rascal,” said Grandgousier, “have you been at the pot, are you trying to rhyme already?” “Oh yes, my lord king,” replied Gargantua. “I can rhyme that much and more, and when I rhyme I often catch the rheum. Listen to what our privy says to the shitters: Shittard, Squittard, Crackard, Turdous, Thy bung Has flung Some dung On us. Filthard, Cackard, Stinkard, May you burn with St. Anthony’s Fire     If all      Your foul     Assholes Are not well-wiped ere you retire. “Would you like any more of this?” “Yes, indeed,” replied Grandgousier. “Well then,” said Gargantua: Rondeau Yesterday, shitting, I did know The profit to my ass I owe; Such was the smell that from it slunk. 89

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I’m a strange creature, for I satisfy women, a service to the neighbors! No one suffers at my hands except for my slayer. I grow very tall, erect in a bed, I’m hairy underneath. From time to time a beautiful girl, the brave daughter of some churl dares to hold me, grips my russet skin, robs me of my head, and puts me in the pantry. At once that girl with plaited hair who has confined me remembers our meeting. Her eye moistens. A riddle, from The Exeter Book. It is thought that the riddle’s answer is either a penis or an onion. There are ninety-five other riddles contained in The Exeter Book, which was left to the Exeter Cathedral by Bishop Leofric upon his death in 1072. It is the largest surviving collection of Old English poetry, containing the elegies “The Wanderer,” “The Seafarer,” and “The Ruin.” On the first folio there are various cuts and circular stains, suggesting that the book may have also doubled as a cutting board and a surface on which beers were set up.

That I was with it all bestunk. Oh, had but then someone consented To bring me her for whom I waited, While shitting! I would have closed her water pipe In my rough way and bunged it up, While she had with her fingers guarded My jolly asshole all bemerded With shitting. “Now tell me I’m not clever! God’s bum, I didn’t invent a line of it. I heard that fine lady over there reciting it and I kept it in the bag of my memory.” “Let us return to our subject,” said Grandgousier. “What,” said Gargantua. “Shitting?” “No,” answered Grandgousier. “Ass wiping.” “But,” said Gargantua, “will you pay me a puncheon of Breton wine if I catch you out on the subject?” “Yes, I will,” said Grandgousier. “There’s no need to wipe your bottom unless it’s mucky,” said Gargantua, “it can’t be mucky if 90 

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you haven’t shat; we have to shit, therefore, before we wipe our asses.” “Oh,” said Grandgousier, “what a good head you’ve got, my little fellow! One day very soon I’ll get you made a Doctor of Gay Learning, by God, I will. For you have more sense than your years. Now please go on with this ass wiping talk of yours, and by my beard, instead of a puncheon, you shall have six casks. I know something about this good Breton wine, which doesn’t grow in Brittany at all, but in the fine land of Veron.” “After that,” said Gargantua, “I wiped myself with a kerchief, with a pillow, with a slipper, with a game bag, with a basket—but what an unpleasant ass wiper that was!—then with a hat. The best of all are the shaggy ones, for they make a very good abstersion of the fecal matter. Then I wiped myself with a hen, a cock, and a chicken, with a calf ’s skin, a hare, a pigeon, and a cormorant, with a lawyer’s bag, with a penitent’s hood, with a coif, with an otter. But to conclude, I say and maintain that there is no ass wiper like a well-downed goose, if you hold her neck between your legs. You must take my word for it, you really must. You get a miraculous sensation in your asshole, both from the softness of the down and from the temperate heat of the goose herself; and this is easily communicated to the bum, gut, and the rest of the intestines, from which it reaches the heart and the brain. Do not imagine that the felicity of the heroes and demigods in the Elysian Fields arises from their asphodel, their ambrosia, or their nectar, as those ancients say. It comes, in my opinion, from their wiping their asses with the neck of a goose, and that is the opinion of Master Duns Scotus, too.” François Rabelais, from Gargantua and Pantagruel. Rabelais joined the medical faculty at the University of Montpellier in 1530 and two years later published—under the anagrammatic pseudonym Alcofribas Nasier—the first of his four books that would be collected as Gargantua and Pantagruel. At least two of the books were condemned for heresy by the Sorbonne. The word “Rabelaisian” first appeared in English in a preface to the works of novelist Laurence Sterne: “He decently lived a becoming ornament of the Church, till his Rabelaisian spirit…immersed him into the gaieties and frivolities of the world.”

1959:

Los Angeles

a far more valuable commodity I am not sure how I got to be a comedian or a comic. Perhaps I’m not a comic. It’s not worth arguing about. At any rate, I have been making a good living for many years masquerading as one. As a lad, I don’t remember knocking anyone over with my wit. I’m a pretty wary fellow, and I have neither the desire nor the equipment to analyze what makes one man funny to another man. I have read many books by alleged experts explaining the basis of humor and attempting to describe what is funny and what isn’t. I doubt if any comedian can honestly say why he is funny and why his next-door neighbor is not. I believe all comedians arrive by trial and error. This was certainly true in the old days of vaudeville, and I’m sure it’s true today. The average team would consist of a straight man and a comic. The straight man would sing, dance, or possibly do both. And the comedian would steal a few jokes from other acts and find a few in the newspapers and comic magazines. They would then proceed to play small-time vaudeville theaters, burlesque shows, nightclubs, and beer gardens. If the comic

was inventive, he would gradually discard the stolen jokes and the ones that died and try out some of his own. In time, if he was any good, he would emerge from the routine character he had started with and evolve into a distinct personality of his own. This has been my experience and also that of my brothers, and I believe this has been true of most of the other comedians. My guess is that there aren’t a hundred top-flight professional comedians, male and female, in the whole world. They are a much rarer and far more valuable commodity than all the gold and precious stones in the world. But because we are laughed at, I don’t think people really understand how essential we are to their sanity. If it weren’t for the brief respite we give the world with our foolishness, the world would see mass suicide in numbers that compare favorably with the death rate of the lemmings. I’m sure most of you have heard the story of the man who, desperately ill, goes to an analyst and tells the doctor that he has lost his desire to live and that he is seriously considering suicide. The doctor listens to this tale of melancholia and then tells the patient that what he needs is a good belly-laugh. He advises the unhappy man to go to the circus that night and spend the Toba-e: Fukubiki subject, by Keisai Eisen, c. 1810.

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Stanczyk, by Jan Matejko, 1862.

evening laughing at Grock, the world’s funniest clown. The doctor sums it up, “After you have seen Grock, I am sure you will be much happier.” The patient rises to his feet, looks sadly at the doctor, turns and ambles toward the door. As he starts to leave the doctor says, “By the way, what is your name?” The man turns and regards the analyst with sorrowful eyes. “I am Grock.” When funnymen play a serious role it always gives me a lingering pain to see the critics hysterically throw their hats in the air, dance in the streets, and overwhelm the comic with assorted kudos. Why this should evoke such astonishment and enthusiasm in the eyes of the critics has always baffled me. There is hardly a comedian alive who isn’t capable of doing a firstrate job in a dramatic role. But there are mighty few dramatic actors who could essay a comic role with any distinction. David Warfield, Ed Wynn, Walter Houston, Red Buttons, Danny Kaye, Danny Thomas, Jackie Gleason, Jack Benny, Louis Mann, Charles Chaplin [Los Angeles, page 25], Buster Keaton, and Eddie Cantor are all first-rate comedians who have played dramatic roles, and they are almost unanimous in saying 92 

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that, compared to being funny, dramatic acting is like a two-week vacation in the country. To convince you that this isn’t just a notion exclusively my own, here are the words of S. N. Behrman, one of our better playwrights: “Any playwright who has been up against the agony of casting plays will tell you that the actor who can play comedy is the fellow to shoot for. The comic intuition gets to the heart of a human situation with a precision and a velocity unattainable in any other way. A great comic actor will do it for you with an inflection of voice as adroit as the flick of the wrist of a virtuoso fencer.” Nevertheless, critics are always surprised. Groucho Marx, from Groucho and Me. It is said that the Marx brothers—in order of their births, Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo, and Zeppo—received their stage names during a card game. In a twentyyear period, Chico, Harpo, and Groucho appeared in thirteen films, among them Animal Crackers, Duck Soup, and A Night at the Opera. Groucho reportedly resigned from the Friars Club with a note reading, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.” He hosted the television show You Bet Your Life from 1950 to 1961.

c. 1000:

Kyoto

points of interest Things later regretted—An adopted child who turns out to have an ugly face. Things people despise—A crumbling earth wall. People who have a reputation for being exceptionally good-natured. Infuriating things—Thinking of one or two changes in the wording after you’ve sent a message to someone, or written and sent off a reply to someone’s message. Having hurriedly sewn something, you’re rather pleased with how nicely you’ve done it—but then when you come to pull out the needle, you find that you forgot to knot the thread when you began. It’s also infuriating to discover you’ve sewn something inside out. Things it’s frustrating and embarrassing to witness—Someone insists on telling you about some horrid little child, carried away with her own infatuation with the creature, imitating its voice as she gushes about the cute and winning things it says. Witnessing the servingmen in the place you’re visiting overnight being playful and silly. Deeply irritating things—Rain on the day when you’re to go out for some special event or a temple pilgrimage. Someone you don’t particularly care for who jumps to ridiculous conclusions and gets upset about nothing, and generally behaves with irritating self-importance. Miserable-looking things—A poorly dressed woman of the lower classes with a baby strapped to her back on a very cold or very hot day. Awkward and pointless things—A large ship left beached by the tide. A great tree that’s blown over in the wind and lies there on its side with its roots in the air. An inconsequential little man strutting about scolding a retainer. Awkward and embarrassing things—Going confidently out to greet a visitor on the assumption that it’s for you, when he’s in fact called to see a different person. It’s even worse when he’s brought along a gift as well. You happen to say something rude about someone, and a child

who overhears it repeats your words in front of the person concerned. People who are smug and cocky—Present-day three year olds. The female head of some lowly house. Fools—the cocky ones who presume to instruct those who really do know. Things that just keep passing by—A boat with its sail up. People’s age. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. Things that no one notices—The aging of people’s mothers. Jokes are grievances.  —Marshall McLuhan, 1969 Infuriating things—A very ordinary person who beams inanely as she prattles on and on. A baby who cries when you’re trying to hear something. A dog that discovers a clandestine lover as he comes creeping in, and barks. You’ve just settled sleepily into bed when a mosquito announces itself with that thin little wail and starts flying round your face. It’s horrible how you can feel the soft wind of its tiny wings. Someone who butts in when you’re talking and smugly provides the ending herself. Indeed, anyone who butts in, be they child or adult, is most infuriating. A man you’re in a relationship with speaks admiringly of some woman who was once his lover. In general, anyone other than the master of a household who sneezes loudly is irritating. Fleas are also infuriating things. They dance about under your clothes so vigorously that you almost expect them to raise your skirts with their leaping. And I hate people who don’t close a door that they’ve opened to go in or out. Sei Shōnagon, from The Pillow Book. Serving the Empress Sadako as a lady-in-waiting from about 991 to 1000, Sei possessed a deep knowledge of Japanese and Chinese poetry as well as a quick tongue and a precise eye for court fashion. Among other observations she makes in her influential Pillow Book are “Things now useless that recall a glorious past” (“A painter with poor eyesight”), “Things that are far yet near” (“Relations between men and women”), and “Things that look lovely but are horrible inside” (“A heaped plate of food”).

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1. No ducks waltz; 2. No officers ever decline to waltz; 3. All my poultry are ducks. Answer: My poultry are not officers.

sense and nonsense 1. Babies are illogical; 2. Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile; 3. Illogical persons are despised. Answer: Babies cannot manage crocodiles.

1. No one takes in the Times unless he is welleducated; 2. No hedgehogs can read; 3. Those who cannot read are not well-educated. Answer: No hedgehog takes in the Times.

1. There are no Jews in the kitchen; 2. No Gentiles say “shpoonj”; 3. My servants are all in the kitchen. Answer: My servants never say “shpoonj.”

1. All the MPs who belong to the House of Commons have perfect self-command; 2. No MP who wears a coronet should ride in a donkey race;

Mona Lisa, Age Twelve, by Fernando Botero, 1959.

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3. All the MPs who belong to the House of Lords wear coronets. Answer: No MP should ride in a donkey race unless he has perfect self-command. 1. Nobody who really appreciates Beethoven fails to keep silence while the “Moonlight Sonata” is being played; 2. Guinea pigs are hopelessly ignorant of music; 3. No one who is hopelessly ignorant of music ever keeps silence while the “Moonlight Sonata” is being played. Answer: Guinea pigs never really appreciate Beethoven. 1. No interesting poems are unpopular among people of real taste; 2. No modern poetry is free from affectation; 3. All your poems are on the subject of soap bubbles; 4. No affected poetry is popular among people of real taste; 5. No ancient poem is on the subject of soap bubbles. Answer: All your poems are uninteresting. 1. There is no box of mine in this room that I dare open; 2. My writing desk is made of rosewood; 3. All my boxes are painted, except those in this room; 4. There is no box of mine that I dare not open, unless it is full of live scorpions; 5. All my rosewood boxes are unpainted. Answer: My writing desk is full of live scorpions. 1. All writers who understand human nature are clever; 2. No one is a true poet unless he can stir the hearts of men; 3. Shakespeare [Padua, page 194] wrote Hamlet; 4. Not but those who understand human nature can stir the hearts of men; 5. None but a true poet could have written Hamlet. Answer: Shakespeare was clever. 1. Animals that do not kick are always unexcitable;

2. Donkeys have no horns; 3. A buffalo can always toss one over a gate; 4. No animals that kick are easy to swallow; 5. No hornless animal can toss one over a gate; 6. All animals are excitable, except buffalo. Answer: Donkeys are not easy to swallow. 1. Animals are always mortally offended if I fail to notice them; 2. The only animals that belong to me are in that field; 3. No animal can guess a conundrum unless it has been properly trained in a board school; 4. None of the animals in that field are badgers; 5. When an animal is mortally offended, it rushes about wildly and howls; 6. I never notice any animal unless it belongs to me; 7. No animal that has been properly trained in a board school ever rushes about wildly and howls. Answer: No badger can guess a conundrum. 1. The only animals in this house are cats; 2. Any animal is suitable for a pet if it loves to gaze at the moon; 3. When I detest an animal, I avoid it; 4. No animals are carnivorous, unless they prowl at night; 5. No cat fails to kill mice; 6. No animals ever take to me, except what are in this house; 7. Kangaroos are not suitable for pets; 8. None but carnivores kill mice; 9. I detest an animal that does not take to me; 10. Animals that prowl at night always love to gaze at the moon. Answer: I always avoid a kangaroo. Lewis Carroll, from Symbolic Logic: Part 1, Elementary. Born Charles Dodgson in 1832, Carroll became a lecturer in mathematics at Oxford University in 1855, published his first book, on geometry, in 1860, and told the story of a girl falling down a rabbit hole to ten-year-old Alice Liddell at a picnic in 1862. “Oh, Mr. Dodgson,” she said, “I wish you would write out Alice’s adventures for me!” He published Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 and Through the Looking-Glass in 1871. Much of the second volume of his symbolic logic already had been set in type when he died in 1898.

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c. 300:

Greece

very old jokes Two numbskulls, acting out of respect, alternately escorted each other home after a dinner party and never got to bed. A man encountered a numbskull and said, “The slave you sold me died.” “By the gods,” he said, “he didn’t do anything like that when he was with me.” A person went to a numbskull doctor and said, “Doctor, whenever I get up from sleeping, I’m groggy for a half hour and only after that am I all right.” The doctor: “Get up a half hour later.” There were twin brothers, and one of them died. When a numbskull encountered the survivor, he asked, “Was it you who died, or your brother?” Wanting to train his donkey not to eat, a numbskull stopped giving him any food. When the donkey died of starvation, the man said, “What a loss! Just when he had learned not to eat, he died.” A numbskull who was going on a trip was asked by a friend to buy him two slaves, each fifteen years old. “Certainly,” he said, “and if I can’t find you two fifteen-year-olds, I’ll buy you one thirty-year-old.” Two patricidal numbskulls were angry that their fathers were still alive. One said, “So, shall we each strangle our own father?” “No, no,” said the other, “we don’t want to be called patricides. But if you want, you kill my father, and I’ll kill yours.” A numbskull encountered a friend of his and said, “I heard that you had died.” He replied, “Well, you can see that I’m alive.” To which the numbskull said, “But the person who told me is much more trustworthy than you are.” 96 

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A numbskull saw his family doctor coming and kept himself out of sight. “I haven’t been sick for a long time, and I feel ashamed.” A numbskull who was having an argument with his father said to him, “You good-for-nothing, can’t you see what kind of loss you have caused me? If you hadn’t been born, I would have been my grandfather’s heir.” While a numbskull was voyaging, a powerful storm raged, and his slaves were railing. “Don’t cry,” he said. “I have set all of you free in my will.” When a numbskull heard from someone that his beard was coming, he went away to the gate to await it. Another fool, after inquiring and learning about the situation, said, “People are justified in calling us idiots. How do you know that it’s not coming through the other gate?” A numbskull was sleeping with his father. During the night he would stand up on bed and eat some of the grapes that were hanging overhead. His father hid a lamp under a pot and, when the son stood up, suddenly showed the light. The son started snoring as he stood upright, pretending to be asleep. During the night a numbskull got into bed with his grandmother. When his father beat him on account of this, he said, “You’ve been screwing my mother for a long time without any trouble from me, and now you’re angry at finding me with your mother just once?” Hierocles and Philagrius, from The Laughter Lover. Little is known about this book’s authors or the pedigree of its 265 jokes, although references in some date the work to the third or fourth century. About jokes in ancient Greece, Athenaeus, the author of The Sophists at Dinner, wrote that a group of Athenians known as the Sixty gathered at the Heracleum in the town of Diomea to exchange quips, “and their reputation for amusing qualities was so great that Philip the Macedonian heard of it and sent them a talent to engage them to write out their witticisms and send them to him.”

1995:

New York City

comedy, the art form George Plimpton: Here’s a simple question for you. As opposed to spoken humor, what’s the secret to actually writing it? Why can’t people sit down and write funny stuff ? Calvin Trillin: What is called “getting it onto the page.” That’s a really good question, so good it’s probably unanswerable. We all know funny people who can’t get it down on the page— even funny writers who can’t get it down on the page. I suppose that there is the necessity of some sort of structure in written humor that you can get away without in spoken humor by the use of timing and gesture. Everybody knows people who are funny just by the way they talk.

Remember that comedian Jack Leonard—this big, fat guy who appeared on the Johnny Carson shows? He talked very fast. He would always say something like, IjustwantyoutoknowJohnnyifyou everneedafriendyouwon’tbeabletofindone. But if you listened to him carefully, after a while you realized a lot of things he said weren’t funny at all. But he had a wonderful delivery. Or take the joke about the telegram that Trotsky sent to Stalin from exile in Mexico: I was wrong. You were right. I should apologize. Somebody says to Stalin, Trotsky’s given up. He’s asking forgiveness. Stalin says, No, you don’t understand: Trotsky’s Jewish. What he’s saying is, I was wrong?? You were right?? I should apologize?!? So that’s one thing. When you’re writing, you are robbed of your delivery. People, particularly comedians, always say it’s all in the timing. But in written humor, the reader has to do his own

The Fun Police When: Where

By order of

Outlawed

Penalty

c. 600 bc: Athens

Athenian constitution, as revised by Solon

Insulting someone while in temples, courts, public offices, or at games

Fine of three drachmas to injured party and two drachmas to the public

c. 450 bc: Rome

Twelve Tables, earliest Roman legislation

Singing or composing a slanderous or offensive song

Death

213 bc: Qin

Li Si, chancellor to Shihuangdi

Discussing, owning, or not reporting possession of a non-state-approved book

Execution for subversive writers; books burned

c. 650: France

Law code of the Salian Franks

Calling a woman “harlot” without evidence; calling an adversary a “fox”

Fines, respectively of forty-five and three shillings

1189: Chinon

Richard the Lionheart, king of England

Taunting, insulting, or accusing a fellow crusader of hating God

Fine of as many ounces of silver as insults were issued

c. 1644: England

Commonwealth Parliament

Christmas celebrations

Fines and imprisonment

1926: New York City

City’s law code

Three or more persons dancing in a bar or jazz club without cabaret license

Fine and padlocking of offending business (law still on books)

1939: Germany

Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda

Receiving foreign radio broadcasts, owning non-state-issued radio receiver

Several years of imprisonment with hard labor

c. 1976: Albania

Enver Hoxha, first secretary of the Party of Labor

Popular dance forms, foreign radio stations, beards

Labor camps

c. 2003: Turkmenistan

President Saparmurat Niyazov

Ballet, opera, the circus, long hair worn by men

Imprisonment, potential torture

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timing—you have to build in the timing for the reader, which is difficult. Also, I find that written humor and spoken humor are really so different. For instance, I have been on a book tour with this recent collection of newspaper columns and Shouts and Murmurs pieces from The New Yorker. Occasionally I gave readings in bookstores. It’s amazing how few of the pieces wore well when read aloud. A number of them, partly for purely technical reasons—they have too many quotes in them, or too many parenthetical phrases— don’t read well. It is hard to read quotes, or parenthetical phrases. Plimpton: When did you realize that you were funny? Trillin: At Sunday school when I was about eleven. We came to the part in the Bible or the Talmud, whichever it is, with the famous phrase, “If I forget thee, oh Yerushalayem, may my right hand lose its cunning and my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth.” I stood up with my right hand gradually becoming noticeably weird and said, “If I forget thee, O Yerushalayem, may my right hand lose its cunning and my tongue cleave to duh woof of my mout.” Everybody laughed except the teacher, who ejected me from the classroom and accused me of self-hatred. A very weird epiphany. I guess I already knew I wasn’t a solemn little boy—shy, but not exactly solemn. I actually think of being funny as an odd turn of mind, like a mild disability, some weird way of looking at the world that you can’t get rid of. It’s odd: one of the questions that people ask me constantly is, Is it hard having to be funny all the time? The difficult thing for me is being serious. It’s a genetic thing—being funny—like being able to wiggle your ears. I don’t have any trouble being funny, that’s my turn of mind. Or at least attempting to be funny. Whether it really is funny is for the audience to judge. But I actually do think that some people are and some people aren’t. We all know, say, a lot of lawyers who aren’t funny and some 98 

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who are. A lot of dentists who aren’t funny. The dentist who just took a fractured root out of my tooth—we refer to him as the butcher of Fiftyfourth Street—is a pleasant, friendly man, but he’s not funny. Plimpton: I would have thought most people who find themselves very funny early on think of themselves as potential standup comics or actors. Trillin: If I had been raised in a different house, I might have done something like that. As it was, I was raised to be a kind of champion, sent out to make something of myself. My father, who was technically an immigrant—he came when he was an infant—wanted me to be an American, preferably an American president. He didn’t go to college. Before I was born he wanted me to go specifically to Yale, which he thought would help. It was easy for him to think I could be president: he didn’t have to worry about being president himself, being ineligible because he wasn’t born in the United States. Plimpton: Did he worry about your comic streak? Trillin: I think that he enjoyed it, but yes, he did worry about it a little bit. It never seemed to me a bad thing, or something that I was supposed to suppress or anything like that. On the other hand, if I’d had the ambition to become, say, a standup comic, I don’t think I could have gone to my father very comfortably and said, This is what your dreams have come to. Calvin Trillin, from an interview with The Paris Review. After graduating from Yale University in 1957 and serving in the U.S. Army, Trillin became a staff writer for The New Yorker in 1963. He remarked elsewhere in this interview that at the magazine’s office, “There were two or three Polish cleaning women who came in late at night, and I was always afraid that they would find my early drafts and read them to each other, howling with laughter, slapping their brooms against the desks like hockey players do: Ha! He calls himself a writer!”

Studies of heads, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1485.

1860:

London

roots of laughter Why do we smile when a child puts on a man’s hat? What induces us to laugh on reading that the corpulent Edward Gibbon was unable to rise from his knees after making a tender declaration? The usual reply to such questions is that laughter results from a perception of incongruity. Even were there not on this reply the obvious criticism that laughter often occurs from extreme pleasure or from mere vivacity, there would still remain the real problem—how comes a sense of the incongruous to be followed by these peculiar bodily actions? Some have alleged that laughter is due to the pleasure of a relative self-elevation, which we feel on seeing the humiliation of others. But this theory, whatever portion of truth it may contain, is, in the first place, open to the fatal objection—that there are various humiliations to others which produce in us anything but laughter, and in the second place, it does not apply to the many instances in which no one’s

dignity is implicated, as when we laugh at a good pun. Moreover, like the other, it is merely a generalization of certain conditions to laughter and not an explanation of the odd movements which occur under these conditions. Why, when greatly delighted or impressed with certain unexpected contrasts of ideas, should there be a contraction of particular facial muscles and particular muscles of the chest and abdomen? Such answer to this question as may be possible can be rendered only by physiology. That laughter is a display of muscular excitement, and so illustrates the general law that feeling, passing a certain pitch, habitually vents itself in bodily action, scarcely needs pointing out. It perhaps needs pointing out, however, that strong feeling of almost any kind produces this result. It is not a sense of the ludicrous only which does it, nor are the various forms of joyous emotion the sole additional causes. We have, besides, the sardonic laughter and the hysterical laughter, which result from mental distress; to which must be added certain sensations, as tickling, cold, and some kinds of acute pain. 99

Strong feeling, mental or physical, being then the general cause of laughter, we have to note that the muscular actions constituting it are distinguished from most others by this: that they are purposeless. In general, bodily motions that are prompted by feelings are directed to special ends, as when we try to escape a danger or struggle to secure a gratification. But the movements of chest and limbs which we make when laughing have no object. And now remark that these quasiconvulsive contractions of the muscles, having no object but being results of an uncontrolled discharge of energy, we may see whence arise their special characters—how it happens that certain Two similar faces, neither of which alone causes laughter, cause laughter when they are together, by their resemblance.  —Blaise Pascal, c. 1657 classes of muscles are affected first, and then certain other classes. For an overflow of nerve force, undirected by any motive, will manifestly take first the most habitual routes and, if these do not suffice, will next overflow into the less habitual ones. Well, it is through the organs of speech that feeling passes into movement with the greatest frequency. The jaws, tongue, and lips are used not only to express strong irritation or gratification, but that very moderate flow of mental energy which accompanies ordinary conversation finds its chief vent through this channel. Hence it happens that certain muscles round the mouth, small and easy to move, are the first to contract under pleasurable emotion. The class of muscles which, next after those of articulation, are most constantly set in action (or extra action, we should say) by feelings of all kinds, are those of respiration. Under pleasurable or painful sensations we breathe more rapidly: possibly as a consequence of the increased demand for oxygenated blood. The sensations that accompany exertion also bring on hard breathing, which here more evidently responds to the physiological needs. And emotions, too, agreeable and disagreeable, both, at first, excite respiration; though the last sub100 

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sequently depress it. That is to say, of the bodily muscles, the respiratory are more constantly implicated than any others in those various acts which our feelings impel us to; and hence, when there occurs an undirected discharge of nervous energy into the muscular system, it happens that, if the quantity is considerable, it convulses not only certain of the articulatory and vocal muscles but also those which expel air from the lungs. Should the feeling to be expended be still greater in amount—too great to find vent in these classes of muscles—another class comes into play. The upper limbs are set in motion. Children frequently clap their hands in glee; by some adults the hands are rubbed together, and others, under still greater intensity of delight, slap their knees and sway their bodies backward and forward. Last of all, when the other channels for the escape of the surplus nerve force have been filled to overflowing, a yet further and less-used group of muscles is spasmodically affected: the head is thrown back and the spine bent inward—there is a slight degree of what medical men call opisthotonos. Thus, then, without contending that the phenomena of laughter in all their details are to be so accounted for, we see that in their ensemble they conform to these general principles—that feeling excites to muscular action; that when the muscular action is unguided by a purpose, the muscles first affected are those which feeling most habitually stimulates; and that as the feeling to be expended increases in quantity, it excites an increasing number of muscles in a succession determined by the relative frequency with which they respond to the regulated dictates of feeling. Herbert Spencer, from “The Physiology of Laughter.” The philosopher and social theorist reflected on this essay in his autobiography, “It was evolutionary as being an explanation of laughter in terms of those nervo-muscular actions…and especially as using for a key the law that motion follows the line of least resistance.” Seven years before publishing his thoughts on laughter—six years before Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species appeared—Spencer coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” in an article that speculated that birth rates would decline as civilization developed and advanced.

1923:

New York City

robert benchley brings the kids In America there are two classes of travel—first class, and with children. Traveling with children corresponds roughly to traveling third class in Bulgaria. They tell me there is nothing lower in the world than third-class Bulgarian travel. The actual physical discomfort of traveling with the kiddies is not so great, although you do emerge from it looking as if you had just moved the piano upstairs singlehanded. It is the mental wear and tear that tells, and for a sensitive man there is only one thing worse, and that is a church wedding in which he is playing the leading comedy role. There are several branches of the ordeal of Going on Choo-Choo, and it is difficult to tell

which is the roughest. Those who have taken a very small baby on a train maintain that this ranks as pleasure along with having a nerve killed. On the other hand, those whose wee companions are in the romping stage simply laugh at the claims of the first group. Sometimes you will find a man who has both an infant and a romper with him. Such a citizen should receive a salute of twenty-one guns every time he enters the city and should be allowed to wear the insignia of the Pater Dolorosa, giving him the right to solicit alms on the cathedral steps. There is much to be said for those who maintain that rather should the race be allowed to die out than that babies should be taken from place to place along our national arteries of traffic. On the other hand, there are moments when babies are asleep. (Oh, yes, there are. There must be.) But it is practically a straight run of ten or a Monkeys as Judges of Art, by Gabriel Cornelius von Max, 1889.

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1688: France

character study

A fool is always troublesome; a man of sense perceives when he pleases or is tiresome—he goes away the very minute before it might have been thought he stayed too long. Mischievous wags are a kind of insect which is in everybody’s way and plentiful in all countries. Real wit is rarely to be met with, and even if it be innate in a man, it must be very difficult to maintain a reputation for it during any length of time; for, commonly, he that makes us laugh does not stand high in our estimation. There are a great many obscene minds, yet more railing and satirical, but very few fastidious ones. A man must have good manners, be very polite, and even have a great deal of originality to be able to jest gracefully and be felicitous in his remarks about trifles; to jest in such a manner and to make something out of nothing is to create. We meet with persons who, in their conversations, or in the little intercourse we have with them, disgust us with their ridiculous expressions, the novelty, and, if I may say so, the impropriety of the phraseology they use, as well as by linking together certain words which never came together but in their mouths and were never intended by their creators to have the meaning they give to them. In their conversation they neither follow reason nor custom, but only their own eccentricity; and their desire always to jest, and perhaps to shine, gradually changes it into a peculiar sort of dialect which at last becomes natural to them. They accompany this extraordinary language by affected gesticulations and a conceited kind of pronunciation. They are all highly delighted with themselves and with their pleasant wit, of which, indeed, they are not entirely destitute, but we pity them for the little they have— and, what is worse, we suffer through it. Jean de La Bruyère, from The Characters, or Manners of the Age. La Bruyère wrote in the preface to this book, “The subject matter of this work being borrowed from the public, I now give back to it what it lent me; it is but right that having finished the whole work throughout with the utmost regard to truth I am capable of, and which it deserves from me, I should make restitution of it.” The cast of characters increased from 420 in the 1688 edition to 1,120 in the 1694 edition, which appeared two years before La Bruyère died at the age of fifty.

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dozen hours for your child of four. You may have a little trouble in getting the infant to doze off, especially as the train newsboy waits crouching in the vestibule until he sees signs of slumber on the child’s face and then rushes in to yell, “Copy of Life, out today!” right by its pink, shell-like ear. But after it is asleep, your troubles are over except for wondering how you can shift your ossifying arm to a new position without disturbing its precious burden. If the child is of an age which denies the existence of sleep, however, preferring to run up and down the aisle of the car rather than sit in its chair (at least a baby can’t get out of its chair unless it falls out and even then it can’t go far), then every minute of the trip is full of fun. On the whole, having traveled with children of all the popular ages, I would be inclined to award the hair shirt to the man who successfully completes the ride with a boy of, let us say, three. In the first place, you start with the pronounced ill-will of two-thirds of the rest of the occupants of the car. You see them as they come in, before the train starts, glancing at you and yours with little or no attempt to conceal the fact that they wish they had waited for the four o’clock. Across from you is perhaps a large man who, in his hometown, has a reputation for eating little children. He wears a heavy gold watch chain and wants to read through a lot of reports on the trip. He is just about as glad to be opposite a small boy as he would be if it were a hurdy-gurdy. In back of you is a lady in a black silk dress who doesn’t like the porter. Ladies in black silk dresses always seem to board the train with an aversion to the porter. The fact that the porter has to be in the same car with her makes her fussy to start with, and when she discovers that in front of her is a child of three who is already eating (you simply have to give him a lemon drop to keep him quiet at least until the train starts) she decides that the best thing to do is simply to ignore him and not give him the slightest encouragement to become friendly. The child therefore picks her out immediately to be his buddy.

“Having the Giggles,” France, 1905.

For a time after things get to going, all you have to do is answer questions about the scenery. This is only what you must expect when you have children, and it happens no matter where you are. You can always say that you don’t know who lives in that house or what that cow is doing. Sometimes you don’t even have to look up when you say that you don’t know. This part is comparatively easy. It is when the migratory fit comes on that you will be put to the test. Suddenly you look and find the boy staggering down the aisle, peering into the faces of people as he passes them. “Here! Come back here, Roger!” you cry, lurching after him and landing across the knees of the young lady two seats down. Roger takes this as a signal for a game and starts to run, screaming with laughter. After four steps he falls and starts to cry. On being carried kicking back to his seat, he is told that he mustn’t run down the aisle again. This strikes even Roger as funny, because it is such a flat thing to say. Of course he is going to run down the aisle, and he knows it as well as you do. In the meantime, however, he is perfectly willing to spend a little time with the lady in the black silk dress.

“Here, Roger,” you say, “don’t bother the lady.” “Hello, little boy,” the lady says, nervously, and tries to go back to her book. The interview is over as far as she is concerned. Roger, however, thinks that it would be just dandy to get up in her lap. This has to be stopped, and Roger has to be whispered to. He then announces that it is about time that he went to the washroom. You march down the car, steering him by the shoulders and both lurching together as the train takes the curves and attracting wide attention to your very obvious excursion. Several kindly people smile knowingly at you as you pass and try to pat the boy on the head, but their advances are repelled, it being a rule of all children to look with disfavor on any attentions from strangers. The only people they want to play with are those who hate children. On reaching the washroom you discover that the porter had just locked it and taken the key with him, simply to be nasty. This raises quite a problem. You explain the situation as well as possible, which turns out to be not well enough. There is every indication of loud crying and perhaps worse. You call attention to the Burrows Rustless Screen sign which you 103

are just passing and stand in the passageway by the drinking cups, feverishly trying to find things in the landscape as it whirls by which will serve to take the mind off the tragedy of the moment. You become so engrossed in this important task that it is some time before you discover that you are completely blocking the passageway and the progress of some fifteen people who want to get off at Utica. There is nothing for you to do but head the procession and get off first. Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.  —Václav Havel, 1986 Once out in the open, the pride and prop of your old age decides that the thing to do is pay the engineer a visit, and starts off up the platform at a terrific rate. This amuses the onlookers and gives you a little exercise after being cramped up in that old car all the morning. The imminent danger of the train’s starting without you only adds to the fun. At that, there might be worse things than being left in Utica. One of them is getting back on the tram again to face the old gentleman with the large watch chain. The final phase of the ordeal, however, is still in store for you when you make your way (and Roger’s way) into the diner. Here the plunging march down the aisle of the car is multiplied by six (the diner is never any nearer than six cars and usually is part of another train). On the way, Roger sees a box of animal crackers belonging to a little girl and commandeers it. The little girl, putting up a fight, is promptly pushed over, starting what promises to be a free-for-all fight between the two families. Lurching along after the apologies have been made, it is just a series of unwarranted attacks by Roger on sleeping travelers and equally unwarranted evasions by Roger of the kindly advances of very nice people who love children. 104 

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In the diner, it turns out that the nearest thing they have suited to Roger’s customary diet is veal cutlets, and you hardly think that his mother would approve of those. Everything else has peppers or sardines in it. A curry of lamb across the way strikes the boy’s fancy, and he demands some of that. On being told that he has not the slightest chance in the world of getting it but how would he like a little crackers and milk, he becomes quite upset and threatens to throw a fork at the Episcopal clergyman sitting opposite. Pieces of toast are waved alluringly in front of him, and he is asked to consider the advantages of preserved figs and cream, but it is curry of lamb or he gets off the train. He doesn’t act like this at home. In fact, he is noted for his tractability. There seems to be something about the train that brings out all the worst that is in him, all the hidden traits that he has inherited from his mother’s side of the family. There is nothing else to do but say firmly, “Very well, then, Roger. We’ll go back without any nice dinner,” and carry him protesting from the diner, apologizing to the head steward for the scene and considering dropping him overboard as you pass through each vestibule. In fact, I had a cousin once who had to take three of his little ones on an all-day trip from Philadelphia to Boston. It was the hottest day of the year, and my cousin had on a woolen suit. By the time he reached Hartford, people in the car noticed that he had only two children with him. At Worcester he had only one. No one knew what had become of the others, and no one asked. It seemed better not to ask. He reached Boston alone and never explained what had become of the tiny tots. Anyone who has ever traveled with tiny tots of his own, however, can guess. “Kiddie-Kar Travel.” Along with Robert Sherwood, Benchley resigned from Vanity Fair in 1920 to protest the magazine’s firing of Dorothy Parker; the three friends soon became members of the Algonquin Round Table. Of the small office he at one time shared with Parker, he remarked, “One cubic foot less of space, and it would have constituted adultery.” Benchley served as the drama critic for The New Yorker from 1929 to 1940. Having taken actor David Niven’s advice to visit Venice, Benchley wired back on arrival, “Streets full of water. Advise.”

 It’s All in the Delivery One-liners from action films

James Bond electrocutes a villain.

“Shocking. Positively shocking.”  —Sean Connery, Goldfinger (1964) Inspector Callahan interrupts a robbery, tells criminal “We” won’t allow him to get away, and is asked, “Who’s we?”

“Smith, and Wesson, and me.” —Clint Eastwood, Sudden Impact (1983) After Eliot Ness tosses Frank Nitti from a roof onto the top of a car, he is asked where the villain went.

“He’s in the car.”

—Kevin Costner, The Untouchables (1987)

The Terminator is about to destroy the T-1000.

“Hasta la vista, baby!”

—Arnold Schwarzenegger, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Captain Steven Hiller punches an alien who has just crash-landed.

“Welcome to earth.”

—Will Smith, Independence Day (1996)

Black Dynamite realizes a man in doughnut costume is a villain and shoots him.

“Doughnuts don’t wear alligator shoes.”

—Michael Jai White, Black Dynamite (2009)

James Bond forces Dr. Kananga to swallow a shark-gun bullet, causing him to expand and explode.

“He always did have an inflated opinion of himself.”  —Roger Moore, Live and Let Die (1973) Major Alan Schaefer throws a knife into an enemy’s chest, causing him to hit a wall.

“Stick around.”

—Arnold Schwarzenegger, Predator (1987)

Roger Murtaugh shoots apartheid criminal Arjen Rudd after Rudd holds up an ID card and says, “Diplomatic immunity.”

“It’s just been revoked.”  —Danny Glover, Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) Hudson Hawk cuts a man’s head off.

“Looks like you won’t be attending that hat convention in July.”

—Bruce Willis, Hudson Hawk (1991)

Smith fatally stabs someone through the mouth with a carrot.

“Eat your vegetables.”  —Clive Owen, Shoot ’Em Up (2007) Lee Christmas throws a knife into a villain at the same time that Barney Ross shoots him.

“Call that a tie.”

—Jason Statham, The Expendables (2010)

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Actor Wearing a Comic Mask, by Paul Klee, 1903.

c. 330 bc:

Athens

categorical imperatives As the objects of imitation are the actions of men, and these men of necessity are either good or bad (for on this does character principally depend, the manners being in men most strongly marked by virtue and vice), it follows that we can only represent men either as better than they actually are, or worse, or exactly as they are—just as, in painting, the pictures of Polygnotus were above the common level of nature, those of Pauson below it, those of Dionysius, faithful likenesses. Now it is evident that each of the imitations mentioned above will admit of these differences, and become a different kind of imitation, as it imitates objects that differ in 106 

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this respect. This may be the case with dancing, with the music of the flute and of the lyre, and also with the poetry which employs words—or verse only, without melody or rhythm. Thus, Homer has drawn men superior to what they are; Cleophon, as they are; Hegemon the Thasian, the inventor of parodies, and Nicochares, the author of the Deliad, worse than they are. Tragedy also, and comedy, are distinguished in the same manner, the aim of comedy being to exhibit men worse than we find them; that of tragedy, better. Poetry, following the different characters of its authors, naturally divided itself into two different kinds. They who were of a grave and lofty spirit chose for their imitation the actions and the adventures of elevated characters: while poets of a lighter turn represented those

of the vicious and contemptible. And these composed, originally, satires, as the former did hymns and encomiums. Of the lighter kind, we have no poem anterior to the time of Homer, though there were in all probability many of the sort, but from his time we have some, such as his Margites and others of the same species, in which the iambic was introduced as the most proper meter. And hence the name of iambic—because it was the meter in which they used to iambize, i.e., to satirize, each other. And thus these old poets were divided into two classes—those who used the heroic and those who used the iambic verse. And as in the serious kind Homer alone may be said to deserve the name of poet—not only on account of his other excellences but also of the dramatic spirit of his imitations— so was he likewise the first who suggested the idea of comedy, by substituting ridicule for invective and giving that ridicule a dramatic cast. For his Margites bears the same analogy to comedy as his Iliad and Odyssey to tragedy. But when tragedy and comedy had once made their appearance, succeeding poets, according to the turn of their genius, attached themselves to the one or the other of these new species: the lighter sort, instead of iambic, became comic poets; the graver, tragic instead of heroic—and that on account of the superior dignity and higher estimation of these latter forms of poetry. Whether tragedy has now, with respect to its constituent parts, received the utmost improvement of which it is capable, considered both in itself and relatively to the theater, is a question that belongs not to this place. Both tragedy, then, and comedy, having originated in a rude and unpremeditated manner— the first from the dithyrambic hymns, the other from those phallic songs which, in many cities, still remain in use—each advanced gradually toward perfection by such successive improvements as were most obvious. Tragedy, after various changes, reposed at length in the completion of its proper form.

Aeschylus first added a second actor; he also abridged the chorus and made the dialog the principal part of tragedy. Sophocles increased the number of actors to three and added the decoration of painted scenery. It was also late before tragedy threw aside the short and simple fable and ludicrous language of its satiric original, and attained its proper magnitude and dignity. Comedy, as was said before, is an imitation of bad characters: bad not with respect to every sort of vice but to the ridiculous only, as being a species of turpitude or deformity, since it may Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes—comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.  —Woody Allen, 1991 be defined to be—a fault or deformity of such a sort as is neither painful nor destructive. A ridiculous face, for example, is something ugly and distorted, but not so as to cause pain. The successive improvements of tragedy and the respective authors of them have not escaped our knowledge, but those of comedy, from the little attention that was paid to it in its origin, remain in obscurity. For it was not till late that comedy was authorized by the magistrate and carried on at the public expense: it was at first a private and voluntary exhibition. Indeed, from the time when it began to acquire some degree of form, its poets have been recorded, but who first introduced masks or prologues or augmented the number of actors—these and other particulars of the same kind are unknown. Aristotle, from The Poetics. The second book of this treatise, which dealt in more depth with comedy, has been lost. Aristotle believed that Sophocles’ Oedipus the King was among the finest Greek tragedies, exemplifying his concepts of the tragic hero, reversal, recognition, and catharsis. While The Poetics is often considered the first and most influential work of literary criticism in the world, the only version available throughout the Middle Ages and early Renaissance was a Latin translation of an Arabic commentary on it by the Arab philosopher Averroës.

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1791:

Steventon

briefly noted The history of England from the reign of Henry IV to the death of Charles I by a partial, prejudiced, and ignorant historian. N.B. There will be very few dates in this history.

Henry IV Henry IV ascended the throne of England much to his own satisfaction in the year 1399 after having prevailed on his cousin and predecessor, Richard II, to resign it to him and to retire for the rest of his life to Pomfret Castle, where he happened to be murdered. It is to be supposed that Henry was married, since he had

Young Boy Wearing a Feathered Hat Laughing While Pointing at Something with His Right Hand (detail), by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, c. 1670.

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certainly four sons, but it is not in my power to inform the reader who was his wife. Be this as it may, he did not live forever, but falling ill, his son the prince of Wales came and took away the crown, whereupon the king made a long speech, for which I must refer the reader to Shakespeare’s plays [Padua, page 194], and the prince made a still longer. Things being thus settled between them, the king died and was succeeded by his son Henry who had previously beat Sir William Gascoigne. Henry V This prince, after he succeeded to the throne, grew quite reformed and amiable, forsaking all his dissipated companions, and never thrashing Sir William again. During his reign Lord Cobham was burned alive, but I forget what for. His Majesty then turned his thoughts to France, where he went and fought the famous Battle of Agincourt. He afterward married the king’s daughter Catherine, a very agreeable woman by Shakespeare’s account. In spite of all this, however, he died, and was succeeded by his son Henry. Henry VI I cannot say much for this monarch’s sense. Nor would I if I could, for he was a Lancastrian. I suppose you know all about the wars between him and the duke of York, who was of the right side; if you do not, you had better read some other history, for I shall not be very diffuse in this, meaning by it only to vent my spleen against, and show my hatred to, all those people whose parties or principles do not suit with mine, and not to give information. This king married Margaret of Anjou, a woman whose distresses and misfortunes were so great as almost to make me, who hates her, pity her. It was in this reign that Joan of Arc lived and made such a row among the English. They should not have burned her— but they did. There were several battles between the Yorkists and Lancastrians, in which the former (as they ought) usually conquered. At length they were entirely overcome; the king was murdered—the queen was sent home—and Edward IV ascended the throne.

Edward IV This monarch was famous only for his beauty and his courage, of which his portrait and his undaunted behavior in marrying one woman while he was engaged to another are sufficient proofs. His wife was Elizabeth Woodville, a widow who—poor woman!—was afterward confined in a convent by that monster of iniquity and avarice Henry VII. One of Edward’s mistresses was Jane Shore, who has had a play written about her, but it is a tragedy and therefore not worth reading. Having performed all these noble actions, His Majesty died and was succeeded by his son. Edward V This unfortunate prince lived so little that nobody had him to draw his picture. He was murdered by his uncle’s contrivance, whose name was Richard III. Richard III The character of this prince has been in general very severely treated by historians, but as he was a York, I am rather inclined to suppose him a very respectable man. It has indeed been confidently asserted that he killed his two nephews and his wife, but it has also been declared that he did not kill his two nephews, which I am inclined to believe true—and if this is the case, it may also be affirmed that he did not kill his wife. Whether innocent or guilty, he did not reign long in peace, for Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, as great a villain as ever lived, made a great fuss about getting the crown, and having killed the king at the Battle of Bosworth, he succeeded to it. Jane Austen, from “The History of England from the Reign of Henry IV to the Death of Charles I.” Austen composed this parody of Oliver Goldsmith’s history of England at the age of fifteen; she filled a family copy of his work with marginalia, which often expressed royalist sympathies. Oliver Cromwell was a “detestable monster,” and, adjacent to a statement that he “inherited a very small paternal fortune,” she noted, “and that was more than he deserved.” In a five-year period in the 1810s, Austen published Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma.

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1921:

Baltimore

h. l. mencken on balder and dash On the question of the logical content of Dr. Harding’s harangue of last Friday, I do not presume to have views. The matter has been debated at great length by the editorial writers of the republic, all of them experts in logic; moreover, I confess to being prejudiced. When a man arises publicly to argue that the United States entered the war because of a “concern for preserved civilization,” I can only snicker in a superior way and wonder why he isn’t holding I am convinced that there can be no entire regeneration of mankind until laughter is put down! —Percy Bysshe Shelley, c. 1813 down the chair of history in some American university. When he says that the United States has “never sought territorial aggrandizement through force,” the snicker arises to the virulence of a chuckle, and I turn to the first volume of Gen. Grant’s memoirs. And when, gaining momentum, he gravely informs the boobery that “ours is a constitutional freedom where the popular will is supreme, and minorities are sacredly protected,” then I abandon myself to a mirth that transcends, perhaps, the seemly. But when it comes to the style of a great man’s discourse, I can speak with a great deal less prejudice, and maybe with somewhat more competence, for I have earned most of my livelihood for twenty years past by translating the bad English of a multitude of authors into measurably better English. Thus qualified professionally, I rise to pay my small tribute to Dr. Harding. Setting aside a college professor or two and half a dozen dipsomaniacal newspaper reporters, he takes the first place in my Valhalla of literati. That is to say, he writes the worst English I have even encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through 110 

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endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm (I was about to write abscess!) of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash. But I grow lyrical. More scientifically, what is the matter with it? Why does it seem so flabby, so banal, so confused and childish, so stupidly at war with sense? If you had first read the inaugural address and then heard it intoned, as I did (at least in part), then you will perhaps arrive at an answer. That answer is very simple. When Dr. Harding prepares a speech he does not think of it in terms of an educated reader locked up in jail, but in terms of a great horde of stoneheads gathered around a stand. That is to say, the thing is always a stump speech; it is conceived as a stump speech and written as a stump speech. More, it is a stump speech addressed to the sort of audience that the speaker has been used to all of his life, to wit, an audience of small-town yokels, of low political serfs, or morons scarcely able to understand a word of more than two syllables, and wholly unable to pursue a logical idea for more than two centimeters. Such imbeciles do not want ideas—that is, new ideas, ideas that are unfamiliar, ideas that challenge their attention. What they want is simply a gaudy series of platitudes, of sonorous nonsense driven home with gestures. As I say, they can’t understand many words of more than two syllables, but that is not saying that they do not esteem such words. On the contrary, they like them and demand them. The roll of incomprehensible polysyllables enchants them. They like phrases which thunder like salvos of artillery. Let that thunder sound, and they take all the rest on trust. If a sentence begins furiously and then peters out into fatuity, they are still satisfied. If a phrase has a punch in it, they do not ask that it also have a meaning. If a word slips off the tongue like a ship going down the ways, they are content and applaud it and wait for the next. Brought up amid such hinds, trained by long practice to engage and delight them, Dr.

Harding carries his stump manner into everything he writes. He is, perhaps, too old to learn a better way. He is, more likely, too discreet to experiment. The stump speech, put into cold type, maketh the judicious to grieve. But roared from an actual stump, with arms flying and eyes flashing and the old flag overhead, it is certainly and brilliantly effective. Read the inaugural address, and it will gag you. But hear it recited through a sound magnifier, with grand gestures to ram home its periods, and you will begin to understand it. Let us turn to a specific example. I exhume a sentence from the latter half of the eminent orator’s discourse: “I would like government to do all it can to mitigate, then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved.” I assume that you have read it. I also assume that you set it down as idiotic—a series of words without sense. You are quite right; it is. But now imagine it intoned as it

were designed to be intoned. Imagine the slow tempo of a public speech. Imagine the stately unrolling of the first clause, the delicate pause upon the word then—and then the loud discharge of the phrase in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, each with its attendant glare and roll of the eyes, each with a sublime heave, each with its gesture of a blacksmith bringing down his sledge upon an egg— imagine all this, and then ask yourself where you have got. You have got, in brief, to a point where you don’t know what it is all about. You hear and applaud the phrases, but their connection has already escaped you. And so, when in violation of all sequence and logic, the final phrase, our tasks will be solved, assaults you, you do not notice its disharmony—all you notice is that, if this or that, already forgotten, is done, “our tasks will be solved.” Whereupon, glad of the assurance and thrilled by the vast gestures that drive it home, you give a cheer. Crispin and Scapin, by Honoré Daumier, c. 1864.

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Allegory of comedy, justice, and truth, Pompeian-style fresco, by Giuseppe Borsato, c. 1837.

That is, if you are the sort of man who goes to political meetings, which is to say, if you are the sort of man that Dr. Harding is used to talking to, which is to say, if you are a jackass. The whole inaugural address reeked with just such nonsense. The thing started off with an error in English in its very first sentence— the confusion of pronouns in the one-he combination, so beloved of bad newspaper reporters. It bristled with words misused: civic for civil, luring for alluring, womanhood for women, referendum for reference, even task for problem. “The task is to be solved ”—what could be worse? Yet I find it twice. “The expressed views of world opinion”—what irritating tautology! “The expressed conscience of progress”—what on earth does it mean? “This is not selfishness, it is sanctity”—what intelligible idea do you get out of that? “I know that Congress and the administration will favor every wise government policy to aid the resumption and encourage continued progress”—the resumption of what? “Service is the supreme commitment of life”— ach, du heiliger! 112 

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But is such bosh out of place in stump speech? Obviously not. It is precisely and thoroughly in place of stump speech. A tight fabric of ideas would weary and exasperate the audience; what it wants is a simple loud burble of words, a procession of phrases that roar, a series of whoops. This is what it got in the inaugural address of the Hon. Warren Gamaliel Harding. And this is what it will get for four long years— unless God sends a miracle and the corruptible puts on incorruption…Almost I long for the sweeter song, the rubber stamps of more familiar design, the gentler and more seemly bosh of the late Woodrow. “Gamalielese.” Running on a promise to “return to normalcy,” Warren G. Harding won the presidential election, the first in which women could vote, with the greatest margin of victory in the popular vote up to that time. Mencken began writing and editing for the Sun papers in 1906, an association that lasted, with some interruptions, for more than forty years, while also publishing Notes on Democracy in 1926, Treatise on the Gods in 1930, and Treatise on Right and Wrong in 1934. He died at the age of seventy-five in 1956.

1974:

Los Angeles

timing is everything I was appearing on The Tonight Show, but because Johnny Carson hadn’t liked me the first time I had been on with him, I was only getting booked with a guest host, doing material that I was developing on the road. Then I got a surprise note from the show’s booker, Bob Shayne: “We had a meeting with Johnny yesterday, told him you’d been a smash twice with guest hosts, and he agrees you should be back on with him. So I think that hurdle is over.” In September I was booked on the show with Johnny. This was welcome news. Johnny had comic savvy. The daytime television hosts, with the exception of Steve Allen, did not come from comedy. I had a small routine (suggested by my writer friend Michael Elias) that went like this: “I just bought a new car. It’s a prestige car. A ’65 Greyhound bus. You know you can get up to thirty tons of luggage in one of those babies? I put a lot of money into it…I put a new dog on the side. And if I said to a girl, ‘Do you want to get in the backseat?’ I had, like, forty chances.” Etc. Not great, but at the time it was working. It did, however, require all the pauses and nuance that I could muster. On The Merv Griffin Show I decided to use it for panel, meaning I would sit with Merv and pretend it was just chat. I began, “I just bought a new car. A ’65 Greyhound bus.” Merv, friendly as ever, interrupted and said, “Now, why on earth would you buy a Greyhound bus?” I had no prepared answer; I just stared at him. I thought, “Oh my God, because it’s a comedy routine.” And the bit was dead. Johnny, on the other hand, was the comedian’s friend. He waited; he gave you your timing. He lay back and stepped in like Ali, not to knock you out but to set you up. He struggled with you, too, and sometimes saved you. I was able to maintain a personal relationship with Johnny over the next thirty years, at least as personal as he or I could make it, and I was flattered that he came to respect my comedy. On one of my appearances, after he had

done a solid impression of Goofy the cartoon dog, he leaned over to me during a commercial and whispered prophetically, “You’ll use everything you ever knew.” He was right; twenty years later I did my teenage rope tricks in the movie ¡Three Amigos! Once Johnny joked in his monologue, “I announced that I was going to write my autobiography, and nineteen publishers went out and copyrighted the title Cold and Aloof.” This was the common perception of him. But Johnny was For contemporary judgment does not recognize that equally wondrous are the glasses that observe the sun and those that look at the movements of inconspicuous insects; for contemporary judgment does not recognize that much depth of soul is needed to light up the picture drawn from contemptible life and elevate it into a pearl of creation; for contemporary judgment does not recognize that lofty ecstatic laughter is worthy to stand beside the lofty lyrical impulse, and that a whole abyss separates it from the antics of a street-fair clown!  —Nikolai Gogol, 1842 not aloof; he was polite. He did not presume intimate relationships where there were none; he took time, and with time grew trust. He preserved his dignity by maintaining the personality that was appropriate for him. Johnny enjoyed the delights of split-second timing, of watching a comedian squirm and then rescue himself, of the surprises that can arise in the seconds of desperation when the comedian senses that his joke might fall to silence. For my first show back, I chose to do a bit I had developed years earlier at the Ice House. I speed-talked a Vegas nightclub act in two minutes. Appearing on the show was Sammy Davis Jr., who, while still performing energetically, had also become a historic showbiz figure. I was whizzing along, singing a foursecond version of “Ebb Tide,” then saying at lightning speed, “Frank Sinatra personal friend of mine Sammy Davis Jr. personal friend of 113

The Two Clowns, by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, c. 1600.

mine Steve Martin I’m a personal friend of mine too and now a little dancin’!” I started a wild flail, which I must say was pretty funny, when a showbiz miracle occurred. The camera cut away to a dimly lit Johnny, precisely as he whirled up from his chair, doubling over with laughter. Suddenly, subliminally, I was endorsed. At the end of the act, Sammy came over and hugged me. I felt like I hadn’t been hugged since I was born. This was my sixteenth appearance on the show, and the first one I could really call a smash. The next day, elated by my success, I walked into an antique store on La Brea. The woman behind the counter looked at me. 114 

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“Are you that boy who was on The Tonight Show last night?” “Yes,” I said. “Yuck!” she blurted out. Steve Martin, from Born Standing Up. While attending UCLA in 1967, Martin was asked to write for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour; two years later he won an Emmy Award for his work on the show. He later starred in The Jerk and L.A. Story. Elsewhere in his 2007 memoir, Martin observed, “Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the abominable circumstances.”

1856:

London

a german comedy is like a german sentence Wit is an electric shock which takes us by violence quite independently of our predominant mental disposition, but humor approaches us more deliberately and leaves us masters of ourselves. Hence it is that while coarse and cruel humor has almost disappeared from contemporary literature, coarse and cruel wit abounds. Even refined men cannot help laughing at a coarse bon mot or a lacerating personality if the “shock” of the witticism is a powerful one; while mere fun will have no power over them if it jars on their moral taste. Hence, too, it is that, while wit is perennial, humor is liable to become superannuated. As is usual with definitions and classifications, however, this distinction between wit and humor does not exactly represent the actual fact. Like all other species, wit and humor overlap and blend with each other. There are bon mots, like many of Charles Lamb’s [Eafield, page 71], which are a sort of facetious hybrids; we hardly know whether to call them witty or humorous. There are rather lengthy descriptions or narratives which, like Voltaire’s “Micromégas,” would be humorous if they were not so sparkling and antithetic, so pregnant with suggestion and satire that we are obliged to call them witty. We rarely find wit untempered by humor, or humor without a spice of wit, and sometimes we find them both united in the highest degree in the same mind, as in Shakespeare [Padua, page 194] and Molière [Paris, page 27]. A happy conjunction this, for wit is apt to be cold and thin-lipped and Mephistophelean in men who have no relish for humor, whose lungs do never crow at fun and drollery; and broad-faced rollicking humor needs the refining influence of wit. Indeed, it may be said that there is no really fine writing in which wit has not an implicit, if not an explicit, action. The wit may never rise to the surface, it may never flame out into a witticism—but it helps to give brightness and transparency, it warns off from flights and exaggerations which verge on the

ridiculous—in every genre of writing it preserves a man from sinking into the genre ennui. And it is eminently needed for this office in humorous writing, for as humor has no limits imposed on it by its material, no law but its own exuberance, it is apt to become preposterous and wearisome unless checked by wit, which is the enemy of all monotony, of all lengthiness, of all exaggeration. Perhaps the nearest approach nature has given us to a complete analysis, in which wit is as thoroughly exhausted of humor as possible, and humor as bare as possible of wit, is in the typical Frenchman and the typical German. Voltaire [Ferney, page 142], the intensest Laughter is little more than an expression of self-satisfied shrewdness.  —Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, c. 1825 example of pure wit, fails in most of his fictions from his lack of humor. “Micromégas” is a perfect tale, because, as it deals chiefly with philosophic ideas and does not touch the marrow of human feeling and life, the writer’s wit and wisdom were all-sufficient for his purpose. Not so with Candide. Here Voltaire had to give pictures of life as well as to convey philosophic truth and satire, and here we feel the want of humor. The sense of the ludicrous is continually defeated by disgust, and the scenes, instead of presenting us with an amusing or agreeable picture, are only the frame for a witticism. On the other hand, German humor generally shows no sense of measure, no instinctive tact; it is either floundering and clumsy as the antics of a leviathan, or laborious and interminable as a Lapland day, in which one loses all hope that the stars and quiet will ever come. For this reason Jean Paul, the greatest of German humorists, is unendurable to many readers, and frequently tiresome to all. Here, as elsewhere, the German shows the absence of that delicate perception, that sensibility to gradation, which is the essence of tact and taste and the necessary concomitant of wit. All his subtlety is reserved for the region of metaphysics. He has the finest 115

nose for empiricism in philosophical doctrine, but the presence of more or less tobacco smoke in the air he breathes is imperceptible to him. To the typical German it is indifferent whether his door lock will catch, whether his teacup is more or less than an inch thick, whether or not his book has every other leaf unstitched, whether his neighbor’s conversation is more or less of a shout, whether he pronounces b or p, t or d, whether or not his adored one’s teeth are few and far between. He has the same sort of insensibility to gradations in time. A German comedy is like a German sentence: you see no reason in its structure why it should ever come to an end, and you accept the conclusion as an arrangement of Providence rather than of the author. We have heard Germans use the word Langeweile, the equivalent for ennui, and we have secretly wondered what it can be that produces ennui in a German. Not the longest of long tragedies, for we have known him to pronounce that “most captivating”; not the heaviest of heavy books, for he delights in that “thoroughly”; not the slowest of journeys in a postchaise, for the slower the horses, the more cigars he can smoke before he reaches his journey’s end. German ennui must imply some kind of extremely unknown quantity of stupefaction. It is easy to see that this national deficiency in nicety of perception must have its effect on the national appreciation and exhibition of humor. You find in Germany ardent admirers of Shakespeare who tell you that what they think most admirable in him is his Wortspiel, his verbal quibbles. And it is a remarkable fact that among the five great races concerned in modern civilization, the German race is the only one which, up to the present century, had contributed nothing classic to the common stock of European wit and humor. Italy was the birthplace of pantomime and the immortal Pulcinello; Spain had produced Miguel de Cervantes [page 170]; France had produced François Rabelais [Paris, page 89] and Molière, and classic wits innumerable; England had yielded Shakespeare and a host of humorists. But Germany had borne no great comic dramatist, no great satirist, and she 116 

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has not yet repaired the omission; she had not even produced any humorist of a high order. Of course, we do not pretend to an exhaustive acquaintance with German literature; we not only admit—we are sure—that it includes much comic writing of which we know nothing. We simply state the fact that no German production of that kind, before the present century, ranked as European—a fact which does not, indeed, determine the amount of the national facetiousness, but which is quite decisive as to its quality. Whatever may be the stock of fun which Germany yields for home consumption, she has provided little for the palate of other lands. All honor to her for the still greater things she has done for us! She has fought the hardest fight for freedom of thought, has produced the grandest inventions, has made magnificent contributions to science, has given us some of the divinest poetry, and quite the divinest music, in the world. We revere and treasure the products of the German mind. To say that that mind is not fertile in wit, is only like saying that excellent wheat land is not rich pasture; to say that we do not enjoy German facetiousness is no more than to say that though the horse is the finest of quadrupeds, we do not like him to lay his hoof playfully on our shoulder. Still, as we have noticed that the pointless puns and stupid jocularity of the boy may ultimately be developed into the epigrammatic brilliancy and polished playfulness of the man; as we believe that racy wit and chastened delicate humor are inevitably the results of invigorated and refined mental activity—we can also believe that Germany will one day yield a crop of wits and humorists. George Eliot, from “German Wit: Heinrich Heine.” Eliot saw hope for the country’s humor in Heine— “true, this unique German wit is half a Hebrew,” she noted, but his ancestors were raised on “wurst and sauerkraut, so that he is as much a German as a pheasant is an English bird.” Mary Ann Evans first used George Eliot as her pseudonym when publishing a section of Scenes of Clerical Life in 1857. The inspiration for her “first story” came while she was “lying in bed,” and her “thoughts merged themselves into a dreamy doze,” an incident she fictionalized in her novel The Mill on the Floss, published in 1860.

1985:

Blacksmith

warmup act Silence in the halls, shadows on the sloping lawn. We closed the door and disrobed. The bed was a mess. Magazines, curtain rods, a child’s sooty sock. Babette hummed something from a Broadway show, putting the rods in a corner. We embraced, fell sideways to the bed in a controlled way, then repositioned ourselves, bathing in each other’s flesh, trying to kick the sheets off our ankles. Her body had a number of long hollows, places the hand might stop to solve in the dark, tempo-slowing places. “What do you want to do?” she said. “Whatever you want to do.” “I want to do whatever’s best for you.” “What’s best for me is to please you,” I said. “I want to make you happy, Jack.”

“I’m happy when I’m pleasing you.” “I just want to do what you want to do.” “I want to do whatever’s best for you.” “But you please me by letting me please you,” she said. “As the male partner, I think it’s my responsibility to please.” “I’m not sure whether that’s a sensitive, caring statement or a sexist remark.” “Is it wrong for the man to be considerate toward his partner?” “I’m your partner when we play tennis, which we ought to start doing again, by the way. Otherwise, I’m your wife. Do you want me to read to you?” “First-rate.” “I know you like me to read sexy stuff.” “I thought you liked it too.” “Isn’t it basically the person being read to who derives the benefit and the satisfaction?”

Sign hanging at the shop of a coffin maker, Bombay, 1988. Photograph by Steve McCurry.

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Caricature of Pope Innocent XI, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1676.

“I thought you liked to read erotic passages.” “If it pleases you, then I like to do it.” “But it has to please you too, Baba. Otherwise how would I feel?” “It pleases me that you enjoy my reading.” “I get the feeling a burden is being shifted back and forth. The burden of being the one who is pleased.” “I want to read, Jack. Honestly.” “Are you totally and completely sure? Because if you’re not, we absolutely won’t.” Someone turned on the TV set at the end of the hall, and a woman’s voice said, “If it breaks easily into pieces, it is called shale. When wet, it smells like clay.” We listened to the gently plummeting stream of nighttime traffic. I said, “Pick your century. Do you want to read about Etruscan slave girls, Georgian rakes? I think we have some literature on flagellation brothels. What about the Middle Ages? We have incubi and succubi. Nuns galore.” “Whatever’s best for you.” “I want you to choose. It’s sexier that way.” “One person chooses, the other reads. Don’t we want a balance, a sort of give and take? Isn’t that what makes it sexy?” “A tautness, a suspense. First-rate. I will choose.” “I will read,’’ she said. “But I don’t want 118 

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you to choose anything that has men inside women, quote-quote, or men entering women. ‘I entered her.’ ‘He entered me.’ We’re not lobbies or elevators. ‘I wanted him inside me,’ as if he could crawl completely in, sign the register, sleep, eat, so forth. Can we agree on that? I don’t care what these people do as long as they don’t enter or get entered.” “Agreed.” “‘I entered her and began to thrust.’” “I’m in total agreement,” I said. “‘Enter me, enter me, yes, yes.’” “Silly usage, absolutely.” “‘Insert yourself, Rex. I want you inside me, entering hard, entering deep, yes, now, oh.’” I began to feel an erection stirring. How stupid and out of context. Babette laughed at her own lines. The TV said, “Until Florida surgeons attached an artificial flipper.” Don DeLillo, from White Noise. DeLillo published his first novel, Americana, in 1971, followed by five more, among them Great Jones Street and Players, before the end of that decade. He remarked in the 1990s, “The novel’s not dead, it’s not even seriously injured, but I do think we’re working in the margins, working in the shadows of the novel’s greatness and influence…Everything in the culture argues against the novel, particularly the novel that tries to be equal to the complexities and excesses of the culture.” DeLillo’s most recent novel, Point Omega, was published in 2010.

1748:

Bath

low and unbecoming Dear Boy, I must from time to time remind you of what I have often recommended to you, and of what you cannot attend to too much— sacrifice to the Graces. They prepare the way to the heart, and the heart has such an influence over the understanding that it is worthwhile to engage it in our interest. Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld, in his Maxims, says, that “the heart almost always dupes the mind.” If he had said often instead of almost always, I fear he would have been nearer the truth. This being the case, aim at the heart. To engage the affection of any particular person, you must, over and above your general merit, have some particular merit to that person—by services done or offered, by expressions of regard and esteem, by complaisance, attentions, etc. And the graceful manner of doing all these things opens the way to the heart and facilitates, or rather insures, their effects. From your own observation, reflect what a disagreeable impression an awkward address, a slovenly figure, an ungraceful manner of speaking, whether stuttering, muttering, monotony, or drawling; an inattentive behavior, etc., make upon you, at first sight, in a stranger, and how they prejudice you against him, though, for ought you know, he may have great intrinsic sense and merit. And reflect, on the other hand, how much the opposites of all these things prepossess you, at first sight, in favor of those who enjoy them. You wish to find all good qualities in them and are in some degree disappointed if you do not. A thousand little things, not separately to be defined, conspire to form these graces, this je ne sais quoi that always pleases. A pretty person, genteel motions, a proper degree of dress, a harmonious voice, something open and cheerful in the countenance, but without laughing; a distinct and properly varied manner of speaking: all these things and many others are necessary ingredients in

the composition of the pleasing je ne sais quoi, which everybody feels though nobody can describe. Observe carefully, then, what displeases or pleases you in others, and be persuaded, that, in general, the same things will please or displease them in you. Having mentioned laughing, I must particularly warn you against it—I could heartily wish that you may often be seen to smile but never heard to laugh while you live. Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners; it is the manner in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things, and they call it being merry. In my mind there is nothing so illiberal and so ill-bred as audible laughter. True wit, or sense, never yet made anybody laugh—they are above it; they please the mind and give a cheerfulness to the countenance. But it is low buffoonery or silly accidents that always excite laughter, and that is what people of sense and breeding should show themselves above. A man’s going to sit down, in the supposition that he has a chair behind him, and falling down upon his breech for want of one, sets a whole company a laughing, when all the wit in the world would not do it; a plain proof, in my mind, how low and unbecoming a thing laughter is. Not to mention the disagreeable noise that it makes and the shocking distortion of the face that it occasions. Laughter is easily restrained by a very little reflection, but as it is generally connected with the idea of gaiety, people do not enough attend to its absurdity. I am neither of a melancholy nor a cynical disposition and am as willing, and as apt, to be pleased as anybody, but I am sure that, since I have had the full use of my reason, nobody has ever heard me laugh. Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth earl of Chesterfield, from a letter to his son. Stanhope entered Parliament in 1715, became ambassador to Holland in 1728, and sired his illegitimate son in 1732. Starting when the boy was five years old and ending within four weeks of his son’s death at the age of thirty-six, Stanhope wrote 448 letters to him, generally on the topic of “the necessary arts of the world.” After Stanhope’s death, Samuel Johnson complained that the posthumously published letters taught “the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing master.”

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1940:

Ireland

flann o’brien splits the atom “Did you ever discover or hear tell of the atomic theory?” the sergeant inquired. “No,” I answered. He leaned his mouth confidentially over to my ear. “Would it surprise you to be told,” he said darkly, “that the atomic theory is at work in this parish?” “It would indeed.” “It is doing untold destruction,” he continued, “the half of the people are suffering from it; it is worse than the smallpox.” Comedy, like sodomy, is an unnatural act.  —Marty Feldman, 1969 He walked on, looking worried and preoccupied, as if what he was examining in his head was unpleasant in a very intricate way. “The atomic theory,” I sallied, “is a thing that is not clear to me at all.” “Michael Gilhaney,” said the sergeant, “is an example of a man that is nearly banjaxed from the principle of the atomic theory. Would it astonish you to hear that he is nearly half a bicycle?” “It would surprise me unconditionally,” I said. “Michael Gilhaney,” said the sergeant, “is nearly sixty years of age by plain computation and if he is itself, he has spent no less than thirty-five years riding his bicycle over the rocky roadsteads and up and down the hills and into the deep ditches when the road goes astray in the strain of the winter. He is always going to a particular destination or other on his bicycle at every hour of the day or coming back from there at every other hour. If it wasn’t that his bicycle was stolen every Monday he would be sure to be more than halfway now.” “Halfway to where?” “Halfway to being a bicycle himself,” said the sergeant. 120 

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“Your talk,” I said, “is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.” “Did you never study atomics when you were a lad?” asked the sergeant, giving me a look of great inquiry and surprise. “No,” I answered. “That is a very serious defalcation,” he said, “but all the same I will tell you the size of it. Everything is composed of small particles of itself, and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable other geometrical figures too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go. These diminutive gentlemen are called atoms. Do you follow me intelligently?” “Yes.” “They are lively as twenty leprechauns doing a jig on top of a tombstone.” “Now take a sheep,” the sergeant said. “What is a sheep, only millions of little bits of sheepness whirling around and doing intricate convolutions inside the sheep? What else is it but that?” “That would be bound to make the beast dizzy,” I observed, “especially if the whirling was going on inside the head as well.” The sergeant gave me a look which I am sure he himself would describe as one of non-possum [I can’t] and noli-me-tangere [don’t touch me]. “That remark is what may well be called buncombe,” he said sharply, “because the nerve strings and the sheep’s head itself are whirling into the same bargain, and you can cancel out one whirl against the other, and there you are— like simplifying a division sum when you have fives above and below the bar.” “To say the truth, I did not think of that,” I said. “Atomics is a very intricate theorem and can be worked out with algebra, but you would want to take it by degrees, because you might spend the whole night proving a bit of it with rulers and cosines and similar other instruments and then at the windup not believe what you

Golconda, by René Magritte, 1953.

had proved at all. If that happened, you would have to go back over it till you got a place where you could believe your own facts and figures and then go on again from that particular place till you had the whole thing properly believed and not have bits of it half-believed or a doubt in your head hurting you like when you lose the stud of your shirt in bed.” “Very true,” I said. “Consecutively and consequentially,” he continued, “you can safely infer that you are made of atoms yourself and so is your fob pocket and the tail of your shirt and the instrument you use for taking the leavings out of the crook of your hollow tooth. Do you happen to know what takes place when you strike a bar of iron with a good coal hammer or with a blunt instrument?” “What?” “When the wallop falls, the atoms are bashed away down to the bottom of the bar and compressed and crowded there like eggs under

a good clucker. After a while in the course of time they swim around and get back at last to where they were. But if you keep hitting the bar long enough and hard enough they do not get a chance to do this, and what happens then?” “That is a hard question.” “Ask a blacksmith for the true answer and he will tell you that the bar will dissipate itself away by degrees if you persevere with the hard wallops. Some of the atoms of the bar will go into the hammer, and the other half into the table or the stone or the particular article that is underneath the bottom of the bar.” “That is well-known,” I agreed. “The gross and net result of it is that people who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them, and you would be surprised at the number of 121

c. 1576: Aquitaine

not as wretched as we are worthless

Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first, finding the condition of man vain and ridiculous, never went out in public but with a mocking and laughing face; whereas Heraclitus, having pity and compassion on this same condition of ours, wore a face perpetually sad, and eyes filled with tears, “One always, when he over his threshold stepped, / Laughed at the world; the other always wept” ( Juvenal). I prefer the first humor, not because it is pleasanter to laugh than to weep, but because it is more disdainful, and condemns us more than the other. And it seems to me that we can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless. Thus Diogenes, who pottered about by himself, considering us as flies or bags of wind, was really a sharper and more stinging judge, and consequently juster, to my taste, than Timon, who was surnamed “the hater of men.” For what we hate we take seriously. Timon wished us ill, passionately desired our ruin, shunned association with us as dangerous, as with wicked men depraved by nature. Diogenes esteemed us so little that contact with us could neither disturb him nor affect him, and he avoided our company, not through fear of association with us, but through disdain of it; he considered us incapable of doing either good or evil. Our own peculiar condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh. Michel de Montaigne, from “On Democritus and Heraclitus.” At the age of thirty-seven in 1570, Montaigne sold his seat in the Bordeaux parliament, and around two years later, working in the tower of his chateau, began composing essays. He published the first of three books in 1580 with a prefatory “To the Reader” that included the observation, “I am myself the matter of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject.” Montaigne elsewhere wrote, “Man is quite insane. He wouldn’t know how to create a maggot and he creates gods by the dozen.”

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people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles.” I let go a gasp of astonishment that made a sound in the air like a bad puncture. “And you would be flabbergasted at the number of bicycles that are half human, almost half man, half partaking of humanity.’ “Are you certain about the humanity of the bicycle?” I inquired of him. “Is the atomic theory as dangerous as you say?” “It is between twice and three times as dangerous as it might be,” he replied gloomily. “Early in the morning I often think it is four times, and what is more, if you lived here for a few days and gave full play to your observation and inspection, you would know how certain the sureness of certainty is.” “Gilhaney did not look like a bicycle,” I said. “He had no back wheel on him, and I did not think he had a front wheel either, although I did not give much attention to his front.” The sergeant looked at me with some commiseration. “You cannot expect him to grow handlebars out of his neck, but I have seen him do more indescribable things than that. Did you ever notice the queer behavior of bicycles in these parts?” “I am not long in this district.” “Then watch the bicycles if you think it is pleasant to be surprised continuously,” he said. “When a man lets things go so far that he is half or more than half a bicycle, you will not see so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at curbstones. Of course there are other things connected with ladies and ladies’ bicycles that I will mention to you separately some time. But the man-charged bicycle is a phenomenon of great charm and intensity and a very dangerous article.” At this point a man with long coattails spread behind him approached quickly on a bicycle, coasting benignly down the road past us from the hill ahead. I watched him with the eye of six eagles, trying to find out which was carrying the other and whether it was really a man with a bicycle on his shoulders. I did not seem

Old Woman Studying the Alphabet with a Laughing Girl, by Sofonisba Anguissola, c. 1555.

to see anything, however, that was memorable or remarkable. The sergeant was looking into his black notebook. “That was O’Feersa,” he said at last. “His figure is only twenty-three percent.” “He is twenty-three percent bicycle?” “Yes.” “Does that mean that his bicycle is also twenty-three percent O’Feersa?” “It does.” “How much is Gilhaney?” “Forty-eight.” “Then O’Feersa is much lower.” “That is due to the lucky fact that there are three similar brothers in the house and that they are too poor to have a separate bicycle apiece. Some people never know how fortunate they are when they are poorer than each other. Six years ago one of the three O’Feersas won a prize of ten pounds in John Bull. When I got the wind of this tiding, I knew I would have to take steps unless

there was to be two new bicycles in the family. Luckily I knew the postman very well. The postman! Great holy suffering indiarubber bowls of brown stirabout!” The recollection of the postman seemed to give the sergeant a pretext for unlimited amusement and cause for intricate gesturing with his red hands. “The postman?” I said. “Seventy-one percent,” he said quietly. “Great Scot!” “A round of thirty-eight miles on the bicycle every single day for forty years, hail, rain or snowballs. There is very little hope of ever getting his number down below fifty again.” “You bribed him?” “Certainly. With two of the little straps you put around the hubs of bicycles to keep them spick.” “And what way do these people’s bicycles behave?” “These people’s bicycles?” “I mean these bicycles’ people or whatever 123

is the proper name for them—the ones that have two wheels under them and a handlebars.” “The behavior of a bicycle that has a high content of humanity,” he said, “is very cunning and entirely remarkable. You never see them moving by themselves, but you meet them in the least accountable places unexpectedly. Did you never see a bicycle leaning against the dresser of a warm kitchen when it is pouring outside?” “I did.” “Not very far away from the fire?” “Yes.” A jest breaks no bones.  —Samuel Johnson, 1781 “Near enough to the family to hear the conversation?” “Yes.” “Not a thousand miles from where they keep the eatables?” “I did not notice that. You do not mean to say that these bicycles eat food?” “They were never seen doing it—nobody ever caught them with a mouthful of steak. All I know is that the food disappears” “What!” “It is not the first time I have noticed crumbs at the front wheels of some of these gentlemen.” “All this is a great blow to me,” I said. “Nobody takes any notice,” replied the sergeant. “Mick thinks that Pat brought it in, and Pat thinks that Mick was instrumental. Very few of the people guess what is going on in this parish. There are other things I would rather not say too much about. A new lady teacher was here one time with a new bicycle. She was not very long here till Gilhaney went away into the lonely country on her female bicycle. Can you appreciate the immorality of that?” “I can.” “But worse happened. Whatever way Gilhaney’s bicycle managed it, it left itself leaning at a place where the young teacher would rush out to go away somewhere on her bicycle in a 124 

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hurry. Her bicycle was gone, but here was Gilhaney’s, leaning there conveniently and trying to look very small and comfortable and attractive. Need I inform you what the result was or what happened?” “You need not,” I said. “Well, there you are. Gilhaney has a day out with the lady’s bicycle and vice versa contrarily, and it is quite clear that the lady in the case had a high number—thirty-five or forty, I would say, in spite of the newness of the bicycle. Many a gray hair it has put into my head, trying to regulate the people of this parish. If you let it go too far, it would be the end of everything. You would have bicycles wanting votes, and they would get seats on the county council and make the roads far worse than they are for their own ulterior motivation. But against that and on the other hand, a good bicycle is a great companion, there is a great charm about it.” “How would you know a man has a lot of bicycle in his veins?” “If his number is over fifty, you can tell it unmistakable from his walk. He will walk smartly always and never sit down, and he will lean against the wall with his elbow out and stay like that all night in his kitchen instead of going to bed. If he walks too slowly or stops in the middle of the road, he will fall down in a heap and will have to be lifted and set in motion again by some extraneous party. This is the unfortunate state that the postman has cycled himself into, and I do not think he will ever cycle himself out of it.” “I do not think I will ever ride a bicycle,” I said. From The Third Policeman. Born Brian Ó Nualláin in Ireland in 1911, the author published his novels—among them At Swim-Two-Birds and The Hard Life—using the pseudonym Flann O’Brien and his newspaper column for the Irish Times, which ran for twenty-six years, using the pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen. He also served in the Irish civil service from 1935 to 1953. O’Brien died of a heart attack in 1966. The Third Policeman, the novel he had completed in 1940 but could not get published, appeared posthumously.

c. 205 bc:

Rome

the taste of boot polish [Pyrgopolynices, a military man of handsome and impressive appearance, is either just emerging from his house or arriving at it from another part of the town; during his opening words, he is relieved of his heavier accoutrements by slaves or soldiers, who take them away for cleaning. He is accompanied by his satellite, Artotrogus.] Pyrgopolynices: My shield, there—have it burnished brighter than the bright splendor of the sun on any summer’s day. Next time I have occasion to use it in the press of battle, it must flash defiance into the eyes of the op-

posing foe. My sword, too, I see, is pining for attention; poor chap, he’s quite disheartened and cast down, hanging idly at my side so long; he’s simply itching to get at an enemy and carve him into little pieces…Where’s Artotrogus? Artotrogus: Here, at his master’s heels, close to his hero, his brave, his blessed, his royal, his doughty warrior—whose valor Mars himself could hardly challenge or outshine. Pyrgopolynices: [reminiscing] Aye—what of the man whose life I saved on the Curculionean field, where the enemy was led by Bumbomachides Clytomestoridysarchides, a grandson of Neptune?

On the Borscht Belt Henny Youngman Say, a drunk was brought into court. The judge says, “My good man, you’ve been brought here for drinking.” He says, “Alright judge, let’s get started.” Sid Caesar The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was a genius. Milton Berle I feel great; I really feel wonderful. I just got back from a pleasure trip—I took my mother to the airport. Myron Cohen Two bubbes in the Bronx were hanging clothes to dry. One asks, “Have you seen what’s going on in Poland?” The other replies, “I live in the back—I don’t see anything.” Traditional Guy’s hit by a car, and he’s lying in the street. And a guy walks over and puts a coat under his head, and he says, “You comfortable?” And the man looks up and says, “I make a living.” Rodney Dangerfield When I was a kid, my yo-yo, it never came back.

Don Rickles To actor Cliff Robinson: You’re a fantastic actor, Cliff. You’ve told me that many, many times. Totie Fields I’m so tired of being everyone’s buddy. Just once to read in a newspaper, Totie Fields raped in an alley. Van Harris My youngest son: he’s named after my grandfather. We have a son named Grandpa. Traditional The food here stinks, and the portions are so small. Red Buttons On George Burns: A man who is old enough to be his own father. Joan Rivers I was the last girl in Larchmont, New York, to get married. My mother had a sign up: last girl before freeway. Jackie Mason I have a girlfriend. To me she is the most remarkable, the most wonderful person in the world. That’s to me. But to my wife?… Woody Allen My grandfather was a very insignificant man. At his funeral, his hearse followed the other cars.

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Postcard from Pablo Picasso’s private collection, depicting a female matador and a bull in the shape of a phallus.

Artotrogus: I remember it well. I remember his golden armor, and how you scattered his legions with a puff of breath, like a wind sweeping up leaves or lifting the thatch from a roof. Pyrgopolynices: [modestly] It was nothing much, after all. Artotrogus: Oh, to be sure, nothing to the many more famous deeds you did—[aside] or never did. [He comes down, leaving the captain attending to his men.] If anyone ever saw a bigger liar or more conceited braggart than this one, he can have me for keeps…The only thing to be said for him is, his cook makes a marvelous olive salad.

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Pyrgopolynices: It was only a light blow, too. Artotrogus: By Jove, yes, if you had really hit him, your arm would have smashed through the animal’s hide, bones, and guts. Pyrgopolynices: [modestly] I’d rather not talk about it, really. Artotrogus: Of course, sir; you don’t need to tell me anything about your courageous deeds; I already know them all. [aside] Oh dear, what I have to suffer for my stomach’s sake. My ears have to be stuffed lest my teeth should decay from lack of use. I have to listen to all his tall stories and confirm them.

Pyrgopolynices: [missing him] Where have you got to, Artotrogus?

Pyrgopolynices: [fishing for more flattery] Let me see, didn’t I—?

Artotrogus: [obsequiously] Here I am, sir. I was thinking about that elephant in India, and how you broke his ulna with a single blow of your fist.

Artotrogus: [promptly] Yes, that’s right, I remember—you did. By Jove, yes…

Pyrgopolynices: His ulna, was it?

Artotrogus: That…whatever it was…

Artotrogus: His femur, I should have said.

Pyrgopolynices: Have you got a—?

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Pyrgopolynices: What are you referring to?

Artotrogus: Notebook? Yes, sir, and a pencil. Pyrgopolynices: You are as good as a thought reader, my dear man. Artotrogus: Well, it’s my job, isn’t it, sir, to know your mind? I’ve trained myself to anticipate your wishes by instinct. Pyrgopolynices: I wonder if you remember… [He seems to be vaguely calculating.] Artotrogus: How many? Yes, a hundred and fifty in Cilicia, a hundred in Scytholatronia, Sardians thirty, Macedonians sixty—killed, that is—in one day alone. Pyrgopolynices: How many does that make altogether? Artotrogus: Seven thousand. Pyrgopolynices: Must be at least that. You’re an excellent accountant. Artotrogus: [showing his blank tablets, with a grin] And I haven’t any of it written down. All done from memory. Pyrgopolynices: A prodigious memory, by Jove. Artotrogus: Nourished by a prodigious appetite. Pyrgopolynices: Go on as you are doing, my man, and you will never go hungry. I give you the freedom of my table. Artotrogus: And what about Cappadocia, sir, when you slaughtered five hundred at one fell swoop—or would have done if your sword hadn’t got blunted first? Pyrgopolynices: They were only poor footsloggers; I decided to spare their lives. Artotrogus: Need I say, sir—since the whole world knows it—that the valor and triumphs

of Pyrgopolynices are without equal on this earth, and so is his handsome appearance? The women are all at your feet, and no wonder; they can’t resist your good looks; like those girls who were trying to get my attention yesterday. Pyrgopolynices: What did they say to you? Artotrogus: Oh, they pestered me with questions: “Is he Achilles?” “No, his brother,” I said. And the other girl said, “I should think so, he’s so good-looking and so charming—and hasn’t he got lovely hair? I envy the girls who go to bed with him.” Pyrgopolynices: Did they really say that? Artotrogus: They did—and they begged me to bring you past their house today, as if you were a traveling show! Pyrgopolynices: It really is a bore to be so goodlooking. Artotrogus: I’m sure it is. These women are a perfect pest, always begging and wheedling and imploring for a chance to see you. They keep asking me to arrange an introduction; I simply can’t get on with my proper work. Pyrgopolynices: Well, I suppose it’s time we went to the forum, to pay those recruits I enlisted yesterday. King Seleucus was most insistent that I should round up and sign on some troopers for him, and I mean to oblige him this very day. Artotrogus: Let’s go, then. Plautus, from The Swaggering Soldier. Born in Umbria around 254 bc, during the first Punic War, the playwright took the name Titus Maccius Plautus—maccus means clown, plautus means flatfoot—when he gained Roman citizenship. He is thought to have come to Rome at an early age, finding work as a stagehand and actor, before he began combining Greek plays with native Italian farces to create a new kind of drama for the Roman stage. Plautus is believed to have written over one hundred plays, of which only twenty are extant.

127

1996:

Washington, DC

making distinctions We got a lot of racism going on in the world right now. Who’s more racist, black people or white people? Black people. You know why, because we hate black people too. Everything white people don’t like about black people, black people really don’t like about black people. There’s some shit going on with black people right now. It’s like the Civil War going on with black people, and there’s two sides. There’s black people, and

Ceramic portrait head vessel with stirrup spout, Moche Civilization, Peru, c. 400.

there’s niggas. And niggas have got to go. Every time black people want to have a good time, ignorant-ass niggas fuck it up. Can’t do shit without some ignorant ass niggas fuckin’ it up. Can’t do shit. Can’t keep a disco open more than three weeks. Grand opening? Grand closin’. Can’t go to a movie the first week it comes out—why? ’Cause niggas are shootin’ at the 128 

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screen. What kind of ignorant shit is that? “Hey, this is a good movie! This so good I gotta bust a cap in here!” I love black people, but I hate niggas. Oh I hate niggas. Boy I wish they let me join the Ku Klux Klan. Shit, I’d do a drive-by from here to Brooklyn. Tired of niggas. You can’t have shit when you’re around niggas. You can’t have no big-screen TV. You can have it, but you better move it in at three in the morning, paint it white, hope niggas think it’s a bassinet. Can’t have shit in your house. Why? ’Cause niggas will break into your house. Niggas who live next door to you will break into your house, come over the next day, and go, “I heard you got robbed.” Fuck man, tired of this shit. You know what the worst thing about niggas, the worst thing about niggas? Niggas love to not know. Nothing make a nigga happier than not knowin’ the answer to your question. Just ask a nigga a question, any nigga. “Hey nigga, what’s the capital of Zaire?” “I don’t know that shit—keepin’ it real!” Niggas love to keep it real. Real dumb. Niggas hate knowledge. Niggas breakin’ into your house? You wanna save money? Put it in your books. Now they got some shit—they’re trying to get rid of welfare. Every time you see welfare, they always show black people. Black people don’t give a fuck about welfare. Niggas shakin’ in their boots. “Boy they gonna take our shit.” A black man, he got two jobs, go to work every day, hates a nigga on welfare, like, “Nigga, get a job. I got two—you can’t get one?” Shit, a black woman who’s got two kids, goin’ to work every day, bustin’ her ass—hates a bitch with nine kids gettin’ all that welfare, like “Bitch, stop fuckin’. Stop. Fuckin’. Stop it. Put the dick down. Put it down. Get a job. Yes, you can get a job. Get a job holdin’ dicks.” Tired of this shit. Tired, tired, tired. It ain’t all black people on welfare. White people on welfare, too. But we can’t give a fuck about them. We just gotta do our own thing. We can’t be like, Oh, they fucked up—we can be fucked up. That’s ignorant. First of all, white people, they make it look like—there ain’t even that many black people in the country. Black people

are 10 percent of the population. Black people in New York, DC, LA, Chicago, Atlanta—like, ten places. Ain’t no black people in Minnesota. Only black people in Minnesota is Prince and Kirby Puckett. Shit, the whole rest of the country, the other forty states, is filled up with brokeass white people. Broke-ass, living in a trailer home, eating mayonnaise sandwiches, fuckin’ their sister, listening to John Cougar Mellencamp records. And they need your help. And I see some black people lookin’ at me: “Man. Why you gotta say that? It ain’t us, it’s the media. It ain’t us, it’s the media. The media has distorted our image to make us look bad. Why must you come down on us like that—it ain’t us.” Please cut the fuckin’ shit, okay? When I go to the money machine tonight, I ain’t lookin’ over my back for the media. I’m lookin for niggas. Ted Koppel ain’t never took shit from me. You think I got three guns in my house ’cause the media outside? Oh shit, Mike Wallace, run! Tired of this shit. Tired, tired, tired. I don’t know. I need to go back to school, that’s what I need to do. Well, let me stop. I need to go to school. You know what’s wild if you’re black? You get more respect comin’ out of jail than you do out of school. You come out of jail, you the fuckin’ man. “Fresh out, nigga?” You come out of school, nobody gives a fuck. “Hey, I got out of school—I got my masters.” “So what— bitch. Punk-ass bitch. Don’t come around with all that readin’ and shit, don’t come around with all that countin’ shit. I can count too. One, two, three, four, five—for what? I’m countin’ these rocks, biatch!” I dropped out of school. Dropped out. Sorry. Got myself a GED. You know what GED stands for? Good-Enough Diploma. You know a GED’s bullshit—“Let me get this straight. I can make up four years in six hours?” And you know as soon as you get your GED, someone’s always got the nerve to go, “Now you go to college!” Slow down. I think it’s obvious high school was busting my ass. You can’t go to college with no GED. Only college you can go to with a GED is community college. You know why they call it community college?

’Cause anybody in the community can go— crackhead, prostitute, drug dealer—come on in! Community college is like a disco with books— “Here’s ten dollars, let me get my learn on.” So I was in community college. I’m in there, I figure, let me take some shit I know. So I took a black-history class. I gotta know this, because I’m black, right? I get a B just for showing up, right? Wrong. Failed it. Ain’t that some sad shit? A black man failing black history—that’s sad. ’Cause you know fat people don’t fail cooking. Failed black history. Why? Because I didn’t know shit about Africa. ’Cause you know, you go to white schools, you learn Europe up the ass. Never learn shit about Africa; I still don’t know shit about it. Only thing I know about Africa—it’s far. Africa is far, far away. Africa is like a thirty-five-hour flight. So you know that boat ride was real long. The boat ride so long, there’s still slaves on their way here. I didn’t know nothin’ in school—only thing I knew was Martin Luther King. That’s all they ever teach you in school about black people—Martin Luther King. That was my answer to everything. Martin Luther King. “What’s the capital of Zaire?” Martin Luther King. “Could you tell us the name of the woman who would not leave her seat on the bus?” Oooh, that’s hard. Are you sure it was a woman? Oh, I got it. Martina Luther King. You know what’s so sad? Martin Luther King stood for nonviolence. Now what’s Martin Luther King? A street. And I don’t give a fuck where you are in America, if you’re on Martin Luther King Boulevard, there’s some violence goin’ down. It ain’t the safest place to be. You can’t call nobody—tell ’em you’re lost on MLK. “I’m lost, I’m on Martin Luther King.” “Run! Run! Run! The media’s there!” Chris Rock, from Bring the Pain. This routine made Rock a national standup comedy star, earning him praise as well as criticism, and the HBO special in which it first appeared won two Emmy Awards. In a 2009 interview with 60 Minutes, Rock remarked, “By the way, I’ve never done that joke again, ever, and I probably never will. ’Cause some people that were racist thought they had license to say nigger. So, I’m done with that routine.” His fifth HBO special, Kill the Messenger, aired in 2008.

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Interior with Merry Company, by Willem Pietersz Buytewech, c. 1623.

1927:

New York City

dorothy parker attends an uptown party The woman with the pink-velvet poppies twined round the assisted gold of her hair traversed the crowded room at an interesting gait combining a skip with a sidle, and clutched the lean arm of her host. “Now I got you!” she said. “Now you can’t get away!” “Why, hello,” said her host. “Well. How are you?” “Oh, I’m finely,” she said. “Just simply finely. Listen. I want you to do me the most terrible favor. Will you? Will you please? Pretty please?” “What is it?” said her host. “Listen,” she said. “I want to meet Walter Williams. Honestly, I’m just simply crazy about that man. Oh, when he sings! When he sings those spirituals! Well, I said to Burton, ‘It’s a good thing for you Walter Williams is colored,’ 130 

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I said, ‘or you’d have lots of reason to be jealous.’ I’d really love to meet him. I’d like to tell him I’ve heard him sing. Will you be an angel and introduce me to him?” “Why, certainly,” said her host. “I thought you’d met him. The party’s for him. Where is he, anyway?” “He’s over there by the bookcase,” she said. “Let’s wait till those people get through talking to him. Well, I think you’re simply marvelous, giving this perfectly marvelous party for him, and having him meet all these white people and all. Isn’t he terribly grateful?” “I hope not,” said her host. “I think it’s really terribly nice,” she said. “I do. I don’t see why on earth it isn’t perfectly all right to meet colored people. I haven’t any feeling at all about it—not one single bit. Burton—oh, he’s just the other way. Well, you know, he comes from Virginia, and you know how they are.” “Did he come tonight?” said her host. “No, he couldn’t,” she said. “I’m a regular grass widow tonight. I told him when I left,

‘There’s no telling what I’ll do,’ I said. He was just so tired out, he couldn’t move. Isn’t it a shame?” “Ah,” said her host. “Wait till I tell him I met Walter Williams!” she said. “He’ll just about die. Oh, we have more arguments about colored people. I talk to him like I don’t know what, I get so excited. ‘Oh, don’t be so silly,’ I say. But I must say for Burton, he’s heaps broader-minded than lots of these Southerners. He’s really awfully fond of colored people. Well, he says himself, he wouldn’t have white servants. And you know, he had this old colored nurse, this regular old nigger mammy, and he just simply loves her. Why, every time he goes home, he goes out in the kitchen to see her. He does, really, to this day. All he says is, he says he hasn’t got a word to say against colored people as long as they keep their place. He’s always doing things for them—giving them clothes and I don’t know what all. The only thing he says, he says he wouldn’t sit down at the table with one for a million dollars. ‘Oh,’ I say to him, ‘you make me sick, talking like that.’ I’m just terrible to him. Aren’t I terrible?” “Oh, no, no, no,” said her host. “No, no.” “I am,” she said. “I know I am. Poor Burton! Now, me, I don’t feel that way at all. I haven’t the slightest feeling about colored people. Why, I’m just crazy about some of them. They’re just like children—just as easygoing, and always singing and laughing and everything. Aren’t they the happiest things you ever saw in your life? Honestly, it makes me laugh just to hear them. Oh, I like them. I really do. Well, now, listen, I have this colored laundress, I’ve had her for years, and I’m devoted to her. She’s a real character. And I want to tell you, I think of her as my friend. That’s the way I think of her. As I say to Burton, ‘Well, for heaven’s sakes, we’re all human beings!’ Aren’t we?” “Yes,” said her host. “Yes, indeed.” “Now this Walter Williams,” she said. “I think a man like that’s a real artist. I do. I think he deserves an awful lot of credit. Goodness, I’m so crazy about music or anything, I don’t care what color he is. I honestly think if a person’s

1947: Washington, DC new hires

I have appointed a Secretary of Semantics— a most important post. He is to furnish me forty- to fifty-dollar words. Tell me how to say yes and no in the same sentence without a contradiction. He is to tell me the combination of words that will put me against inflation in San Francisco and for it in New York. He is to show me how to keep silent—and say everything. You can very well see how he can save me an immense amount of worry. Then I have appointed a Secretary of Reaction. I want him to abolish flying machines and tell me how to restore ox carts, oar boats, and sailing ships. What a load he can take off my mind if he will put the atom back together so it cannot be broken up. What a worry that will abolish for both me and Vyshinsky. I have appointed a Secretary for Columnists. His duties are to listen to all radio commentators, read all columnists in the newspapers from ivory tower to lowest gossip, coordinate them, and give me the result so I can run the United States and the world as it should be. I have several able men in reserve besides the present holder of the job, because I think in a week or two, the present Secretary for Columnists will need the services of a psychiatrist and will in all probability end up in St. Elizabeth’s. Harry S. Truman, three notes. Truman assumed the presidency upon Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s death in April 1945. In roughly the span of his first year in office—in which time he dropped atomic bombs on Japan and subsequently helped to conclude World War II—Truman’s approval rating dropped from 87 to 32 percent. He defeated Thomas Dewey in the election of 1948. On Truman’s desk he had two signs—one was a quote from Mark Twain, always do right. this will gratify some people and astonish the rest and the other was the buck stops here.

an artist, nobody ought to have any feeling at all about meeting them. That’s absolutely what I say to Burton. Don’t you think I’m right?” “Yes,” said her host. “Oh, yes.” “That’s the way I feel,” she said. “I just can’t understand people being narrow-minded. Why, I absolutely think it’s a privilege to meet a man like Walter Williams. Yes, I do. I haven’t any feeling at all. Well, my goodness, the good 131

Lord made him, just the same as He did any of us. Didn’t He?” “Surely,” said her host. “Yes, indeed.” “That’s what I say,” she said. “Oh, I get so furious when people are narrow-minded about colored people. It’s just all I can do not to say something. Of course, I do admit when you get a bad colored man, they’re simply terrible. But as I say to Burton, there are some bad white people, too, in this world. Aren’t there?” “I guess there are,” said her host. A joke is at most a temporary rebellion against virtue, and its aim is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded. —George Orwell, 1945 “Why, I’d really be glad to have a man like Walter Williams come to my house and sing for us, some time,” she said. “Of course, I couldn’t ask him on account of Burton, but I wouldn’t have any feeling about it at all. Oh, can’t he sing! Isn’t it marvelous, the way they all have music in them? It just seems to be right in them. Come on, let’s us go on over and talk to him. Listen, what shall I do when I’m introduced? Ought I to shake hands? Or what?” “Why, do whatever you want,” said her host. “I guess maybe I’d better,” she said. “I wouldn’t for the world have him think I had any feeling. I think I’d better shake hands, just the way I would with anybody else. That’s just exactly what I’ll do.” They reached the tall young Negro, standing by the bookcase. The host performed introductions; the Negro bowed. “How do you do?” he said. The woman with the pink-velvet poppies extended her hand at the length of her arm and held it so for all the world to see, until the Negro took it, shook it, and gave it back to her. “Oh, how do you do, Mr. Williams,” she said. “Well, how do you do. I’ve just been saying, I’ve enjoyed your singing so awfully much. I’ve been to your concerts, and we have you on 132 

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the phonograph and everything. Oh, I just enjoy it!” She spoke with great distinctness, moving her lips meticulously, as if in parlance with the deaf. “I’m so glad,” he said. “I’m just simply crazy about that ‘Water Boy’ thing you sing,” she said. “Honestly, I can’t get it out of my head. I have my husband nearly crazy, the way I go around humming it all the time. Oh, he looks just as black as the ace of— well. Tell me, where on earth do you ever get all those songs of yours? How do you ever get hold of them?” “Why,” he said, “there are so many different—” “I should think you’d love singing them,” she said. “It must be more fun. All those darling old spirituals—oh, I just love them! Well, what are you doing, now? Are you still keeping up your singing? Why don’t you have another concert some time?” “I’m having one the sixteenth of this month,” he said. “Well, I’ll be there,” she said. “I’ll be there, if I possibly can. You can count on me. Goodness, here comes a whole raft of people to talk to you. You’re just a regular guest of honor! Oh, who’s that girl in white? I’ve seen her someplace.” “That’s Katherine Burke,” said her host. “Good heavens,” she said, “is that Katherine Burke? Why, she looks entirely different off the stage. I thought she was much betterlooking. I had no idea she was so terribly dark. Why, she looks almost like—oh, I think she’s a wonderful actress! Don’t you think she’s a wonderful actress, Mr. Williams? Oh, I think she’s marvelous. Don’t you?” “Yes, I do,” he said. “Oh, I do, too,” she said. “Just wonderful. Well, goodness, we must give someone else a chance to talk to the guest of honor. Now, don’t forget, Mr. Williams, I’m going to be at that concert if I possibly can. I’ll be there applauding like everything. And if I can’t come, I’m going to tell everybody I know to go anyway. Don’t you forget!”

Titania Awakes, Surrounded by Attendant Fairies, Clinging Rapturously to Bottom, Still Wearing the Ass’s Head (detail), by Henry Fuseli, c. 1793.

“I won’t,” he said. “Thank you so much.” The host took her arm and piloted her into the next room. “Oh, my dear,” she said. “I nearly died! Honestly, I give you my word, I nearly passed away. Did you hear that terrible break I made? I was just going to say Katherine Burke looked almost like a nigger. I just caught myself in time. Oh, do you think he noticed?” “I don’t believe so,” said her host. “Well, thank goodness,” she said, “because I wouldn’t have embarrassed him for anything. Why, he’s awfully nice. Just as nice as he can be. Nice manners, and everything. You know, so many colored people, you give them an inch, and they walk all over you. But he doesn’t try any of that. Well, he’s got more sense, I suppose. He’s really nice. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes,” said her host. “I liked him,” she said. “I haven’t any feeling at all because he’s a colored man. I felt just as natural as I would with anybody. Talked to him just as naturally, and everything. But honestly, I could hardly keep a straight face. I kept thinking of Burton. Oh, wait till I tell Burton I called him ‘Mister’!” “Arrangement in Black and White.” Parker based this story on the treatment she saw singer Paul Robeson receive at a party. She succeeded P. G. Wodehouse as Vanity Fair’s drama critic in 1918 but was fired two years later for her writing’s caustic tone; around that time Parker became the only female founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. She began writing for The New Yorker in the late 1920s. “A ‘smart cracker’ they called me,” Parker recalled in 1956, “and that makes me sick and unhappy. There’s a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.”

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confrontational 2000:

New York City

arthur miller’s line to walk on Sol Burry made a living inventing jokes that he sold to the few remaining vaudevillians and the radio stars like Jack Benny, Phil Silvers, and Henny Youngman. He of course hated Milton Berle, who stole jokes without paying and was fatuous besides. He would hold court in the Whelan’s drugstore on the corner of Broadway and Forty-seventh, if I recall, or it could have been Forty-fifth—I’m no longer sure after more than sixty-two years. Young actors and ambitious, unproduced playwrights would look for Burry in Whelan’s and sit around one of the four white, marble-topped tables they had there, trying to find favor with this odd man who somehow knew more about plays, directing, and acting than anybody. He would occasionally deign to read a script and opinionate on it, negatively for the most part but usually offering small rays of hope. “You got three great lines here,” he would

say as he rifled with black fingernails through 120 or so pages in search of the gems, “—here you are! In these lines you got truth; the rest is mostly language. Language is dangerous with a New York audience, which only cracks can waken from their undetected death.” Like so many in the business in those impoverished times, Burry regarded radio as a necessary but fairly contemptible way of making a living, perhaps half a step beneath movie acting, which was low enough. It was the theater that had true prestige, a very different quality than mere Hollywood celebrity, with which people had begun to confuse it. Burlesque, Burry’s heartland, had gone nearly dead by the 1930s’ end, but it still carried on in one or two theaters in Manhattan, and maybe one in Brooklyn, plus a scattering across the country. Having worked his material into many burlesque skits, Burry retained

“The Magic Ring,” by Maxfield Parrish, illustration from Dream Days, by Kenneth Grahame, 1902.

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a far higher respect for the art of the burlesque comic than he did for the radio people. “Radio,” he would say, “is fencing in front of a mirror. The stage actor is going against the audience that can stab him in the belly.” I am no longer sure of this, but I think the last time I ever saw Burry was on the brilliantly sunny day when we were standing together on a sidewalk in front of a drugstore. Burry was talking with three or four dressed-up, youngish comedians who had bought material from him in the past. They all had sharply pressed trousers, brightly shined shoes, starched shirts, glinting wristwatches, slicked hair, or an ultraclean hat. The two great branches of ridicule in writing are comedy and burlesque. The first ridicules persons by drawing them in their proper characters, the other by drawing them quite unlike themselves.  —Joseph Addison, 1711 In fact, they were all looking for work and were hanging out at this drugstore, which had, along one wall, a line of five phone booths, any one of which might momentarily ring with an offer of a job from one of their agents holed up in some airless, filthy-windowed cubicle above Times Square. A weekend gig in the Catskills maybe, or a club in Brooklyn, or, God forbid, in Newark or even beyond, where, in their minds, there were ravenous lions and tigers and most certainly a majority of Gentiles in the audiences, which came to the same thing. It was not yet a time when Gentiles had heard, for example, of the bagel, or lox, or cream cheese, or pastrami, or, for that matter, anything that made life worth living, and every one of these jokesters had defensively Americanized his Jewish name. Hitler’s hateful speeches, still hard to attribute to a head of state, were growing louder, and the anti-Semitic gang mentality had respectable voices on American radio and in the Church. If one wanted to be monumentally depressed, it was not hard to find supporting evidence. Indeed, Father Charles Coughlin’s followers 136 

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in the Christian Front would soon have to be disarmed on Roosevelt’s orders by FBI raids, and the new French liner Normandie, probably the most beautiful ship afloat, would be set afire and sunk by Nazi saboteurs, or so it was universally believed until later proved untrue. At the time, lying on her side for months in her West Side Manhattan berth, her bottom indecently exposed, she made hatred very real to passersby. Whatever the world’s slide into savagery, this posse of comedians was screamingly ready and eager to perform. Even as they stood there palavering, their shoe soles were tapping restlessly on the pavement, fists clamping and unclamping with unreleased energy, carefully wiped fingers hiking up the knots of their ties and shooting their shirt cuffs and smoothing the deftly combed hair at their temples. They were charged young men tossing some sidewalk chat back and forth: somebody’s big night with a girl up in Albany, a chance word with Benny in a Radio City corridor, Roosevelt’s recent blast at the Republicans, little Mayor LaGuardia getting tangled up in a fire hose when he insisted, as he often did, on directing muttering firemen at a big downtown fire, wearing a wobbling helmet too big for him and a gigantic black raincoat that reached to the ground. And now suddenly, as though dropping out of the sky, came this very tall, robust, blondish fellow wearing a bean-green plaid suit with large rose checks, a yellowish shirt with a tie of orange hue, and a look of deep self-appreciation. He stood there with both beringed hands folded over his stomach, as satisfied as a rabbi who has just done a double wedding; it seemed from the pleasure in his fair face that for some reason he was, in effect, awaiting applause. I would soon realize that this was Henny Youngman, who was hovering, as he would for the rest of his long life, at the very edge of real stardom of the Jack Benny–Red Skelton kind. In any case, unlike several of the others present, he was always, or at least frequently, working and—so I recall—had already coined his logo line, “Take my wife…”

New as I was to this milieu, and innocent of its customs, it took some minutes to realize that what might be called a situation of some tension had arisen with Youngman’s precipitous entry. The same sun was shining on all of them, but Youngman, with his fair hair and face, seemed golden now, glistening. It was not only the sun but his having been working on a national network rather than in a club or on a stage, and if he had not yet passed through the Republic’s inner golden door of public love and acceptance he did seem lately to be thrusting a leg across the magical threshold at least up to the knee. All I knew, however, was that on his arrival, the others, half a generation younger, went swiftly into a weird mode of evasiveness toward the new arrival. One kept up an exaggeratedly motionless, wide-eyed staring at the pavement; others launched into fingernail inspections of one finger at a time along with studied skyward scans, all the while exchanging brief glances

among them that bordered on bottled-up laughter. Why? It was beyond me. And now I noticed that Burry was, so to speak, stirring in his depths. I knew him well enough now to sense when some terrible remark was making its way up from far below. Talk in the group continued, but the offerings were oddly absentminded now and dry, unseriously proffered remarks chewed on vacantly like three-day-old pastries. And the more arid their inventions the more unveiled was the expectancy in those glances directed toward Burry, who, after all, had been their common mind, their wit and rule, the imaginative source from which all of them, from time to time, had sipped. This was when I remembered another such conclave of some months earlier when Burry had parted from a group with some notable remark, now forgotten—what he described to me later as “a line to walk on.” One had to have

Scene from The Possessed Girl, by Menander, mosaic in Villa of Cicero, Pompeii, by Dioskourides of Samos, c. 100 bc.

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a line to walk on; you couldn’t simply wave to a group and say “See ya” or “Take care.” Given a cohesive clique, the unspoken code allowed that they might all disband and melt away if they did so together, but a man departing alone from a still extant group had to be propelled by a line of at least some distinction or risk having done a flat exit. In this case, Youngman had somehow, without a word spoken, set himself up for a challenge by the whole irregularly employed cohort as he stood there in his ex-

c. 1985: United States swatting flies

I had a lot of trouble early on, being one of the first women comedians. If there was a group of three or more guys, I was pretty sure I was gonna get heckled by them. It was just par for the course. And I had a lot of trouble with that. Another comedian, a male, gave me a really good idea for when I got heckled. He said, “With guys like that, you have to go for the jugular.” So when guys would heckle me, my inevitable response would always be “So, guys, where are the girls tonight?” And it would turn the whole discussion around, because it was like, “Oh, you’re guys who have no dates.” So that would spin it around, and then, “Oh, I guess they’re parking the car, huh?” And that would shut them right up, because I went to the part of their ego that they didn’t want to be magnified at that point, which was, “Oh, you’re guys here alone, with no dates. Okay, so that’s why you’re picking on the female comedians.” What I came to see is that when you perform, the audience is very fair. The heckler gets as much room as you do, which I’m surprised about, but they want to see that gladiator kind of atmosphere. They enjoy that. So I had to learn to let the heckler have his day—and then squash him. Carol Leifer, from an interview in We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy. Leifer started performing standup comedy in the late 1970s along with Paul Reiser, David Letterman, and Jerry Seinfeld. She wrote for Saturday Night Live and Seinfeld and published When You Lie About Your Age, The Terrorists Win in 2009. That same year, Leifer said, “I recently became vegan because I felt that as a Jewish lesbian, I wasn’t part of a small enough minority.”

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pensive, wild suit as green as grass and idiotic tie, his beringed fingers, and the teeming selfsatisfaction of his upholstered-back-arching manner of standing there with that untroubled smile on his face. Like sun bursting through fog, the moment had come. Burry, who happened to be standing next to Youngman, reached over and just barely touched the sleeve of the green plaid suit and asked, “Is this real, Henny?” The crowd held its breath. Burry had delivered his line to walk on, and it was unanswerable, implying several insults at once: that garish as it was, the suit might easily be a clownish stage costume Youngman had decided to wear in the street, possibly in order to get civilians to ask him if he was in show business; even worse, that the taste the suit revealed was similar to that in Youngman’s humor; and finally that it was time for the gathering to break up, to flee under the sheer menace of this green plaid, which was on par with Milton Berle’s act and no longer tolerable to behold. Youngman’s mouth began to open like a grouper nibbling coral, but nothing came out. A universal sigh seemed to emanate from the company, and the tension was gone; they had prevailed. And before anyone could stop him or top him, Burry was laboring his hunched way down the street. The group disintegrated into their phone booths but not without politely offering farewells to Youngman, who, as was customary at such moments, affected to have noticed no put-down, no ripple in the smooth flow of a successful afternoon. I was not finished with Youngman, though it took six decades for us to meet again, if only figuratively. An interviewer had asked, among other questions, if I watched television, and I said I didn’t very much, because it was so rarely funny. It needed comedians, I thought. And who in my opinion was funny? the interviewer asked. Without thinking, I said, “Henny Youngman.” The man was greatly surprised. “Why Henny Youngman?” As it happened I had been on an airline flight only the day before and had listened through earphones to a comedy tape, and there

The Triumph of Ridicule, by Basset, 1773.

was Youngman saying, “My wife and I had an argument. She wanted a new fur coat, and I wanted to buy a car. So we compromised. We bought the coat and hung it in the garage.” I thought of Burry then—some sixty years after our sidewalk conclave—and wondered whether even he could have resisted giving that one at least a grin. A couple of weeks after the interview was published, I received a cutting from Daily Variety, a half-page ad, signed “Henny Youngman,” which quoted my praise of him and ended, “Thank you, Arthur Miller. I promise never to play Willy Loman.” He died not long after, in his nineties. I’ve never known when Burry

died; once married I stopped hanging out at Whelan’s and hardly saw him anymore. But I do regret never having dared to tell him that I thought Youngman, God help us, was funny. From “A Line to Walk On.” Elsewhere in this essay, Miller recalled how Burry read his early play The Golden Years, about Montezuma and Hernán Cortés, and warned, “No play with Indians ever got anywhere…Them Spaniards; they gotta come on with the helmets; you get six of them sitting down for a meet, what do you do with the helmets?” The play was never staged, although a television adaptation of it appeared in 1992 after Miller cut “some purple passages.” The author of Death of a Salesman and The Crucible died at the age of eighty-nine in 2005.

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Towards the Corner, by Juan Muñoz, 1998. Wood, resin, paint, and metal.

c. 1870:

Boston

schadenfreude I began as a lecturer in 1866, in California and Nevada; in 1867 lectured in New York and in the Mississippi River valley a few times; in 1868 made the whole western circuit; and in the two or three following seasons added the eastern circuit to my route. We had to bring out a new lecture every season now and explode it in the “Star Course”—Boston, for a first verdict, before an audience of 2,500 in the old Music Hall; for it was by that verdict that all the lyceums in the country determined the lecture’s commercial value. The campaign did not really begin in Boston, but in the towns around; we did not appear in Boston until we had rehearsed about a month in those towns 140 

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and made all the necessary corrections and revisings. This system gathered the whole tribe together in the city early in October, and we had a lazy and sociable time there for several weeks. We lived at Young’s hotel; we spent the days in Redpath’s bureau smoking and talking shop; and early in the evenings we scattered out among the towns and made them indicate the good and poor things in the new lectures. The country audience is the difficult audience; a passage which it will approve with a ripple will bring a crash in the city. A fair success in the country means a triumph in the city. And so, when we finally stepped onto the great stage at Music Hall, we already had the verdict in our pocket. But sometimes lecturers who were new to the business did not know the value of “trying it on a dog,” and these were apt to come to Music

Hall with an untried product. There was one case of this kind which made some of us very anxious when we saw the advertisement. De Cordova— humorist—he was the man we were troubled about. I think he had another name, but I have forgotten what it was. He had been printing some dismally humorous things in the magazines; they had met with a deal of favor and given him a pretty wide name; and now he suddenly came poaching upon our preserve, and took us by surprise. Several of us felt pretty unwell—too unwell to lecture. We got outlying engagements postponed and remained in town. We took front seats in one of the great galleries and waited. The house was full. When De Cordova came on, he was received with what we regarded as a quite overdone and almost indecent volume of welcome. I think we were not jealous, nor even envious, but it made us sick anyway. When I found he was going to read a humorous story—from a manuscript—I felt better, and hopeful, but still anxious. He had a Dickens-like arrangement onstage of a tall gallows-frame adorned with upholsteries, and he stood behind it under its overhead row of hidden lights. The whole thing had a quite stylish look and was rather impressive. The audience was so sure that he was going to be funny that they took a dozen of his first utterances on trust and laughed cordially—so cordially, indeed, that it was very hard for us to bear, and we felt very much disheartened. Still I tried to believe he would fail, for I saw that he didn’t know how to read. Presently the laughter began to relax; then it began to shrink in area; next to lose spontaneity; and next to show gaps between—the gaps widened; they widened more; more yet; still more. It was getting to be almost all gaps and silences, with that untrained and unlively voice droning through them. Then the house sat dead and emotionless for a whole ten minutes. We drew a deep sigh; it ought to have been a sigh of pity for a defeated fellow but it was not—for we were mean and selfish, like all the human race, and it was a sigh of satisfaction to see our unoffending brother fail. He was laboring, now, and distressed; he constantly mopped his face with his handker-

chief, and his voice and his manner became a humble appeal for compassion, for help, for charity, and it was a pathetic thing to see. But the house remained cold and still, and gazed at him curiously and wonderingly. There was a great clock on the wall, high up; presently the general gaze forsook the reader and fixed itself upon the clock face. We knew by dismal experience what that meant; Laughter is the strong elastic fish, caught in the Styx, springing and flapping about until it dies. Laughter is the sudden handshake of mystic violence and the Antichrist. Laughter is the mind sneezing.  —Wyndham Lewis, 1917 we knew what was going to happen, but it was plain that the reader had not been warned, and was ignorant. It was approaching nine, now— half the house watching the clock, the reader laboring on. At five minutes to nine, twelve hundred people rose, with one impulse, and swept like a wave down the aisles toward the doors! The reader was like a person stricken with a paralysis; he stood choking and gasping for a few moments, gazing in a white horror at that retreat, then he turned drearily away and wandered from the stage with the groping and uncertain step of one who walks in his sleep. The management were to blame. They should have told him that the last suburban cars left at nine, and that half the house would rise and go then, no matter who might be speaking from the platform. I think De Cordova did not appear again in public. Mark Twain, from volume one of his Autobiography. After giving his first organized lecture in 1866, Twain continued the lucrative practice of reading, speaking, and performing for audiences for thirty years while also publishing, among other works, Roughing It and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In 1895 he published the essay “How to Tell a Story,” in which he proffered, “The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.”

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1764:

Ferney

a history of revisions All councils are undoubtedly infallible—for they are composed of men. It is impossible for passions, intrigues, the lust for dispute, hatred, jealousy, prejudice, ignorance ever to reign in these assemblies. But why, it will be asked, have so many councils contradicted each other? It is to try our faith. Each was in the right in its turn. Roman Catholics now believe only in councils approved by the Vatican, and the Greek Catholics believe only in those approved in Constantinople. Protestants deride them both. Thus everybody should be satisfied. Even in laughter the heart is sad, and the end of joy is grief. —Book of Proverbs, c. 50 I shall refer here only to the great councils; the small ones are not worth the trouble. The first one was that of Nicaea. It was assembled in 325 of the common era, after Constantine had written and sent by the hand of Ozius this noble letter to the rather confused clergy of Alexandria: “You are quarreling about something very trivial. These subtleties are unworthy of sensible people.” The thing was to determine whether Jesus was created or uncreated. This has nothing to do with morality, which is the essential point. Whether Jesus was in time or before time, we must nonetheless be good. After many altercations it was finally decided that the son was as old as the father, and consubstantial with the father. This decision is hardly comprehensible, but it is all the more sublime on that account. Seventeen bishops protested against the decree, and an ancient chronicle of Alexandria, preserved at Oxford, says that two thousand priests also protested; but prelates pay little attention to simple priests, who are usually poor. Be that as it may, there was no question whatever of the Trinity in this first council. The formula reads, “We believe Jesus consubstan142 

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tial with the Father, God of God, light of light, begotten and not made; we also believe in the Holy Ghost.” The Holy Ghost, it must be admitted, was treated pretty offhandedly. It is reported in the supplement of the Council of Nicaea that the fathers, being very perplexed to know which were the cryphal or apocryphal books of the Old and New Testaments, put them all pell-mell on an altar, and the books to be rejected fell to the ground. It is a pity that this elegant procedure has not survived. After the first Council of Nicaea, composed of 317 infallible bishops, another was held at Rimini, and this time the number of infallibles was four hundred, not counting a big detachment of about two hundred at Seleucia. These six hundred bishops, after four months of quarrels, unanimously deprived Jesus of his consubstantiality. It has since been restored to him, except among the Socinians—so everything is fine. One of the great councils was that of Ephesus in 431. Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, great persecutor of heretics, was himself condemned as a heretic for maintaining that in truth Jesus was really God, but that his mother was not absolutely the mother of God but the mother of Jesus. It was St. Cyril who had Nestorius condemned, but then the partisans of Nestorius had St. Cyril deposed in the same council: which much embarrassed the Holy Ghost. Note very carefully here, dear reader, that the Gospel has never said a word about the consubstantiality of the Word, nor about the honor Mary had to be the mother of God, nor about the other disputes which have caused infallible councils to be assembled. Eutyches was a monk who had much abused Nestorius, whose heresy did not fall short of alleging that Jesus was two persons, which is appalling. The better to contradict his adversary, the monk asserted that Jesus had only one nature. A certain Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, maintained against him that it was absolutely necessary for Jesus to have had two natures. A numerous council was assembled at Ephesus in 449. This one was conducted with the quarterstaff, like the little Council of Cirta in 355 and a

The French and Italian Comic Actors of the Past Sixty Years and More, attributed to Verrio, 1670.

certain conference at Carthage. Flavian’s nature became black and blue, and two natures were assigned to Jesus. At the Council of Chalcedon, in 451, Jesus was reduced to one nature. I pass over councils held on account of minute details, and come to the sixth general council, of Constantinople, assembled to determine precisely whether Jesus, having only one nature, had two wills. It will be realized how important this is in order to please God. This council was called by Constantine the bearded, just as all the others had been by the preceding emperors. The legates of the bishop of Rome sat on the left, the patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch on the right. I do not know whether the Roman toadies claim the left to be the place of honor. Be this as it may, Jesus obtained two wills from this affair. The first great council called by a pope was the first Lateran, in 1139. About a thousand bishops were there, but almost nothing was accomplished in it, except that those who said that the church was too rich were anathemized. In 1245 took place the general council of Lyons, then an imperial city, during which Pope Innocent IV excommunicated Emperor Frederick II, and in consequence deposed him, and forbade him fire and water. It was in this council that the cardinals were given red hats to remind them that they must bathe in the blood of the

emperor’s supporters. This council brought about the destruction of the house of Swabia and led to thirty years of anarchy in Italy and Germany. In 1414 was held the great Council of Constance, which contented itself with deposing Pope John XXIII, convicted of a thousand crimes, and in which John Huss and Jerome of Prague were burned for being obstinate, since obstinacy is a much greater crime than murder, rape, simony, and sodomy. The great Council of Basel in 1431 was not recognized in Rome because it deposed Pope Eugene IV, who did not consent to be deposed. Finally we have the great Council of Trent, which does not have authority in France in matters of discipline. However, its dogma is unquestionable, since the Holy Ghost came every week from Rome to Trent in the courier’s trunk, according to Fra Paolo Sarpi, but Fra Paolo Sarpi smelled a little of heresy. Voltaire, from A Philosophical Dictionary. The philosopher and satirist spent two years in England in the 1720s, becoming fluent in English and befriending Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. In 1759 Voltaire published Candide, his sendup of philosophical optimism, and relocated to Ferney, close to France’s border with Switzerland, where he assembled his dictionary. It is said that when the poet Jean-Baptiste Rousseau sent his recently completed “Ode to Posterity” to Voltaire for his reaction, Voltaire responded, “I do not think this poem will reach its destination.”

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c. 1255:

Baghdad

subject of ridicule You must know that one of my brothers is called the Babbler, and he is semiparalyzed. One day when he was walking along on some errand of his, he met an old woman who asked him to stop for a moment so that she could propose something to him, adding, “And if you like the sound of it, then do it for me, with God’s guidance.” He stopped, and she went on: “I shall tell you of something and guide you to it, but you must not question me too much.” “Tell me,” said my brother, and she asked, “What do you say to a beautiful house with a pleasant garden, flowing streams, fruit, wine, a beautiful face, and someone to embrace you from evening until morning? If you do what I shall suggest to you, you will find something to please you.” When my brother heard this, he said, “My lady, how is it that you have singled me out

from everybody else in this affair, and what is it about me that has pleased you?” “Didn’t I tell you not to talk too much?” she said. “Be quiet and come with me.” She then turned back and my brother followed her, hoping to see what she had described. They entered a spacious house with many servants, and after she had taken him from the bottom to the top of it, he saw that it was an elegant mansion. When the members of the household saw him, they asked, “Who has brought you here?” “Don’t talk to him,” said the old woman, “and don’t worry him. He is a craftsman and we need him.” She then took him to a beautifully decorated room, as lovely as any eye had ever seen. When they entered, the women there got up, welcomed him, and made him sit beside them. Immediately he heard a great commotion, and in came maids, in the middle of whom was a girl like the moon on the night it comes to the full. My brother turned to look at her and then got up and made his obeisance. She welcomed him, telling him to sit down, and after he had done this, she went

Body Talk

First uses according to the Oxford English Dictionary

• 1560: Clicket gate

• c. 1300: Buttocks • c. 1300: Pintle

• 1398: Semen

• 1290: Seed

• 1440: Fist • 1405: Let flee

• c. 1300: Swiving

• 1450: Kind

• c. 1350: Pillicock • 1297: Fundament

Legend: Fart Penis Vagina Sexual Intercourse

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• 1400: Carnal knowing

Buttocks

• 1552: To break wind

1500

• 1480: Melling

1400

• 1325: Cunt 1300

1200

• 1250: Fart

• 1480: Semence

• 1390: Nature

• 1568: Fucking

• 1541: Virile member

• 1475: Rump

• c. 1555: Prick • 1483: Copulation • 1549: Let a scape • 1553: Tool • 1544: Occupying

up to him and said, “May God honor you, is all well with you?” “Very well indeed,” replied my brother. Then she ordered food to be brought, and a delicious meal was produced for him. She sat and joined him in eating it, but all the while she could not stop laughing, although whenever he looked at her, she turned away to her maids as though she was laughing at them. She made a show of affection for him and joked with him while he, donkey that he is, understood nothing. He was so far under the influence of desire that he thought that the girl was in love with him and that she would allow him his wish. After they had finished eating, wine was produced, and then ten maids like moons came with stringed lutes in their hands and they started to sing with great emotion. Overcome by delight, my brother took a glass from the girl’s hand and drained it before standing up. The girl then drank a glass. “Good health,” said my brother, and he made her another obeisance. She then gave him a second glass to drink, but when he did this, she slapped him on the nape of his

neck. At that my brother left the room as fast as he could, but the old woman followed him and started winking at him, as if to tell him to go back. So back he went, and when the girl told him to sit down, he sat without a word. She then slapped him again on the nape of his neck, and not content with that, she ordered all her maids to slap him. All the while he was saying to the old woman, “I have never seen anything finer than this,” while the old woman was exclaiming to her mistress that that was enough. But the maids went on slapping him until he was almost unconscious. When he had to get up to answer the call of nature, the old woman caught up with him and said, “A little endurance and you will get what you want.” “How long do I have to endure,” he asked, “now that I have been slapped almost unconscious?” “When she gets drunk,” the old woman told him, “you will get what you want.” So my brother went back and sat down in his place. All the maids stood up and their mistress told them to perfume my brother and to sprinkle • 1890: Spunk

• 1653: Crack

• 1851: Rear end

• 1674: Egg fry

• 1897: Roar • 1772: Shagging

1700

1600

• 1623: Crepitate

• 1794: Bottom

• 1955: Kootch • 1927: Poontang • 1927: Beaver

1800

• 1708: Frigging

• 1891: Dick

1900

• 1594: Foist

• 1967: Scum

2014

• 1578: Penis

• 1914: Jelly roll

• 1602: Mawkin • 1618: Cock

• 1682: Vagina

• 1896: Mattress jig

• 1675: Bumfiddle • 1594: Crupper • 1640: Manhood • 1635: Nature’s treasury • 1627: (To play at) Hot cockles

• 1930: Nookie

• 1823: Ultimatum

• 1879: John Thomas • 1753: Sexual Intercourse • 1756: Moon • 1785: Cock alley

• 1935: Bim • 1930: Ass

• 1904: Snatch • 1899: Jism

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rosewater over his face. When they had done this, the girl said, “May God bring you honor. You have entered my house and endured the condition I imposed. Whoever disobeys me, I expel, but whoever endures reaches his goal.” “I am your slave, lady,” said my brother, “and you hold me in the palm of your hand.” “Know,” she replied, “that God has made me passionately fond of amusement, and those who indulge me in this get what they seek.” On her orders, the maids sang with loud voices until all present were filled with delight. She then said to one of them, “Take your master, do what needs to be done to him, and then bring him back immediately.” The maid took my brother, little knowing what was going to be Laughter is an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing.  —Immanuel Kant, 1790 done to him. He was joined by the old woman, who said, “Be patient—you will not have to wait long.” His face cleared, and he went with the maid heeding the words of the old woman telling him that patience would bring him his desire. He then asked, “What is the maid going to do?” “No harm will come to you,” said the old woman, “may I be your ransom. She is going to dye your eyebrows and pluck out your mustache.” “Dye on the eyebrows can be washed away,” said my brother, “but plucking out a mustache is a painful business.” “Take care not to disobey her,” said the old lady, “for her heart is fixed on you.” So my brother patiently allowed his eyebrows to be dyed and his mustache plucked. The maid went to her mistress and told her of this, but her mistress said, “There is one thing more. You have to shave his chin so as to leave him beardless.” The maid returned to tell my brother of her mistress’ order, and he, the fool, objected, “But won’t this make me a public disgrace?” The old woman explained, “She only wants to do that to you so that you may be smooth and beardless, with nothing on your face that 146 

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might prick her, for she has fallen most deeply in love with you. So be patient, for you will get what you want.” Patiently my brother submitted to the maid and let his beard be shaved. The girl then had him brought out, with his dyed eyebrows, his shorn mustache, his shaven chin, and his red face. At first, the lady recoiled from him in alarm, but then she laughed until she fell over. “My master,” she said, “you have won me by your good nature.” Then she urged him to get up and dance, which he did, and there was not a cushion in the room that she did not throw at him, while the maids began to pelt him with oranges, lemons, and citrons, until he fell fainting from the blows, the cuffs that he had suffered on the back of his neck, and the things that had been thrown at him. “Now,” said the old woman, “you have achieved your goal. There will be no more blows, and there is only one thing left. It is a habit of my mistress that, when she is drunk, she will not let anyone have her until she has stripped off her clothes, including her harem trousers, and is entirely naked. Then she will tell you to remove your own clothes and to start running, while she runs in front of you as though she was trying to escape from you. You must follow her from place to place until you have an erection, and she will then let you take her.” She told him to strip, and he got up in a daze and took off all his clothes until he was naked. “Get up now,” the lady told my brother, “and when you start running, I’ll run too.” She, too, stripped and said, “If you want me, then come and get me.” Off she ran, with my brother following. She started to go into one room after another, before dashing off somewhere else, with my brother behind her, overcome by lust, his penis rampant, like a madman. In she went to a darkened room, but when my brother ran in after her, he trod on a thin board that gave way beneath him, and before he knew what was happening, he was in the middle of a lane in the market of the leather sellers, who were calling their wares and buying and selling. When they saw him in that state, naked, with an erection, a shaven chin,

John with Drawing of a Clown, by Francesco Caroto, c. 1520.

dyed eyebrows, and reddened cheeks, they cried out against him, slapped him with their hands, and started to beat him in his nakedness with leather straps, until he fainted. Then they sat him on a donkey and took him to the wali. When the wali asked about him, they said, “He fell down in this state from Shams al-Din’s house.” The wali sentenced him to a hundred lashes and banished him from Baghdad, but I went out after him and brought him back in secret. I have given him an allowance for his

food, but were it not for my sense of honor, I could not put up with a man like him. From The Thousand and One Nights. One of the earliest mentions in Arabic of some of this collection’s stories dates from a tenth-century work referring to a grouping of legends from India, Greece, and Iran called A Thousand Tales. In the early 1700s, French scholar Antoine Galland worked from a fifteenth-century Syrian version of the tales to produce the first Western translation of Nights, supplementing it with oral and written stories from other sources, such as those about the seven voyages of a sailor named Sindbad.

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1905:

Vienna

sigmund freud psychoanalyzes the joke It is easy to give an overview of the tendencies present in jokes. Where a joke is not an end in itself, i.e.‚ innocuous, it puts itself at the service of two tendencies only, which can themselves be merged into a single viewpoint; it is either a hostile joke (used for aggression, satire, defense) or it is an obscene joke (used to strip someone naked). Again, we should note from the start that the technical variety of the joke—whether it is a verbal or an intellectual joke—bears no relation to these two tendencies. Laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature. Laughter hath only a scornful tickling.  —Philip Sidney, 1582 But it will take us longer to lay out the way in which jokes serve these tendencies. In this investigation I would like to begin not with hostile jokes but with obscene jokes. It is true, the latter have been deemed worthy of study far less often, as if a revulsion from their subject matter had carried over to the object. However, let us not be thrown off course by this, for straightaway we are about to come upon a borderline kind of joke which promises to throw light on more than one dark point. We know what is understood by bawdry: deliberately emphasizing sexual facts and relations by talking about them. However, this definition is no more conclusive than any other. A lecture on the anatomy of the sexual organs or on the physiology of reproduction, despite this definition, need not have a single point of contact in common with bawdry. It is also characteristic of bawdy talk that it is directed at a particular person by whom the speaker is sexually aroused and is meant to make them aware of this arousal by listening to the bawdry and so becoming sexually aroused themselves. 148 

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Instead of being aroused, the person might also be made to feel shame or embarrassment, which only implies a reaction against their arousal and, in this roundabout way, an admission of it. Bawdy talk, then, is in origin directed at women and is to be regarded as the equivalent of an attempt at seduction. So if a man in male company enjoys telling or listening to bawdy stories, the original situation—which cannot be realized on account of social impediments— is also imagined as well. Anyone who laughs at the bawdy talk they have heard is laughing like a spectator at an act of sexual aggression. The sexual subject matter that forms the content of bawdry includes more than what is specific to either sex; over and above this, it includes what the two sexes have in common to which the feeling of shame extends, that is, excremental subject matter in all its range. But this is the range that sexual subject matter has in childhood; in the imagination at this stage there exists a latrine, as it were, where what is sexual and what is excremental are distinguished badly or not at all. Everywhere in the field of thinking investigated by the psychology of neuroses, the sexual still includes the excremental and is understood in the old, infantile, sense. Bawdry is like an act of unclothing the person of the different sex at whom it is directed. By voicing the obscene words it forces the person attacked to imagine the particular part of the body or the act involved and shows them that the aggressor himself is imagining it. There is no doubt that the pleasure in gazing on what is sexual revealed in its nakedness is the original motive of bawdy talk. In men a high degree of this urge persists as a component of the libido and serves to introduce the sex act. If this urge asserts itself on the first approach to the woman, it has to make use of speech for two reasons. First, to lay claim to the woman, and second, because by summoning up the idea the words spoken may kindle the corresponding state of arousal in the woman herself and waken her inclination to passive exhibitionism. These words of solicitation do not go as far as bawdry, but can pass

over into it. For in a situation where the woman soon becomes willing, the obscene speech is short-lived—it promptly gives way to a sexual action. It is different if the woman’s willingness cannot be counted on, and a defensive reaction on her part makes its appearance instead. Then the sexually arousing speech becomes—in the form of bawdry—an end in itself; as the sexual aggression is checked in its advance toward the act, it lingers on the evocation of arousal and derives pleasure from signs of it in the woman. In doing so, the aggression probably also changes character, in the same way as every movement in the libido does when it meets an obstacle; it becomes plainly hostile, cruel—that is, it calls on the sadistic components of the sexual drive for help against the obstacle. The woman’s intransigence, then, is the most immediate prerequisite for bawdry to develop, though one which merely seems to imply postponement, offering the prospect that further efforts might not be in vain. The ideal case

of this kind of resistance on the woman’s part occurs if another man, a third party, is present at the same time, for then any immediate acquiescence from the woman is as good as out of the question. This third party soon becomes very important for the development of the bawdry, but above all, we should not disregard the presence of the woman. Among country people or in lower-class taverns, one can observe that it is only when the barmaid or the landlady comes on the scene that the bawdry gets going; the opposite occurs only when we reach a higher social level, and the presence of a female person puts an end to the bawdry; the men save this kind of conversation—which originally presupposed the presence of a woman made ashamed—until they are “among themselves.” And so, gradually, instead of the woman, it is the spectator or, in this case, the listener, who becomes the target audience for the bawdry, and this transformation already makes the bawdry approach the character of a joke. Banjo player on a street, c. 1920.

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Only when we rise into more cultivated society do we find the addition of the formal requirements for jokes. The bawdry becomes witty, and is tolerated only if it is witty. The technical device it uses most is allusion, i.e.‚ replacement by something small, something remotely related that the listener can reconstruct in his imagination into a full and plain obscenity. The greater the disproportion between what is given directly in the joke and what it has necessarily aroused in the listener, the subtler the joke, and the higher it may dare enter into good society. Apart from allusion, coarse or subtle, the bawdy joke has all the other devices of verbal and intellectual jokes at its disposal. All comedies are ended by a marriage.  —Lord Byron, c. 1821 Here at last we can understand what a joke can do for its tendency. It makes the satisfaction of a drive possible (be it lustful or hostile) in the face of an obstacle in its way; it circumvents this obstacle and in doing so draws pleasure from a source that the obstacle had made inaccessible. The obstacle in the way is actually nothing other than woman’s increased inability, in conformity with a higher cultural and social level, to tolerate sexual matters undisguised. The woman thought of as being present in the original situation is simply kept on as if she were there or, even in her absence, her influence continues to have the effect of making the men abashed. One may observe how men of a higher social level are prompted by the presence of girls of a lower class to let their bawdy jokes revert to simple bawdy talk. The power that makes it difficult or impossible for women, and to a lesser extent men, too, to enjoy undisguised obscenity we call repression, and we recognize in it the same psychical process which in cases of serious psychological illness keeps entire complexes of impulses as well as their issue far from consciousness, and which has turned out to be one of the main causal factors in what are called the psychoneuroses. We 150 

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grant that higher culture and education have a great influence on the development of repression, and we assume that under these conditions a change in psychical organization comes about, which could also be contributed by an inherited disposition—with the result that what was once felt to be agreeable now appears unacceptable and is rejected with all the force of the psyche. Through our culture’s work of repression, primary possibilities of enjoyment, now spurned by the censorship within us, are lost. But all renunciation is very difficult for the human psyche, and so we find that tendentious jokes provide a means of reversing the process of renunciation and of regaining what was lost. When we laugh at an indecent joke that is subtle, we are laughing at the same thing that causes the bumpkin to laugh in a coarse obscenity; in both cases the pleasure is drawn from the same source, but we would not be capable of laughing at the coarse obscenity—we would be ashamed, or it would appear disgusting to us—we can only laugh when the joke has come to our help. The tendentious joke has other sources of pleasure at its disposal than the innocuous kind, where all the pleasure is somehow linked to technique. We can also emphasize afresh that in tendentious jokes we are not capable of distinguishing by our feeling which share of our pleasure has its source in technique, and which in tendency. So we do not in the strict sense know what we are laughing at. In the case of all obscene jokes, we are subject to gross illusions of judgment as to how “good” the joke is, insofar as this depends on formal requirements; the technique of these jokes is often pretty feeble, the laughter they provoke tremendous. From The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious. Shortly before he published his first major work, The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud sent a copy of it to his friend Wilhelm Fleiss, who suggested that the recounted dreams were too humorous. Freud replied, “All dreamers are equally intolerably witty, and they are so because they are under pressure; the straight path is barred to them…The apparent wit of all unconscious processes is intimately linked to the theory of the witty and the comic.” Six years later Freud published his work on humor, relating “joke work” to “dream work.”

Name Calling Dorothy Parker on Katharine Hepburn She ran the whole gamut of emotion from A to B. Oscar Wilde on Alexander Pope There are two ways of disliking poetry, one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.

W. B. Yeats on Wilfred Owen Unworthy of the poets’ corner of a country newspaper.

Henry James on Thomas Carlyle The same old sausage, fizzing and sputtering in its own grease.

William Faulkner on Henry James One of nicest old ladies I ever met.

Thomas Carlyle on Ralph Waldo Emerson A hoary-headed and toothless baboon.

Ralph Waldo Emerson on Algernon Charles Swinburne A leper and a mere sodomite.

Algernon Charles Swinburne on Lord Byron The most affected of sensualists and the most pretentious of profligates.

Joan Mitchell on Helen Frankenthaler That tampon painter.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Edward Gibbon Gibbon’s style is detestable; but is not the worst thing about him.

Cecil Beaton on Evelyn Waugh Died of snobbery.

Pauline Kael on Anthony Quinn Needs a personality transplant.

Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.

Alfred Kazin on William Faulkner Curiously dull, furiously commonplace, and often meaningless.

David Niven on Jayne Mansfield Miss United Dairies herself.

Vita Sackville-West on Max Beerbohm A shallow, affected, self-conscious fribble—so there.

Harry Truman on Adlai Stevenson No better than a regular sissy.

Lord Byron on William Cowper That maniacal Calvinist and coddled poet.

Winston Churchill on Charles de Gaulle Like a female llama surprised in her bath.

Edward Gibbon on Samuel Johnson Greedy of every pretense to hate and persecute those who dissent from his creed.

Thomas Babington Macaulay on Socrates The more I read about him, the less I wonder that they poisoned him.

Samuel Johnson on Oliver Goldsmith He goes on without knowing how he is to get off.

Cyril Connolly on George Orwell He could not blow his nose without moralizing on the state of the handkerchief industry.

Igor Stravinsky on Benjamin Britten Not a composer. A kleptomaniac.

Margaret Kendal on Sarah Bernhardt A great actress, from the waist down.

George Orwell on W. H. Auden The kind of person who is always somewhere else when the trigger is pulled.

Zelda Fitzgerald on Ernest Hemingway A pansy with hair on his chest.

Clifton Fadiman on Gertrude Stein A past master in making nothing happen very slowly.

Ava Gardner on Clark Gable The kind of guy who, if you say, “Hiya, Clark, how are yah?” is stuck for an answer.

Dwight Macdonald on Doris Day As wholesome as a bowl of cornflakes and at least as sexy.

Gertrude Stein on Ezra Pound A village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.

Ezra Pound on G. K. Chesterton Like a vile scum on a pond.

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2002:

Somers, NY

i shall not compare thee You are the bread and the knife, The crystal goblet and the wine…   —Jacques Crickillon You are the bread and the knife, the crystal goblet and the wine. You are the dew on the morning grass and the burning wheel of the sun. You are the white apron of the baker, and the marsh birds suddenly in flight. However, you are not the wind in the orchard, the plums on the counter, or the house of cards. And you are certainly not the pine-scented air. There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air. It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge, maybe even the pigeon on the general’s head, but you are not even close to being the field of cornflowers at dusk. And a quick look in the mirror will show that you are neither the boots in the corner nor the boat asleep in its boathouse. It might interest you to know, speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world, that I am the sound of rain on the roof. I also happen to be the shooting star, the evening paper blowing down an alley and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table. I am also the moon in the trees and the blind woman’s teacup. But don’t worry, I’m not the bread and the knife. You are still the bread and the knife. You will always be the bread and the knife, not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine. Billy Collins, “Litany.” Collins is the author of numerous books of poetry, among them The Art of Drowning, Picnic, Lightning, and Ballistics. The U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003, he once said in an interview, “One of the differences between being a novelist and a poet is that the novelist kind of moves into your house. I mean, it takes three days or three weeks to read a novel. I think of the novelist as a houseguest. The poet is more someone who just appears. You know, a door opens, and there’s the poet.”

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1963:

Los Angeles

lenny bruce loses the crowd “Are you a sick comic?” “Why do they call you a sick comic?” “Do you mind being called a sick comic?” It is impossible to label me. I develop, on the average, four minutes of new material a night, constantly growing and changing my point of view; I am heinously guilty of the paradoxes I assail in our society.

The reason for the label sick comic is the lack of creativity among journalists and critics. There is a comedy actor from England with a definite Chaplinesque quality. “Mr. Guinness, do you mind being called a Chaplinesque comic?” There is a comedian by the name of Peter Sellers who has a definite Guinnessesque quality. “Mr. Sellers, why do they say you have a Guinnessesque quality?” The motivation of the interviewer is not to get a terse, accurate answer, but rather to write an interesting, slanted article within the

Portrait of the Artist with the Features of a Mocker (detail), by Joseph Ducreux, c. 1793.

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boundaries of the editorial outlook of his particular publication, so that he will be given the wherewithal to make the payment on his MG. Therefore this writer prostitutes his integrity by asking questions, the answers to which he already has, much like a cook who follows a recipe and mixes the ingredients properly. Concomitant with the sick comic label is the carbon cry, “What happened to the healthy comedian who just got up there and showed everybody a good time and didn’t preach, didn’t have to resort to knocking religion, mocking physical handicaps and telling dirty toilet jokes?” Yes, what did happen to the wholesome trauma of the 1930s and 1940s—the honeymoon jokes, concerned not only with what they did but also with how many times they did it; the distorted wedding-night tales, supported visually by the trite vacationland postcards of an elephant with his trunk searching through the opening of a pup tent, and a woman’s head straining out the other end, hysterically The Storyteller, by Eugenio Zampighi, c. 1900.

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screaming, “George!”—whatever happened to all this wholesomeness? What happened to the healthy comedian who at least had good taste?…Ask the comedians who used to do the harelip jokes, or the moron jokes—“The moron who went to the orphans’ picnic,” etc.—the healthy comedians who told good-natured jokes that found Pat and Abie and Rastus outside of St. Peter’s gate all listening to those angels harping in stereotype. Whatever happened to Joe E. Lewis? His contribution to comedy consisted of returning Bacchus to his godlike pose with an implicit social message: “If you’re going to be a swinger and fun to be with, always have a glass of booze in your hand; even if you don’t become part swinger, you’re sure to end up with part liver.” Whatever happened to Henny Youngman? He involved himself with a nightly psychodrama named Sally, or sometimes Laura. She possessed features not sexually but economically stimulating. Mr. Youngman’s Uglivac crossfiled and clas-

sified diabolic deformities definitively. “Her nose was so big that every time she sneezed…” “She was so bowlegged that every time…” “One leg was shorter than the other…” And Mr. Youngman’s mutant reaped financial harvest for him. Other comedians followed suit with Cockeyed Jennies, et al., until the Ugly Girl routines became classics. I assume this fondness for atrophy gave the nightclub patron a sense of well-being. And whatever happened to Jerry Lewis? His neorealistic impression of the Japanese male captured all the subtleties of the Japanese physiognomy. The bucktoothed malocclusion was caricatured to surrealistic proportions until the teeth matched the blades that extended from Ben-Hur’s chariot. Highlighting the absence of the iris with Coke-bottle-thick lenses, this satire has added to the fanatical devotion which Japanese students have for the United States. Just ask Eisenhower. Whatever happened to Milton Berle? He brought transvestitism to championship bowling and upset a hardcore culture of dykes that control the field. From Charlie’s Aunt and Some Like it Hot and Milton Berle, the pervert has been taken out of Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis and made into a sometimes-fun fag. Berle never lost his sense of duty to the public, though. Although he gave homosexuals a peek out of the damp cellar of unfavorable public opinion, he didn’t go all the way; he left a stigma of menace on his fag—“I sweah I’w kiw you.” I was labeled a “sicknik” by Time magazine, whose editorial policy still finds humor in a person’s physical shortcomings: “Shelly Berman has a face like a hastily sculptured hamburger.” The healthy comic would never offend…unless you happen to be fat, bald, skinny, deaf, or blind. The proxy vote from purgatory has not yet been counted. Let’s say I’m working at the Crescendo on the coast. There’ll be Arlene Dahl with some New Wave writer from Algiers, and on the whole it’s a cooking kind of audience. But I’ll finish a show, and some guy will come up to me and say, “I—I’m a club owner, and I’d like you to work for me. It’s a beautiful club. You ever

work in Milwaukee? Lots of people like you there, and you’ll really do great. You’ll kill ’em. You’ll have a lot of fun. Do you bowl?” The only thing is, I know that in those clubs between Los Angeles and New York the people in the audience are a little older than me. The most I can say to people over fifty or fifty-five is, “Thank you, I’ve had enough to eat.” I get to Milwaukee, and the first thing that frightens me to death is that they’ve got a six-thirty dinner show…six-thirty in the Some things are privileged from jest—namely, religion, matters of state, great persons, all men’s present business of importance, and any case that deserves pity.  —Francis Bacon, 1597 afternoon and people go to a nightclub! It’s not even dark out yet. I don’t wanna go in the house—it’s not dark yet, man. If the dinner show is held up, it’s only because the Jell-O’s not hard. The people look familiar, but I’ve never been to Milwaukee before. Then I realize—these are the Grayline Sightseeing Bus Tours before they leave—this is where they live. They’re like fortyyear-old chicks with prom gowns on. They don’t laugh, they don’t heckle, they just stare at me in disbelief. And there are walkouts, walkouts, every night, walkouts. The owner says to me, “Well, I never saw you do that religious bit…and those words you use!” The chef is confused—the desserts aren’t moving. I go to the men’s room, and I see kids in there. Kids four years old, six years old. These kids are in awe of this men’s room. It’s the first time they’ve ever been in a place their mother isn’t allowed in. Not even for a minute. Not even to get something is she allowed in there. And the kids stay in there for hours. “Come out of there!” “No. Uh-uh.” “I’m going to come in and get you.” “No, you’re not allowed in here, ’cause everybody’s doing, making wet in here.” 155

In between shows I’m a walker, and I’m getting nudgy and nervous. The owner decides to cushion me with his introduction: “Ladies and gentlemen, the star of our show, Lenny Bruce, who, incidentally, is an ex-GI and, uh, a hell of a good performer, folks, and a great kidder, know what I mean? It’s all a bunch of silliness up here, and he doesn’t mean what he says. He kids about the pope and about the Jewish religion, too, and the colored people and the white people—it’s all a silly, make-believe world. And he’s a hell of a nice guy, folks. He was at the Veterans’ Hospital today doing a There are two things at which I cannot choose but laugh: a woman reading Sanskrit and a man singing a song.  —King Shūdraka, c. 450 show for the boys. And here he is—his mom’s out here tonight, too, she hasn’t seen him in a couple of years—she lives here in town…Now, a joke is a joke, right, folks? What the hell. I wish that you’d try to cooperate. And whoever has been sticking ice picks in the tires outside, he’s not funny. Now Lenny may kid about narcotics, homosexuality, and things like that…” And he gets walkouts. I get off the floor, and a waitress says to me, “Listen, there’s a couple, they want to meet you.” It’s a nice couple, about fifty years old. The guy asks me, “You from New York?” “Yes.” “I recognized that accent.” And he’s looking at me, with a sort of searching hope in his eyes, and then he says, “Are you Jewish?” “Yes.” “What are you doing in a place like this?” “I’m passing.” He says, “Listen, I know you show people eat all that crap on the road…” (Of course. What did you eat tonight? Crap on the road.) And they invite me to have a nice dinner at their house the next day. He writes out the address, you know, with the ballpoint pen on the wet cocktail napkin. 156 

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That night I go to my hotel—I’m staying at the local show-business hotel; the other show people consist of two people, the guy who runs the movie projector and another guy who sells Capezio shoes—and I read a little, write a little. I finally get to sleep about seven o’clock in the morning. The phone rings at nine o’clock. “Hello, hello, hello, this is the Sheckners— the people from last night. We didn’t wake you up, did we?” “No, I always get up at nine in the morning. I like to get up about ten hours before work so I can brush my teeth and get some coffee. It’s good you got me up. I probably would have overslept otherwise.” “Listen, why we called you—we want to find out what you want to eat.” “Oh, anything. I’m not a fussy eater, really.” I went over there that night, and I do eat anything—anything but what they had. Liver. And Brussels sprouts. That’s really a double threat. And the conversation was on the level of, “Is it true about Liberace?” That’s all I have to hear, then I really start to lay it on them: “Oh, yeah, they’re all queer out there in Hollywood. All of them. Rin Tin Tin’s a junkie.” Then they take you on a tour around the house. They bring you into the bedroom with the dumb dolls on the bed. And what the hell can you tell people when they walk you around in their house? “Yes, that’s a very lovely closet, that’s nice the way the towels are folded.” They have a piano, with the big lace doily on top, and the bowl of wax fruit. The main function of these pianos is to hold an eight-by-ten picture of the son in the army, saluting. “That’s Morty; he lost a lot of weight.” The trouble is, in these towns—Milwaukee; Lima, Ohio—there’s nothing else to do, except look at stars. In the daytime, you go to the park to see the cannon, and you’ve had it. One other thing—you can hang out at the Socony Gas Station between shows and get gravel in your shoes. Those night attendants really swing.

Buster Keaton, film still from The Cameraman, directed by Edward Sedgwick, 1928.

“Lemme see the grease rack go up again,” I say. “Can I try it?” “No, you’ll break it.” “Can I try on your black-leather bow tie?” “No. Hey, Lenny, you wanna see a clean toilet? You been in a lot of service stations, right? Did you ever see one this immaculate?” “It’s beautiful.” “Now don’t lie to me.” “Would I lie to you about something like that?” “I thought you’d like it, because I know you’ve seen everything in your travels—” “It’s gorgeous. In fact, if anyone ever says to me, ‘Where is there a clean toilet, I’ve been searching forever,’ I’ll say, ‘Take 101 into 17 up through 50,’ and I’ll just send ’em right here.” “You could eat off the floor, right Lenny?” “You certainly could.” “Want a sandwich?” “No thanks.” Then I start fooling around with his condom-vending machine.

“You sell many of these here?” “I don’t know.” “You fill up the thing here?” “No, a guy comes around.” “You wear condoms ever?” “Yeah.” “Do you wear them all the time?” “No.” “Do you have one on now?” “No.” “Well, what do you do if you have to tell some chick, ‘I’m going to put a condom on now’—it’s going to kill everything.” I ask the gas-station attendant if I can put one on. “Are you crazy or something?” “No, I figure it’s something to do. We’ll both put condoms on. We’ll take a picture.” “Now, get the hell out of here, you nut, you.” I can’t help it, though. Condoms are so dumb. They’re sold for the prevention of love. As far as chicks are concerned, these small towns are dead. The cab drivers ask you where 157

to get laid. It’s really a hang-up. Every chick I meet, the first thing they hit me with is, “Look, I don’t know what kind of a girl you think I am, but I know you show people, you’ve got all those broads down in the dressing room, and they’re all ready for you, and I’m not gonna…” “That’s a lie, there’s nobody down there!” “Never mind, I know you get all you want.” “I don’t!” That’s what everybody thinks, but there’s nobody in the dressing room. That’s why Frank Sinatra never gets any. It’s hip not to ball him.

1974: London

toning it down

Dear Mike, The censor’s representative, Tony Kerpel, came along to Friday’s screening at Twickenham, and he gave us his opinion of the film’s probable certificate. He thinks the film will be AA, but it would be possible, given some dialog cuts, to make the film an A rating, which would increase the audience. (AA is 14 and over, and A is 5–14.) For an A we would have to: Lose as many shits as possible Take Jesus Christ out, if possible Lose “I fart in your general direction” Lose “the oral sex” Lose “oh, fuck off ” Lose “We make castanets out of your testicles.” I would like to get back to the Censor and agree to lose the shits, take the odd Jesus Christ out, and lose “Oh, fuck off,” but to retain “fart in your general direction,” “castanets of your testicles,” and “oral sex,” and ask him for an A rating on that basis. Please let me know as soon as possible your attitude to this. Yours sincerely, Mark Forstater, a letter to Michael White, a fellow producer of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Forstater wrote this letter a few days after a representative from the British Board of Film Censors had seen a preview screening of the comedy group’s second feature film. “I fart in your general direction,” mentions of Jesus, two of the shits, “oral sex,” and the castanet-testicle line all stayed in the picture, released in 1975, eight months after this missive was written.

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“Listen, now, they all ball him, I’m not gonna ball him.” And the poor schmuck really sings “Only the Lonely.” It’s a real hang-up, being divorced when you’re on the road. Suppose it’s three o’clock in the morning: I’ve just done the last show, I meet a girl, and I like her, and suppose I have a record I’d like her to hear, or I just want to talk to her—there’s no lust, no carnal image there— but because where I live is a dirty word, I can’t say to her, “Would you come to my hotel?” And every healthy comedian has given motel such a dirty connotation that I couldn’t ask my grandmother to go to a motel, say I wanted to give her a Gutenberg Bible at three in the morning. The next day at two in the afternoon, when the Kiwanis Club meets there, then hotel is clean. But at three o’clock in the morning, Jim…Christ, where the hell can you live that’s clean? You can’t say hotel to a chick, so you try to think, what won’t offend? What is a clean word to society? What is a clean word that won’t offend any chick? Trailer. That’s it, trailer. “Will you come to my trailer?” “All right, there’s nothing dirty about trailers. Trailers are hunting and fishing and Salem cigarettes. Yes, of course, I’ll come to your trailer. Where is it?” “Inside my hotel room.” Why can’t you just say, “I want to be with you and hug and kiss you.” No, it’s “Come up while I change my shirt.” Or coffee. “Let’s have a cup of coffee.” In fifty years, coffee will be another dirty word. From How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. Born Leonard Alfred Schneider in 1925, Bruce was dishonorably discharged from the Navy in 1946 after falsely claiming to possess homosexual urges. “A lot of people say to me, ‘Why did you kill Christ?’” he once said. “I dunno…It was one of those parties, got out of hand.” After he was arrested on charges of obscenity in 1964, Allen Ginsberg formed the Emergency Committee Against the Harassment of Lenny Bruce. The comedian was sentenced to four months in jail; he died two years later from a morphine overdose.

c. 105:

Rome

more in anger than in sorrow When a flabby eunuch marries, when well-born girls go crazy For pig-sticking upcountry, bare-breasted and spear in fist; When the barber who rasped away at my youthful beard has risen To challenge good society with his millions; when Crispinus— That Delta-bred house slave, silt-washed down by the Nile— Now hitches his shoulders under Tyrian purple, airs A thin gold ring in summer on his sweaty finger (“My dear, I couldn’t bear to wear my heavier jewels”), Why then, it is harder not to be writing satires; for who Could endure this monstrous city, however callous at heart, And swallow his wrath? Look: here comes a brand-new litter, Crammed with its corpulent owner, some chiseling advocate. Who’s next? An informer. He turned in his noble patron, And soon he’ll have gnawed away that favorite bone of his, The aristocracy. Lesser informers dread him, grease His palm with ample bribes, while the wives of trembling actors A Caricature Group, by John Hamilton Mortimer, c. 1766.

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Grease him the other way. Today we are elbowed aside By men who earn legacies in bed, who rise to the top Via that quickest, most popular route—the satisfied desires Of some rich old matron. Each lover will get his cut, A twelfth share in the estate, or eleven-twelfths, depending On the size of his—services rendered. I suppose he deserves Some recompense for all that sweat and exertion: he looks As pale as the man who steps barefoot on a snake—or is waiting His turn to declaim, at Lyons, in Caligula’s competitions. Need I tell you how anger burns in my heart when I see The bystanders jostled back by a mob of bravos Whose master has first debauched his ward, and later Defrauded the boy as well? The courts condemned him, But the verdict was a farce. Who cares for reputation If he keeps his cash? A provincial governor, exiled For extortion, boozes and feasts all day, basks cheerfully In the wrathful eye of the gods; it’s still his province, After winning the case against him, that feels the pinch. Are not such themes well worthy of Horace’s pen? Should I Not attack them, too? Must I stick to the usual round Of Hercules’ labors, what Diomede did, the bellowing Of that thingummy in the labyrinth, or the tale of the flying carpenter, and how his son went splash in the sea? Will these suffice in an age when each pimp of a husband Takes gifts from his own wife’s lover—if she is barred in law From inheriting legacies—and, while they paw each other, Tactfully stares at the ceiling, or snores, wide awake, in his wine? Will these suffice, when the young blade who has squandered His family fortune on racing stables still reckons to get Command of a cohort? Just watch him lash his horses Down the Flaminian Way like Achilles’ charioteer, Reins bunched in one hand, showing off to his mistress Who stands beside him, wrapped in his riding cloak! Don’t you want to cram whole notebooks with scribbled invective When you stand at the corner and see some forger carried past On the necks of six porters, lounging back like Maecenas In his open litter? A counterfeit seal, a will, a mere scrap Of paper—these were enough to convert him to wealth and honor. Do you see that distinguished lady? She has the perfect dose For her husband—old wine with a dash of parching toad’s blood. Locusta’s a child to her; she trains her untutored neighbors To ignore all unkind rumors, to stalk through angry crowds With their black and bloated husbands before them on the hearse. If you want to be someone today you must nerve yourself For deeds that could earn you an island exile, or years in jail.

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The Journalists, by Hannah Höch, 1925.

Honesty’s praised, but honest men freeze. Wealth springs from crime: Landscape gardens, palaces, furniture, antique silver— Those cups embossed with prancing goats—all, all are tainted. Who can sleep easy today? If your greedy daughter-in-law Is not being seduced for cash, it’ll be your bride: mere schoolboys Are adulterers now. Though talent be wanting, yet Indignation will drive me to verse, such as I—or any scribbler— May still command. All human endeavors, men’s prayers, Fears, angers, pleasures, joys, and pursuits, these make The mixed mash of my verse. Juvenal, from Satires. The origins of what the Romans called satura were debated in the ancient world and have not been agreed upon since. The first-century rhetorician Quintilian claimed that the form was “wholly” Roman, suggesting it began with second-century-bc writers like Lucilius, while Horace, who wrote his own satires in the first century bc, posited that Lucilius was “entirely” reliant on such Greeks as Aristophanes. Failing to obtain a post in Emperor Domitian’s administration in the 80s, Juvenal disparaged court favoritism in one of his satires and is believed to have been banished. About the Roman people, he wrote that they craved only “bread and circuses.”

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1882:

San Francisco

the reply churlish That sovereign of insufferables Oscar Wilde [London, page 82] has ensued with his opulence of twaddle and his penury of sense. He has mounted his hind legs and blown crass vapidities through the bowel of his neck, to the capital edification of circumjacent fools and foolesses, fooling with their foolers. He has tossed off the top of his head and uttered himself in copious overflows of ghastly bosh. The ineffable dunce has nothing to say and says it—says it with a liberal embellishment of bad delivery, embroidering it with reasonless vulgarities of attitude, gesture, and attire. There never was an impostor so hateful, a blockhead so stupid, a crank so variously and offensively daft. Therefore is the she-fool enamored of the feel of his tongue in her ear to tickle her understanding. The limpid and spiritless vacuity of this intellectual jellyfish is in ludicrous contrast with the rude but robust mental activities that he came to quicken and inspire. Not only has he no thought, but no thinker. His lecture is mere verbal ditchwater—meaningless, trite, and without coherence. It lacks even the nastiness that exalts and refines his verse. Moreover, it is obviously his own; he had not even the energy and independence to steal it. And so, with a knowledge that would equip an idiot to dispute with a cast-iron dog, and eloquence to qualify him for the duties of a caller on a hog ranch, and an imagination adequate to the conception of a tomcat, when fired by contemplation of a fiddle string, this consummate and starlike youth, missing everything his heavenappointed functions and offices, wanders about posing as a statute of himself and, like the sunsmitten image of Memnon, emitting meaningless murmurs in the blaze of women’s eyes. He makes me tired. And this gawky gowk has the divine effrontery to link his name with those of Algernon Charles Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and William Morris—this dunghill he-hen would 162 

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The dwarf Yaksa, from the Pitalkhora Caves, Maharashtra, India, c. 100 bc.

fly with eagles. He dares to set his tongue to the honored name of John Keats. He is the leader, quoth’a, of a renaissance in art, this man who cannot draw—of a revival of letters, this man who cannot write! This little and looniest of a brotherhood of simpletons, whom the wicked wits of London, haling him dazed from his obscurity, have crowned and crucified as King of the Cranks, has accepted the distinction in stupid good faith, and our foolish people take him at his word. Mr. Wilde is pinnacled upon a dazzling eminence, but the earth still trembles to the dull thunder of the kicks that set him up. Ambrose Bierce, from his Prattle column in The Wasp. Bierce published his denunciation four days after Wilde delivered a lecture at Platt’s Hall in San Francisco as part of his American speaking tour on aestheticism. A prolific newspaperman for decades, Bierce began to publish “Devil’s Dictionary” entries in 1881 and contradicted the editorial policy of his employer William Randolph Hearst by condemning the Spanish-American War in 1898. He disappeared in 1913: he is thought to have been traveling to Mexico to lend a hand in Pancho Villa’s revolution.

c. 1650:

Paris

sticks and stones Cyrano: If anyone has any observations To make about the center of my face, Please note that if he’s of sufficient breeding I make my mark with steel and not with leather, And further up the torso, and in front. De Guiche: [who has come down from the stage with his entourage of marquises] This has gone on too long. Valvert:

Indeed. He’s tiresome.

De Guiche: Won’t anybody rid us of him? Valvert:    No one? Just watch, my lord, how I shall deal with him. [He walks toward Cyrano, who watches him calmly, and draws himself up before him in a self-important attitude.] Your nose, sir, is…er, well, it’s…very big. Cyrano: Very. Valvert:    Ha, ha! Cyrano:   Is that all? Valvert:    What? Cyrano:   No. No, it’s not all. You’re lacking in invention, Young man. You could have said so many things. You could have been aggressive, for example: “Good heavens, man, if I’d a nose like that I’d have it amputated right away!” Solicitous: “But sir, how do you drink? Doesn’t it trail in your glass?” Or else descriptive: “It’s a rock, it’s a peak, it’s a cape…No, not a cape, It’s a peninsula!” Inquisitive: “Do tell me, what is that long container? Do you keep pens in it, or scissors?” Twee: “How darling of you to have built a perch For little birds to rest their tiny claws.” 163

Facetious: “When you smoke, do they call ‘Fire’?” Do people think some chimney is alight?’ Worried: “Now do be careful, when you walk, That you don’t overbalance on your face.” Motherly: “We must make a little parasol To shade it from the sun.” Perhaps pedantic: “Only the creature, sir, which Aristophanes [Athens, page 52] Calls Hippocampelephantocamelos Could carry such a weight of flesh and bone Below its forehead.” Friendly, masculine: “I say, old chap, is that the latest fashion? It certainly would do to hang your hat on!” Grandiloquent: “Oh dread protuberance, Say what rash wind would dare to make you sneeze?” Dramatic: “Make the Red Sea one nosebleed.” Fanciful: “Is it a conch shell? Are you a Triton?” Naive: “Is it a monument? When does it open?” Or deferential: “Please accept my compliments: A nose like that’s a claim on our respect.” Rustic: “Call that a nose, bor? Thass a marrer, A winnin’ one an’ all.” Or military: “Enemy closing, cannon aim and fire!” Practical: “You could put it up for sale, And advertise it as a monster bargain.” Tragical: “Oh, that this too, too solid nose Would melt, thaw, and dissolve itself into a dewdrop!” These are the things, sir, that you could have said Had you a modicum of wit or letters, But wit—good Lord—you don’t know what it is, And letters, well…just four can sum you up F-O-O-L. But… Even if you had had the inspiration To entertain this noble audience With such ingenious fancies, you would never Have managed to articulate a quarter Of half of the beginning of the first one, For while I sometimes choose to mock myself, I don’t accept such pleasantries from others. Edmond Rostand, from Cyrano de Bergerac. The play premiered in Paris on December 28, 1897, with the great French actor Constant Coquelin in the title role; the audience insisted upon multiple curtain calls, and it was an immediate success for its twenty-eight-year-old playwright. Coquelin and Sarah Bernhardt toured the United States performing the play in 1900, the same year the two actors appeared in another work by Rostand, L’Aiglon, a tragedy in six acts revolving around Napoleon Bonaparte’s son, the duke of Reichstadt, who died of tuberculosis before he could assume power.

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c. 1180 bc:

Lemnos

a bad day for adultery A rippling prelude— now the bard struck up an irresistible song: The Love of Ares and Aphrodite Crowned with Flowers— how the two had first made love in Hephaestus’ mansion, all in secret. Ares had showered her with gifts and showered Hephaestus’ marriage bed with shame but a messenger ran to tell the god of fire— Helios, lord of the sun, who’d spied the couple lost in each other’s arms and making love. Hephaestus, hearing the heart-wounding story, bustled toward his forge, brooding on his revenge— planted the huge anvil on its block and beat out chains, not to be slipped or broken, all to pin the lovers on the spot. This snare the fire god forged, ablaze with his rage at War, then limped to the room where the bed of love stood firm and round the posts he poured the chains in a sweeping net with streams of others flowing down from the roof beam, gossamer-fine as spiderwebs no man could see, One Good Turn Deserves Another, by Edmé Gustave Brun, 1878.

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not even a blissful god— the smith had forged a masterwork of guile. Once he’d spun that cunning trap around his bed he feigned a trip to the well-built town of Lemnos, dearest to him by far of all the towns on earth. But the god of battle kept no blind man’s watch. As soon as he saw the master craftsman leave he plied his golden reins and arrived at once and entered the famous god of fire’s mansion, chafing with lust for Aphrodite crowned with flowers. She’d just returned from her father’s palace, mighty Zeus, and now she sat in her rooms as Ares strode right in and grasped her hand with a warm, seductive urging: “Quick, my darling, come, let’s go to bed and lose ourselves in love! Your husband’s away— by now he must be off in the wilds of Lemnos, consorting with his raucous Sintian friends.” So he pressed, and her heart raced with joy to sleep with War, and off they went to bed and down they lay— and down around them came those cunning chains of the crafty god of fire, showering down now till the couple could not move a limb or lift a finger— then they knew at last: there was no way out, not now. But now the glorious crippled smith was drawing near; he’d turned around, miles short of the Lemnos coast, for the sun god kept his watch and told Hephaestus all, so back he rushed to his house, his heart consumed with anguish. Halting there at the gates, seized with savage rage he howled a terrible cry, imploring all the gods, “Father Zeus, look here— the rest of you happy gods who live forever— here is a sight to make you laugh, revolt you too! Just because I am crippled, Zeus’ daughter Aphrodite will always spurn me and love that devastating Ares, just because of his striking looks and racer’s legs while I am a weakling, lame from birth, and who’s to blame? Both my parents—who else? If only they’d never bred me! Just look at the two lovers…crawled inside my bed, locked in each other’s arms—the sight makes me burn! But I doubt they’ll want to lie that way much longer, not a moment more—mad as they are for each other. No, they’ll soon tire of bedding down together, but then my cunning chains will bind them fast till our father pays my bride gifts back in full all I handed him for that shameless bitch, his daughter, irresistible beauty—all unbridled too!” So Hephaestus wailed as the gods came crowding up to his bronze-floored house. Poseidon, god of the earthquake, came, and Hermes came, 166 

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“The Soviet of Turkmenistan,” 1972. Photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson.

the running god of luck, and the archer, lord Apollo, while modesty kept each goddess to her mansion. The immortals, givers of all good things, stood at the gates, and uncontrollable laughter burst from the happy gods when they saw the god of fire’s subtle, cunning work. One would glance at his neighbor, laughing out, “A bad day for adultery! Slow outstrips the swift.” “Look how limping Hephaestus conquers War, the quickest of all the gods who rule Olympus!” “The cripple wins by craft.” “The adulterer, he will pay the price!” So the gods would banter among themselves, but lord Apollo goaded Hermes on: “Tell me, Quicksilver, giver of all good things— even with those unwieldy shackles wrapped around you, how would you like to bed the golden Aphrodite?” “Oh, Apollo, if only!” the giant killer cried. “Archer, bind me down with triple those endless chains! Let all you gods look on, and all you goddesses, too— how I’d love to bed that golden Aphrodite!” Homer, from The Odyssey. Hephaestus, the god of fire, was born lame to Hera and Zeus, and, when he sided with his mother during a fight between his parents, Zeus cast him off Mt. Olympus. He fell for nine days and nights, landing on the volcanic island of Lemnos, where the Greeks maintained a cult dedicated to him. In Homer’s other epic, The Iliad, when brooding Achilles finally decides to fight again—to avenge the death of his friend Patroclus—it is Hephaestus who forges for him his magnificent shield.

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March of the Clowns, by Albert Bloch, 1941.

c. 1937:

Leningrad

tall tales Blue Notebook #10 There was a redheaded man who had no eyes or ears. He didn’t have hair either, so he was called a redhead arbitrarily. He couldn’t talk, because he had no mouth. He didn’t have a nose either. He didn’t even have arms or legs. He had no stomach, he had no back, no spine, and he didn’t have any insides at all. There was nothing! So we don’t even know who we’re talking about. We’d better not talk about him anymore. Tumbling Old Women Because of her excessive curiosity, one old woman tumbled out of her window, fell, and shattered to pieces. Another old woman leaned out to look at the one who’d shattered but, out of excessive curiosity, also tumbled out of her window, fell, and shattered to pieces. Then a third old woman 168 

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tumbled from her window, and a fourth, and a fifth. When the sixth old woman tumbled out of her window, I got sick of watching them and walked over to the Maltsev Market where, they say, a blind man had been given a knit shawl. The Meeting Now, one day, a man went to work, and on the way he met another man, who, having bought a loaf of Polish bread, was heading back home where he came from. And that’s it, more or less. Lynch Law Petrov gets on his horse and, addressing the crowd, delivers a speech about what would happen if, in place of the public garden, they’d build an American skyscraper. The crowd listens and, it seems, agrees. Petrov writes something down in his notebook. A man of medium height emerges from the crowd and asks Petrov what he wrote down in his notebook. Petrov replies that it concerns himself alone. The man of medium height

presses him. Words are exchanged, and discord begins. The crowd takes the side of the man of medium height, and Petrov, saving his life, drives his horse on and disappears around the bend. The crowd panics and, having no other victim, grabs the man of medium height and tears off his head. The torn-off head rolls down the street and gets stuck in the hatch of a sewer drain. The crowd, having satisfied its passions, disperses. Sonnet A peculiar thing happened to me: I suddenly forgot what comes first—seven or eight? I set off to ask my neighbors what their thoughts were on the matter. How great was their surprise—and mine, too—when they suddenly realized that they also could not recall the counting order. One, two, three, four, five, and six, they remember, but what comes next they’ve forgotten. We all went down to the commercial store called Gastronom on the corner of Znamenskaya and Basseynaya streets and asked the cashier there about our incomprehension. Smiling a sad smile, the cashier extracted a small hammer from her mouth and twitched her nose slightly. She said, “In my opinion seven comes after eight, but only when eight comes after seven.” We thanked the cashier and in utter joy ran out of the store. But after we had pondered deeply the cashier’s words, grief came over us again, for it seemed that not a word of hers made any sense to us. What was there to do? We went to the Summer Garden and began counting the trees there. But when we reached the number six we stopped counting and began to argue: some thought seven was next in the order, others— eight. We would have argued very long, but luckily just then somebody’s child toppled off a park bench and broke his jaw. This distracted us from the argument. After that everyone went home. What They Sell in Stores Nowadays Koratygin came to see Tikakeyev but did not find him at home.

Meanwhile, Tikakeyev was at the store buying sugar, meat, and cucumbers. Koratygin milled around in Tikakeyev’s doorway and was about ready to write him a note when he saw Tikakeyev himself, carrying a plastic satchel in his hands. Koratygin saw Tikakeyev and yelled, “And I’ve been waiting here for a whole hour!” “That’s not true,” said Tikakeyev, “I’ve only been out twenty-five minutes.” “Well, that I don’t know,” said Koratygin, “but I’ve been here an hour, that much I do know.” When humor can be made to alternate with melancholy, one has a success, but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time, it’s just wonderful.  —François Truffaut, 1980 “Don’t lie,” said Tikakeyev. “It’s shameful.” “My good sir,” said Koratygin, “you should use some discretion in choosing your words.” “I think…” started Tikakeyev, but Koratygin interrupted: “If you think…” he said, but then Tikakeyev interrupted Koratygin, saying: “You’re one to talk!” These words so enraged Koratygin that he pinched one nostril with his finger and blew his other nostril at Tikakeyev. Then Tikakeyev snatched the biggest cucumber from his satchel and hit Koratygin over the head. Koratygin clasped his hands to his head, fell over and died. What big cucumbers they sell in stores nowadays! Daniil Kharms, from Incidents. Kharms was the founder of the avant-garde art group OBERIU. His absurdist play Elizabeth Bam—in which the titular character is accused of murder by her alleged victim—was part of the group’s first public performance in 1928. Kharms was arrested three years later and charged with anti-Soviet activities for his illogical children’s stories; he confessed that in his works he “consciously renounced contemporary reality.” He was arrested again in 1941 and died in a psychiatric ward during the Siege of Leningrad.

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1605:

Spain

mistaken identity As they were talking, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza saw thirty or forty of the windmills found in that countryside, and as soon as Don Qui­xote caught sight of them, he said to his squire, “Good fortune is guiding our affairs better than we could have desired, for there you see, my friend Sancho Panza, thirty or more enormous giants with whom I intend to do battle and whose lives I intend to take, and with the spoils we shall begin to grow rich, for this is righteous warfare, and it is a great service to God to remove so evil a breed from the face of the earth.”

“What giants?” said Sancho Panza. “Those you see over there,” replied his master, “with the long arms; sometimes they are almost two leagues long.” “Look, your grace,” Sancho responded, “those things that appear over there aren’t giants but windmills, and what looks like their arms are the sails that are turned by the wind and make the grindstone move.” “It seems clear to me,” replied Don Qui­xote, “that thou art not well-versed in the matter of adventures: these are giants; and if thou art afraid, move aside and start to pray while I enter with them in fierce and unequal combat.” And having said this, he spurred his horse, Rocinante, paying no attention to the shouts of

Benoît de Tyskiewicz in Tyrolean costume, c. 1890. Self-portrait.

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his squire, Sancho, who warned him that, beyond any doubt, those things he was about to attack were windmills and not giants. But he was so convinced they were giants that he did not hear the shouts of his squire, and could not see, though he was very close, what they really were; instead, he charged and called out, “Flee not, cowards and base creatures, for it is a single knight who attacks you.” Just then a gust of wind began to blow, and the great sails began to move, and, seeing this, Don Quixote said, “Even if you move more arms than the giant Briareus, you will answer to me.” And saying this, and commending himself with all his heart to his lady Dulcinea, asking that she come to his aid at this critical moment, and well-protected by his shield, with his lance in its socket, he charged at Rocinante’s full gallop and attacked the first mill he came to; and as he thrust his lance into the sail, the wind moved it with so much force that it broke the lance into pieces and picked up the horse and the knight, who then dropped to the ground and were very badly battered. Sancho Panza hurried to help as fast as his donkey could carry him, and when he reached them, he discovered that Don Quixote could not move because he had taken so hard a fall with Rocinante. “God save me!” said Sancho. “Didn’t I tell your grace to watch what you were doing, that these were nothing but windmills, and only somebody whose head was full of them wouldn’t know that?” “Be quiet, Sancho my friend,” replied Don Quixote. “Matters of war, more than any others, are subject to continual change; moreover, I think, and therefore it is true, that the same Frestón the Wise who stole my room and my books has turned these giants into windmills in order to deprive me of the glory of defeating them: such is the enmity he feels for me; but in the end, his evil arts will not prevail against the power of my virtuous sword.” “God’s will be done,” replied Sancho Panza. He helped him to stand, and Don Quixote remounted Rocinante, whose back was almost

broken. And, talking about their recent adventure, they continued on the road to Puerto Lápice, because there, said Don Quixote, he could not fail to find many diverse adventures since it was a very heavily trafficked place; but he rode heavyhearted because he did not have his lance, and expressing this to his squire, he said, “I remember reading that a Spanish knight named Diego Pérez de Vargas, whose sword broke in battle, tore a heavy bough or branch from an oak tree and with it did such great deeds that day, and thrashed so many Moors, that he was called Machuca, the Bruiser, and from that day forward he and his descendants were named Vargas y Machuca. I have told Big head, little wit.

—French proverb

you this because from the first oak that presents itself to me I intend to tear off another branch as good as the one I have in mind, and with it I shall do such great deeds that you will consider yourself fortunate for deserving to see them and for being a witness to things that can hardly be believed.” “It’s in God’s hands,” said Sancho. “I believe everything your grace says, but sit a little straighter, it looks like you’re tilting, it must be from the battering you took when you fell.” “That is true,” replied Don Quixote, “and if I do not complain about the pain, it is because it is not the custom of knights errant to complain about any wound, even if their innards are spilling out because of it.” “If that’s true, I have nothing to say,” Sancho responded, “but God knows I’d be happy if your grace complained when something hurt you. As for me, I can say that I’ll complain about the smallest pain I have, unless what you said about not complaining also applies to the squires of knights errant.” Don Quixote could not help laughing at his squire’s simplemindedness, and so he declared that he could certainly complain however and whenever he wanted, with or without cause, for as yet he had not read anything to 171

the contrary in the order of chivalry. Sancho said that it was time to eat. His master replied that he felt no need of food at the moment, but that Sancho could eat whenever he wished. With this permission, Sancho made himself as comfortable as he could on his donkey, and after taking out of the saddlebags what he had put into them, he rode behind his master at a leisurely pace, eating and, from time to time, tilting back his wineskin with so much gusto that the most self-indulgent tavern keeper in Malaga might have envied him. And as he rode along in that manner, taking frequent drinks,

he did not think about any promises his master had made to him, and he did not consider it work but sheer pleasure to go around seeking adventures, no matter how dangerous they might be. In short, they spent the night under some trees, and from one of them Don Quixote tore off a dry branch to use as a lance and placed on it the iron head he had taken from the one that had broken. Don Quixote did not sleep at all that night but thought of his lady Dulcinea, in order to conform to what he had read in his books of knights spending

c. 1958: Washington, DC courtesy call

U.S. President Merkin Muffley: Hello? Hello, Dmitry? Listen, I can’t hear too well, do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little? Oh, that’s much better. Yes. Fine, I can hear you now, Dmitry. Clear and plain and coming through fine. I’m coming through fine too, eh? Good, then. Well, then, as you say, we’re both coming through fine. Good. Well it’s good that you’re fine and I’m fine. I agree with you. It’s great to be fine. [laughs] Now then, Dmitry. You know how we’ve always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the bomb. The bomb, Dmitry. The hydrogen bomb. Well, now, what happened is, one of our base commanders, he had a sort of, well he went a little funny in the head. You know. Just a little…funny. And, uh, he went and did a silly thing. [listens] Well, I’ll tell you what he did, he ordered his planes… to attack your country. [listens] Well let me finish, Dmitry. Let me finish, Dmitry. [listens] Well, listen, how do you think I feel about it! Can you imagine how I feel about it, Dmitry? Why do you think I’m calling you? Just to say hello? [listens] Of course I like to speak to you. Of course I like to say hello. Not now, but any time, Dmitry. I’m just calling up to tell you something terrible has happened. [listens] It’s a friendly call. Of course it’s a friendly call. Listen, if it wasn’t friendly…You probably wouldn’t have even got it. They will not reach their targets for at least another hour. [listens] I am…I am positive, Dmitry. Listen, I’ve been all over this with your ambassador. It is not a trick. [listens] Well I’ll tell you. We’d like to

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give your air staff a complete rundown on the targets, the flight plans, and the defensive systems of the planes. [listens] Yes! I mean, if we’re unable to recall the planes, then I’d say that, uh, well, we’re just going to have to help you destroy them, Dmitry. [listens] I know they’re our boys. [listens] All right, well, listen…now who should we call? [listens] Who should we call, Dmitry? [listens] The people…? Sorry, you faded away there. [listens] The People’s Central Air Defense Headquarters. Where is that, Dmitry? [listens] In Omsk. Right. Yes. [listens] Oh, you’ll call them first, will you? [listens] Uh-huh. Listen, do you happen to have the phone number on you, Dmitry? [listens] What? I see, just ask for Omsk Information. I’m sorry too, Dmitry. I’m very sorry. [listens] All right! You’re sorrier than I am! But I am sorry as well. I am as sorry as you are, Dmitry. Don’t say that you are more sorry than I am, because I am capable of being just as sorry as you are. So we’re both sorry, all right? Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, and Peter George, from Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Peter Sellers played three roles: President Muffley, Grp. Capt. Lionel Mandrake, and Dr. Strangelove. The 1964 film grew out of Kubrick’s interest in the issue of nuclear-war deterrence: “Gradually I became aware of the almost wholly paradoxical nature of deterrence or, as it has been described, the Delicate Balance of Terror. If you are weak, you may invite a first strike. If you are becoming too strong, you may provoke a preemptive strike.”

many sleepless nights in groves and meadows, turning all their thoughts to memories of their ladies. Sancho Panza did not do the same—since his stomach was full, and not with chicory water, he slept the entire night, and if his master had not called him, the rays of the sun shining in his face and the song of numerous birds joyfully greeting the arrival of the new day would have done nothing to rouse him. When he woke he made another pass at the wineskin and found it somewhat flatter than it had been the night before, and his heart grieved, for it seemed to him they were not likely to remedy the lack very soon. Don Quixote did not wish to eat breakfast because he meant to live on sweet memories. They continued on the road to Puerto Lápice, and at about three in the afternoon it came into view. “Here,” said Don Quixote when he saw it, “we can, brother Sancho Panza, plunge our hands all the way up to the elbows into this thing they call adventures. But be advised that even if you see me in the greatest danger in the world, you are not to put a hand to your sword to defend me, unless you see that those who offend me are baseborn rabble, in which case you certainly can help me; but if they are gentlemen, under no circumstances is it licit or permissible for you, under the laws of chivalry, to help me until you are dubbed a knight.” “There’s no doubt, Señor,” replied Sancho, “that your grace will be strictly obeyed in this; besides, as far as I’m concerned, I’m a peaceful man and an enemy of getting involved in quarrels or disputes. It’s certainly true that when it comes to defending my person I won’t pay much attention to those laws, since laws both human and divine permit each man to defend himself against anyone who tries to hurt him.” “I agree,” Don Quixote responded, “but as for helping me against gentlemen, you have to hold your natural impulses in check.” “Then that’s just what I’ll do,” replied Sancho, “and I’ll keep that precept as faithfully as I keep the sabbath on Sunday.”

As they were speaking, there appeared on the road two Benedictine friars mounted on two dromedaries, for the two mules they rode on were surely no smaller than that. They wore their traveling masks and carried sunshades. Behind them came a carriage, accompanied by four or five men on horseback, and two muledrivers on foot. In the carriage, as was learned later, was a Basque lady going to Seville, where her husband was preparing to sail for the Indies to take I like to make people laugh every ten pages.  —Haruki Murakami, 2004 up a very honorable post. The friars were not traveling with her, although their route was the same, but as soon as Don Quixote saw them, he said to his squire, “Either I am deceived, or this will be the most famous adventure ever seen, because those black shapes you see there must be, and no doubt are, enchanters who have captured some princesses in that carriage, and I needs must do everything in my power to right this wrong.” “This will be worse than the windmills,” said Sancho. “Look, Señor, those are friars of St. Benedict, and the carriage must belong to some travelers. Look carefully, I tell you, look carefully at what you do, in case the devil is deceiving you.” “I have already told you, Sancho,” replied Don Quixote, “that you know very little about the subject of adventures; what I say is true— and now you will see that it is so.” And having said this, he rode forward and stopped in the middle of the road that the friars were traveling, and when they were close enough so that he thought they could hear what he said, he called to them in a loud voice, “You wicked and monstrous creatures, instantly unhand the noble princesses you hold captive in that carriage, or else prepare to receive a swift death as just punishment for your evil deeds.” The friars pulled on the reins, taken aback as much by Don Quixote’s appearance as by his 173

words, and they responded, “Señor, we are neither wicked nor monstrous, but two religious of St. Benedict who are traveling on our way, and we do not know if there are captive princesses in that carriage or not.” “No soft words with me; I know who you are, perfidious rabble,” said Don Quixote. And without waiting for any further reply, he spurred Rocinante, lowered his lance, and attacked the first friar with so much ferocity and courage that if he had not allowed himself to fall off the mule, the friar would have been thrown to the ground and seriously injured or even killed. The second friar, who saw how his companion was treated, kicked his castle-size mule and began to gallop across the fields, faster than the wind. Sancho Panza, who saw the man on the ground, quickly got off his donkey, hurried over to the friar, and began to pull off his habit. At this moment, two servants of the friars came over and asked why he was stripping him. Sancho replied that these clothes were legitimately his, the spoils of the battle his master, Don Quixote, had won. The servants had no sense of humor and did not understand any-

thing about spoils or battles, and seeing that Don Quixote had moved away and was talking to the occupants of the carriage, they attacked Sancho and knocked him down, and leaving no hair in his beard unscathed, they kicked him breathless and senseless and left him lying on the ground. The friar, frightened and terrified and with no color in his face, did not wait another moment but got back on his mule, and when he was mounted, he rode off after his companion, who was waiting for him a good distance away, wondering what the outcome of the attack would be; they did not wish to wait to learn how matters would turn out but continued on their way, crossing themselves more than if they had the devil at their backs. Miguel de Cervantes, from Don Quixote. As a soldier aboard the Marquesa in 1571, Cervantes fought against the Turkish fleet at the Battle of Lepanto, where he received two gunshot wounds to the chest and a third to his hand, crippling it—“a wound which, although it appears ugly, he holds for lovely,” he wrote, using the third person, in the prologue to his Exemplary Stories, published in 1613. The first volume of Don Quixote appeared in 1605, the second in 1615, and a year later Cervantes died at the age of sixty-eight.

Four entertainers, pottery group from a Han Dynasty–era tomb, China, c. 125.

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1993:

Belfast

goodbye to. The right or the left?

martin mcdonagh saves the nipple

James: No, now. Come on, now!

[A desolate warehouse or some such. James, a barechested, bloody, and bruised man, hangs upside down from the ceiling, his feet bare and bloody. Padraic idles near him, wielding a cutthroat razor, his hands bloody. Around Padraic’s chest are strapped two empty holsters, and there are two handguns on a table stage left. James is crying.]

Padraic: Be picking, I’m saying! Whichever’s your favorite nipple—I won’t be touching that fella at all—I’ll be concentrating on the other. I’ll be giving him a nice sliceen and then probably be feeding him to ya, but if you don’t pick and pick quick, it’ll be both of the boys you’ll be waving goodbye to, and waving goodbye to two tits when there’s no need but to wave goodbye to one makes no sense at all as far as I can see. In my eyes, like. In fact it’s the mark of a madman. So be picking your nipple and we’ll get the ball rolling, for I have better things to do with me time than to be hanging around warehouses cutting your nipples off, James Hanley.

Padraic: James? [pause] James? James: [sobbing] Wha’? Padraic: Do you know what’s next on the agenda? James: I don’t. And I don’t want to know. Padraic: I know well you don’t, you big feck. Look at the state of you, off bawling like some fool of a girl. James: Is a fella not supposed to bawl so, you take his fecking toenails off him? Padraic: [pause] Don’t be saying “feck” to me, James… James: I’m sorry, Padraic… Padraic: Or you’ll make me want to give you some serious bother, and not just be tinkering with you. James: Is toenails off just tinkering with me, so? Padraic: It is. James: Oh, it’s just fecking tinkering with me toenails off is… Padraic: [pause] The next item on the agenda is which nipple of yours do you want to be saying

James: [crying] But I’ve done nothing at all to deserve nipples off, Padraic! Padraic: Oh, let’s not be getting into the whys and wherefores, James. You do push your filthy drugs on the schoolchildren of Ireland, and if you concentrated exclusive on the Protestants I’d say all well and good, but you don’t, you take all comers. James: Marijuana to the students at the Tech I sell, and at fair rates! Padraic: Keeping our youngsters in a druggedup and idle haze, when it’s out on the streets pegging bottles at coppers they should be. James: Sure, everybody smokes marijuana nowadays. Padraic: I don’t! James: Well, maybe you should! It might calm you down! Padraic: Be picking your nipple, I’m saying! James: The right one! The right one! 175

[Padraic takes James’s right tit in his hand so that the nipple points out, and is just about to slice it off.] Padraic: Grit your teeth, James. This may hurt. James: [screaming] No!… […when the cellphone in Padraic’s back pocket rings loudly…] Padraic: Will you hang on there a minute, James? [Padraic answers the phone, idling away from James, who is left shaking and whimpering behind him…Speaking into phone.] Hello? Dad, ya bastard, how are you? [to James] It’s me dad. [pause] I’m grand indeed, Dad, grand. How is all on Inishmore? Good-oh, good-oh. I’m at work at the moment, Dad, was it important now? I’m torturing one of them fellas pushes drugs on wee kids, but I can’t say too much over the phone, like… James: [crying] Marijuana, Padraic. Padraic: They are terrible men, and it’s like they don’t even know they are, when they know well. They think they’re doing the world a favor, now. [pause] I haven’t been up to much else, really. I put bombs in a couple of chip shops, but they didn’t go off. [pause] Because chip shops aren’t as well-guarded as army barracks. Do I need your advice on planting bombs? [pause] I was pissed off, anyways. The fella who makes our bombs, he’s fecking useless. I think he does drink. Either they go off before you’re ready, or they don’t go off at all. One thing about the IRA anyways, as much as I hate the bastards, you’ve got to hand it to them, they know how to make a decent bomb. [pause] Sure, why would the IRA be selling us any of their bombs? They need them themselves, sure. Those bastards’d charge the earth anyways. I’ll tell ya, I’m getting pissed off with the whole thing. I’ve been thinking of forming a splinter group. [pause] I know we’re already a splinter group, but there’s no law says you can’t splinter from a splinter group. A splin176 

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ter group is the best kind of group to splinter from anyways. It shows you know your own mind, [whispering] but there’s someone in the room, Dad, I can’t be talking about splinter groups. [to James, politely] I’ll be with you in a minute now, James. [James shudders slightly.] What was it you were ringing about anyways, Dad? [Pause. Padraic’s face suddenly becomes very serious, eyes filling with tears.] Eh? What about Wee Thomas? [pause] Poorly? How poorly, have you brought him to the doctor? [pause] How long has he been off his food, and why didn’t you tell me when it first started? [pause] He’s not too bad? Either he’s poorly or he’s not too bad now, Dad, he’s either one or the fecking other—there’s a major difference, now, between not too bad and fecking poorly—he cannot be the fecking two at fecking once, now [crying heavily], and you wouldn’t be fecking calling me at all if he was not too bad, now! What have you done to Wee Thomas now, you fecking bastard? Put Wee Thomas on the phone. He’s sleeping? Well, put a blanket on him and be stroking and stroking him and get a second opinion from the doctor and don’t be talking loud near him and I’ll be home the first fecking boat in the fecking morning. Ar, you fecker, ya! [Padraic smashes the phone to pieces on the table, shoots the pieces a few times, then sits there crying quietly.] James: Is anything the matter, Padraic? Padraic: Me cat’s poorly, James. Me best friend in the world, he is. James: What’s wrong with him? Padraic: I don’t know, now. He’s off his food, like. James: Sure, that’s nothing to go crying over, being off his food. He probably has ringworm. Padraic: Ringworm? Is that serious, now? James: Sure, ringworm isn’t serious at all. Just get him some ringworm pellets from the

chemist and feed them to him wrapped up in a bit of cheese. They don’t like the taste of ringworm pellets, cats, so if you hide them in a bit of cheese, he’ll eat them unbeknownst and never know the differ, and he’ll be as right as rain in a day or two, or at the outside three. Just don’t exceed the stated dose. Y’know, read the instructions, like. Padraic: How do you know so much about ringworm? James: Sure, don’t I have a cat of me own I love with all my heart, had ringworm a month back? Padraic: Do ya? I didn’t know drug pushers had cats. James: Sure, drug pushers are the same as anybody underneath. Padraic: What’s his name? James: Eh? Padraic: What’s his name? James: Em, Dominic. [pause] And I promise not to sell drugs to children anymore, Padraic. On Dominic’s life I promise. And that’s a big promise, because Dominic means more to me than anything. Padraic: [pause] Are you gipping me now, James? James: I’m not gipping you. This is a serious subject. [Padraic approaches James with the razor and slices through the ropes that bind him. James falls to the floor in a heap, then half picks himself up, testing out his weight on his bloody foot. Padraic holsters his guns.] Padraic: How are them toes? James: They’re perfect, Padraic.

Stock Characters

New and old manifestations of commedia dell’arte personas Capitano Blustering and boastful and cowardly Pyrgopolynices (The Swaggering Soldier, Plautus, c. 205 bc) Wizard (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum, 1900) “Brave” Sir Robin (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975) Innamorati Lovers striving against obstacles to unite Daphnis/Chloe (Daphnis and Chloe, Longus, c. 200) Elizabeth/Mr. Darcy (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, 1813) Buttercup/Wesley (The Princess Bride, William Goldman, 1973) Dottore Pedant prone to jumbling facts and general pretension Polonius (Hamlet, William Shakespeare, c. 1600) Moe (The Three Stooges, c. 1930) Paul (Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen, 2011) Pantalone Older man, often foolish, miserly, or lecherous Zeus (Metamorphoses, Ovid, 8) Humbert Humbert (Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955) Roger Sterling (Mad Men, Matt Weiner, c. 2010) Arlecchino Jester often costumed in variously colored diamonds Trinculo (The Tempest, William Shakespeare, c. 1611) Hubert Hawkins (The Court Jester, Norman Panama and Melvin Frank, 1956) Harley Quinn (Batman: The Animated Series, c. 1992) Colombina Cheeky and skillful female servant Dorine (Tartuffe, Molière, 1664) Miss Moneypenny (Casino Royale, Ian Fleming, 1953) Babette (Beauty and the Beast, Disney, 1991) Pedrolino Simpleminded, awkward, lovesick loyal servant Papageno (The Magic Flute, Emanuel Schikaneder, 1791) Canio (Pagliacci, Ruggero Leoncavallo, 1892) Xander Harris (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joss Whedon, c. 2000) Brighella Opportunistic and lovable rogue Vicomte de Valmont (The Dangerous Liasons, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 1782) Rhett Butler (Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 1936) Omar Little (The Wire, David Simon, c. 2005) Pulcinella Duplicitous, vindictive, disobedient, and often deformed Falstaff (Henry IV, William Shakespeare, c. 1596) Punch (Punch and Judy, c. 1650) Soup Nazi (Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, 1995)

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“It Was Abadie Who Made the Sacre-Coeur, but God Made This!” color lithograph, by Adolphe Léon Willette, c. 1895.

Padraic: You admit you deserved the toes at least? James: Oh I did. The toes and an arm, really. Padraic: Do you have money to get the bus to the hospital? James: I don’t. [Padraic gives the confused James some change.] Padraic: Because you want to get them toes looked at. The last thing you want now is septic toes. James: Oh d’you know, that’s the last thing I’d want. 178 

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Padraic: I’m off to Galway to see me cat. [exits] James: [calling out] And I hope by the time you get home he’s laughing and smiling and as fit as a fiddle, Padraic! [Pause. Outer door banging shut. Crying.] I hope that he’s dead already and buried in shite, you stupid mental fecking bastard, ya! From The Lieutenant of Inishmore. McDonagh was born in London in 1970, dropped out of school at the age of sixteen, performed clerical duties at the department of trade, and began writing in the early 1990s. He composed two trilogies of plays primarily set in County Galway, Ireland, where he spent time as a boy, which include The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Lieutenant of Inishmore. McDonagh wrote and directed the films In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths.

c. 360 bc:

Athens

hold the ridicule Athenian Stranger: When men take to damning and cursing each other and to calling one another rude names in the shrill tones of women, these mere words, empty though they are, soon lead to real hatreds and quarrels of the most serious kind. In gratifying his ugly emotion, anger, and in thus disgracefully stoking the fires of his fury, the speaker drives back into primitive savagery a side of his character that was once civilized by education— and such a splenetic life makes him no better than a wild beast; bitter indeed, he finds, are the pleasures of anger. Besides, on such occasions all men are usually quick to resort to ridicule of their opponents, and no one who has indulged that habit has ever acquired the slightest sense of responsibility or remained faithful to many of his principles. That is why no one must ever breathe a word of ridicule in a temple or at a public sacrifice or at the games or in the marketplace or in court or in any public gathering, and the relevant official must always punish such offenses. The view we are putting forward now is that when a man is embroiled in a slanging match he is incapable of carrying on the dispute without trying to make funny remarks, and when such conduct is motivated by anger we censure it. Well then, what does this imply? That we are prepared to tolerate a comedian’s eagerness to raise a laugh against people, provided that when he sets about ridiculing our citizens in his comedies, he is not inspired by anger? Or shall we divide comedy into two kinds, according to whether it is goodnatured or not? Then we could allow the playful comedian to joke about something, without anger, but forbid, as we’ve indicated, anyone whatsoever to do so if he is in deadly earnest and shows animosity. We must certainly insist on this stipulation about anger, but we still have to lay down by law who ought to receive permission for ridicule and who not. No

composer of comedies—or of songs or iambic verse—must ever be allowed to ridicule either by description or by impersonation any citizen whatsoever, with or without rancor. Anyone who disobeys this rule must be ejected from the country that same day by the presidents of the games. If the latter fail to take this action, they must be fined three hundred drachmas, to be dedicated to the god in whose honor the festival is being held. Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards, and we will go to great lengths to prove it. Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that if one psychologist in the room laughs at something a rat does, all of the other psychologists in the room will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be left holding the joke.  —Garrison Keillor, 1989 Those who have earlier been licensed to compose verse against each other should be allowed to poke fun at people, not in savage earnest, but in a playful spirit and without rancor. The distinction between the two kinds must be left to the minister with overall responsibility for the education of the young; an author may put before the public anything the minister approves of, but if it is censored, the author must not perform it to anyone personally nor be found to have trained someone else to do so, whether a free man or a slave. If he does, he must get the reputation of being a scoundrel and an enemy of the laws. Plato, from The Laws. This is the longest of Plato’s dialogs and is presumed to have been among his last. Set on the island of Crete, The Laws has three characters: the Athenian Stranger, the Spartan Megillus, and the Cretan Kleinias. Their discussion revolves around the composition of laws proper to govern a city. Plato was born into a distinguished family—his father’s lineage claimed Poseidon as an ancestor, his mother’s, the lawgiver Solon. In the 380s he founded the Academy in Athens, where Aristotle was a pupil and later a teacher.

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c. 1030:

Constantinople

impossible relics Many say—I know not if this be true, but I do believe it—that you, holy father, rejoice when you acquire venerable bones of ascetics or revered holy martyrs, and that you have many coffers of relics which you open for all your friends to see: ten hands that belonged to the martyr St. Procopius, fifteen jaws belonging to Holy Theodore, at least eight legs belonging to St. Nestor, no fewer than four heads belonging to St. George, five breasts of martyred Barbara, twelve femurs of the glorious martyr Demetrius, and twenty thigh bones of Panteleimon. O what bounty! You maintain that you gather these in fervent faith, never doubting, never wavering as you kneel before these caskets, groveling before them as if they were the martyrs of Christ. Blessed be your vibrant faith, Father Andreas, which makes you believe that Christ’s ascetics are Hydras and His martyrs wild dogs—the former with countless heads, the latter with the many teats of the bitch. Your faith has turned martyred Nestor into a fish, or rather into an octopus with eight tentacles, and Procopius into Briareus, the hundred-armed giant. You humbly claim to own sixty teeth of the great martyr Thecla (what madness!) and white hairs from great Prodromus’ head. You proudly boast that you own hairs from the beards of the slaughtered infants of Bethlehem. You say these must be revered with deep devotion. If your faith leads you to accept these things as true, and you are happy to squander all your money, you will never be at a loss for relics. Why squander all your gold? Why not go to the city’s graveyard

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and gather some bones for free? Do you feel you are not getting your money’s worth when you scoop up from the tombs bones that cost nothing? Go ahead and buy them then, go ahead! You will empty your pockets much faster than the bone merchants can empty those tombs. Christopher of Mytilene, from “To Father Andreas, Gatherer of Bones.” Christopher served in the Byzantine imperial administration as a secretary and a supreme judge of Paphlagonia and Armeniakon. In addition to his more caustic poems—in his epigram “To a Poet,” he wrote, “How much better if an ox were to sit on your tongue/than for your poems to plod like oxen over fields”—he composed four calendars in verse for the Church, some of which remain in use in Greek Orthodox services, and epigrams on everyday life in Constantinople. Christopher died around 1050. Wall Street Bubbles—Always the Same, by Joseph Keppler Jr., 1901. Caricature of J. P. Morgan as a bull blowing bubbles representing inflated values.

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1842:

Russia

nikolai gogol marks up the merchandise Chichikov, taking a cup of tea in his hand and pouring some liqueur into it, held forth to the mistress of the house thus: “You’ve got a nice little estate here, dearie. How many souls are there?” “Nigh onto eighty souls, my dear,” the mistress said, “but the trouble is the weather’s been bad, and there was such a poor harvest last year, God help us.” Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.  —Mel Brooks, 1961 “Still, the muzhiks have a hearty look; the cottages are sturdy. But allow me to know your last name. I’m so absentminded…arrived in the night…” “Korobochka, widow of a collegiate secretary.” “I humbly thank you. And your first name and patronymic?” “Nastasya Petrovna.” “Nastasya Petrovna? A nice name, Nastasya Petrovna. My aunt, my mother’s sister, is Nastasya Petrovna.” “And what’s your name?” the lady landowner asked. “I expect you’re a tax assessor?” “No, dearie,” Chichikov replied, smiling, “don’t expect I’m a tax assessor, I’m just going around on my own little business.” “Ah, so you’re a buyer! Really, my dear, what a pity I sold my honey to the merchants so cheaply, and here you would surely have bought it from me.” “No, your honey I wouldn’t have bought.” “Something else, then? Hemp maybe? But I haven’t got much hemp either: only half a bale.” “No, dearie, mine are a different kind of goods: tell me, have any of your peasants died?” “Oh, dearie, eighteen men!” the old woman said, sighing. “Died, and all such fine folk, all 182 

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good workers. Some were born after that, it’s true, but what’s the use of them: all such runts; and the tax assessor comes—pay taxes on each soul, he says. Folk are dead, and you pay on them like the living. Last week my blacksmith burned up on me, such a skillful one, and he knew locksmithing, too.” “So you had a fire, dearie?” “God spared us such a calamity—a fire would have been all that much worse—he got burned up on his own, my dear. It somehow caught fire inside him; he drank too much, just this little blue flame came out of him, and he smoldered, smoldered, and turned black as coal, and he was such a very skillful blacksmith! And now I can’t even go out for a drive: there’s no one to shoe the horses.” “It’s all as God wills, dearie!” said Chichikov, sighing, “there’s no saying anything against the wisdom of God…Why not let me have them, Nastasya Petrovna?” “Whom, dearie?” “But, all that have died.” “But how can I let you have them?” “But, just like that. Or maybe sell them. I’ll give you money for them.” “But how? I really don’t quite see. You’re not going to dig them out of the ground, are you?” Chichikov saw that the old woman had overshot the mark and that it was necessary to explain what it was all about. In a few words he made clear to her that the transfer or purchase would only be on paper, and the souls would be registered as if they were living. “But what do you need them for?” the old woman said, goggling her eyes at him. “That’s my business.” “But they really are dead.” “But who ever said they were alive? That’s why it’s a loss for you, because they’re dead: you pay for them, but now I’ll rid you of the trouble and the payments. Understand? And not only rid you of them, but give you fifteen rubles to boot. Well, is it clear now?” “I really don’t know,” the mistress said with deliberation. “I never yet sold any dead ones.”

“I should think not! It would be quite a wonder if you’d sold them to anyone. Or do you think they really are good for anything?” “No, I don’t think so. What good could they be, they’re no good at all. The only thing that troubles me is that they’re already dead.” “Well, the woman seems a bit thickheaded,” Chichikov thought to himself. “Listen, dearie, you just give it some good thought: here you are being ruined, paying taxes for them as if they were alive…” “Oh, my dear, don’t even mention it!” the lady landowner picked up. “Just two weeks ago I paid more than one hundred and fifty rubles. And had to grease the assessor’s palm at that.” “Well, you see, dearie. And now consider only this, that you won’t have to grease the assessor’s palm any longer, because now I will pay for

them—I, and not you; I will take all the obligations upon myself. I’ll even have the deed drawn up at my own expense, do you understand that?” The old woman fell to thinking. She saw that the business indeed seemed profitable, yet it was much too novel and unprecedented; and therefore she began to fear very much that this buyer might somehow hoodwink her; he had come from God knows where, and in the night, too. “So then, dearie, shall we shake hands on it?” said Chichikov. “Really, my dear, it has never happened to me before to sell deceased ones. I did let two living ones go, two wenches, for a hundred rubles each, to our priest, the year before last, and he was ever so grateful—they turned out to be such good workers; they weave napkins.” Laughter, by Charles Le Brun, c. 1645.

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Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, comedy duo, c. 1930.

“Well, this is nothing to do with the living— God be with them. I’m asking for dead ones.” “Really, I’m afraid this first time, I may somehow suffer a loss. Maybe you’re deceiving me, my dear, and they’re…somehow worth more.” “Listen, dearie…eh, what a one! How much could they be worth? Consider: it’s dust. Do you understand? It’s just dust. Take any last worthless thing, even some simple rag, for instance, still a rag has its value: it can at least be sold to a paper mill—but for this there’s no need at all. No, you tell me yourself, what is it needed for?” “That’s true enough. It’s not needed for anything at all, but there’s just this one thing stops me—that they’re already dead.” “Bah, what a blockhead!” Chichikov said to himself, beginning to lose patience now. “Go, try getting along with her! I’m all in a sweat, the damned hag!” Here he took his handkerchief 184 

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from his pocket and began mopping the sweat which in fact stood out on his brow. However, Chichikov need not have been angry: a man can be greatly respectable, even statesmanlike, and in reality turn out to be a perfect Korobochka. Once he gets a thing stuck in his head, there’s no overcoming him; present him with as many arguments as you like, all clear as day— everything bounces off him, like a rubber ball bouncing off a wall. Having mopped his sweat, Chichikov decided to see whether she could be guided onto the path from another side. “Either you don’t wish to understand my words, dearie,” he said, “or you’re saying it on purpose, just to say something…I’m offering you money: fifteen rubles in banknotes. Do you understand that? It’s money. You won’t find it lying in the street. Confess now, how much did you sell your honey for?” “Thirty kopeks a pound.”

“That’s a bit of a sin on your soul, dearie. You didn’t sell it for thirty kopeks.” “By God, I did too.” “Well, you see? Still, that was honey. You collected it for maybe a year, with care, with effort, with trouble; you had to go smoke the bees, feed them in the cellar all winter, but the thing with the dead souls is not of this world. Here you made no effort on your side; it was God’s will that they depart this life, to the detriment of your household. There you get twelve roubles for your labor, your effort, and here you take them for nothing, for free, and not twelve but fifteen, and not in silver but all in blue bank­notes.” After such strong assurances, Chichikov had scarcely any doubt that the old woman would finally give in. “Really,” the lady landowner replied, “I’m so inexperienced, what with being a widow and all! I’d better take a little time; maybe merchants will come by, I’ll check on the prices.” “For shame, for shame, dearie! Simply for shame! Think what you are saying! Who is going to buy them? What use could they possibly be to anyone?” “Maybe they’d somehow come in handy around the house on occasion…” the old woman objected and, not finishing what she was saying, opened her mouth and looked at him almost in fear, wishing to know what he would say to that. “Dead people around the house! Eh, that’s going a bit far! Maybe just to frighten sparrows in your kitchen garden at night or something?” “Saints preserve us! What horrors you come out with!” the old woman said, crossing herself. “Where else would you like to stick them? No, anyhow, the bones and graves—all that stays with you, the transfer is only on paper. So, what do you say? How about it? Answer me at least.” The old woman again fell to thinking. “What are you thinking about, Nastasya Petrovna?” “Really, I still can’t settle on what to do; I’d better sell you the hemp.”

“What’s all this hemp? For pity’s sake, I ask you about something totally different, and you shove your hemp at me! Hemp’s hemp— the next time I come, I’ll take the hemp as well. So, how about it, Nastasya Petrovna?” “By God, it’s such queer goods, quite unprecedented!” Here Chichikov went completely beyond the bounds of all patience, banged his chair on the floor in aggravation, and wished the devil on her. Of the devil the lady landowner was extraordinarily frightened. He who laugheth too much, hath the nature of a fool; he that laugheth not at all, hath the nature of an old cat.  —Thomas Fuller, 1732 “Oh, don’t remind me of that one, God help him!” she cried out, turning all pale. “Just two days ago I spent the whole night dreaming about the cursed one. I had a notion to tell my fortune with cards that night after prayers, and God sent him on me as a punishment. Such a nasty one; horns longer than a bull’s.” “I’m amazed you don’t dream of them by the dozen. It was only Christian loving kindness that moved me: I saw a poor widow wasting away, suffering want…No, go perish and drop dead, you and all your estate!” “Ah, what oaths you’re hanging on me!” the old woman said, looking at him in fear. “But there’s no way to talk with you! Really, you’re like some—not to use a bad word—some cur lying in the manger: he doesn’t eat himself, and won’t let others eat. I thought I might buy up various farm products from you, because I also do government contracting…” Here he was fibbing, though by the way and with no further reflection, but with unexpected success. The government contracting produced a strong effect on Nastasya Petrovna, at least she uttered now, in an almost pleading voice, “But why all this hot anger? If I’d known before that you were such an angry one, I wouldn’t have contradicted you at all.” 185

2007: Liphook

emerging markets

Dear Secretary of State, My friend, who is farming at the moment, recently received a check for three thousand pounds from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs. I would now like to join the “not rearing pigs” business. In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I approach this endeavor in keeping with all government policies, as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy. I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type you want not reared, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Saddlebacks or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too many people already not rearing them? My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for forty years or so, and the best he has ever made on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is—until this year, when he received a check for not rearing any. If I got three thousand pounds for not rearing fifty pigs, will I get six thousand pounds for not rearing a hundred? I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to about four thousand pigs not reared, which will mean about £240,000 for the first year. As I become more expert in not rearing pigs, I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, forty thousand pigs not reared in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4 million from your department. Incidentally, I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradable carbon credits for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting methane gases? I am also considering the “not milking cows” business, so please send any information you have on that, too. Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to have several thousand hectares)? Nigel Johnson-Hill, from a letter. This document circulated on the Internet and was published with the consent of its author in The Big Bang by John Julius Norwich. It bears striking resemblance to a letter quoted in a British parliamentary discussion in 1935: an American had written in to the New York Commercial and Financial Chronicle to inquire “your opinion of the best kind of farm not to raise hogs on, the best strain of hogs not to raise and how best to keep an inventory of hogs you are not raising.”

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“What’s there to be angry about! The whole affair isn’t worth a tinker’s damn—as if I’d get angry over it!” “Well, as you please, I’m prepared to let you have them for fifteen in banknotes! Only, mind you, my dear, about those contracts: if you happen to buy up rye flour, or buckwheat flour, or grain, or butchered cattle, please don’t leave me out.” “No, dearie, I won’t leave you out,” he said, all the while wiping off the sweat that was streaming down his face. He inquired whether she had some attorney or acquaintance in town whom she could authorize to draw up the deed and do all that was necessary. “Of course, our priest, Father Kiril, has a son who serves in the treasury,” said Korobochka. Chichikov asked her to write a warrant for him and, to save her needless trouble, even volunteered to write it himself. “It would be nice,” Korobochka meanwhile thought to herself, “if he’d start buying my flour and meat for the government. I must coax him; there’s still some batter left from yesterday, I’ll go and tell Fetinya to make some pancakes; it would also be nice to do up a short-crust pie with eggs—my cook does them so well, and it takes no time at all.” The mistress went to carry out her thought concerning the doing up of a pie, and probably to expand it with other productions of domestic bakery and cookery; and Chichikov went to the drawing room to get the necessary papers from his chest. He rested briefly, for he felt he was all in a sweat, as if in a river: everything he had on, from his shirt down to his stockings, everything was wet. “She really wore me out, the damned hag!” he said. From Dead Souls. After the success of his story collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, Gogol obtained a history professorship at the University of St. Petersburg, where Ivan Turgenev was one of his students. The younger man later noted that he and his classmates were convinced their master knew nothing of history. Gogol published Dead Souls in 1842, envisioning it as the first part of a modern Divine Comedy. Convinced by a priest that he would be damned for his writing, he burned the second part of it on February 24, 1852. Within ten days, he was dead at the age of forty-two.

1948:

Chicago

some reservations “Look here at these headlines, man, where Congress is busy passing laws. While they’re making all these laws, it looks like to me they ought to make one setting up a few game preserves for Negroes.” “Whatever gave you that fantastic idea?” I asked. “A movie short I saw the other night,” said Simple, “about how the government is protecting wildlife, preserving fish and game, and setting aside big tracts of land where nobody can fish, shoot, hunt, nor harm a single living creature with furs, fins, or feathers. But it did not show a thing about Negroes.” “I thought you said the picture was about wildlife. Negroes are not wild.” “No,” said Simple, “but we need protection. This film showed how they put aside a thousand acres out West where the buffaloes roam and nobody can shoot a single one of

them. If they do, they get in jail. It also showed some big national park with government airplanes dropping food down to the deers when they got snowed under and had nothing to eat. The government protects and takes care of buffaloes and deers—which is more than the government does for me or my kinfolks down South. Last month they lynched a man in Georgia, and just today I see where the Klan has whipped a Negro within a inch of his life in Alabama. And right up North here in New York, a actor is suing a apartment house that won’t even let a Negro go up on the elevator to see his producer. That is what I mean by game preserves for Negroes—Congress ought to set aside some place where we can go and nobody can jump on us and beat us, neither lynch us nor Jim Crow us every day. Colored folks rate as much protection as a buffalo, or a deer.” “You have a point there,” I said. “This here movie showed great big beautiful lakes with signs up all around: no fishing— state game preserve. But it did not show a single place with a sign up: no lynching. It also

American soldiers having fun while riding a camel, Tunisia, 1943. Photograph by Robert Capa.

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Feast in an Inn (detail), by Jan Havicksz Steen, 1674.

showed flocks of wild ducks settling down in a nice green meadow behind a government sign that said: no hunting. It were nice and peaceful for them fish and ducks. There ought to be some place where it is nice and peaceful for me, too, even if I am not a fish or a duck. “They showed one scene with two great big old longhorn elks locking horns on a game preserve somewhere out in Wyoming, fighting like mad. Nobody bothered them elks or tried to stop them from fighting. But just let me get in a little old fistfight here in this bar—they will lock me up, and the desk sergeant will say, ‘What are you colored boys doing, disturbing the peace?’ Then they will give me thirty days and fine me twice as much as they would a white man for doing the same thing. There ought to be some place where I can fight in peace and not get fined them high fines.” “You disgust me,” I said. “I thought you were talking about a place where you could be quiet and compose your mind. Instead, you are talking about fighting.” “I would like a place where I could do both,” said Simple. “If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a fish to be a fish without getting hooked, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place in this American country where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed. There ought to be a law. The next time I see my congressman, I am going to tell him to introduce a 188 

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bill for game preserves for Negroes.” “The Southerners would filibuster it to death,” I said. “If we are such a problem to them Southerners,” said Simple, “I should think they would want some place to preserve us out of their sight. But then, of course, you have to take into consideration that if the Negroes was taken out of the South—who would they lynch? What would they do for sport? A game preserve is for to keep people from bothering anything that is living. “When that movie finished, it were sunset in Virginia and it showed a little deer and its mama lying down to sleep. Didn’t nobody say, ‘Get up, deer, you can’t sleep here,’ like they would to me if I was to go to the White Sulphur Springs Hotel.” “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of a man hath not where to lay his head.’’ “That is why I want game preserves for Negroes,” said Simple. Langston Hughes, “There Ought to Be a Law.” After publishing his essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” and The Weary Blues and Other Poems in 1926, serving as a correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American in Spain in 1937, and writing the screenplay for Way Down South in 1939, Hughes published his first dialog featuring his “Simple Minded Friend” in the Chicago Defender in February 1943. He went on to publish multiple books of Simple stories as well as one play.

1555:

Paris

merry pranksters There was a long strife between Brusquet, court fool to the French king, and the Marshal Strozzi, a summary of which will reveal more of the lighter side of court life than do many of the genteel examinations of the learned. Pierre Strozzi, son of Philippe Strozzi and Clarice de Medici, is one of the great names of French military annals. In his private life, he was easy, agreeable, and facetious. He loved to laugh, to clown, and to frisk forth a quip, and in Brusquet he found the worthiest of adversaries. One day when the Lord Marshal, in a fine mantle of black velvet with silver-worked sleeves, was bowing and bending before his sovereign, Brusquet stole up behind him with a larding pin and a provision of bacon strips. He promptly larded the skirt of that noble cloak, and when the Marshal turned from his interview, Brusquet cried to the king, “Sire, are not those fine golden aglets that my Lord Marshal wears in his cloak?” Loud laughed the king, the marshal, and the bystanders, and Strozzi exclaimed, “Come, good Brusquet, and you did want this mantle—take it, and tell my men to bring me another—but I vow to you that you will pay me this!” A few days later, the marshal came to Brusquet’s house with a band of gentlemen, among them a skillful locksmith. With a very honest and open visage, he invited Brusquet to a stroll in the garden, but meanwhile he slyly pointed to the locksmith the chest where Brusquet kept the fruits of his rapine. While the marshal and Brusquet conversed in the garden, the artisan had the chest open in a jiffy, passed the treasures to the gentlemen, who escaped with bundles of plate under their cloaks, and clapped the strongbox shut again. Soon Brusquet came to the king with a very long face to tell of his misfortune. Thereupon the marshal returned all but five hundred crowns’ worth of his spoils, and this he gave

to the locksmith, and all averred the prank a merry one. Soon after, the marshal was waiting again upon the king, having left his fine-blooded horse—worth five hundred crowns and with a rich, silver-broidered housing—in charge of a lackey at the Louvre gate. Brusquet appeared forthwith and sent the simple lackey on a wild-goose chase, took the charger to his posting stable, cut off his mane and half of one ear, and sent him, in the wretched harness of his hirelings, on the post to Longjumeau. On his return, the postilion at Brusquet’s bidding, Being a funny person does an awful lot of things to you. You feel that you mustn’t get serious with people. They don’t expect it from you, and they don’t want to see it. You’re not entitled to be serious, you’re a clown, and they only want you to make them laugh.  —Fanny Bryce, 1951 rode him to the marshal’s palace and addressed Strozzi in this tenor: “My lord, my master sends you his obeisance, and this, your horse. He is very fit for the posting service, according to the trial I have made. My master bids me say that he will be pleased to buy your horse for fifty crowns.” The marshal made no answer but the lordly one: “Go, take him to your master, and bid him keep the nag until he founders.” It was not long before the marshal sent a command to Brusquet for twenty post horses; some he rode until they dropped, and some he gave to certain poor foot soldiers, and two he sold to a miller to carry flour. Brusquet’s men, recognizing their steeds under the shameful burden of flour sacks, had them seized by justice, but the lawsuit cost their master more than the price of the horses. Brusquet soon found such games too costly for his purse. He invited the marshal to a treaty of peace and celebrated the signing by a banquet, to which a dozen gallants of the court were bidden. He promised them 189

Budai Heshang, by Liu Zhen, 1486. The Zen monk is sometimes referred to as the Laughing Buddha.

that he would find the matter for a feast in his own house. For the first service, some thirty pasties were brought in, hot and savory, and well sauced with spice and cinnamon and even musk. Brusquet then excused himself a moment while his guests, opening their pasties, found inside them old bits of bridles, girths, cinch straps, cruppers, breastplates, headstalls, studs, pommels, and cantles. It’s said that some of those eager trenchermen had the tidbits in their mouths before they found out the cheat, and then the spitting and cursing would have made you sick with laughter. Next the marshal, apparently without rancor, in his turn summoned Brusquet to dine. But first he had his men steal a pretty little donkey that was the pet of Brusquet’s stable, and this ass he had skinned and prepared 190 

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in cold pies and with hot sauces and in the manner of venison. Brusquet ate of all three, and heartily, for they were indeed delicate, and when he could swallow no more avowed that he had never better dined. “Would you like to see what you’ve eaten?” inquired the marshal—and behold the head of Brusquet’s ass, garnished like a boar’s head. Brusquet disgorged till he was near to expiring. Strozzi also found Brusquet’s wife a good stick with which to belabor his witty enemy. Brusquet went to Italy in 1555 in the train of the Cardinal de Lorraine, who was on a mission to the pope. During his absence, Strozzi so managed matters that a post rider came to Paris with news of the death of Brusquet, bringing besides his master’s testament, duly signed and witnessed. This document prayed the king to endow his widow with the continuance of his charge, but only on condition that she would straightaway marry the courier who brought the news. The king was pleased to find good this continuance and condition, supported as it was by the honorable marshal. Madame Brusquet was apprised of the king’s pleasure, and duly performed the obsequies of her spouse, published her grief for a fitting period, and wedded the courier, who had a good sum of crowns awarded him in the wedding contract. The happy marriage had lasted a month when Brusquet returned, and whether his wife was more surprised at his resurrection or he at the horns planted on his brow is a nice question. All the town buzzed with the tale of his neat cuckolding, but he, recognizing the humors of Strozzi, laughed out of the wrong side of his mouth, as you may well imagine. Morris Bishop, from A Gallery of Eccentrics. While working as a doctor in the 1530s, Brusquet demonstrated such a propensity for killing, rather than curing, his patients that an order went out for his execution. He was a court jester for three kings: Henry II—who saved him from the gallows—Francis II, and Charles IX. Bishop published his book about twelve eccentrics in 1928; he also published two volumes of comic verse, Paramount Poems and Spilt Milk.

1875:

London

self-incrimination Chapter XV We endeavor to point out that the obstreperous and meaningless habit of laughing is, if not the entire cause, at least one of the principal causes, of the existence and continuance of the follies, frivolities, mischiefs, and lewd conversations which are now so rampant in every class of society, and which sink it so low in the moral scale. The actors of all practical jokes, the authors of every species of mischief, the retailers of low, vulgar, and obscene anecdotes, together with utterers of scandal, are all instigated by the very contemptible ambition of raising a laugh, a giggle, or a smirk at someone’s expense.

These miserable mongers of foul talk and these vulgar performers of practical jokes exhibit their absurd antics and retail their obscene anecdotes for the express purpose of exciting laughter, which they expect and look for as a gratification and reward for their ingenuity, dexterity, or wit. This being the case, we may safely conclude that if follies, vulgarities, and absurdities were never laughed at, but were listened to in silence and treated with the contempt which they really deserve, they would soon cease to be practiced. Who would transform themselves into monkeys, or magpies, or buffoons (as thousands are in the habit of doing), if their unmeaning absurdities were visited with silence and contempt? Who would continue to indulge in gibes and mocks and ribaldry, or shameless conversation, if they were received with a frown or a rebuke?

This Just In

Headlines from The Onion Clinton Deploys Vowels to Bosnia; Cities of Sjlbvdnzv, Grznc to Be First Recipients (1995) World Death Rate Holding Steady at 100 Percent (1997) Drugs Win Drug War (1998) God Answers Prayers of Paralyzed Little Boy; “No,” Says God (1998) Area Man Experimenting with Homosexuality for Past Eight Years (2000) Bush Regales Dinner Guests with Impromptu Oratory on Virgil’s Minor Works (2001) A Shattered Nation Longs to Care About Stupid Bullshit Again (2001) U.S. Finishes a “Strong Second” in Iraq War (2004) Rest Of U2 Perfectly Fine with Africans Starving (2005) Kitten Thinks of Nothing But Murder All Day (2006) Reaganomics Finally Trickles Down to Area Man (2007) Black Guy Asks Nation for Change (2008) Report: Nation’s Gentrified Neighborhoods Threatened by Aristocratization (2008) Shell Executives Accuse Oil-Covered Otter of Playing It Up (2009) New Study Reveals Most Children Unrepentant Sociopaths (2009) U.S. Economy Grinds to Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just a Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion (2010) 62 Year Old With Gun Only One Standing Between Nation and Full-Scale Government Takeover (2013)

191

Teacher Asleep (detail), by André Henri Dargelas, c. 1860.

All these abominations and annoyances are continued—and actually expand and increase— precisely because they are incessantly laughed at. Not only are absurdities and follies and mischiefs supported and perpetuated by being rewarded with a vulgar laugh, but very many vices and actual crimes are regarded by the volatile and unreflecting as capital jokes, and are greeted with a hearty burst of laughter. Thomas Carlyle says that England contains twenty million people, mostly fools. We cannot help fully endorsing Carlyle’s estimate. Chapter XX Let us repeat the fact (which should be continually borne in mind by all those who maintain that laughter is consistent with propriety and decorum)—namely, that habitual laughers are silly, giddy, frivolous, superficial persons—that is to say, they are, in one expressive word—fools. A second fact requires to be remembered— namely, that sensible and intelligent persons whose lives are occupied in the important duties of improving their minds, in being useful, and in doing good, and whose leisure hours are spent in rational, cheerful, and humanizing enjoyments—such persons (male or female) are rarely tempted to laugh; and many very excellent 192 

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men and women never laugh under any possible circumstances. On the other hand, the worst of characters—the depraved, the dissipated, the criminal—are generally much addicted to uproarious mirth and laughter. Moreover, all the innumerable words and actions which induce or compel people to laugh are invariably tainted with some degree of folly, vice, or crime—all of which, it must be at once acknowledged, are decidedly objectionable and should, therefore, as soon as possible be utterly swept away. An evident and most important corollary may be deduced from the latter proposition—namely, that the more these vices can be avoided and got rid of, the better it will be for the happiness of mankind. We may very safely conclude that the universal predominance of these qualities would be the total annihilation of laughter. George Vasey, from The Philosophy of Laughter and Smiling. Elsewhere in this work, Vasey classified laughter according to five types: “1. The giggling laugh, excited by romping fun and nonsense; 2. The hearty laugh, instigated by practical jokes or extremely absurd antics; 3. The full-faced laugh of the weaker sex; 4. The boisterous laugh of the stronger sex; 5. The ne plus ultra laugh, which may be variously denominated as the obstreperous laugh—the vociferous laugh—the stentorian laugh—or the horse laugh.”

1978:

New York City

what if? So what would happen if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not? Clearly, menstruation would become an enviable, boastworthy, masculine event: Men would brag about how long and how much. Young boys would talk about it as the envied beginning of manhood. Gifts, religious ceremonies, family dinners, and stag parties would mark the day. To prevent monthly work-loss among the powerful, Congress would fund a National Institute of Dysmenorrhea. Doctors would research little about heart attacks, from which men were hormonally protected, but everything about cramps. Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. Of course, some men would still pay for the prestige of such commercial brands as Paul Newman Tampons, Muhammad Ali’s Ropea-Dope Pads, John Wayne Maxi Pads, and Joe Namath Jock Shields—“For Those Light Bachelor Days.” Generals, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation (“men-struation”) as proof that only men could serve God and country in combat (“You have to give blood to take blood”), occupy high political office (“Can women be properly fierce without a monthly cycle governed by the planet Mars?”), be priests, ministers, God Himself (“He gave this blood for our sins”), or rabbis (“Without a monthly purge of impurities, women are unclean”). Male liberals or radicals, however, would insist that women are equal, just different, and that any woman could join their ranks if only she were willing to recognize the primacy of menstrual rights (“Everything else is a single issue”) or self-inflict a major wound every month (“You must give blood for the revolution”). Street guys would invent slang (“He’s a three-pad man”) and “give fives” on the

corner with some exchange like, “Man, you lookin’ good!” “Yeah man, I’m on the rag!” TV shows would treat the subject openly. (Happy Days: Richie and Potsie try to convince Fonzie that he is still “The Fonz,” though he has missed two periods in a row. Hill Street Blues: The whole precinct hits the same cycle.) So would newspapers. (“Summer Shark Scare Threatens Menstruating Men.” “Judge Cites Monthlies in Pardoning Rapist.”) Men would convince women that sex was more pleasurable at “that time of the month.” Lesbians would be said to fear blood and therefore life itself, though all they needed was a good menstruating man. Medical schools would limit women’s entry (“They might faint at the sight of blood”). Of course, intellectuals would offer the most moral and logical arguments. Without that biological gift for measuring the cycles of the moon and planets, how could a woman master any discipline that demanded a sense of time, space, mathematics—or the ability to measure anything at all? In philosophy and religion, how could women compensate for being disconnected from the rhythm of the universe? Or for their lack of symbolic death and resurrection every month? Menopause would be celebrated as a positive event, the symbol that men had accumulated enough years of cyclical wisdom to need no more. Liberal males in every field would try to be kind. The fact that “these people” have no gift for measuring life, the liberals would explain, should be punishment enough. Gloria Steinem, from “If Men Could Menstruate.” Steinem, whose grandmother had been the president of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association, traveled in 1956 on a fellowship to India, an experience that inspired her first book, The Thousand Indias. Her exposé of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club, published in 1963, earned her notoriety and acclaim, and in the 1970s she emerged as a leader of the women’s liberation movement, helping to found the Coalition of Labor Union Women and Women Against Pornography.

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c. 1592:

Padua

wordplay Petruchio: Good morrow, Kate, for that’s your name, I hear. Katherine: Well have you heard but something hard of hearing. They call me Katherine that do talk of me. Petruchio: You lie, in faith, for you are called plain Kate, And bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the cursed, But Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom, Kate of Kate Hall, my superdainty Kate— For dainties are all cates, and therefore “Kate”— Take this of me, Kate of my consolation: Hearing thy mildness praised in every town, Thy virtues spoke of, and thy beauty sounded— Yet not so deeply as to thee belongs— Myself am moved to woo thee for my wife. Katherine: Moved? In good time. Let him that moved you hither Re-move you hence. I knew you at the first You were a movable. Petruchio:   Why, what’s a movable? Katherine: A joint stool. Petruchio:     Thou hast hit it. Come, sit on me. Katherine: Asses are made to bear, and so are you. Petruchio: Women are made to bear, and so are you. Katherine: No such jade as you, if me you mean. Petruchio: Alas, good Kate, I will not burden thee, For knowing thee to be but young and light. Katherine: Too light for such a swain as you to catch, And yet as heavy as my weight should be. Petruchio: Should be?—should buzz. Katherine: Well taken, and like a buzzard. Petruchio: O slow-winged turtle, shall a buzzard take thee? Katherine: Aye, for a turtle, as he takes a buzzard. Petruchio: Come, come, you wasp, i’faith you are too angry. Katherine: If I be waspish, best beware my sting. Petruchio: My remedy is then to pluck it out. Katherine: Aye, if the fool could find it where it lies. 194 

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Petruchio: Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail. Katherine: In his tongue. Petruchio:     Whose tongue? Katherine: Yours, if you talk of tales, and so farewell. Petruchio: What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again, Good Kate, I am a gentleman. Katherine:    That I’ll try. [She strikes him] Petruchio: I swear I’ll cuff you if you strike again. Katherine: So may you lose your arms. If you strike me you are no gentleman, And if no gentleman, why then, no arms. Petruchio: A herald, Kate? O, put me in thy books. Katherine: What is your crest—a coxcomb? Caricature of Queen Victoria as an Edgar Degas ballet dancer, by Aubrey Beardsley, c. 1893.

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Girl laughing while holding condoms filled with water, Daulatdia Brothel, Bangladesh.

Petruchio: A combless cock, so Kate will be my hen. Katherine: No cock of mine. You crow too like a craven. Petruchio: Nay, come, Kate, come. You must not look so sour. Katherine: It is my fashion when I see a crab. Petruchio: Why, here’s no crab, and therefore look not sour. Katherine: There is, there is. Petruchio: Then show it me. Katherine: Had I a glass I would. Petruchio: What, you mean my face? Katherine:

Well aimed, of such a young one.

Petruchio: Now, by St. George, I am too young for you. Katherine: Yet you are withered. Petruchio:    ’Tis with cares. Katherine:   I care not. Petruchio: Nay, hear you, Kate. In sooth, you scape not so. Katherine: I chafe you if I tarry. Let me go. Petruchio: No, not a whit. I find you passing gentle. ’Twas told me you were rough, and coy, and sullen, And now I find report a very liar, For thou art pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous, 196 

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But slow in speech, yet sweet as springtime flowers. Thou canst not frown. Thou canst not look askance, Nor bite the lip, as angry wenches will, Nor hast thou pleasure to be cross in talk, But thou with mildness entertain’st thy wooers, With gentle conference, soft, and affable. Why does the world report that Kate doth limp? O slanderous world! Kate like the hazel twig Is straight and slender, and as brown in hue As hazelnuts, and sweeter than the kernels. O let me see thee walk. Thou dost not halt. Katherine: Go, fool, and whom thou keep’st command. Petruchio: Did ever Dian so become a grove As Kate this chamber with her princely gait? O, be thou Dian, and let her be Kate, And then let Kate be chaste and Dian sportful. Katherine: Where did you study all this goodly speech? Petruchio: It is extempore, from my mother wit. Katherine: A witty mother, witless else her son. Petruchio: Am I not wise? Katherine:     Yes, keep you warm. Petruchio: Marry, so I mean, sweet Katherine, in thy bed. And therefore setting all this chat aside, Thus in plain terms: your father hath consented That you shall be my wife, your dowry ’greed on, And will you, nill you, I will marry you. Now, Kate, I am a husband for your turn, For by this light, whereby I see thy beauty— Thy beauty that doth make me like thee well— Thou must be married to no man but me, For I am he am born to tame you, Kate, And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate Conformable as other household Kates. Here comes your father. Never make denial. I must and will have Katherine to my wife. William Shakespeare, from The Taming of the Shrew. Most of the five-act comedy, including this scene, is part of a play within a play, staged by a lord as a joke at the expense of a drunken tinker. In the final scene, Katherine delivers the longest speech in the play, in which she declares, “I am ashamed that women are so simple/ To offer war where they should kneel for peace,/Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,/When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.” Petruchio responds, “Why, there’s a wench!—Come on, and kiss me Kate.”

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Further Remarks

Once Upon a Time in the West By Ben Tarnoff

O

n November 18, 1865, the New York Saturday Press published a short sketch called “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” about a frog-jumping contest in rural California. It “set all New York in a roar,” reported one journalist, and soon went viral, reprinted in papers from San Francisco to Memphis. The story’s author was Mark Twain, the pseudonym of a twentynine-year-old writer born Samuel Clemens. At the time, Twain was living in California, enjoying provincial renown as a Western humorist. The success of “Jim Smiley” made him nationally famous. “No reputation was ever more rapidly won,” observed the New York Tribune. Twain’s stature quickly grew. Within a decade, he would publish his bestselling book The Innocents Abroad, perform to sold-out audiences at home and overseas, and build a mansion in

Hartford, Connecticut, staffed with servants and outfitted with indulgences like a telephone, a billiard table, and a battery-powered burglar alarm. By the time of his death in 1910, he had become a legend—“the Lincoln of our literature,” in the words of Twain’s friend the author and critic William Dean Howells—and in the century since, he has been hailed by Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Norman Mailer as the father of modern American fiction. “Jim Smiley,” subsequently retitled “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” lifted Twain to fame and laid the foundation for his later triumphs, but it isn’t especially funny anymore. What once made bankers in New York and boatmen in Baton Rouge laugh out loud would now at best elicit a halfhearted chuckle from a generous reader. It’s hard to say exactly

Ben Tarnoff is the author of A Counterfeiter’s Paradise. His second book, The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature, will be published by the Penguin Press in March. His last essay for Lapham’s Quarterly appeared in the Fall 2011 issue, The Future. Pie in the face. Film still from an undocumented silent movie, featuring Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle.

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why. Humor eludes elaborate theorizing, but it usually relies on context: on shared assumptions about the permissible and the taboo, the familiar and the strange. Some humor stays funny because its underlying truths remain in force—the flirty banter in The Taming of the Shrew [Padua, page 194], for instance, or the dick jokes in Tristram Shandy. A large part of the pleasure in laughing at old material is realizing how little has changed. Other humor, by contrast, loses its power as its context fades. “Jim Smiley” drew upon a context that has changed beyond recognition: the American West. More than just a place, the West was an idea; it spawned national legends, bestselling authors, and a menagerie of pop-culture entertainments, from the nineteenth-century “horse operas” performed on Broadway to the dime novels featuring frontier outlaws. What made “Jim Smiley” such a hit was Twain’s upending of the convenFountain, by Marcel Duchamp, 1964 replica of the 1917 original.

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tions of this world, with a picture of the West at once recognizable and not.

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he precise boundaries of the West were constantly changing, but the term always referred to the place where white men ran up against an alien continent. This collision destroyed native populations. It also created new myths and metaphors and slang, and the makings of a national identity. In 1750, the inhabitants of colonial America numbered little more than a million, and the West was the wilderness beyond the Allegheny Mountains. By 1850, the United States was home to twenty-three million people, and the West stretched all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The hunters and homesteaders who ventured into Ohio and Oregon didn’t simply transform the wilderness. They were themselves transformed by an unfamiliar, unforgiving landscape.

To survive, they had to adapt. For hordes of westward-bound whites from the colonial era onward, this was a delicate task. Eastern elites viewed the West with suspicion and scorn, a lawless backwater of heathen Indians and howling wilderness. Settlers ran the risk of losing their manners. In his Letters from an American Farmer, published in 1782, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur described frontiersmen as “a mongrel breed, half civilized, half savage,” and the prejudice remained firm into the nineteenth century. No one struck a better balance between Western savagery and Eastern civility than America’s first frontier icon, Daniel Boone. The real Boone was a Revolutionary War veteran and an early settler of Kentucky. The mythic Boone was nothing less than a superhero. He slaughtered Indians, protected settlers, feasted on buffalo, and blazed trails through the backcountry. Remarkably, he remained a gentleman. Between bouts of wrestling bears and outlaws, Boone always found time to be polite to women. The architects of his legend were careful to lend him an air of gentility for his presentation to respectable readers. If the West lent itself to myth making, to the transposition of fact and fiction, it also proved fertile ground for humor. Western comedy grew out of an omnipresent feature of frontier life: its hardness. As Daniel Boone knew, there was no shortage of ways for a man to die in the West. He could die slowly from starvation or exposure, or suddenly, from an encounter with a Shawnee brave or a bear or a bobcat. He could also tangle with his fellow frontiersmen, often the greatest threat of all. The backwoods were full of brutal men. They picked fights with each other on the slimmest pretexts, solely for the pleasure of hurting and humiliating their opponents. These macho rituals generated their own special language. A Tennessee trapper or a Mississippi boatman might thump his chest and claim that he was a snapping turtle, or that he was endowed with a bear’s claws and the Devil’s tail. The boasts were meant to make the man as fearsome as the landscape he inhabited. They were also self-consciously silly, exaggerated to the

point of absurdity. They converted the cruelty of frontier life into a source of cathartic laughter. In a society of strangers, Westerners could gather around the campfire and enjoy a fleeting sense of community as they spun the unfunny facts of their surroundings into surreal comic fictions. These “tall tales” became the basis for America’s first folk art: a set of oral traditions known as frontier humor. The yarns often featured a gristly frontiersman, engaging in fantastical feats of violence and speaking strange, gorgeous slang. It is easy to distinguish between the joking that reflects good breeding and that which is coarse—the one, if aired at an apposite moment of mental relaxation, is becoming in the most serious of men, whereas the other is unworthy of any free person, if the content is indecent or the expression obscene.  —Cicero, 44 bc Mark Twain loved frontier humor, the impish wit and yeasty vernacular, its fondness for the gargantuan and the grotesque. He also understood its deeper value: not merely as entertainment but as a survival tactic. Twain once defined humor as the “kindly veil” that makes life endurable. “The hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel for us to know and touch them year after year without some mitigating influence,” he said, and he spoke from experience. In his early thirties, he put a gun to his head and almost pulled the trigger; in his seventies, he was still wondering whether he’d made the right choice. The dark comedy of the frontier fit his temperament and his talent. Tall talk showed him how to make language more expressive, by embracing a vernacular that reflected the regional varieties of American speech and gave words a more imaginative relationship to the things they described. One famous frontier humorist put it this way: you could ladle out “words at randum, like a calf kickin’ at yaller-jackids,” or you could roll “em out tu the pint, like a feller a-layin bricks—every one fits.” The point was to avoid 201

being a mere bricklayer of language, to break free from the patterns prescribed by tradition and congealed by cliché and to find more original ways to build sentences. What distinguished Twain was his willingness to do so, and by so doing to turn frontier humor into literature. It wasn’t easy. The notion that literature could emerge from the frontier’s barbaric yawp encountered violent resistance from America’s literary establishment. It didn’t help that tall tales abounded in vulgarity, drunkenness, and depravity, not to mention perversions of proper English that would make a schoolteacher gasp. Proving the literary power of the frontier would be a central part of Twain’s legacy, and a pie in the face of There comes a time when suddenly you realize that laughter is something you remember and that you were the one laughing.  —Marlene Dietrich, 1962 the New England dons who had dominated the country’s high culture for much of the nineteenth century. He wasn’t immune to wanting their approval, but he came from a very different tradition. His ear hadn’t been trained at Harvard or Yale; it was tuned to the myriad voices of slaves and scoundrels, boatmen and gamblers.

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wain’s escape into literature began with a bar fight. He had a friend named Steve Gillis, a squarely built Southerner who loved a good scrap. One night in November 1864, Gillis was walking by a saloon on Howard Street in San Francisco when he saw a scuffle inside. He decided to lend a hand—and ended up smashing a pitcher across the bartender’s head, nearly killing him. Gillis was arrested, posted bail with Twain’s help, and then fled before facing charges. Twain lacked the money to pay the forfeited bond, and so he followed suit. Gillis went to Virginia City, Nevada, and Twain to Jackass Hill, a mining camp about a hundred miles from San Francisco where Gillis’ brother Jim owned a cabin. The change of scenery was abrupt. In San Francisco, Twain had enjoyed oysters, cham-

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pagne, and the company of young and ambitious writers like Bret Harte. At Jackass Hill, the food was simpler, the society less sophisticated. In the glory days of ’49, the region had been the heart of the gold rush. By 1864, the mines were mostly spent, and the old boomtowns had gone bust. Only a “forlorn remnant of marooned miners” remained, Twain wrote, swapping tall tales in their drawling, graphic talk at the tavern, recalling great gold strikes and fights and curious incidents of any kind. One day, a man told a story about a jumping frog. Twain jotted down the plot in his notebook: Coleman with his jumping frog—bet stranger $50—stranger had no frog, & C got him one—in the meantime stranger filled C’s frog full of shot & he couldn’t jump—the stranger’s frog won. What struck Twain was the narrator’s seriousness: the man spun the ludicrous yarn as if it were “the gravest sort of history,” a series of “austere facts” that his listeners received as solemnly as if the story were delivered from a pulpit. Nobody in the tavern seemed “aware that a firstrate story had been told in a first-rate way, and that it was brimful of a quality whose presence they never suspected—humor,” Twain wrote. Twain wanted to reproduce the effect in prose. A friend later remembered him saying that he would make that frog “jump around the world,” if only he could write the tale the way the man told it. An opportunity soon arose. When Twain returned to San Francisco in February 1865, he found a letter waiting for him from Artemus Ward, America’s reigning king of comedy. Ward asked if Twain wanted to contribute a piece to a new book he was putting together, and Twain, replying months later, suggested the jumping-frog story. “Write it,” Ward responded. “There is still time to get it into my volume of sketches.” The story emerged only gradually, and by October 1865, eight months after his return from mining country, Twain still wasn’t done.

Girls in kimonos laughing and playing outside a house near a stream, Japan.

He wrote a long letter to his brother and his sister-in-law that helped to explain why: I never had but two powerful ambitions in my life. One was to be a pilot, & the other a preacher of the gospel. I accomplished the one & failed in the other, because I could not supply myself with the necessary stock in trade—i.e., religion. I have given it up forever. I never had a “call” in that direction, anyhow, & my aspirations were the very ecstasy of presumption. But I have had a “call” to literature, of a low order—i.e., humorous. It is nothing to be proud of, but it is my strongest suit, & if I were to listen to that maxim of stern duty which says that to do right you must multiply the one or the two or the three talents which the Almighty entrusts to your keeping, I would long ago have ceased to meddle with things for which I was by nature unfitted & turned my attention to seriously scribbling to excite the laughter of God’s creatures. Poor, pitiful business! The confession offers a glimpse of the crisis behind the jumping frog. Twain could make people laugh, but he felt ashamed of the fact, since humor was a lowbrow pursuit. He didn’t want to be a clown for the rest of his life, yapping and hollering for people’s amusement. Yet

he also recognized that humor was what he did best: his “strongest suit,” a talent, a calling, bestowed by the Almighty. He couldn’t abandon it, despite his misgivings about its crudeness. In this ambivalence he differed from Artemus Ward, who had fewer scruples about his vocation. Twain and Ward had met during Ward’s trip to the far West in 1863. They hit it off immediately: drinking, trawling dance halls, and ribbing each other relentlessly. Ward was only a year older but much further along in his career. His given name was Charles Farrar Browne, and like Twain he had started out as a typesetter before cranking out the comic sketches that made him famous. He also worked as a standup comedian, delivering non sequiturs and puns in a mockserious vernacular that had his audience rolling in the aisles. His admirers included Abraham Lincoln [Springfield, IL, page 57], who read one of Ward’s pieces aloud to his cabinet before presenting the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. Secretary of State William H. Seward thought it was hilarious; Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase did not. “Gentlemen, why don’t you laugh?” Stanton later recalled Lincoln saying. “With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die, and you need this medicine as much as I do.” Like Twain, Lincoln took humor’s medicinal properties seriously. 203

Ward’s success set him apart, but he wasn’t alone. He belonged to a generation of humorists who emerged around the time of the Civil War. They wrote under a variety of pseudonyms—Petroleum V. Nasby, Josh Billings, Orpheus C. Kerr—and helped popular-

ize the telling of funny stories. They did little to elevate humor into art. Their comedy largely relied on misspelled words and malapropisms, illuminated by the occasional witticism. While there was plenty of quaint American slang on offer in their work, these writers didn’t try

The Buffoon Sebastian de Morra, by Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, c. 1646.

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to develop the deeper potential of vernacular language into anything approximating “good square American literatoor,” as Ward called it. That task fell to Twain. His anxiety about humor’s lowness worked to his advantage, pushing him to improve on the more buffoonish antics of predecessors like Ward and find a more literary key for his work. Since he couldn’t renounce humor, he enriched it. To do so he drew on the particular strain of frontier storytelling that he had encountered in his youth: Southwestern humor, named for a loosely defined region that included Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Missouri. Starting in the 1830s, a handful of news­ papermen began documenting life in the Southwestern hinterlands—mostly members of the educated Whig elite who caricatured their subjects as dumb yokels. The central Southwestern device was the “frame”: a genteel narrator placed between the reader and the barbarous backwoods society. The gentleman was always in control, a guide pointing out specimens of frontier humanity like he might animals in a zoo. Although originally published in the region’s own papers, Southwestern humor soon moved north. Characters like Simon Suggs and Sut Lovingood started appearing in Eastern magazines, raising hell and spouting dialect for an urban audience. Readers in New York City and Boston learned about frontier rituals like the camp meeting, the coon hunt, and the horse race; they became acquainted with the confidence man and the Indian killer. Despite their coarseness, these lowlifes possessed a certain charm, inhabiting a realm beyond law, morality, or logic—a place where the usual rules didn’t apply. Their days weren’t organized around the miseries of wage labor, as they were for the urban masses of the industrializing East. The backwoodsman lived in a “borderland of fable,” as the historian Bernard DeVoto later called it, where the beets grew as big as cedar stumps and the grasshoppers were so thick they could be barbecued as steaks. This phantasmagoria reflected the terrifying powers of a newfound land, filtered through the fevered mind of the

frontiersman. The strange language of the frontier grew out of the need to describe something new, to create word pictures commensurate with the otherworldliness of the West. These homespun bits of brilliance inspired Twain, who mined them for maximum literary effect. As 1865 drew to a close, he found a way out of his crisis and into the jumping frog. He immersed himself in the manuscript, and constructed a tale that closely resembled the Southwestern humor sketches of his Missouri childhood. But by the time Twain finally finished “Jim Smiley,” Ward’s book had already The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people—that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.  —James Thurber, 1959 gone to press. The missed deadline was fortuitous: the publisher passed the item along to the editor of the Saturday Press, who wasted little time in printing it.

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he premise is simple. The narrator enters a tavern looking for a reverend named Leonidas W. Smiley. Simon Wheeler, a drowsy patron, says that he once knew a Jim Smiley, and proceeds to box the bewildered stranger into a corner and unspool a bizarre, meandering yarn. This Smiley had a bit of a gambling problem, says Wheeler. He even trained a frog to jump on command, for the purpose of betting on him. He took such pride in his pet that when a stranger came to town, Smiley challenged him to a frogjumping contest. The stranger accepted, but first he would need a frog of his own. While Smiley went to procure one for him, the stranger grabbed Smiley’s frog, pried its mouth open, and filled it with quail shot. When the moment came, Smiley’s frog couldn’t move—“planted as solid as a anvil”—while the other frog “hopped 205

off lively.” The stranger collected his winnings and took off, leaving Smiley stunned. The narrator isn’t sure how to react to this story. Wheeler never smiles, despite the ridiculousness of the incident he relates. He drifts “serenely” through his “queer yarn” in the same quiet, “gently flowing key”—and probably would have kept drifting on indefinitely if someone at the other side of the bar hadn’t called him away, giving the narrator a chance to escape. He makes for the door, only to be buttonholed by Wheeler at the last minute. Jests and scoffs do lessen majesty and greatness and should be far from great personages and men of wisdom.  —Henry Peacham, 1622 Wheeler wants to spin another yarn, this time about Smiley’s “yaller one-eyed cow.” The narrator stomps out, yelling, “O, curse Smiley and his afflicted cow!” Americans found the tale uproariously funny. For decades, readers had laughed at Southwestern sketches that presented the frontiersman as a clown. Now they were treated to the opposite: the joke isn’t on the illiterate Westerner who can’t talk straight, but is instead on the genteel narrator, who gets lured in and barraged with a series of absurdities that leaves him flummoxed and frustrated, no closer to meeting his soughtafter clergyman. When he first meets Wheeler, he sees “winning gentleness and simplicity” in his face—whereas a savvier onlooker would discern a con man about to take a city slicker for a ride. Wheeler is by far the smarter of the two, despite his lack of education. He speaks in vivid images: a dog’s jaw sticks out like “the fo’castle of a steamboat,” his teeth “shine savage like the furnaces.” He creates lovely word music from syncopated verbal rhythms, as when he describes how Smiley’s frog “hysted up his shoulders—so—like a Frenchman, but it wasn’t no use—he couldn’t budge…” Wheeler embodies the “mongrel breed” despised by Crèvecoeur, yet he breaks out of 206 

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the cage of Eastern condescension and shows his uncanny skill as a storyteller. By contrast, the narrator’s language is flat, secondhand, soggy with the sentimental clichés of Eastern respectability. In the face-off between East and West, the West wins—not with violence, which is how a similar encounter ends in an earlier Twain sketch, “The Dandy Frightening the Squatter”—but with a confidence trick, another favorite frontier pastime. Twain had taken a popular genre and turned it inside out. His inversion of the Southwestern form drew loud laughter from a country deeply familiar with the conventions of frontier humor. But “Jim Smiley” represented more than just a clever sendup of the Southwestern school. It also marked a transition for Twain: the moment when he discovered the literary power of the frontier. If it’s harder to see the humor in the story today, that’s partly because Twain had ambitions beyond being funny. The piece’s devilish irony, lyrical slang, and rambling flow aren’t purely for comic effect; they are the building blocks of a distinctive narrative style, one that would shape later masterpieces like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain had set out to tell a tall tale and ended up with a work of art. He used the veil of humor to smuggle in a serious point about the purpose of American literature, challenging the entrenched belief in Eastern superiority and Western barbarism. In “Jim Smiley,” the frontier isn’t an inferior stage of civilization awaiting the enlightening influence of the Atlantic Coast, but a densely detailed universe demanding to be understood on its own terms. In the coming decades, Twain would explore this universe in greater detail—in Roughing It, his chronicle of Nevada and California; in Life on the Mississippi, his account of his piloting days; and, above all, in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, grounded in his boyhood memories of Hannibal, Missouri. The jumping frog opened the vein of literary creation that would sustain his best work, and helped him build a legacy far beyond any of his fellow humorists. Twain had wanted to do more than just make people laugh. He succeeded.

Dangerous Wit Assailant

1673: London

Target

Ammunition In poem “A Satyr on Charles II,” the king is accused of disregarding the law in pursuit of sexual pleasures, “for he loves fucking much.” Repercussions Rochester banned temporarily from court.

John Wilmot, second earl of Rochester

Assailant

Alexander Pope

King Charles II

1728: London

Target

Ammunition In poem Dunciad, editor Theobald is called “Tibbald,” King of Dunces, son of the Goddess of Dullness. Repercussions Pope was said to have armed himself against reprisals, going everywhere with loaded pistols and his Great Dane, Bounce.

Lewis Theobald

Assailant

1933: Moscow

Target

Ammunition In poem “The Stalin Epigram,” references to Stalin rolling “the executions on his tongue like berries” and “laughing cockroaches on his top lip.” Repercussions Mandelstam arrested, tortured, and exiled along with his wife.

Osip Mandelstam

Assailant

Charlie Chaplin

Assailant

Ai Weiwei

Joseph Stalin

1940: Hollywood

Target

Ammunition In film The Great Dictator, Chaplin caricatured Hitler as “Adenoid Hynkel” and denounced Nazis as “machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts.” Repercussions Chaplin supposedly on Hitler’s “death list,” branded a “pseudo-Jew” in German anti-Semitic book.

Adolf Hitler

2011: Beijing

Target

Ammunition In photograph, Ai showed himself naked except for toy horse covering his genitals and caption, “Fuck your mother, the party central committee.” Repercussions Ai detained at Beijing airport, held and interrogated for nearly three months by police officers.

Communist Party of China

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Conversations

thomas hobbes Leviathan, 1651 Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter, and is caused either by some sudden act of men’s own that pleaseth them or by the apprehension of some deformed thing in another, by comparison whereof they suddenly applaud themselves. And it is incident most to them that are conscious of the fewest abilities in themselves who are forced to keep themselves in their own favor by observing the imperfections of other men. And therefore much laughter at the defects of others is a sign of pusillanimity. For of great minds, one of the proper works is to help and free others from scorn, and compare themselves only with the most able. On the contrary, sudden dejection is the passion that causeth weeping, and is caused by such accidents as suddenly take away some vehement hope or some prop of their power: and they are most subject to it who rely principally on helps external, such as are women and children. Therefore some weep for the loss of friends, others for their unkindness, others for the sudden stop made to their thoughts of revenge by reconciliation. But in all cases, both laughter and weeping are sudden motions, custom taking them both away. For no man laughs at old jests or weeps for an old calamity.

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viktor frankl Man’s Search for Meaning, 1946 It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human makeup, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent. To draw an analogy: a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. It also follows that a very trifling thing can cause the greatest of joys. Take as an example something that happened on our journey from Auschwitz to the camp affiliated with Dachau. We had all been afraid that our transport was heading for the Mauthausen camp. We became more and more tense as we approached a certain bridge over the Danube which the train would have to cross to reach Mauthausen, according to the statement of experienced traveling companions. Those who have never seen anything similar cannot possibly imagine the dance of joy performed in the carriage by the prisoners when they saw that our transport was not crossing the bridge and was instead heading “only” for Dachau.

la rochefoucauld Maxims, 1678 We give nothing so liberally as our advice. To point out that one never flirts is in itself a form of flirtation. The reason why lovers never tire of each other’s company is that the conversation is always about themselves. We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those who find us boring. Whatever discoveries have been made in the land of self-love, many regions still remain unexplored. Old people are fond of giving good advice; it consoles them for no longer being capable of setting a bad example. The most dangerous absurdity of elderly persons who have been attractive is to forget that they are so no longer. Most young people think they are being natural when really they are just ill-mannered and crude. We all have strength enough to endure the troubles of others. When vanity is not prompting us, we have little to say.

rob delaney Tweets, c. 2012 You’ve really got to hand it to short people. Because they often can’t reach it. Never judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. Unless they’re Crocs, then fuck that guy. Children give terrible gifts because they’re poor. The Jews run Hollywood! Which is probably why it’s a fun place to work with a lot of great restaurants. Probably the worst thing you can do to a person is leave them a voicemail. Ask any guy: if you don’t know all the sex tips from the latest Cosmo, we are not interested. “It just feels so good to have a clean apartment!”—Someone who’s never killed a bear with a sword. He’d come off as way less pretentious if he went by Daniel “Dave” Lewis. Made my wife a “surprise” appointment for lap-band surgery. April Fool’s! She left me a few weeks ago. Sometimes I put dog poop in the toilet at work so the guys don’t think I only went in there to cry. 209

quintilian Institutes of Oratory, c. 93 In the first place, all ridicule has something in it that is buffoonish; that is, something that is low, and oftentimes purposely rendered mean. In the next place, it is never attended with dignity, and people are apt to construe it in different senses because it is not judged by any criterion of reason but by a certain unaccountable impression that it makes upon the hearer. I call it “unaccountable” because many have endeavored to account for it—but, I think, without success. Here it is that a laugh may arise, not only from an action or a saying, but even the very motion of the body may raise it; add to this that there are many different motives for laughter. For we laugh not only at actions and sayings that are witty and pleasant but such as are stupid, passionate, and cowardly. It is therefore of a motley composition, for very often we laugh with a man as well as laugh at him. Our maxim is of use not only to the purpose of an orator but to the purposes of life, which is: never to attack a man whom it is dangerous to provoke, lest you be brought to maintain some disagreeable enmities or to make some scandalous submissions. It is likewise highly improper to throw out any invectives that numbers of people may take to themselves, or to arraign, by the lump, nations, degrees, and ranks of mankind, or those pursuits that are common to many. A man of sense and good breeding will say nothing that can hurt his own character or probity. A laugh is too dearly bought when purchased at the expense of virtue.

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joan rivers Interview with The Hollywood Reporter, 2013 I’ve learned: When you get older, who cares? I don’t mince words, I don’t hold back. What are you gonna do to me? Fire me? It’s been done. Threaten to commit suicide? Done. Take away my show? Done! Not invite to me to the Vanity Fair party? I’ve never been invited! If I ever saw the invitation, I’d use it as toilet paper. My gardener Jose is invited—he asks me to bring him his sombrero to clean it for him. I’ve learned to have absolutely no regrets about any jokes I’ve ever done. I got a lot of flack for a joke I made about Heidi Klum and the Nazis (“The last time a German looked this hot was when they were pushing Jews into the ovens”), but I never apologized for it. I said Justin Bieber looked like a little lesbian—and I stand by it: he’s the daughter Cher wishes she’d had. You can tune me out, you can click me off, it’s okay. I am not going to bow to political correctness. But you do have to learn, if you want to be a satirist, you can’t be part of the party. Meaning, you can’t go horseback riding with Jackie O in Central Park if you’re going to make a joke about her that night.

st. john chrysostom On the Statutes, 387 Let us then discern the snares and walk far off from them! Let us discern the precipices and not even approach them! This will be the foundation of our greatest safety, not only to avoid things sinful, but those things which, being accounted indifferent, are yet apt to make us stumble against sin. For example, to laugh, to speak jocosely, does not seem an acknowledged sin, but it leads to acknowledged sin. Thus laughter often gives birth to foul discourse, and foul discourse to actions still more foul. Often from words and laughter proceeds railing and insult; and from railing and insult, blows and wounds; and from blows and wounds, slaughter and murder. If, then, you would take good counsel for yourself, avoid not merely foul words and foul deeds, or blows, wounds, and murders, but unseasonable laughter itself—and the very language of raillery—since these things have proved the root of subsequent evils. Therefore St. Paul said, “Let no foolish talking nor jesting proceed out of thy mouth.” For although this seems to be a small thing in itself, it becomes, however, the cause of much mischief to us. Again, to live in luxury does not seem to be a manifest and admitted crime, but then it brings forth in us great evils—drunkenness, insolence, avarice, and rapine. If you would avoid luxurious living, you should remove the foundation of extortion, and rapine, drunkenness, and a thousand other evils, cutting away the root of iniquity from its extremity. Hence St. Paul said that “she who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives.” Again to go to the theaters does not seem, to most men, to be an admitted crime, but it introduces into our life an infinite host of miseries. For spending time in the theaters produces fornication, intemperance, and every kind of impurity.

charles baudelaire On the Essence of Laughter, 1855 Laughter is satanic; it is therefore profoundly human. In man it is the consequence of his idea of his own superiority; and in fact, since laughter is essentially human, it is essentially contradictory, that is to say, it is at one and the same time a sign of infinite greatness and of infinite wretchedness in relation to the beasts. It is from the constant clash of these two infinites that laughter flows. The comic, the power of laughter, is in the laugher, not at all in the object of laughter. It is not the man who falls down who laughs at his own fall, unless he is a philosopher, a man who has acquired, by force of habit, the power of getting outside himself quickly and watching, as a disinterested spectator, the phenomenon of his ego. While laughter is a sign of superiority in relation to animals, and I include in that category the numerous outcasts of intelligence, it is a sign of inferiority in relation to the wise men, who, by the contemplative innocence of their minds, have something childlike about them. If, as we have the right to, we compare humanity to man, we can see that the primitive nations cannot begin to conceive the idea of caricature, and have no comic drama (holy books, whichever nation they belong to, never laugh), and that, as they move slowly upward toward the misty peaks of intelligence or peer into the gloomy furnaces of metaphysics, nations begin laughing diabolically; and finally that if, in these selfsame ultracivilized nations, one intelligent being, driven on by a noble ambition, wants to break through the limits of worldly pride and launch out boldly into pure poetry, that limpid poetry as profound as nature, laughter will not be there any more than in the soul of the sage.

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miscellany Gioachino Rossini was known to possess strong opinions about other composers. “Wagner has some fine moments,” he estimated, “but some bad quarters of an hour.” After hearing Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, he remarked, “What a good thing it isn’t music.” Dorothy Parker [New York City, page 130] was once asked to use the word horticulture in a sentence. “You can lead a horticulture,” she replied, “but you can’t make her think.” Austrian-born philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein observed in 1947, “A typical American film, naive and silly, can—for all its silliness and even by means of it—be instructive. A fatuous, self-conscious English film can teach one nothing. I have often learned a lesson from a silly American film.” A review of the sitcom The Hank McCune Show in a 1950 issue of Variety magazine described the first known use of a laugh track on TV: “Although the show is lensed on film without a studio audience, there are chuckles and yucks dubbed in. Whether this induces a jovial mood in home viewers is still to be determined, but the practice may have unlimited possibilities if it’s spread to include canned peals of hilarity, thunderous ovations, and gasps of sympathy.” According to his biographer Aelius Lampridius, the Roman emperor Elagabalus would amuse himself at dinner by seating his guests on “air pillows instead of cushions and let the air out while they were dining, so that often the diners were suddenly found under the tables.” Niccolò Machiavelli, author of The Prince, was well known in his lifetime as a comic dramatist. An early performance in Florence of The Mandrake caused Pope Leo X to insist that 212 

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its actors and scenery be brought to Rome in 1520. In the prologue to Clizia, a play inspired by Plautus [Rome, page 125], Machiavelli wrote, “Comedies were invented to be of use and of delight to their audiences.” In 1662 diarist Samuel Pepys saw two plays by William Shakespeare [Padua, page 194] performed in London. Of Romeo and Juliet he wrote, “It is a play of itself the worst that ever I heard in my life, and the worst acted that ever I saw these people do.” A Midsummer Night’s Dream he described simply as “the most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life.” As editor of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley once received a letter requesting an autograph of the late Edgar Allan Poe that Greeley might possess from his correspondence. Greeley replied, “I happen to have in my possession but one autograph of the late distinguished American poet Edgar A. Poe. It consists of an IOU, with my name on the back of it. It cost me just $51.50, and you can have it for half-price.” Shortly before Ezra Pound was indicted for treason for his anti-American broadcasts on Benito Mussolini’s Radio Rome, Ernest Hemingway wrote to poet Archibald MacLeish, “If Ezra has any sense he should shoot himself. Personally I think he should have shot himself somewhere along after the twelfth canto, although maybe earlier.” In Moscow in 1921, a group of actors formed the Blue Blouses, a theater company that acted out scenarios from the news. Their success inspired the creation of many similar amateur troupes. One joke that emerged from the movement went: Bim and Bom were the most popular clowns in revolutionary Moscow. Bim

came out with a picture of Lenin and one of Trotsky. “I’ve got two beautiful portraits,” he announced, “I’m going to take them home with me!” Bom asked, “What will you do with them when you get home?” “Oh, I’ll hang Lenin and put Trotsky against the wall.” When a former leader of the Tijuana cartel was shot in the back of the head by a man dressed in a clown costume, five hundred clowns from around Latin America joined together at the International Clown Meeting in Mexico City and staged a fifteen-minute laughathon “to demonstrate their opposition to the generalized violence that prevails in our country.” Having read a manuscript by Marcel Proust, an editor at the publishing house Ollendorff wrote to its author, “I may perhaps be dead from the neck up, but rack my brains as I may, I can’t see why a chap should need thirty pages to describe how he turns over in bed before going to sleep.” When asked about Sigmund Freud [Vienna, page 148] in an interview, William Faulkner replied, “Everybody talked about Freud when I lived in New Orleans, but I have never read him. Neither did Shakespeare. I doubt if Melville did either, and I’m sure Moby Dick didn’t.” Milton Berle was reputed to have one of the biggest penises in show business. In the bathroom of the Friar’s Club in New York City, another comedian asked Berle to compare sizes with him. Berle reportedly replied, “Okay, but I’m only gonna take out enough to win.” In May 1969 the crew of Apollo 10 became the second mission to orbit the moon. Transcripts attest to a malfunctioning wastedisposal system: “Give me a napkin quick. There’s a turd floating through the air.” The three astronauts could not determine the provenance of the turd: “I didn’t do it. It ain’t one of mine.” “I don’t think it’s one of mine.” “Mine was a little more sticky than that. Throw that away.” “God Almighty.”

The world’s oldest known joke was written in Sumerian sometime between 2300 and 1900 bc: “Something which never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.” In his Anthology of Black Humor, published in 1939, André Breton speculated, “Given the specific requirements of the modern sensibility, it is increasingly doubtful that any poetic, artistic, or scientific work, any philosophical or social system that does not contain this kind of humor will not leave a great deal to be desired, will not be condemned more or less rapidly to perish.” One of Elvis Presley’s favorite movies was Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which he is said to have watched around forty-five times in his private movie theater at Graceland. During the last years of his life, Presley was also known to spend late nights at his mansion acting out Python routines with one his cousins. Muphry’s law was formulated by John Bangsund in The Society of Editors Newsletter in 1992: “(a) if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written; (b) if an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book; (c) the stronger the sentiment expressed in (a) and (b), the greater the fault; (d) any book devoted to editing or style will be internally inconsistent.” A feature of ancient Roman funeral processions, the archimime was a particular jester or fool hired to walk behind the body, dressed as the deceased, silently imitating his or her walk and acting out events from the dead person’s life as the parade went toward the tomb. When asked if he had read a recent play by Maurice Maeterlinck, Leo Tolstoy replied, “Why should I? Have I committed a crime?” 213

Aubrey Boucicault and Charles Bigelow in a scene from the burlesque Higgledy-Piggledy, produced by Joe Weber and Florenz Ziegfeld, Weber Music Hall, New York City, 1904.

Split Personalities by Andrew McConnell Stott

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ildred Harris was only nineteen years old when she sued for divorce, although she may have been even younger. Her career in movies had begun sometime between the ages of nine and twelve, depending on who was asking. Either way, she was far younger than her husband, who, at thirty-one, was the most famous man in the world—and was leading a double life. Harris first met Charlie Chaplin at a party at Samuel Goldwyn’s beach house in the fall of 1917. He offered her a ride home, resulting in a yearlong affair, a pregnancy, and a hurried

wedding. Their child survived only three days, its sad little death a cipher for their unflourishing marriage. In the courtroom, Harris told the judge of the unhappiness she had experienced as the wife of the funniest man alive. Chaplin neglected and mistreated her, she said. He brooded and was rarely home, abandoning her to go off with his friends for up to six weeks at a time, or leaving her alone at night as he spent hours stalking the streets in search of ideas. When he was around, he criticized her constantly, correcting her manners, censoring

Andrew McConnell Stott is Professor of English at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, and the author, most recently, of The Vampyre Family: Passion, Envy, and the Curse of Byron. His last essay for Lapham’s Quarterly appeared in the Summer 2012 issue, Magic Shows. 214 

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her dress, and refusing her money, despite his commanding a salary of $670,000 a year. Her friends were unwelcome at their house, and if she ever went out alone, he hired detectives to follow her. Among the few people she was allowed to see were her ever-present mother and the men Chaplin would bring home for dinner. “But such men!” Harris lamented. “Old, grave, and intellectual men! They were fifty years old or more. They talked of things I could not possibly understand. I was seventeen. What could I know of philosophy, or of Voltaire [Ferney, page 142] or Rousseau or Kant?” Chaplin had hoped to cultivate the mind of his young wife, which he found “cluttered with pink-ribboned foolishness.” According to Harris, this meant he read long, boring books out loud and rehearsed the tragic roles he harbored secret ambitions to play. Mildred once mistook something he said for a joke and began to laugh, but soon realized her error as he flew into a fury and called her names. When they divorced in 1920, on grounds of mental cruelty, she received $200,000. “It has been said that a comedian is only funny in public,” she complained to the Washington Times. “I believe it. In fact, I know it. Charlie Chaplin, who has made millions laugh, only caused me tears.” Chaplin did little to deny it. He appeared to suffer bouts of melancholy when he first became famous, and when the journalist and poet Benjamin De Casseres came to speak to him around the time of his divorce, the actor’s condition had escalated to full-blown despair. “There are days when contact with any human being makes me physically ill,” Chaplin told him. “I am oppressed at such times and in such periods by what was known among the Romantics as worldweariness. I feel then a total stranger to life.” Was this proof that the Chaplin projected on the screen was exactly that, an insubstantial phantom concealing the true identity of the man? “He has clowned, cavorted, and somersaulted in every city, town, and mining camp in the civilized and uncivilized world,” wrote De Casseres, “but there is no man I have ever met who, intellectually and emotionally, comes

nearer to the Hamlet type of being than Charles Spencer Chaplin, planetary clown, whose stage personality is better known than any other human being who has thus far been born on this star and who has more completely hidden his real personality than any other world figure.” Chaplin, beloved of millions and known around the world, was walled off, Midas-like, from the very gift that others revered in him. De Casseres’ conclusion was emphatic: “I have never met an unhappier or a shyer human being than this Charles Spencer Chaplin.”

I

s it a condition of comic genius to be perpetually wrestling with demons? From Canio, the iconic, stiletto-wielding clown of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s 1892 opera, Pagliacci, to modern greats like Richard Pryor, Andy Kaufman, and John Belushi, it would seem so. Even in Chaplin’s day, the depressed and often violent clown A joke’s a very serious thing.  —Charles Churchill, 1763 was a well-established trope, both offstage and on. Hollywood Pagliacci types included Frank Tinney, the blackface vaudevillian accused of brutally assaulting his mistress; Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, whose brilliant career was undone by the untimely death of Virginia Rappe, a bit-part actress who suffered a fatal trauma in his hotel room; and the suave French comedian Max Linder, brought in by Essanay Films to replace Chaplin after the tramp had departed the studio but who failed to replicate his predecessor’s success. Suffering from a severe depression that was deepened by service in the Great War, Linder claimed he could practically feel the ability to be funny seeping out from him. In February 1924, he and his young wife, Ninette, a wealthy heiress, made a suicide pact at a hotel in Vienna but failed to consume a sufficient dose of sleeping powders. The following autumn in Paris they were better prepared. Both drank large drafts of barbiturates before injecting morphine into their veins and slitting their wrists. Chaplin 215

dedicated a film to his replacement, declaring himself Linder’s disciple. That comedy is a mansion built on tragic foundations was a theory given credence by Sigmund Freud [Vienna, page 148]. “A jest betrays something serious,” he wrote in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, which argued that humor was a means of circumnavigating taboo and repackaging unpalatable thoughts into digestible form. At the heart of Freud’s argument is a reluctance to accept comedy on its own terms as comedy, viewing it rather as a proxy for something kept hidden. For Freud, Chaplin was “a particularly simple and transparent case” of someone who used humor to explore the darker states of mind. Writing to his friend Max Schiller, Freud commented how Chaplin always seemed to play the same part: The weak, poor, helpless, clumsy young man for whom things turn out right in the end. Do you think he has to forget his own

ego for this role? On the contrary, he only acts himself as he was in his bleak youth. He cannot escape from those impressions, and even today he is compensating himself for the deprivations and discouragement of that period. It’s a familiar idea: comedy as compensation, a means of bolstering that wounded, second self. But how much of this is a psychological fact, and how much an expectation on the part of the public that comedians are made this way? Certainly, the concept of duality has been inherent in comedy for centuries. From Dionysus and his servant Xanthias in Aristophanes’ The Frogs to Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, Molière’s plays of feigned identity, and the first double acts of nineteenth-century music halls, the theme of doubling is ever present. That comedians, rather than comedies, should be seen as divided is merely a projection of this theme onto the performers themselves.

Two Fools of Carnival, engraving by Hendrik Hondius, after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1642.

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The first doubled comedians were the first professional comedians, the comic actors who plied their trade as professional theaters emerged during the late sixteenth century. It was these men for whom the word comedian was coined, a designation that sought to describe the nature of their labor by placing them within a strict generic context. Prior to this moment, it was not possible to define comedy so neatly, nor could it be so closely associated with particular individuals. Rather, it existed as part of the much wider category of “fooling,” a diverse and multi-faceted portmanteau of spectacles that might include jugglers, acrobats, and simpletons as much as it did jesters and wits. Medieval fooling could also incorporate a mystical dimension, imagining the fool as both scapegoat and scourge, a quasiapocalyptic Everyman who stood to remind us of the principle listed by St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians: “The wisdom of this world is foolishness before God.” Where the medieval fool was a type as opposed to an individual, the early modern men who followed were professionals contracted to appear in performances bounded by the generic expectations of comedy. Of these comedians, Robert Armin, a member of Shakespeare’s company, was particularly successful at crafting a sense of himself beyond his roles. Armin was a writer as well as a performer, publishing books of his routines and descriptions of notable fools that suggest an almost academic interest on his part in the lineage of his profession. It was also Armin who was instrumental in transforming the clown of the Shakespearean stage from the jigging buffoon of the earlier plays into the drier and more verbal wit of As You Like It, King Lear, and Twelfth Night. His performance as the detached and moody Feste in Twelfth Night provided a particularly revealing portrait of the professional comedian, for while Feste’s name suggests festivity and song, the character himself makes it plain that he is the embodied spirit of nothing, merely a performer for hire, singing for his supper but keeping his distance when no one is willing to pay.

The sense of one life lived center stage and another lived behind the curtain became more entrenched during the Restoration, with the avalanche of cheap theatrical biographies encouraged by the expansion of theatrical culture. Such biographies trafficked in the emerging concept of celebrity, a currency distinct from the ancient concept of fame, which was founded on notions of honor, heroism, saintliness, and imperial majesty. Whereas fame dealt in notable deeds, celebrity sprang He who’s gay all day can’t keep house.  —The Instruction of Ptahhotep, c. 1900 bc from a kind of augmented personhood—the belief that those who were subject to the gaze of many must be inherently interesting. Onstage, a performer might be mesmerizing, but this was merely an intimation of the rich personality that must lie beneath. Of the various comedians who became celebrities of the stage, none were more famous than the pantomime clown Joseph Grimaldi. Grimaldi, the son of an Italian ballet master and an English dancer at Drury Lane, rose to prominence in the first decade of the nineteenth century as the star of Regency pantomime, the seasonal extravaganzas that blended children’s fairy tales with special effects and fast-paced, slapstick harlequinades to create performances so compelling that they were seen by an eighth of the London population each year. Grimaldi had been raised in the theater and began his first performances almost before he could talk, yet it was his appearance in Thomas Dibdin and Charles Farley’s Harlequin and Mother Goose; or, the Golden Egg at the age of twenty-eight that truly propelled him to fame. The show, which debuted at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden on December 29, 1806, was standard pantomime fare which, thanks to Grimaldi’s clowning, became an unprecedented success, running for 119 nights and generating over £20,000 in profits, saving the theater from financial ruin. 217

Grimaldi was truly gifted as a physical comedian—he had a mobile face and an agile body on which were inflicted endless comic punishments—and he was resourceful when it came to constructing stage business. Yet Grimaldi’s most enduring contribution to the history of comedy was his innovation in the area of stage makeup. Prior to his time, the appearance of stage clowns—as rustic servants in stained smocks with a circle of rouge on each cheek—had remained largely unchanged since the Elizabethan era. Grimaldi completely reinvented the look by transforming the clown from doltish menial to overgrown child, replacing the old costume with a colorful, stylized version of the ruff and short Learn weeping, and thou shalt laugh gaining.  —George Herbert, 1640 trousers worn by students at Regency boarding schools, and expanding the makeup so that it encompassed every inch of exposed skin. He was the first to use white foundation that covered not only the face but the hands, neck, and even the ears, lips, and insides of the nostrils. To this he added a wide red mouth, arched eyebrows, and a large chevron on each cheek. The whole was topped off with a loud wig, and the new creation dubbed simply “Joey.” Whiteface clowns have been known by that name ever since. The vivid makeup was also essential if Grimaldi was to be seen from the back of the theaters that had grown from smallish auditoriums to vast dominions of entertainment, some able to accommodate over four thousand people for three or four hours a night. Yet the total absorption of the performer in the makeup also served to suggest a much stricter division between the man and his creation. As such, Grimaldi and his clown came to be seen as distinct entities, even enemies, engaged in a battling but reciprocal relationship. Rumors began to circulate about Grimaldi’s private life almost as soon as he became a celebrity, rumors that not only dogged him for the rest of his career but would also shape the way come218 

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dians have been conceived of ever since. Newspapers claimed that, when not onstage, Grimaldi was somber and prone to depression. As soon as Mother Goose closed, one periodical wrote that he was “resolved to betake himself to sackcloth and ashes!,” reports he himself chose to confirm with a punning quip: “I am grim all day, but I make you laugh at night.” Without doubt, the apex of these rumors was an anecdote that appeared some time in the 1820s and is still used, frequently misattributed, even to this day. The story involves Grimaldi’s reported visit to the famous surgeon John Abertheny, to whom the clown had gone in search of a cure for his melancholy. Abertheny, unable to identify his patient without his slap and motley, briskly prescribed the diversions of “relaxation and amusement”: “But where shall I find what you require?” said the patient. “In genial companionship,” was the reply; “perhaps sometimes at the theater—go and see Grimaldi.” “Alas!” replied the patient. “That is of no avail to me; I am Grimaldi.” Grimaldi’s moment coincided with developing attempts in psychology to understand the hidden reaches of the brain. In 1815, a Dr. Dyce of Aberdeen reported the case of a sixteen-year-old servant girl named Maria who would take on different personalities after she fell asleep. As Maria would set the table and dress the children with her eyes half-shut, this was initially thought to be a simple case of sleepwalking, until her episodes began to take on a more unusual cast. During one she acted the role of an Episcopal clergyman conducting a baptismal ceremony on the children in her care, and in another believed herself to be riding in a horse race as she jockeyed a stool across the kitchen floor. With each new visitation, these personas grew more complex, until eventually she reached a point where she had developed two distinct identities, each with its own consistent and unbroken memories but entirely separate from the other. So utterly

divided were the two identitities that one of her fellow maids took advantage of her altered consciousness to arrange her rape, an incident to which the girl was entirely oblivious until she returned to that state several days later. A similar case was reported the following year, concerning Mary Reynolds, an émigré from Birmingham, England, who had settled in Oil Creek, Pennsylvania. Reynolds’ condition began as a series of occasional fits, until in 1811 she suffered an extreme convulsion that left her deaf and blind for several weeks. It seemed that she had made a full recovery, but soon after, she lost all recollection of her surroundings, so that her family became strangers, and she could not read, write, or perform even the most basic domestic tasks. After five weeks like this, she woke up one day completely restored and with all her memories intact. Three weeks later, she was changed again. And so she lived her life, transitioning from one state to the other for varying lengths of time. As with Maria, the serving girl from Aberdeen, as time passed, each personality began to grow and develop on its own timeline. Whatever she learned or experienced in her secondary state stayed with her, and when she returned to it, she would pick up where she had left off, with all her memories from that state preserved. Her new personality was markedly different from the first, far more witty, talkative, and imaginative. She wrote poetry and cultivated a whole new set of friends, having decided that she didn’t much like the ones from her original state. It was decided that Mary was suffering from “a twofold consciousness, or, more definitely, with two distinct consciousnesses.” Phrenology, the pseudoscience which held that personality traits could be read from the contours of the skull, was thought to be capable of explaining this phenomenon. In the dissecting room, phrenologists such as Johann Spurz­ heim, the protégé of the field’s founder, Franz Joseph Gall, had noted that, just as the body is a mirror image of itself, with two arms, two legs, two eyes, and so on, so the double hemispheres of the brain replicated this pattern. During his popular lecture tours around England in

I Died Laughing c. 450 bc Greek painter Zeuxis, contemplating a portrait he had just completed of an ugly old woman. c. 206 bc Athenian philosopher Chrysippus, watching an old woman give his donkey unmixed wine, having asked her to do so after being amused at seeing it eat figs. 1410 Martin, king of Aragon, prone from gorging himself on aphrodisiac-infused goose, upon hearing a joke made by his jester Borra, who had rushed into the room to amuse his ailing master. 1556 Italian satirist and playwright Pietro Aretino, falling backward in a chair. The cause for the fall is said to have been laughter over a dirty joke about his sisters. 1660 Scottish author and translator of François Rabelais, Thomas Urquhart, upon hearing that Charles II had been restored to the British throne. 1782 Northamptonshire resident Mrs. Fitzherbert, after attending a Wednesday-night performance of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. The “whimsical appearance” of the actor playing Polly made her laugh “without intermission until Friday morning, when she expired.” 1975 English bricklayer Alex Mitchell, suffering from Long QT syndrome—which can cause heart attacks when triggered by exertion or adrenaline—watching sketch-comedy show The Goodies. During an episode called “Kung Fu Capers,” Mitchell gave “a tremendous belly laugh, slumped on the sofa, and died.” 2009 Last known member of the Fore people of Papua New Guinea infected with kuru, or “laughing death.” Among symptoms of the neurological disease, which infected Fore who ate the flesh of their dead, were bursts of uncontrollable laughter. 2013 California visitor Mun Jang, punched and kicked to death in a Los Angeles–area doughnut shop, having laughed at Ronald Eugene Murray II when some of the pastrami in Murray’s sandwich fell to the floor.

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1814 and 1825, Spurzheim expounded on this theory. “In giving the histories of cerebral injuries,” wrote Spurzheim, the duplicity of the nervous system has very generally been forgotten…Tiedeman relates the case of one Moser, who was insane on one side, and observed his insanity with the other. Dr. Gall attended a minister similarly afflicted; for three years he heard himself reproached and abused on his left side; with his right he commonly appreciated the madness of his left side. Sometimes however, when feverish and unwell, he did not judge properly. Long after getting rid of this singular disorder, anger, or a greater indulgence in wine than usual, induced a tendency to relapse. Spurzheim’s insights are clearly reflected in the great interest writers of Romantic literature would come to take in the theme of the double, in novels such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), and James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), all featuring characters who are plagued by an odious other. The apotheosis was reached in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, whose unfortunate protagonist came to understand that his mind was constituted of “polar twins” in constant struggle, neither of whom could lay claim to absolute sovereignty over the other. “I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness,” says Jekyll in his testimony, “even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.” The example most pertinent to the history of comedy, however, is the degree to which the theme of doubling permeates one of Charles Dickens’ earliest works, The Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi (1838). Dickens was reluctant to take the commission to transform Grimaldi’s naive brick of handwritten text into a readable book, but eventually having agreed to it, he finished it 220 

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in a matter of weeks. Such haste and lack of care is evident throughout the text: one struggles to find innate literary merit, aside from a marked insistence on portraying the clown’s life in stark contrasts of black and white. Dickens’ Grimaldi lives in a finely tuned world in which every triumph, personal or professional, is balanced by commensurate pain. “It is singular enough that throughout the whole of Grimaldi’s existence,” writes Dickens, “which was a checkered one enough, there always seemed some odd connection between his good and bad fortune; no pleasure appeared to come to him unaccompanied by some accident or mischance.” The pattern was repeated throughout Grimaldi’s life: the moment his first wife, Maria, accepted his proposal of marriage, Grimaldi was instantly flattened by a “heavy platform on which ten men were standing,” resulting in a broken arm. He found £599 on a street near Tower Hill, only to have exactly the same amount embezzled from him by a confidence artist. He attained his hard-won ambition of being chosen over an archrival to become principal clown at both Sadler’s Wells and Drury Lane theaters just as Maria died in childbirth, placing Grimaldi in the position of having to go onstage even in the depths of mourning, setting “the audience in a roar; and chalking over the seams which mental agony had worn in his face, was hailed with boisterous applause in the merry Christmas pantomime!” And so it continued over the years, until at last his exertions became too much and he was forced into early retirement, in which “the light and life of a brilliant theater were exchanged in an instant for the gloom and sadness of a dull sickroom.” Thanks to Dickens’ impeccable feel for narrative structure, instead of a faithful biography, we are given an elegy for a comedian who has sacrificed his health and his happiness for laughter. Thus Grimaldi becomes the first fully realized example of the clown with a double life.

C

haplin made a brief appearance as a Grimaldi-style clown in one of his final films, Limelight (1952), the last movie he made

Harpo Marx, c. 1930.

in America before sending himself into exile. Chaplin played Calvero, an aging alcoholic comedian who nurses a beautiful ballerina back to health after she has tried to commit suicide. The Grimaldian shade is the perfect complement to a film that has an entirely funereal feel to it, with its meditation on the passage of time, the waning of celebrity, and the diminution of comic potency. “What a sad business, being funny,” says the ballerina as Calvero recounts the events of his life. Is this true, or had Chaplin fallen for his own mythology? Does a talent for comedy necessitate a tragic life? Are comedy and happiness truly incompatible? Common sense says no—there are countless comedians who have lived normal, well-adjusted lives without succumbing to depression, insanity, or sui-

cide. So why is it so hard to think of one? It would seem that Chaplin, like the many who followed in Grimaldi’s wake, found it hard to resist the powerful narrative that set expectations for his happiness. The comedian’s split personality reveals what we ultimately believe comedy to be. Whereas in the Middle Ages fooling was seen as an expression of the cosmic absurdity of being alive, the modern world views it as a symptom of personal distress. In Grimaldi’s day, misery was the grit in the oyster that grew the pearl and gave substance to the otherwise trivial world of pantomime. Suffering ennobles, and when comedians suffer, we are more willing to see their work as flowing from the same font as the profoundest art. We want our comedians to be tortured; only then can we really laugh. 221

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p. 159, Rome Juvenal. Satires. Translated by Peter Green. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1980. Copyright © 1974 by Peter Green. Used with permission of Penguin Books Ltd. p. 162, San Francisco Bierce, Ambrose. Column in The Wasp, 1882. p. 163, Paris Rostand, Edmond. Cyrano de Bergerac. Translated by Carol Clark. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2006. Copyright © 2005 by Carol Clark. p. 165, Lemnos Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books Ltd., 1997. Copyright © 1996 by Robert Fagles. Used with permission of Penguin Books Ltd. p. 168, Leningrad Kharms, Daniil. Today I Wrote Nothing. Translated by Matvei Yankelevich. New York: The Overlook Press & London: Gerald Duckworth Publishers Ltd., 2009. Copyright © 2009 by Matvei Yankelevich. p. 170, Spain Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Translated by Edith Grossman. New York: Ecco, 2005. Copyright © 2003 by Edith Grossman. p. 172, Washington, DC Kubrick, Stanley, Southern, Terry, and George, Peter. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Copyright © 1964 by Columbia Pictures. p. 175, Belfast McDonagh, Martin. The Lieutenant of Inishmore. New York: Methuen Drama, 2009. Copyright © 2001 by Martin McDonagh. p. 179, Athens Plato. The Laws. Translated by Trevor J. Saunders. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2004. Copyright © 1970 by Trevor J. Saunders. Used with permission of Penguin Books Ltd. p. 180, Constantinople Christopher of Mytilene. “To Father Andreas, Gatherer of Bones.” From The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present. Edited by Peter Constantine, Rachel Hadas, Edmund Keeley, and Karen Van Dyck. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2010. Copyright © 2010 by Peter Constantine, Rachel Hadas, Edmund Keeley, and Karen Van Dyck. p. 182, Russia Gogol, Nikolai. Dead Souls. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Copyright © 1996 by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. p. 186, Liphook Johnson-Hill, Nigel. Letter from The Big Bang: Christmas Crackers 2000-2009, by John Julius Norwich. Stanbridge: The Dovecote Press Ltd., 2010. Copyright © 2010 John Julius Norwich. p. 187, Chicago Hughes, Langston. “There Ought to be a Law” from The Return of Simple. Copyright © 1961 by Langston Hughes. Copyright © renewed 1989 by George Houston Bass. p. 189, Paris Bishop, Morris. A Gallery of Eccentrics. New York: Minton, Blach & Company, 1928. p. 191, London Vasey, George. The Philosophy of Laughter. London: J. Burns, 1875. p. 193, New York City Steinem, Glora. Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. New York: Holt, Rihehart and Winston, 1983. Copyright © 1983 by Gloria Steinem. p. 194, Padua Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2008. Copyright © 2005 by Oxford University Press. p. 208 Hobbes, Thomas. The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury; Now First Collected and Edited by Sir William Molesworth, Bart., Vol. III. London: John Bohn, 1839. p. 208 Frankl, Viktor. Man’s Search for Memory. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. Copyright © 2006 by Viktor E. Frankl. p. 209 La Rochefoucauld. Maxims. Translated by Leonard Tancock. London: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1959. Copyright © 1959 by Leonard Tancock.

p. 209 Delaney, Rob. Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Rob Delaney. p. 210 Quintilian. Institutes of Oratory; or, Education of an Orator. Translated by the Rev. John Selby Watson, M.A., M.R.S.L. London: George Bell and Sons, 1903. p. 210 Rivers, Joan. The Hollywood Reporter, 2013. p. 211 Chrysostom, St. John. The Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on The Statues, or, To the people of Antioch. Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1842. p. 211 Baudelaire, Charles. Selected Writings on Art and Artists. Translated by P.E. Charvet. London: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1972. Copyright © 1972 by P.E. Charvet.

Art

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People only laugh at what’s funny or what they don’t understand. Take your choice.   —Anton Chekhov, 1886

Portrait of a Laughing Violinist, by Gerrit van Honthorst, 1624.

Miguel de Cervantes • George eliot

Aristophanes Nikolai Gogol • Joseph Heller

Dorothy Parker

L a p H a m ’ s Q ua r t e r ly

Among The Contributors

Volume VII, Number 1

Jane Austen • lenny bruce

Groucho Marx

oscar wilde Chris Rock • Juvenal

comedy

Charlie Chaplin • Jonathan Swift

comedy

Ben Tarnoff • Andrew McConnell Stott

winter 2014

winter 2014

Volume VII, Number 1