Comedy: It can save your life!

Years ago I had a conversation with a Jewish friend about the movie Life is Beautiful. He hadn't seen it, because some of his own relatives (or his parents? I forget) had walked out of the film. My friend pointed out that he's got relatives with numbered tattoos still on their arms.

Fair enough, I would never try to tell anyone that they *must* enjoy a movie about such a sensitive subject. (Though what you don't know if you don't see the movie til the end is that the father does die at the end.)

Best Scene: Translating the Camp Rules

I'm thinking about it now cause I just saw an interview snippet with Benigni where he says the movie was partly based on his father, who spent three years in a Nazi work camp, and the way he would tell those stories to his children.

"Benigni recalls that his father never told the story of his internment in a way that would frighten or depress his children. This respect and protection of innocence had a profound impact on Benigni, who sought to repeat his father's approach to the subject." (quote from this essay)

The thing is, I kind of get that. Not the protecting innocence thing--thought that's sweet, and it's what makes Life is Beautiful poignant--but dealing with bad things using humor. My grandfather didn't like to talk about his WWII experience, except for telling funny stories. He had this one story about drinking grappa and then taking a long hike up a mountain with friends. And then they looked back and realized... they were still down at the café, drinking grappa. My mother once gave him a t-shirt that he loved, which said on the front "Here he cometh" and on the back "There he goeth." ...What can I say, this is the family line from whence comes my sense of humor.

Not that I've ever had to employ it in such a horrific way as a concentration camp! But for whatever crapitude has come into my life, humor has been my best line of defense. And I confess... there are some very good jokes about the Nazis. Like Chaplin's dictator dance with the balloon-world.

And Seinfeld getting caught for making out throughout Schindler's List. And the protagonist in Hannah and Her Sisters asking his parents about why there's evil, and his father shouting: "How the hell do I know why there were Nazis? I don't even know how the can opener works!"

And Springtime for Hitler!

I'll never forget, eons ago, I was with a girlfriend when she realized she was locked out of her house, and her roommate wouldn't be back for a few hours. It was a really nice day outside, so it was no big deal. I started to crack jokes, as per my usual method, and she snapped at me: It's not funny!

Well my friend... it's even funnier now that you don't see the humor in it. I didn't say that--I guess I just switched into sympathy mode. And ever since then I've been more alert to the fact that not everyone approaches life as one big joke, like I do. It got me into trouble several times at work too, until I learned to tamp down my joking tendency. (To this day I have a friend who thinks I reamed her out for having fur on the hood of her jacket, while I know I was just joking. She refuses to believe it. "You were mad!" "But I don't get mad about stuff like that!" "You were really mad.")

My brother is my preferred Partner in Crisis because he's genetically wired to do the same thing as me. Years ago we had to make a long drive through The Snowstorm of the Century, and thank God he was my companion for that trip... made it that much more bearable to drive in such nerve-wracking conditions. I still remember him telling me, halfway through the long slow drive, that the worst thing was... he needed to pee. Bwah ha ha ha! -- was the reaction.

He was also present when the neighbor upstairs flooded my kitchen--I think when I was in the middle of university assignments too. (Fernando was out of town.) I was so grateful he was there, offering his help, but also making jokes the whole time.

Two of my closest friends, Maewitch and Gilby, also have a tendency to make jokes along with me when we're talking about something crappy that's happened in our lives. Probably one of the reasons they're Two of My Closest Friends. Hmm in fact my Friend-like-a-sister Swiss Girl is the same way. Whenever something bad's happening to me, and someone cracks a joke and then apologizes, I tell them not to apologize. Just keep 'em coming.

I know some people who only like black humor, or political humor... not me, I love all out fluff like Wodehouse (whose humor Stephen Fry likened to a soufflé) and the Marx Brothers and The Vicar of Dibley and Georgette Heyer. One of Heyer's most ridiculous books once sustained a bunch of Romanian political prisoners, throughout their incarceration. And the best part of Hannah and Her Sisters is when the protagonist is suicidal, and goes to see the Marx Brothers, and it gives him a reason to life. So I don't see fluffy humor as unimportant. I think it's life sustaining!

          

How to Write a Humor Novel

So I can turn my mind to what I've been trying to do the whole time--take notes on a writing book by Donald Maass. Maass is one of The Agents in the writing business, so I grabbed his book from the library without looking at it.

It's called Writing the Breakout Novel and the focus is on pushing your craft to the limits. The man's been in da biz for a longo timeo, and he's talking about the kinds of books that turn writers' careers around, or propel them to the next level of their careers.

I see a lot of truth in what he sees, and its applicability across--

suckadoodling when better

[ - fuck - the sick cat is back, burrowing under her blanket. :-( Poor little popinjay. Maybe I shouldn't have fed her supper, though it was her good food. Perhaps I'll fast her the rest of the night. ] [Update: She calmed down again about 20 minutes later.] [Update: She keeps having mini flares. But she seems to know to run--like lightning--straight to her blanky. And go to sleep.]

Aaaaas I was saying. So far I agree with a lot of what he says, across literatures and genres, except--and this is the problem I've been running into for years--except for humorous fiction. Some of the best humor books (and movies) are missing one of the qualities that is usually necessary for A Great Book: heavy deep meaning.

Like... okay there's a wee bit of meaning in a Georgette Heyer novel. The Grand Sophy taught me how to be crafty, but to good purpose. Freddie takes responsibility for the first time in his life because of his love for Kitty; Alverstoke acts unselfishly for the first time in his life because of his love for Frederica. But that just makes them well-constructed romances. There aren't any Grand Themes. They're just funny. Because when Kitty drags Freddie to see the Elgin Marbles...

he thinks they've been fleeced because:
"They've got no heads! ...They haven't any arms either!" (Cotillion)

Maass writes: "Something about the premise of such stories [of breakout novels] grabs me, hollows my stomach and makes me look hard at my life."

Nothing about the premise of a Heyer novel makes me look hard at my life. Even less so a Bertie Wooster story by PG Wodehouse. But I'll tell you... lines like these make my life worth living:

'Yes, sir,' said Jeeves in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend.

I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express in the small of the back.

The Right Hon. was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say `When!'

She fitted into my biggest armchair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing armchairs tight about the hips that season.

Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing-glove.

I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.

We exchanged a meaning glance. Or, rather, two meaning glances, I giving him one and he giving me the other.

And don't get me start on Louise Rennison who kick-started the revival of teen novels, and who I sincerely hope will stand the Test of Time. Sure Georgia grows and discovers that love is better when you actually have something in common with the boy, but...

Mum just brought Bibbs into bed with me. She was asleep, still clutching her swimming goggles and snorkel. She was also clutching our Lord Jesus, or Sandra, as he is now called in his Barbie frock and makeup. (Startled by His Furry Shorts)

Yes. That is the genius. And then there's the genius of Damon Runyon, whose language I fell in love with while watching Guys and Dolls, and it's as great on paper as it is on the big screen:

Only a rank sucker will think of taking two peeks at Dave the Dude's doll, because while Dave may stand for the first peek, figuring it is a mistake, it is a sure thing he will get sored up at the second peek, and Dave the Dude is certainly not a man to have sored up at you. ("Romance in the Roaring Forties")

And even if a book is satire, like Cold Comfort Farm (there's no butter in hell!!) or Three Men in a Boat, who among us understands what was being satirized? The worst examples of the literature they made fun of have disappeared, and yet the books are still funny. Such as this passage about their dog:
  
When I meet a cat, I say, "Poor Pussy!" and stop down and tickle the side of its head; and the cat sticks up its tail in a rigid, cast-iron manner, arches its back, and wipes its nose up against my trousers; and all is gentleness and peace. When Montmorency meets a cat, the whole street knows about it; and there is enough bad language wasted in ten seconds to last an ordinarily respectable man all his life, with care.  [Three Men in a Boat, To say nothing of the dog. The rest of the passage, on fox terriers, is hilarious.]

Just as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will always be funny, even when we perfect space travel and meet aliens.

One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans eas their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in "It's a nice day", or "You're very tall" or "Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right?" 

All this can be summed up by the Preston Sturges' movie Sullivan's Travels, which I just saw for the first time. It's about a popular filmmaker who wants to make an Important Serious movie.


He hits the road pretending to be a homeless man and ends up, eventually, having an authentic "poverty & desperation experience" where he suddenly realizes the value of movies for pure entertainment.

Georgette Heyer had to have realized the same thing, as the only fan letter she kept was from a woman who'd been kept in a Romanian prison:

In 1948, a year before my arrest, I had read – and reveled in – Friday’s Child, and as I have a very retentive memory I was able to tell it to my cell-mates, practically verbatim…Truly, your characters managed to awaken smiles, even when hearts were heavy, stomachs empty and the future dark indeed! ... During the 12 years I spent in prison I didn’t see a written page. My memory however, could not be sealed up and thanks to it and to you, my fellow-sufferers begged, again and again, to hear “What Kitten Did Next”.*

 So what's my bigger point? My bigger point is that no one's written How to Write the Comic Novel. And they need to, because there are some crucial differences that set them apart. And when you're reading all these "how to" books, but you're trying to write a comedy, the how to write novels books just mess with your head.

The rules for writing "great novels" apply pretty well to, say, Jennifer Crusie's romantic comedies because she writes heavy-deep. She does have themes, she does go for the heart. But that is not the intention of all comic novels, and nor should it be.

There is some comedy that is not meant to make you look hard at your life. Some days your life is living in a Romanian prison. Just as the original screwball comedies weren't meant to make you think about your life in the soup line and your quest for work and your worry about feeding your children. There's a time and place for looking hard at your life, and there's a time and place for laughing because Our Lord and Savior is now called Sandra.

There are other elements missing from the Comic Novel How To, but this will do for now. "That'll do Pig. That'll do."

PS: Writing this gave me a breakthrough for my book!
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*Kitten is the nickname for Hero in Friday's Child. Not to be mixed up with Kitty in Cotillion. Though they're both pretty daft.