Thursday, February 02, 2006
In Which I Try To Be Funny
When I was in ninth grade, my English teacher wrote on the back of one of the papers I'd submitted, "I think all you're learning is how to be funny." She gave me a good grade, but I took her advice and tried, for the rest of my time in school, not to be funny. How sad that I succeeded!
I should have reacted as any normal adolescent would have, by continuing to stick hilarious asides in my essays and wisecracks in the margins. Unfortunately, I behaved as the majority of adolescents would have. In short, I behaved as would the abnormal adolescents. I tried to be earnest in everything I wrote afterwards. By the time I tried to foist humor upon what readers I had twenty years later, I'd completely lost comic timing.
Mark Twain always tried to be funny and wound up the master of pathos. If you're funny, you stand the chance of catching the reader off guard and winning him over before your lack of form makes him stop reading. A novel stands a better chance of being read through to the end if something funny is described at the start.
America's deepest novel didn't have a humorous beginning. The work which commenced with the words "Call me Ishmael" was the first flop for its author, who'd had a string of bestsellers. Many people returned the book immediately. Herman Melville's next book sold poorly and the next two helped bankrupt his publisher. Now, if MOBY-DICK had begun "Call me Ishmael and I'll call you Ishkabobble," the saga of the white whale might have turned a dime. This is not to say humorous situations don't occur in the book. Queequeg and Ishmael have a slapstick encounter involving a quilt, a hatchet and a bed, but it happens only after the most primal opening chapter in the history of the novel. Even an audience of shills can't whistle and clap to phrases such as "growing grim about the mouth." Melville donned motley just a little too late in the story. No, his book didn't turn a dime. The greatest book in American literature turned its author into a pauper. But the second-greatest book to come out of America was another in a string of hits for its author. Mark Twain made money off HUCKLEBERRY FINN, but, just to show he had more in common with Melville than many acknowledge, I'll mention that HUCKLEBERRY FINN didn't make as much as the publishers expected.
If you want to read a funny, profound book about a Mississippi steamer, the name of its author is a punchline, because it's not the name you might expect me to cite. The book is THE CONFIDENCE-MAN, and after it was published, it would be more than thirty years before another one was written by its author, Herman Melville.
Post-script: If you've read BILLY BUDD, Melville didn't expect you to do that. It wasn't published until he'd been dead almost a generation.
I should have reacted as any normal adolescent would have, by continuing to stick hilarious asides in my essays and wisecracks in the margins. Unfortunately, I behaved as the majority of adolescents would have. In short, I behaved as would the abnormal adolescents. I tried to be earnest in everything I wrote afterwards. By the time I tried to foist humor upon what readers I had twenty years later, I'd completely lost comic timing.
Mark Twain always tried to be funny and wound up the master of pathos. If you're funny, you stand the chance of catching the reader off guard and winning him over before your lack of form makes him stop reading. A novel stands a better chance of being read through to the end if something funny is described at the start.
America's deepest novel didn't have a humorous beginning. The work which commenced with the words "Call me Ishmael" was the first flop for its author, who'd had a string of bestsellers. Many people returned the book immediately. Herman Melville's next book sold poorly and the next two helped bankrupt his publisher. Now, if MOBY-DICK had begun "Call me Ishmael and I'll call you Ishkabobble," the saga of the white whale might have turned a dime. This is not to say humorous situations don't occur in the book. Queequeg and Ishmael have a slapstick encounter involving a quilt, a hatchet and a bed, but it happens only after the most primal opening chapter in the history of the novel. Even an audience of shills can't whistle and clap to phrases such as "growing grim about the mouth." Melville donned motley just a little too late in the story. No, his book didn't turn a dime. The greatest book in American literature turned its author into a pauper. But the second-greatest book to come out of America was another in a string of hits for its author. Mark Twain made money off HUCKLEBERRY FINN, but, just to show he had more in common with Melville than many acknowledge, I'll mention that HUCKLEBERRY FINN didn't make as much as the publishers expected.
If you want to read a funny, profound book about a Mississippi steamer, the name of its author is a punchline, because it's not the name you might expect me to cite. The book is THE CONFIDENCE-MAN, and after it was published, it would be more than thirty years before another one was written by its author, Herman Melville.
Post-script: If you've read BILLY BUDD, Melville didn't expect you to do that. It wasn't published until he'd been dead almost a generation.
# posted by Fredwemyss @ 12:59 PM 
