Words Fail Me Part 12

This is probably my favorite joke in the whole world:A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Hey, buddy, why the long face?"

Well, it works for me. I first heard it about ten years ago from a colleague at the New York Times Book Review, where the level of humor is extremely elevated. I was useless for the rest of the day. You'd think I'd be sick of the joke by now, but it still reduces me to Jell-O.

I like to think of myself as a woman of the world, a person of some sophistication. Then what do I see in such a corny joke? I've been giving this some thought, and I have a few conclusions.

First, I like jokes that begin with animals walking into bars: ducks, parrots, French poodles, kangaroos, and so on. Another joke I like starts with a duck walking into a hardware store. Heard it from the same guy, in fact.* Second, I like the juxtaposition of the ridiculous and the routine. Third, I like plays on words. And finally, I like a joke I can remember.

Now you know how to make me laugh. How do you make your readers laugh?

While no piece of writing is funny to everyone, it's safe to say that some things are inherently humorous. Penguins are funnier than seagulls. A rutabaga is funnier than a carrot, and a nose job is funnier than an appendectomy. Three clergymen in a lifeboat are funnier than one in a canoe. A jock strap sounds funnier than an athletic supporter, and a truss is funnier still (unless you're the guy who needs one). We know this instinctively, even if we've never stopped to wonder why.

It's certainly more fun to laugh at humor than to a.n.a.lyze it. But putting comedy on the couch can make your own writing funnier. Read humorous writing and look for a method to the madness. Is it parody? Ridicule? Gross exaggeration? Slapstick? Absurd juxtaposition? Incongruous situations? Great timing? Euphemism gone mad? Pomposity deflated?

Look for opportunities to use humor. An amusing anecdote at the beginning of a long essay, for instance, might draw readers in and make it seem less formidable. A few well-placed laughs along the way could provide comic relief. And a light note at the end might be precisely what it takes to drive home your point and make it stick. No kidding.

Remember that most writers aren't relentlessly funny from beginning to end, and they don't have to be. A pinch of humor that works is better than a potful that doesn't. For most of us humor is merely seasoning; it's not the whole dish. Some of the following examples are from humorists and some from writers who use only a strategic giggle here or there. Enjoy them.

Comic Relief.

We've all had to suffer through the boring lecture or sermon or sales pitch that never seems to stop. You know the kind. Just as you think the speaker is coming to the end, you find he's only reached the small intestine.

Remember your sufferings next time you have to write something packed with information. Have mercy on your readers. So what if they don't expect to be entertained? Surprise them. See how the astronomer Fred Hoyle, in his book The Nature of the Universe, lightens up what could have been a weighty discussion of the immensity of s.p.a.ce: "One of the questions we shall have to consider later is what lies beyond the range of our most powerful instruments. But even within the range of observation there are about 100,000,000 galaxies. With upward of 1,000,000 planetary systems per galaxy the combined total for the parts of the Universe that we can see comes out at more than a hundred million million. I find myself wondering whether somewhere among them there is a cricket team that could beat the Australians."

When you have to rattle off a list of numbers, facts, projections, or whatever, give your audience a break. Put something light at the end of the tunnel.

The Last Laugh.

I don't find insects amusing. And scientific writing isn't usually a lot of laughs. Still, a good writer can find humor in almost anything. I couldn't help smiling at this pa.s.sage about ants, from Lewis Thomas's The Lives of a Cell.

"Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarra.s.sment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into wars, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves. The families of weaver ants engage in child labor, holding their larvae like shuttles to spin out the thread that sews the leaves together for their fungus gardens. They exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television."

Yes, it's funny that ants are so much like us at our worst, with their armies, chemical weapons, slavery, and child labor. But what makes the paragraph work is its timing: The best line is saved for last. When you write, be sure you haven't buried a punch line.

Hyper Ventilation.

In humor, the next best thing to understatement is overstatement. Or maybe it's the other way around. Either way, I can't exaggerate the place of exaggeration in funny writing. So I'll let P. G. Wodehouse do it for me. In this excerpt from Right Ho, Jeeves, Bertie Wooster describes drinking his man Jeeves's famous pick-me-up, a remarkably effective morning-after concoction: "For perhaps the split part of a second nothing happens. It is as though all Nature waited breathless. Then, suddenly, it is as if the Last Trump had sounded and Judgement Day set in with unusual severity.

"Bonfires burst out in all parts of the frame. The abdomen becomes heavily charged with molten lava. A great wind seems to blow through the world, and the subject is aware of something resembling a steam hammer striking the back of the head. During this phase, the ears ring loudly, the eyeb.a.l.l.s rotate and there is a tingling about the brow.

"And then, just as you are feeling that you ought to ring up your lawyer and see that your affairs are in order before it is too late, the whole situation seems to clarify. The wind drops. The ears cease to ring. Birds twitter. Bra.s.s bands start playing. The sun comes up over the horizon with a jerk.

"And a moment later all you are conscious of is a great peace."

Like Wodehouse, you can make excess a virtue. Pile it on. Use embellishment for its own sake. Sometimes too much is just enough.

A Little off the Top.

The mighty, it seems, were meant to fall. When this happens in Greek drama, the mighty one is brought down by some tragic flaw. When it happens in comedy, he trips over an ottoman or slips on a banana peel or gets a pie in the face. We love to laugh at the evil figure cut down to size, the pompous one humbled, the bully put in his place. In his short story "The Schmeed Memoirs," Woody Allen whittles down some oversized villains. The narrator is a barber reminiscing about his celebrity clients: "In the spring of 1940, a large Mercedes pulled up in front of my barbershop at 127 Koenigstra.s.se, and Hitler walked in. 'I just want a light trim,' he said, 'and don't take too much off the top. I explained to him there would be a brief wait because von Ribbentrop was ahead of him. Hitler said he was in a rush and asked Ribbentrop if he could be taken next, but Ribbentrop insisted it would look bad for the Foreign Office if he were pa.s.sed over. Hitler thereupon made a quick phone call, and Ribbentrop was immediately transferred to the Afrika Korps, and Hitler got his haircut. This sort of rivalry went on all the time. Once, Goring had Heydrich detained by the police on false pretenses, so that he could get the chair by the window. Goring was a dissolute and often wanted to sit on the hobbyhorse to get his haircuts."

Monsters can make us shudder or they can make us laugh. If laughter is what you're after, the next time you peer into the jaws of evil don't forget to examine the bridgework.

Uneasy Street.

Have you ever been in an awkward situation, the kind that makes you squirm even in retrospect? This same predicament might be hilarious to somebody else. Sure, you get hives when you think about the time you were stuck with your ex in an elevator for three hours. But it might make a great anecdote to liven up that speech you have to give at the divorce lawyers conference next week.

Damon Runyon was a master at finding humor in uncomfortable situations. In his short story "Butch Minds the Baby," a former safecracker is watching Junior while his wife is out for the evening. As he fans the sleeping baby, three former a.s.sociates drop by and ask him to come out of retirement and take on one last job. Butch agrees, but there's a catch: "I dast not leave little John Ignatius Junior for a minute." So the baby comes along on the heist. (They cut him in for five percent.) Let's listen to the narrator, who's "more nervous than somewhat," as he describes the artist at work: "He starts drilling into the safe around the combination lock, working very fast and very quiet, when all of a sudden what happens but John Ignatius Junior sits up on the blanket and lets out a squall. Naturally this is most disquieting to me, and personally I am in favor of beaning John Ignatius Junior with something to make him keep still, because I am nervous enough as it is. But the squalling does not seem to bother Big Butch. He lays down his tools and picks up John Ignatius Junior and starts whispering, 'There, there, there, my itty oddleums. Da-dad is here. "

The safe is forgotten as Butch gets out the Sterno and warms a bottle. Later, the job completed, somebody trips an alarm, and soon the streets are full of police. But little John Ignatius Junior saves the day. Butch walks away a free man, since no cop in his right mind would suspect a party carrying a baby.

As you cast about for humorous subjects to lighten that op-ed piece or alumni newsletter or address to the Odd Fellows, don't overlook the sticky situation. That fine mess you got yourself into may be a million laughs-to somebody else.

Through the Magnifying Gla.s.s.

Let's admit it. We get most of our laughs at the other guy's expense. You can make anyone or anything look ridiculous by picking out a tiny flaw and magnifying it out of all proportion. Unfair, you say? So what else is new?

Mark Twain didn't much care for James Fenimore Cooper, the author of those adventure novels about Indians and woodsmen. In what must be one of the funniest book reviews ever written, Twain mercilessly dissects some of Cooper's sillier literary techniques: "A favorite one was to make a moccasined person tread in the tracks of the moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own trail. Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick. Another stage-property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently was his broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any book of his when somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred handier things to step on, but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one."

Think of that dry twig when you next set out to skewer something. By exaggerating one or two weaknesses, you can puncture an inflated ego or expose the ridiculous. Or you can be just plain ornery.

Tickled to Death.

Now and then euphemisms come in handy. They let you tell a caller that your hubby is indisposed, not that he's sitting on the loo. (Come to think of it, loo is a euphemism, too.) But what's useful in small doses can be a dandy comic technique when taken to extremes.

I know of no better example of euphemism run amok than the famous dead-parrot sketch written by John Cleese and Graham Chapman for television's Monty Python troupe and embellished over the years. We'll join the conversation as a customer returns to a pet shop to complain about a recent purchase: "He's bleedin' demised! He's pa.s.sed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! He's expired and gone to meet his maker! He's a stiff! Bereft of life, he rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed him to the perch he'd be pus.h.i.+ng up the daisies! His metabolic processes are now history! He's off the twig! He's kicked the bucket, he's shuffled off his mortal coil, rung down the curtain and joined the bleedin choir invisible! This is an ex-parrot!"

We don't normally find death funny. In fact, death makes us so uncomfortable that we talk about it in euphemisms. But taken to ridiculous lengths, the forbidden subject itself becomes ridiculous. If you want to write humorously about s.e.x or money or the Grim Reaper or some other delicate matter, get out your thesaurus and collect every outrageous euphemism you can find.

Theater of the Absurd.

Remember Wile E. Coyote, the inept villain in the Road Runner cartoons? His intricate schemes always went awry. Bombs exploded prematurely in his face; giant rubber bands hurled him into boulders; jet-propelled skates shot him through billboards, where he left behind a hole in the shape of his silhouette. Imagine if he had sued the manufacturer of all those faulty products. Ian Frazier imagined it, and the result is his short story "Coyote v. Acme." Let's listen in as the plaintiff's attorney delivers his opening statement in the United States District Court for the Southwestern District, Tempe, Arizona: "Mr. Coyote states that on December 13th he received of Defendant via parcel post one Acme Rocket Sled. The intention of Mr. Coyote was to use the Rocket Sled to aid him in pursuit of his prey. Upon receipt of the Rocket Sled Mr. Coyote removed it from its wooden s.h.i.+pping crate and, sighting his prey in the distance, activated the ignition. As Mr. Coyote gripped the handlebars, the Rocket Sled accelerated with such sudden and precipitate force as to stretch Mr. Coyote's forelimbs to a length of fifty feet. Subsequently, the rest of Mr. Coyote's body shot forward with a violent jolt, causing severe strain to his back and neck and placing him unexpectedly astride the Rocket Sled."

What follows is a litany of mishaps involving various products and a request for damages in the amount of $38,750,000 against the Acme Company, its directors, officers, shareholders, successors, and a.s.signs.

What's so funny? In a word, it's absurd. How often do we see a cartoon character in a real court of law, his improbable bodily injuries described in deadpan medical terminology?

You can use this technique, too. Let your imagination off the leash. Be incongruous. And incongruouser and incongruouser. Imagine the dust bunnies under your bed coming to life. Dr. Ruth as a marriage counselor at the court of Henry VIII. Your toaster oven plotting to short-circuit the microwave. A couple of newborns in a hospital nursery scheming to swap parents.

As for Mr. Coyote, I think he has a pretty good case.

At Wits' End.

If you want to write humor, read humor. There are many more ways to be funny than the few I've talked about. Use those that seem most natural to you, and never strain to get a laugh.

If you have doubts about whether something's funny, play it straight. Nothing is worse than a lame joke. And if you're not sure humor is appropriate, it probably isn't. What leaves you rolling on the floor might not go over so well with Aunt Mabel. As Mel Brooks put it: "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die."

26. I Second That Emotion.

ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING.

Of course you care. You feel things deeply. I do, too. But we can write about feelings without letting feelings run the show. We don't have to hit readers over the head to get across fear, sorrow, love, pity, jealousy, greed, and other powerful emotions. Writing is more moving when it leaves something to the imagination.

Take Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k's Psycho. It's one of the scariest of all scary movies. Why? Because it's one of the least b.l.o.o.d.y. Hitchc.o.c.k forces us to imagine the most frightening parts, and nothing on the big screen could be as frightening as the workings of a frightened mind.

Good writers make the reader's imagination work for them. Say you want to describe an avaricious corporate biggie. You could come right out with it: "He's a greedy SOB." Or you could quote the SOB himself-"The h.e.l.l with an eighty-five percent market share, I want it all!"-and let the reader figure it out.

Sometimes it's not what you put in that stays with the reader-it's what you leave out. If you're writing a research paper that has a particularly ominous conclusion, you don't have to tell readers how ominous it is. Let the research speak for itself.

Think of the writing that moves you the most. I'll bet the writer holds something back, something you have to fill in yourself. Good writing is not a spectator sport; both the writer and the reader partic.i.p.ate. Whenever I reread something that's affected me deeply, I'm surprised at how much of what I remember is my contribution.

Now I'll show you some writing that conveys powerful emotion without overwrought language. Instead, readers are drawn in with evocative details and invited to fill in the blanks.

Drop by Drop.

Primo Levi survived the Holocaust but never left its horrors behind. In this pa.s.sage from Survival in Auschwitz, he describes his arrival at the concentration camp. Freezing, hungry, and desperately thirsty after four days in a cattle car, Levi and his fellow prisoners are put in a cold room where drops of putrid water fall from a faucet: "A huge, empty room: we are tired, standing on our feet, with a tap which drips while we cannot drink the water, and we wait for something which will certainly be terrible, and nothing happens and nothing continues to happen. What can one think about? One cannot think any more, it is like being already dead. Someone sits down on the ground. The time pa.s.ses drop by drop."

With one small detail-the relentless drip of the tap-Levi sums up the fear and dread of waiting for an unknown terror.

Body Language.

Jealousy is a difficult emotion to describe, particularly in first-person writing. A mere "Boy, was I jealous!" doesn't cut the mustard. In this pa.s.sage from her novel A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley portrays jealousy without using the word. The narrator, Ginny, who has nursed her sister through an illness, learns that Rose has stolen her lover. She thinks of the two familiar bodies, now secretly sharing an intimacy that each once shared with her: "And so, here, at last, was Rose, all that bone and flesh, right next to, right in the same bed with, Jess Clark. If I remembered hard enough I could smell her odor, feel the exact dry quality of her skin, smell and feel her the way he did during those mysterious times when I wasn't around. I could smell and feel and hear and see him, too, with a force unmatched since the first few days after we had s.e.x....Every time I could not actually see one or the other of them, I had a visceral conviction that they were together."

Amazing, isn't it? A few intimate details can conjure up the ravenous green-eyed monster. Technicolor and Surround sound are not required.