If you write humor you’ll eventually be asked by some well-meaning clod, “Don’t you ever write anything serious?”
Ouch. Maybe Jean-Clod is not well-meaning at all. His implication, that humor writing isn’t serious writing, is downright insulting. Writing well in any genre or style demands work.
Actors get it. “Dying is easy, comedy is hard,” they tell you, an adage that applies as well to writing. Some people are naturally funny, but even they work at the craft of funny if they aspire to doing it professionally. They study the principles of humor, the construction of a joke. They learn them and hone them.
So the hard work applies to all forms of humor, including those aiming only to entertain. But many writers use humor to get at the deeper issues of humanity. That should be obvious. Apparently it’s not.
I had been led by popular perception to believe that Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) was a lighthearted romp among knights errant and damsels in distress. Almost a children’s book. Then I read it.
The book is funny. That was Twain’s calling card. But this is Mark Twain, folks. His goal in Connecticut Yankee was to burn to the ground the Romantic myth of chivalry and noble causes, but not for the heck of it. The myth was championed by Sir Walter Scott, whom Twain believed fed the fantasy to the antebellum South and contributed to the start of the Civil War. Between laughs Twain treats us to scenes of heartbreak and cruelty and a harrowing vision of what mechanized weapons held in store for the looming 20th century.
Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is also often portrayed as a children’s book, full of booming mirthful giants and squeaking tiny folk. Yes, they’re there. But their purpose is to satirize human societies and politics in all their vindictive, worst urges. A century after publication, Victorians squirmed over Gulliver and gutted its naughty bits and underlying meanings, making it safe for polite society. Essentially, they turned it into a children’s book.
Voltaire couldn’t resist focusing like a laser on those in need of it, and heaven help you if he got you in his sights. Many Enlightenment thinkers were smitten by Leibnizian Optimism, a philosophy proclaiming our world the best one possible. Yay for us! That was almost too easy for Voltaire, and he shreds it in short order (novella-sized, in fact) in Candide (1759). The young hero follows Professor Pangloss around the world, suffering one debasement after another. War, poverty, slavery, disembowelment. Not funny, right? It is. Pangloss insists that “all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds” even as he withers away with syphilis. Voltaire makes the parade of horrors bearable, and with them he skewers a flawed philosophy upon its own absurdities. That’s why Candide is still read two and a half centuries later. I picture the Leibnizians slinking away, tails tucked, after this broadside.
So. Write funny. If you find it difficult, follow Steve Martin’s advice and put a slice of baloney in each shoe so you’ll feel funny. Then get to work. If smug Jean-Clod pesters you about writing something serious, ask him if Shakespeare wasn’t serious about A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Or why he doesn’t get Catch-22. Or Slaughterhouse-Five. Point out that Vonnegut couldn’t write about what he saw during the firebombing of Dresden until he told it from the perspective of unstuck-in-time Billy Pilgrim. Be serious. Write funny. Make yourself laugh. You’ll be in good company.
