tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63658822024-02-08T13:20:08.044-05:00Heidi on HumorThis is a study journal of my doctoral program in humor in American popular culture at The Union Institute and University. Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger107125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1136322722960870752006-01-03T16:12:00.000-05:002006-01-03T16:18:46.780-05:00Straight ManRichard RussoStraight Man is a contemporary novel (1997), and it’s one of what seems to be an emerging recent genre of page-turner comic mysteries involving college English professors who become embroiled in ridiculous department politics where there are bizarre romances, crazy murders, and wonderful suspense. I’m thinking here of Francine Prose’s Blue Angel, Jane Smiley’s Moo, James Hynes’s Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1136309985845529392006-01-02T00:39:00.000-05:002006-01-03T12:41:41.230-05:00Wobegon BoyGarrison Keillor“I’m a cheerful man, even in the dark, and it’s all thanks to a good Lutheran mother,” begins Keillor’s narrator, John Tollefson. It’s one of those First Sentences they talk about in writing workshops, the kind that pulls the reader into the narrative, and in retrospect the sentence truly encapsulates the gist of the novel. Though the term is a little off, Tollefson is a mensch,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1136264672351462192006-01-01T12:04:00.000-05:002006-01-03T00:03:43.170-05:00Wise BloodFlannery O’ConnorAuthor Flannery O’Connor said of fiction writing in general, “it is well to realize that the maximum amount of seriousness admits the maximum amount of comedy. Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe. One reason a great deal of our contemporary fiction is humorless is because so many of these writers are relativists and have to be Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1136256833084637962005-12-30T21:53:00.000-05:002006-01-03T12:47:09.266-05:00Trout Fishing in AmericaRichard BrautiganUnderstanding the misery I put students through is easy when I read Richard Brautigan. And actually I’m surprised. I like the Beats. Somehow, though, the meaning of Brautigan is sealed up tight in some kind of a metal drum. He’s like having a keg without a tap—an apt simile, as it turns out. I have to confess right off that I had to read a good bit of criticism before I could Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1134362386929683602005-12-11T23:39:00.000-05:002005-12-11T23:40:16.646-05:00Dorothy Parker's Complete StoriesDorothy Parker Parker is tricky. She seems to be out of style, at the present, and I think it’s because she’s fooled a good many of the present-day audience. A careless, surface reading of her short stories is likely to give one the impression that she’s as shallow as one of her Park Avenue protagonists. A common conflict occurs in “Mrs. Hofstadter on Josephine Street,” in which a young Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1134359984696447002005-12-10T22:59:00.000-05:002005-12-11T23:00:45.186-05:00Assassination VacationSarah VowellReading S. Vowell for me brings up a range of emotions from feverish laughter to horrific despair and jealousy. The funniest part of Assassination Vacation is the preface, in which Vowell describes her reluctant breakfast at a B&B—something I can so relate to. She explains, “I understand why other people would want to stay in B&Bs. They’re pretty. They’re personal. They’re ‘Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1134277248337041322005-12-09T23:17:00.000-05:002005-12-11T00:07:01.300-05:00Black No MoreGeorge SchuylerTrying to reason why Schuyler’s Black No More is hard to find in the average library can take one down a number of paths. My first assumption was that librarians might be afraid to add the book to a library’s collection since Schuyler was known to be conservative (and by conservative, I mean a member of the John Birch Society), so adding Black No More to any collection might make Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1134237718818830942005-12-08T13:01:00.000-05:002005-12-11T00:06:18.333-05:00The Friday BookJohn BarthThis isn’t a confession. I’m not ashamed to say that I’m no John Barth fan—generally speaking, that is. My distaste goes back to early adolescence when my dad tried to get me to read Giles, Goat Boy, a novel, if you don’t know, that’s just entirely too heady for most fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds, even me at the time (I was pretty strange). In college I was intrigued with “Welcome to Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1133195658000279402005-11-28T11:34:00.000-05:002005-11-28T11:35:10.570-05:00The Lone Ranger & Tonto Fistfight in HeavenSherman AlexieIgnoring the old maxim about not judging the thing by its cover, let’s begin by looking at this volume’s front, with the familiar basketball hoop against a background of surreal orange and purple thunderheads, in which we can see at the top the shadows of Tonto and the Lone Ranger (by the way—remember the Lone Ranger was a cowboy and Tonto the Indian, and Tonto in Spanish means Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1133140228826136072005-11-27T20:10:00.000-05:002005-11-27T20:13:11.706-05:00I Know Why the Caged Bird SingsMaya AngelouHmmm…a memoir, I kept saying. Why would this be on the list of American Comedies? Let me rephrase that: A memoir in which the author tells the very upsetting story of her molestation by a step-father—as well as her repeated abandonment by her parents and other events…how can that be a comedy. A few parts were funny, and by that I mean that I might have smiled as I turned a page Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1133137653089921922005-11-27T19:27:00.000-05:002006-02-05T22:33:59.366-05:00Miss LonelyheartsNathanael WestIn all these years of reading Great American Books, how did I miss N. West? Turns out I love Miss Lonelyhearts. Almost every one of the passages is funny, and even though some of them are perhaps a bit overwrought, I think he means for them to be so, and from that excess of feeling derives much of the humor. In case you haven’t read Miss Lonelyhearts, it is about a newspaper Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1132547101338791992005-11-20T23:25:00.000-05:002005-11-20T23:28:21.356-05:00Side EffectsWoody Allen“Needleman was constantly obsessing over his funeral plans and once told me, ‘I much prefer cremation to burial in the earth, and both to a weekend with Mrs. Needleman.’ In the end, he chose to have himself cremated and donated his ashes to the University of Heidelberg, which scattered them to the four winds and got a deposit on the urn” (“Remembering Needleman” 3). We meet Needleman Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1131734228075634362005-11-08T23:37:00.000-05:002005-11-11T13:45:18.390-05:00A Confederacy of DuncesA Confederacy of DuncesIt took me twenty years to finish Toole’s book. Someone in college gave it to me, shocked that I hadn’t already read it, and I practically threw the book away after reading only about thirty pages, believing (I confess to you ashamedly today) myself to have been identified by the gift horse as the Ignatius Reilly character. Perhaps if I had been more accurate, I would have Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1130171535982394502005-10-24T12:32:00.000-04:002005-11-11T13:39:16.716-05:00Life on the MississiLife on the MississippiThis is a book that, without the contextual essay in the beginning, would have formed a great question mark in my mind—perhaps on its way back to the library in a big hurry. Johnathan Raban writes that Clemens had a terrible time writing a travel book that William Dean Howells proposed to him from a series of articles he originally had written for the Atlantic Monthly. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1129925631179647712005-10-21T16:09:00.000-04:002005-10-21T16:13:51.186-04:00The Diaries of Adam and EveI never even knew about this soft-hearted little book Twain/Clemens wrote. The first part he wrote in the late 1890s from the point of view of Adam, discovering the effusive, garrulous Eve, frustrated with her mystifying habits as well as those of the bizarre creature she spawns (good old Cain), which he mistakes at first for a kangaroo, and later rules out that he is Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1120826587005225272005-07-08T08:36:00.000-04:002005-07-08T08:43:07.010-04:00Peer Day 10: Art for Everyone For a lot of people, going to a museum conjures the image of walking in a gaggle behind a humorless tour guide in sensible shoes past numberless bland impressionist landscapes that speak nothing to them, works painted by long-dead white artists with French names, men who have an elusive concept of beauty that simply cannot be understood in the simple minds of the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1120825947002476042005-07-03T20:27:00.000-04:002005-07-08T08:32:27.013-04:00Peer Day ReportIf you’ve ever skirted the green, woodsy rectangle in New York, seen an aerial shot of it, or even walked through Central Park, you might well have thought that the city somehow wisely foresaw its future overgrowth of concrete and mercifully left undeveloped an idyllic 800-some acres of land for future leisure enthusiasts. I learned in this peer day that Central Park indeed was theUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1120824419929492522005-06-28T07:56:00.000-04:002005-07-08T08:35:56.106-04:00From Olmsted to CaulfieldAerial shots of rapid motion intersections at night, where car lights become incandescent crayons, drawing insane paths. I see sudden sunrises and sunsets, helicopter views of the dizzying edges of high rises where my eyes are in danger of scraping the proverbial sky. TV shows seem to be in the business of capturing the visual clichés of what New York is supposed to be: Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1118978145541700382005-06-16T23:13:00.000-04:002005-06-16T23:15:45.546-04:00And Then There's MaudeI’m watching Maude, episodes 203 & 204 (from 1973). In episode 203 we see a great comic scene where a drunk Maude and Arthur try to decorate grandson Philip’s birthday cake with whipped cream and throw a great big yellow candle in the middle to disguise their mistakes. Even though we can see it coming from a mile away as a very poorly mimicked Lucille Ball routine, they Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1118801264630000442005-06-14T22:03:00.000-04:002005-06-14T22:07:44.636-04:00The General, Cops, The PlayhouseI watched Buster Keaton today, thinking I was just getting The General, but the DVD had the surprise bonus of Cops and The Playhouse as well. The General is really unbelievable because of the stunts. The stuff he does is stunning, particularly since it’s obvious there is no stunt person, either for Keaton or for the woman who plays his lover, and they’re doing Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1118542327764501082005-06-11T22:07:00.000-04:002005-06-11T22:27:16.136-04:00Paul Lewis’s “Politics of Comedy and the Social Functions of Humor”<?xml:namespace prefix = o />In Chapter Two, Lewis begins with Suzanne K. Langers argument that comedy has various degrees of humor (31). Lewis explains that a “critical controversy” exists between “universalists and anti-universalists,” saying that for “some theorists comedy can be defined by its use of humor; that is, comedy isUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1118341053252520842005-06-09T14:10:00.000-04:002005-06-09T14:27:02.436-04:00Love's Labour's Lost: Wooing A Bunch of JacksLove’s Labour’s Lost is an early Shakespearian comedy; it does not have all the elements of classical comedy down exactly. The characters themselves step outside the narrative to alert us of the play’s peculiarities. Berowne says, "Our wooing doth not end like an old play;/ Jack hath not Jill: these ladies' courtesy/ Might well have made our sport a Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1118348810693440332005-06-08T16:20:00.000-04:002005-06-09T18:24:31.373-04:00Paul Lewis’sComic Effects: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Studying HumorChapter OnePaul Lewis’s book on an interdisciplinary approach to the study of humor in literature was helpful in a number of ways. I thought that the way he brought in the theory of humor in social sciences (particularly Freud and various interpretations of Freud’s theory) was particularly interesting. He sees the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1116991212217824132005-05-24T23:16:00.000-04:002005-05-24T23:21:34.556-04:00Much Ado: The Real McCoy It’s hard to remember that the plot in Much Ado About Nothing is an original. The hundred or thousand after it are the cheap imitations. Basically, the plot is one of romantic jollity for royalty. Claudio, a young lord in Don Pedro’s court, falls in love with Hero, Governor Leonato’s daughter. As it happens the whole royal entourage is conveniently staying at the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365882.post-1116363642359400242005-05-17T16:57:00.000-04:002005-05-17T17:02:00.553-04:00Decidedly Un-Superstitious Terence Writes The EunuchTerence (195-159 B.C.) wrote six comedies, all based on Greek New Comedy; like his friend Plautus he based his work on Menander’s. Folklore has it that Plautus’s work was more popular with the masses, and Terence’s work was higher-minded, but according to Holt Parker, evidence proves otherwise. Parker says, “Eunuchus was not his one hit; it was Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0