Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman
In learning how to write hilarious humor, there is no substitute for knowing the work of famous literary humorists. They are textbooks in themselves, for they have mastered the techniques of humor over careers spanning lifetimes and, indeed, generations. Any list of such humorists must include the following men and women: Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), Voltaire, Miguel de Cervantes, Erma Bombeck, Dave Barry, Dorothy Parker, Art Buchwald, Shirley Jackson, Jean Kerr, William Shakespeare, and Neil Simon.
In addition, many situation comedy writers deserve serious study as literary humorists, even if they write scripts for television shows or movies rather than short stories and novels. It is helpful to consider the influences of such men and women, too--the predecessors and contemporaries from whom they themselves learned how to be funny--and the sources of their humor, when these are discoverable. Of course, in the process, it’s enormously helpful to examine their work and the techniques they use to evoke laughter from their audiences.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (“Mark Twain”)
In learning to write hilarious humor, there is no substitute for studying the work of great humorists. Chief among them, by most people’s measure, is Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who is more familiar to many by his famous pen name, Mark Twain. The author of such timeless classics of humor as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Roughing It, Life on the Mississippi, A Tramp Abroad, Following the Equator, The Innocents Abroad, and a host of other comic masterpieces, Twain, more than any other writer, living or dead, established the genre.
From Twain, the student of horror learns that humor can have a purpose beyond mere entertainment. It can evoke laughter, but it can also lampoon social ills and satirize both the institutions of evil and the institutionalization of evil. Humor can poke fun at traditions, mores, hypocrisy, villainy, culture, and even civilization itself, as Twain’s humor does; at the same time, it can, and, indeed, must, make its readers laugh. Great humor is a double-edge sword, one edge of which provokes laughter while the other cuts through pretense, arrogance, and plain hogwash. Twain’s humor, like that of George Bernard Shaw’s, shows how it is done.
From Twain and other humorists, we also learn another requirement of written humor--that is, humor as it occurs in short stories, novels, plays, and movies, rather than in stand-up comedians’ one-liners and skits. Such humor must be comprised of more than simply a series of unconnected jokes. Written humor of the type with which we are concerned has to be about something; it must have a center and a purpose beyond itself. The jokes and anecdotes and other humorous sequences must be connected by a point of view and a theme.
The point of view, which will be closely allied with the tone of the humor, may be one of gentle censure, harsh satire, tolerant lampoon, insolent farce, or ribald burlesque. The theme, or the point, might be to acknowledge human folly, to identify social injustices, to highlight absurdities in human behavior, to condemn human cruelty, to right social wrongs, or any of a host of other purposes.
There must also be a means by which to unite the humor, the point of view, and the tone--a way, as it were, to give a backbone to the various parts of the organism. Often, this backbone is an analogy of some kind.
Erma Bombeck
In All I Know About Animal Behavior I learned in Loehman’s Dressing Room, Erma Bombeck, inspired, apparently, by Jane Goodall’s study of primate behavior, equates human conduct with animal behavior. This analogy is the spine of her book, allowing her to compare various human actions to those of their beastly counterparts over the length of a couple hundred pages rather than a few paragraphs. At the same time, it unifies her sketches, making them part of a bigger narrative and allows her to adopt a humorous, slightly critical point of view (which might be said to be people are such animals!“) and a matching gently chiding tone.
Analogies are commonly the devices by which humorists unify their jokes, anecdotes, and literary sketches, but they also employ ironic reversals upon common themes, almost as if to refute the wisdom, plausibility, or efficacy of the approach theirs is opposing. Twain takes uses this method, which we might call the antithetical approach, in The Innocents Abroad, explaining to his readers that his book is meant to be a sort of corrective to the travel accounts of others whose travelogues are more about what a traveler should see than what he or she would see:
This book is a record of a pleasure trip. If it were a record of a solemn scientific expedition it would have about it the gravity, that profundity, and that impressive incomprehensibility which are so proper to works of that kind, and withal so attractive. Yet not withstanding it is only a record of a picnic, it has a purpose, which is, to suggest to the reader how he would be likely to see Europe and the East if he looked at them with his own eyes instead of the eyes of those who traveled in those countries before him. I make small pretense of showing anyone how he ought to look at objects of interest beyond the sea–other books do that, and therefore, even if I were competent to do it, there is no need [italics added].
Likewise, Voltaire’s tongue-in-cheek masterpiece, Candide, is an argument, both implicitly and explicitly, against Dr. Pangloss’ (i. e., Gottfried Leibnitz’s) view that, in “the best of all possible worlds,” everything must happen for the best. When the protagonist, Candide, leaves the sheltered life he enjoys to embark (with the help of a boot to the rear) upon his travels in the wide world beyond, he encounters one calamity and catastrophe after another, realizing that the world is a dangerous, inhospitable place full of opportunities for sorrow and despair.
In a similar manner, but with respect to the idea that virtue is as precious as gold and should be sought and maintained at all costs, Donatien Alphonse Françiois de Sade, better known as the Marquis de Sade, puts the protagonist of his darkly humorous novel, Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue, through her paces until, at last, she is struck dead by bolt of lightning, as if nature itself were delivering his judgment against her.
Miguel de Cervantes
Also in a similar fashion, Miguel de Cervantes points out the absurdity of the values and traditions of medieval chivalry. In his immortal classic, the picaresque novel Don Quixote, Cervantes’ main character, an elderly rustic, becomes addlebrained as a result of reading chivalrous romances and, donning an old set of armor, mounts his dilapidated farm horse and rides to adventures, tilting at windmills, with his neighbor Sancho Panza, whom he convinces to serve as his squire. The theme seems clear: too much romance is antithetical not only to reason but to practical living as well.
Dave Barry
Humorists also connect their humorous content in various other ways as well. Dave Barry, who began his career as a columnist, sees the absurdity of human existence in the modern world as the source for much of his humor: He defines “sense of humor” as “a measurement of the extent to which we realize that we are trapped in a world almost totally devoid of reason,” and says, “Laughter is how we express the anxiety we feel at this knowledge.” Barry’s novels typically feature several subplots that seem to meander independently of one another in an episodic fashion until, ultimately, they merge toward the end of his narrative.
His more traditional humor tomes are tongue-in-cheek “how-to” books (Claw Your Way to the Top: How To Become the Head of a Major Corporation in Roughly a Week); fictionalized personal experience as the basis for advice to others (Dave Barry Turns 40, Dave Barry’s Guide to Life, Dave Barry’s Guide to Marriage and/or Sex, Dave Barry’s Gift Guide to End All Gift Guides, Dave Barry’s Guide to Guys); flippant travel guides (Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need, Dave Barry Does Japan); and fabricated histories (Dave Barry Slept Here: A Short History of the United States, Dave Barry’s Guide to the Millennium [So Far]). The tone is usually madcap to match his absurdist vision of contemporary America.
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker is a departure of sorts in that much of her humorous material takes the form of poetry rather than of prose. One poem, “Resume,” appears to be a sort of humorous argument against the death penalty, locating the arguments not in any objection to the death of the executed, but in the faultiness of the means of execution. Furthermore, these means are objectionable not for any significant reason; they do not represent “cruel and unusual” means of execution, but are, if anything, nuisances or petty annoyances:
In a similar manner, but with respect to the idea that virtue is as precious as gold and should be sought and maintained at all costs, Donatien Alphonse Françiois de Sade, better known as the Marquis de Sade, puts the protagonist of his darkly humorous novel, Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue, through her paces until, at last, she is struck dead by bolt of lightning, as if nature itself were delivering his judgment against her.
Miguel de Cervantes
Also in a similar fashion, Miguel de Cervantes points out the absurdity of the values and traditions of medieval chivalry. In his immortal classic, the picaresque novel Don Quixote, Cervantes’ main character, an elderly rustic, becomes addlebrained as a result of reading chivalrous romances and, donning an old set of armor, mounts his dilapidated farm horse and rides to adventures, tilting at windmills, with his neighbor Sancho Panza, whom he convinces to serve as his squire. The theme seems clear: too much romance is antithetical not only to reason but to practical living as well.
Dave Barry
Humorists also connect their humorous content in various other ways as well. Dave Barry, who began his career as a columnist, sees the absurdity of human existence in the modern world as the source for much of his humor: He defines “sense of humor” as “a measurement of the extent to which we realize that we are trapped in a world almost totally devoid of reason,” and says, “Laughter is how we express the anxiety we feel at this knowledge.” Barry’s novels typically feature several subplots that seem to meander independently of one another in an episodic fashion until, ultimately, they merge toward the end of his narrative.
His more traditional humor tomes are tongue-in-cheek “how-to” books (Claw Your Way to the Top: How To Become the Head of a Major Corporation in Roughly a Week); fictionalized personal experience as the basis for advice to others (Dave Barry Turns 40, Dave Barry’s Guide to Life, Dave Barry’s Guide to Marriage and/or Sex, Dave Barry’s Gift Guide to End All Gift Guides, Dave Barry’s Guide to Guys); flippant travel guides (Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need, Dave Barry Does Japan); and fabricated histories (Dave Barry Slept Here: A Short History of the United States, Dave Barry’s Guide to the Millennium [So Far]). The tone is usually madcap to match his absurdist vision of contemporary America.
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker is a departure of sorts in that much of her humorous material takes the form of poetry rather than of prose. One poem, “Resume,” appears to be a sort of humorous argument against the death penalty, locating the arguments not in any objection to the death of the executed, but in the faultiness of the means of execution. Furthermore, these means are objectionable not for any significant reason; they do not represent “cruel and unusual” means of execution, but are, if anything, nuisances or petty annoyances:
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
Her method is similar to that of Woody Allen’s humor, which often juxtaposes the significant or somber against the trivial and ludicrous, and it frequently addresses subjects with which sophisticated urban readers can identify.
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson is better known, perhaps, for her horror novels (The Haunting of Hill House is a classic) than for her humorous work. However, like Jean Kerr, she wrote novels about domestic tranquility gone haywire, centering her humor on the trials and tribulations of family and suburban or rural life. Laura Shapiro calls Jackson’s Life Among the Savages, a novel in which a series of short stories represent fictionalized accounts of her four children, “the literature of domestic chaos.”
The treatment of one of the four, newborn Barry, only recently arrived home from the hospital, is typical of Jackson’s detached, ironic portrayal of her fictionalized children. He is the center of attention of his three siblings, Laurie, Jannie, and Sally (ages nine, six, and “the baby”--at least, until Barry’s birth) only briefly. Disappointed that he’s not “something a little bigger,” they soon lose interest in him except as a distraction for their mother to take their places now that they have “all grown up.”
Jackson also wrote another book about her “domestic chaos” as a wife and mother, Raising Demons. Deborah Kerr’s Please Don’t Eat the Daisies is similar to Jackson’s books, offering a collection of essays concerning the domestic bliss that results from rearing four boys in suburbia. The book became the basis of the film starring Doris Day and David Niven and, later, a television series starring Patricia Crowley and Mark Miller.
Art Buchwald
Art Buchwald is the grandfather, so to speak, of humorous political commentary. A columnist for The Washington Post, his wry commentaries on the political machinations and abuses inside the Capitol Beltway made this iconoclastic humorist an American icon, winning him the Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Commentary in both 1982 and 1986. He maintained that sound in the missing 18-and-an-half-minute segment of the Watergate tape was President Richard Nixon humming.
The titles of his many books suggest their political themes; some of the more memorable ones include Son of the Great Society, The Establishment Is Alive and Well in Washington, Washington Is Leaking, While Reagan Slept, and Beating Around the Bush. Buchwald may be regarded as establishing the genre of the modern satirical political commentary that now includes works by such divergent humorists as Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You!), Andy Borowitz’s The Republican Playbook, P. J. O’Rourke’s Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire Government, Ann Coulter’s How To Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), Michael Savages’ The Political Zoo, and Dave Barry’s Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway.
Neil Simon
We mentioned one of Shakespeare’s great comic creations, Sir John Falstaff, but the bard has given many other gifts to the humor genre, not the least of which are plots that involve mistaken identities, cross dressing, a series of unlikely errors, star-crossed lovers, and the participation of supernatural beings in human affairs.
A more contemporary playwright whose comic plots are heavily laced with humor is Neil Simon, who wrote Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, The Goodbye Girl, and many other contemporary plays. The means by which he unifies the action (and the humor) of his dramas is to juxtapose two strongly contrasting characters who live together.
In Barefoot in the Park, newlyweds Corie and Paul Bratter move into a postage-stamp size apartment in downtown Manhattan. Their tiny residence is miserable. There is no heat, the skylight has a large hole in it, they must ascend and descend several flights of stairs, they live next to screwball neighbor, Victor Velasco. Free-spirited Corie and priggish Paul are mismatched in personality traits and temperaments, and the humor of the play results from their contrary traits and disposition as much as from the petty annoyances they must endure.
Most people have seen The Odd Couple, either as a play, a movie, or a television series. Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, two divorced men, share an apartment. Easygoing Oscar is a total slob. Edgy Felix insists upon keeping an immaculate household. The only things that the “odd couple” have in common is that each is divorced and each is a writer. Their opposing personality traits and temperaments are the bases of the shows’ humor.
The Goodbye Girl pits a single mother, Paula McFadden, against Elliot Garfield, the man to whom her ex-boyfriend sublet the apartment that he’d shared with Paula. From the beginning, the pair get on one another’s nerves. Nevertheless, they manage to fall in love, right before Elliot is offered a once-in-a lifetime opportunity in another city and Paula fears that he will leave her, as all the other men in her life have done. As with The Odd Couple, the characters’ opposing personality traits and temperaments are the bases of the movie’s humor, and their only common interests (besides the happiness and welfare of Paula’s 10-year-old daughter, Lucy) are their being reluctant roommates and their career choices: Paula is a former dancer who is trying to make a comeback, and Elliot is an actor trying to get established in his profession.
These plays show Simon’s basic approach to unifying his stories and their humor. He confines two characters with strongly contrasting personality traits and temperaments to a relatively small place where their interaction is both inevitable and frequent, allowing their personality differences to ignite sparks; the humor results from the ensuing interactions between the characters and is tempered with romance, friendship, or affection. As a result of their relationships, whether as husband and wife, friends and roommates, or romantic couple, the characters teach one another something important about each other, helping one another to mature.
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson is better known, perhaps, for her horror novels (The Haunting of Hill House is a classic) than for her humorous work. However, like Jean Kerr, she wrote novels about domestic tranquility gone haywire, centering her humor on the trials and tribulations of family and suburban or rural life. Laura Shapiro calls Jackson’s Life Among the Savages, a novel in which a series of short stories represent fictionalized accounts of her four children, “the literature of domestic chaos.”
The treatment of one of the four, newborn Barry, only recently arrived home from the hospital, is typical of Jackson’s detached, ironic portrayal of her fictionalized children. He is the center of attention of his three siblings, Laurie, Jannie, and Sally (ages nine, six, and “the baby”--at least, until Barry’s birth) only briefly. Disappointed that he’s not “something a little bigger,” they soon lose interest in him except as a distraction for their mother to take their places now that they have “all grown up.”
Jackson also wrote another book about her “domestic chaos” as a wife and mother, Raising Demons. Deborah Kerr’s Please Don’t Eat the Daisies is similar to Jackson’s books, offering a collection of essays concerning the domestic bliss that results from rearing four boys in suburbia. The book became the basis of the film starring Doris Day and David Niven and, later, a television series starring Patricia Crowley and Mark Miller.
Art Buchwald
Art Buchwald is the grandfather, so to speak, of humorous political commentary. A columnist for The Washington Post, his wry commentaries on the political machinations and abuses inside the Capitol Beltway made this iconoclastic humorist an American icon, winning him the Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Commentary in both 1982 and 1986. He maintained that sound in the missing 18-and-an-half-minute segment of the Watergate tape was President Richard Nixon humming.
The titles of his many books suggest their political themes; some of the more memorable ones include Son of the Great Society, The Establishment Is Alive and Well in Washington, Washington Is Leaking, While Reagan Slept, and Beating Around the Bush. Buchwald may be regarded as establishing the genre of the modern satirical political commentary that now includes works by such divergent humorists as Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You!), Andy Borowitz’s The Republican Playbook, P. J. O’Rourke’s Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire Government, Ann Coulter’s How To Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), Michael Savages’ The Political Zoo, and Dave Barry’s Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway.
Neil Simon
We mentioned one of Shakespeare’s great comic creations, Sir John Falstaff, but the bard has given many other gifts to the humor genre, not the least of which are plots that involve mistaken identities, cross dressing, a series of unlikely errors, star-crossed lovers, and the participation of supernatural beings in human affairs.
A more contemporary playwright whose comic plots are heavily laced with humor is Neil Simon, who wrote Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, The Goodbye Girl, and many other contemporary plays. The means by which he unifies the action (and the humor) of his dramas is to juxtapose two strongly contrasting characters who live together.
In Barefoot in the Park, newlyweds Corie and Paul Bratter move into a postage-stamp size apartment in downtown Manhattan. Their tiny residence is miserable. There is no heat, the skylight has a large hole in it, they must ascend and descend several flights of stairs, they live next to screwball neighbor, Victor Velasco. Free-spirited Corie and priggish Paul are mismatched in personality traits and temperaments, and the humor of the play results from their contrary traits and disposition as much as from the petty annoyances they must endure.
Most people have seen The Odd Couple, either as a play, a movie, or a television series. Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, two divorced men, share an apartment. Easygoing Oscar is a total slob. Edgy Felix insists upon keeping an immaculate household. The only things that the “odd couple” have in common is that each is divorced and each is a writer. Their opposing personality traits and temperaments are the bases of the shows’ humor.
The Goodbye Girl pits a single mother, Paula McFadden, against Elliot Garfield, the man to whom her ex-boyfriend sublet the apartment that he’d shared with Paula. From the beginning, the pair get on one another’s nerves. Nevertheless, they manage to fall in love, right before Elliot is offered a once-in-a lifetime opportunity in another city and Paula fears that he will leave her, as all the other men in her life have done. As with The Odd Couple, the characters’ opposing personality traits and temperaments are the bases of the movie’s humor, and their only common interests (besides the happiness and welfare of Paula’s 10-year-old daughter, Lucy) are their being reluctant roommates and their career choices: Paula is a former dancer who is trying to make a comeback, and Elliot is an actor trying to get established in his profession.
These plays show Simon’s basic approach to unifying his stories and their humor. He confines two characters with strongly contrasting personality traits and temperaments to a relatively small place where their interaction is both inevitable and frequent, allowing their personality differences to ignite sparks; the humor results from the ensuing interactions between the characters and is tempered with romance, friendship, or affection. As a result of their relationships, whether as husband and wife, friends and roommates, or romantic couple, the characters teach one another something important about each other, helping one another to mature.
Next: Cartoonists and Other Humorists
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