The Television Situation Comedy, or TV Sitcom

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

A situation comedy (or “sitcom”) involves a continuous cast of regular, recurring, and unique stereotypical characters in comedy that arises from a shared environment, from a specific set of circumstances, or from a particular situation that results in predictable behavior and rapidly resolved conflict. For example, The Andy Griffith Show portrays the life of small-town sheriff Andy Taylor as he interacts with his family, Aunt Bee and Opie, his deputy Barney Fife, and his friends, neighbors, and fellow townspeople.

Regular characters are those which occur in almost every episode of a sitcom series. Such characters include the protagonist, or main character, and the supporting characters with whom he or she routinely interacts, such as a spouse, a child or children, servants, friends, neighbors, coworkers, or roommates.
Often, a regular character is a foil to the protagonist, highlighting the main character’s personality traits by exhibiting traits that are opposite to the protagonist’s qualities. Often, when a foil is part of the regular cast, the sitcom will be filmed in a single location, in a relatively small space, such as an apartment, that the foil shares with the protagonist. Andy Taylor, the sheriff of Mayberry, North Carolina, is the protagonist of The Andy Griffith Show. As such, he is one of the show’s regular characters. Other regular characters include his Aunt Bee, his son Opie, and his deputy Barney Fife.

Recurring characters are supporting characters who interact less frequently with the protagonist or one of the other regular characters than do regular characters; recurring characters may include visitors, government officials or representatives, customers, out-of-town or distant relatives, or supervisors. Some of the recurring characters on The Andy Griffith Show are schoolteacher Helen Crump, Andy’s girlfriend; Thelma Lou, Barney’s girlfriend; barber Floyd Lawson; mechanic Gomer (and, later, his cousin Goober) Pyle; fix-it man Emmett Clark; city clerk Howard Sprague; Aunt Bee’s friend, Clara Edwards; and Mayor Pike.

Unique characters appear only once in a single episode of a sitcom series. The character who is portrayed by a guest star (a actor of some renown) is a special type of unique character. Such a character appears in an episode because the celebrity who plays this character has charisma or glamour that adds interest to the sitcom. A guest star’s appearance may coincide with “sweeps weak” or may occur during a decline in the show’s ratings, to increase the show’s audience. Other unique characters usually appear for a specific purpose, such as to fulfill the need of a particular plot.

Regardless of whether a character is a regular, a recurring, or a unique character, he or she is usually a flat character and a stereotype whose behavior is predictable. A flat character is one that is made up of only a few personality traits are present in most sitcom characters, and these traits can be identified by a short list of adjectives. Barney is a flat character, whose fictitious personality is summed up by such adjectives as “vain,” “sensitive,” “self-important,” “inept,” and “braggadocios.” A stereotypical character is one that fits preconceived ideas about the class of individuals of which he or she is a representative. The sitcom character also usually behaves as viewers imagine such a type of character would behave--that is, according to type. A rustic character is apt to be simple, unaffected, and gullible; an urban character, urbane, pretentiousness, and cynical. Therefore, such characters’ behaviors would be predictable. The simple rustic is likely to misjudge situations or people, underestimating them; provide overt indications of his or her true thoughts and feelings through his or her facial expressions, body language, and speech; and be deceived by unprincipled characters. Gomer is a good example of such a character. A trusting soul who gives everyone the benefit of the doubt, he sometimes chastises those he’s underestimated by shouting, “Shame! Shame! Shame!” at them after they have hoodwinked him with one unlikely story or another. On the other hand, the urban character is apt to see several more implications concerning a situation’s significance or several meanings concerning a deed that would escape the rustic character’s notice; to disguise or hide his or her true thoughts and feelings; and to dismiss good intentions or noble feelings as the motivations or causes of another character’s behavior. On The Andy Griffith Show, Mayor Pike comes the closest to such a character.

In some situation comedies, two or more characters share the same environment. In some instances, one of the regular supporting characters is a foil to the protagonist. Because of their diametrically opposed qualities, these characters are doomed to disagree and, often, to annoy one another. They see things altogether differently, often in opposite terms to one another’s perceptions, thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or beliefs. For example, in The Odd Couple, Oscar Madison is a slob who shares his apartment with Felix Unger, an obsessive-compulsive neat-nik. Much of the show’s conflict--and comedy--stem from their attitudes toward cleanliness.

The shared space can be, and usually is, larger than an apartment. On The Dick Van Dyke Show, Rob Petrie shares an office with his fellow comedy writers Sally Rogers and Buddy Sorrel and his home with his wife Laura and their son Richie. Likewise, the entire community of Mayberry, including the courthouse, Andy Taylor’s house, Wally’s Filling Station, Floyd’s Barber Shop, Emmett’s Fix-It Shop, Weaver’s Department Store, and several other locations, make up the shared space of The Andy Griffith Show.

The sitcom situation is of an everyday sort, such as viewers themselves might encounter in their daily family or work lives or during their leisure time. Each situation gives rise to a commonplace conflict that is resolved within the span of the show’s duration--typically, thirty minutes (no counting commercial messages). Some of the conflicts that occur in plots for The Andy Griffith Show include Opie’s discovery of the harm to relationships that lying causes; Goober’s learning that pedantry is apt to cause others to feel contempt instead of admiration for know-it-alls; and Andy’s willingness to let others retain their personal dignity by taking credit for the good deeds that he has done.

The themes (or subject matter) of sitcoms suggest the type of topics that television audiences find amusing. Over the years, various types of sitcoms have aired on television, several of which types overlap:

• Offbeat comedies (The Addams Family, The Munsters, My Mother the Car)
• Comedies of the workplace (Alice, The Andy Griffith Show, The Bob Newhart Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Oh! Susannah, Laverne and Shirley, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, Night Court, Our Miss Brooks, That Girl, Cheers, Home Improvement, Frazier)
• Comedies involving single-parent families (The Andy Griffith Show, Bachelor Father, The Courtship of Eddies’ Father, Make Room For Daddy, One Day at a Time, WKRP in Cincinnati, My Three Sons, Full House)
• Comedies involving merged families (The Brady Bunch, Eight Is Enough, Yours Mine and Ours, Please Don‘t Eat the Daisies)
• Colleges about roommates (Bosom Buddies, Three’s Company, Friends, Laverne and Shirley, The Odd Couple)
• Comedies featuring black families (The Cosby Show, Good Times, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air)
• Comedies focusing upon nuclear families (The Cosby Show, Good Times, Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Donna Reed Show, Married. . . with Children, Roseanne, Home Improvement)
• Comedies centering upon multi-cultural families (Diff’rent Strokes)
• Comedies featuring extended families (The Mothers-in-Law, Everybody Loves Raymond)
• Comedies about married couples (The Jeffersons, Ozzie and Harriet, The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, I Married Joan, I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners)
• College comedies (Dobie Gillis)
• Comedies concerning high schools or private postsecondary schools (The Facts of Life, Welcome Back, Kotter, Happy Days)
• Rustic comedies (The Dukes of Hazzard, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, The Real McCoys)
• Espionage comedies (Get Smart)
• Supernatural comedies (The Flying Nun, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeanie, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Girl with Something Extra, Topper)
• Military comedies (The Phil Silvers Show, F Troop, Gomer Pyle, USMC, Hogan‘s Heroes, M*A*S*H)
• Beach comedies (Gidget)
• Political comedies (The Governor and J. J.)
• Extraterrestrial comedies (My Favorite Martian, ALF, Mork and Mindy)
• Animal comedies (Mr. Ed)
• Comedies about a Servant (Hazel, Who‘s the Boss?, The Nanny)
• Comedies focusing upon musical families or groups (The Monkees, The Partridge Family)
• Comedies about superheroes (Batman)

How To Write Hilarious Humor: An Analysis of Professional Comedians' (and Comediennes') Techniques to Tickle the Funny Bone

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Chapter 6: Fame, Fortune, Golf, and Television

In “Future Reality Shows,” Radner departs a bit from what had, before now, become her standard approach to developing her book’s humor. Instead of using an opening paragraph to establish a basic situation as an excuse to introduce absurd examples, gags, and jokes concerning an aspect of her book’s central concept, or theme, of aging, the author summarizes the premises of several non-existent television game shows. The descriptions of the shows’ premises poke fun at the absurdities of actual television shows of this genre. Each of the imaginary shows requires participants to do something ridiculous and, usually, dangerous to have a chance to win “a million” (or, in one case, “a schmillion”) dollars. One premise indicates the approach:

Who Wants to Marry a Serial Killer?

Serial killers fall in love, too. Six lucky women get to spend time with a hardened criminal on death row . . . but only one of them gets to marry him, have sex with him, and be present for his execution. You win a million dollars.

This chapter ends with a television show’s title, which takes the form of a rhetorical question, to which Radner provides her narrator’s answer:

Who Wants to Smash Their High-Definition Flat-Screen Television Set?

I do. Keep your million dollars.

The implication is that it is worth a million dollars to Radner to smash her own television set if doing so rids her of such fare as the premises to her imaginary game shows suggest fill the airwaves.

The use of oddball logic structures Radner’s chapter concerning golf (“A Hole in Eight”). In this chapter, after contributing a stunningly funny comparison (“the thought of me holding a golf club was as likely as Eleanor Roosevelt wiring a bikini”), the author shares her ideas as to how to enjoy a game of golf. Her logic is as impeccable, in its own way, as it is unconventional. Her strategy consists of four interrelated practices (or non-practices): don’t entertain high expectations; don’t purchase expensive, quality equipment; don’t practice the sport; and don’t take lessons. By adopting these approaches to playing golf, one eliminates stress and, in fact, enhances the enjoyment of the sport, she argues, for one is “thrilled” if play goes better than anticipated and, at the same time, one has is under no pressure to perform to a high standard--or, indeed, to any standard at all. As Radner’s narrator puts it, “If I hit a good shot, I’m thrilled, and if I don’t . . . well, what do I care? It’s not like I practiced.” She offers similar wrongheaded, but surprisingly sagacious, advice concerning the taking of golf lessons:

Never take a lesson. Just position yourself next to someone who is taking a lesson. This way, if you become worse, you can forget what you overheard, and if you become better, you have had free instruction.

In the “conclusion” to her chapter, Radner’s narrator suggests a theme, or a message, as it were, in the madness of her oddball logic. Her madcap procedures work for her, because, although she may be “out of touch with reality,” she is, nevertheless, “having a good time,” and having a “good time,” she implies, is more important than playing a golf game well.

Occasionally, a comedian or a comedienne can get away with an essentially serious monologue, spoken more from his or her own mouth, as it were, than from that of his or her book’s narrator. Radner accomplishes this--and well--in “At What Price?,” a chapter concerning the instant celebrity to which Andy Warhol referred when he predicted that, given the media’s incessant need for material, “In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes,” exemplifying the hidden personal costs, including invasions of privacy and actual physical danger, that being famous entails and the way in which almost anyone can become “famous”--for a while and for a time, at least--in contemporary America, as Paris Hilton did when her infamous sex tape was leaked over the Internet or as can those “who can stand on a post for hours while holding a dead fish in their mouths.” The theme of this chapter seems to be the lesson that Radner intends to teach her daughter, Molly: “Fame should be a by-product (and not necessarily a good one) of achieving something extraordinary.” She concludes the chapter with a twist on Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous saying, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”: “The only thing we have to fear is fame for fame’s sake.”

Radner gets away with being serious for a moment as a comedienne because she herself is famous (and, as such, may have a thing or two to teach others about the “cost” of celebrity) and because she writes well. However, in a humorous book, even a talented professional jokester can’t expect to get away with being serious very often, and Radner, of course, reverts to form--sort of-- in her next chapter, “CNNNMSNBCCNBCFOXNEWSNETWORKHEADLINENEWSLOCALANDNATIONALNEWS.” Its premise? “There are too many news outlets and not enough news to go around.” As a result, she contends, she hears the same news repeated at night that she has already heard the same morning, with the only real difference that it is now “stretched over twenty-two minutes plus commercials.” She offers an amusing, perhaps telling, observation concerning a parallel between the news itself and one of the products that sponsors it: “I’ve . . . noticed that the commercials on the evening newscasts are predominantly stomach-related. The news is so upsetting, drug companies have figured out a way to profit from it.” The claim that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between disparate incidents or situations is a favorite technique for prompting laughs, and one which tends to be funny whether the relationship is implied, as it is here, or directly stated, as it would have been if Radner had written, ““I’ve . . . noticed that the commercials on the evening newscasts are predominantly stomach-related because the news is so upsetting that it turns viewers’ stomachs, and drug companies have figured out a way to profit from it.”

Radner--or her narrator--offers a couple of brief examples of how news anchors are reduced to creating, rather than reporting, news stories and responds to Katie Couric’s plea to her audience to “send me a story you’d like to see on the news,” assuring viewers she’d “like to hear it,” with, “Well, I wouldn’t. Maybe that’s just me, but I like my news to be newsworthy.”

Having set up her chapter’s topic, television news, Radner follows up by offering an example of the mundane “news” that would result if she were to take Couric at her word and send in an item that her narrator felt was newsworthy; explains why she finds news crawlers (“the additional information located at the bottom of the screen”) helpful, because they add something new, if not actual news, to the newscasts; explains why she enjoys watching televised murder trials (they extend her treadmill exercise time); critiques the appearance of female newscasters (they all resemble fashion models); and criticizes the inundation of newscasts with flash, colorful graphics--all annoyances with which ordinary members of America’s television audience can relate.

In the process, Radner includes several techniques for producing laughter that are common to professional comedians and comediennes, some of which have been mentioned already, such as:

• Run-on text: the title of this chapter runs together the acronyms and titles of several network news shows and the two categories of news programs, local and national, suggesting that these shows and categories have merged into one, more-or-less continuous and identical body of programmed material
• Absurd, but amusing, anecdotes or examples that illustrate her sometimes-serious, sometimes-humorous claims and observations
• A seemingly absurd, but nevertheless appropriate, comparison between disparate items: repeatedly reciting the same news while making it seem as if it is being read for the first time and Madonna’s attempt to affect virginity (“Reporting the exact same stories over and over and trying to keep them sounding as if it is the first time they’re being read has to be harder than Madonna trying to pretend she’s a virgin”) and the appearance of female newscasters as an effect of a cause which she associates with an historical event (“I love Judy Woodruff and Lesley Stahl, but I think the last time they ate something the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan”)
• The use of something for an unintended, but practical, purpose: watching the news is an adjunct to her exercise routine
• Humorous rhetorical questions: do judges’ refusals to televise certain criminal trials suggest that “they do not care about the state of my inner thighs? Have they no conception of the benefits to my buttocks?”
• Absurd solutions to unusual problems: One such solution is suggested by a hypothetical action on her narrator’s part: “If I sent pictures of me before the O. J. trial and then after,” the judges who refuse to televise trials “might reconsider” their decisions, she suggests, and, thereby, allow the broadcast of these programs, which she uses as adjuncts to her exercise routines. She also has an idea as to how to remedy the broadcasts of made-up news: instead of overusing the “Breaking News” graphic, “how about a ‘Made-Up News’ graphic?”
• Cause-and-effect relationships of a spurious, but amusing, nature: “The more attractive a woman reporter is on CNN, the more time she gets to spend indoors. If you’re forty and have a double chin, chances are you’re filming your report wearing a parka and freezing on the White House lawn or wearing a flak jacket down in a spider hole in Iraq”
• Exaggeration: “‘Breaking News’ is a graphic that is currently being overused on television to command our attention. The last time I saw it flashed on my TV screen it turned out that someone in a kitchen in Iowa had broken something”
• Absurd counterexamples (headlines, in this case, that would suggest actual, rather than made-up news--if they were, indeed, true--and would, therefore, command attention): “‘Hi, this is Katherine McKennedy and here are today’s headlines. . . . Tony Danza announces he is running for president of the United States . . . . Bill gates goes bankrupt . . . and Osama Bin laden marries Jennifer Lopez in a drive-through chapel in Vegas.”

Conclusion

Over a period of three chapters, Radner demonstrates how a topic can be given extended treatment when the material that supports it is broad enough. Television provides sufficient fodder, and Radner, employing a variety of humorous techniques, criticizes game show premises and television news, breaking up the topic with the inclusion, between the chapter concerning game shows and news programs, a chapter that deals with golf, a sport that enjoys widespread popularity, and fame which, whether it is deserved or undeserved, comes with a “cost.” In each case, her targets are, as usual, both familiar and popular, but are also sources of aggravation and annoyance for both those who participate in them or those who merely observe others who participate in them. In these chapters, Radner has employed many of the same techniques that she has already used to effect humor, but she also demonstrates the use of several as-yet-unseen methods for amusing readers, including run-on text; unintended (but practical) uses of products or services; absurd solutions to problems, real or imagined; dubious cause-and-effect relationships between disparate incidents or situations; and absurd counterexamples. The chapter concerning the cost of fame shows that a comedian or a comedienne can occasionally get away with being serious (for a moment), provided that, the rest of the time, he or she is funny and provided that, in being serious for a moment, he or she writes well.

How To Write Hilarious Humor: An Analysis of Professional Comedians' (and Comediennes') Techniques to Tickle the Funny Bone

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Chapter 5: Juvenalian Satire

Another arrow in the humorist’s quiver is Juvenalian satire. Such satire is mild, as opposed to harsh or bitter Horatian satire. Historically, Juvenalian satire’s intent was corrective, aiming at diagnosing an annoying or offensive defect in the personality or an annoying habit that, once brought to the offender’s attention, might be fairly easily remedied, as by repressing the annoying personality trait or suppressing the offensive conduct. On the other hand, Horatian satire’s purpose was to identify obnoxious characteristics or behavior that required more serious or prolonged attention, such as social ostracism.

In “Go Ahead, Open This Bag,” using the Juvenalian approach, Radner exposes her father’s--or a caricature of her father’s--vanity concerning his manliness. Despite--or, perhaps, because of--his age, the narrator’s father, a “seventy-eight-year-old man,” is loathe to ask for assistance from either younger individuals or members of the opposite sex, especially in the performing of so simple a task as opening a bag of peanuts that flight attendants have distributed to the passengers aboard an airplane trip from Miami to Las Vegas.

Until now, Radner has presented her chapters’ set-up situations in short expository paragraphs. In this chapter, she introduces the setup through a series of humorous exchanges of dialogue between father and daughter. The father has flown from his hometown to visit the narrator, and after exchanging “the two-minute father-daughter hug” they’ve “perfected through the years,” the narrator asks her father what he means by his cryptic greeting, “I thought I could do it. Turned out I was mistaken.” Her question sets up the exchange of dialogue in which the reader sees the father’s pride concerning his manliness, which has remained intact despite his advanced age. It is this pride, or vanity, that is subjected to the mild attack of Juvenalian satire throughout the remainder of the chapter.

Unable to open the bag of peanuts the flight attendant has provided, he first blames the bag, rather than himself, for his inability to open the package, suggesting that the bag might have been somehow defective:

“Didn’t the bag have a perforation on one side? Usually, if you look carefully, there’s a perforation."

“I checked. There was no perforation. Possibly, it was a defective bag. I don’t know, I didn’t check other people’s.”

When his daughter asks, “Why didn’t you ask for help?,” the father’s vanity surfaces through his responses:

“I’m a seventy-eight-year-old, two-hundred-pound man. What do you want me to say to the thirty-two-year-old, one-hundred-and-fifteen pound female flight attendant? ‘Will you open this bag of peanuts for me?’ Why don’t I just put on a dress and be done with it?”

“How about the person sitting next to you?”

“I wish you hadn’t asked. She was an eighty-year-old ninety-pounder.”

“And she opened the bag with no problems?”

“She struggled. She finally stabbed it with a fork over Denver.”

The reference to “Denver” is a non-sequitur; the context in which it appears--the stabbing of a bag, as if it were a murder victim who is wounded during a struggle--is both surprising and ridiculous, earning a laugh from the reader.

The next exchange of dialogue further reveals the father’s pride--and his wounded dignity:

“Why didn’t you stab it once you saw there was a way in?”

“Because I shouldn’t have to. I’ve raised a daughter, I’ve been a lawyer. Last year, when the last full-service island closed downtown, I even learned how to pump my own gas. I should be able to open a bag of nuts.”

It is absurd for a man of such accomplishments--a father, a lawyer, and a man who has managed to adapt to changes in technology--to feel that his manhood and his dignity are threatened by his difficulty in performing such a mundane task as opening a bag of peanuts, but, of course, many times, people’s sense of self-worth is threatened by just such ludicrous situations, so, once again, Radner taps a universal experience among her readers, the humorous way in which she depicts a fictionalized version of such an experience lessening the embarrassment and the humiliation that such situations may have caused them by deflecting it onto a surrogate, or stand-in, for them, by showing them how ridiculous both the situation itself and the father’s reactions to it are.

Conclusion

In this chapter, Radner has, once again, selected an everyday situation--an airplane flight--and familiar psychological and social states of affairs--a man’s anxiety about the effects of aging upon his masculinity and his sense of dignity as a man and his refusal to accept the help of others--to set up her comedy. In the process, using mild Juvenalian satire, she criticizes the foolishness of the behavior (the father’s refusal to seek or accept the assistance of others) that results from these anxieties. Her techniques also include humorous dialogue, through which she discloses the story’s conflict while characterizing both her narrator and her narrator’s father; comedic repetition through which a series of jokes are included, all concerning the same topic and situation; and personification that comprises a logical non-sequitur(the bag is characterized as if it is a person).

How To Write Hilarious Humor: An Analysis of Professional Comedians' (and Comediennes') Techniques to Tickle the Funny Bone

Chapter 4: “Kiss ‘Em, Kick ‘Em, and Kiss ‘Em,” Climactic Sequences, and Tone

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

If, as a humorist, you’re going to trash someone--a friend (or future former friend) or a family member (before he or she has disowned you forever), perhaps--you don’t want to look, to your reader, like the shark that you are. You want to look like a nice guy or gal. How do you accomplish this miraculous feat?

In trashing her deceased mother, in the “Oh, Mother!” chapter of her book, Radner faced this very problem. Her solution? Prior to the trashing, say some nice things about her target. Use the “kiss ‘em, kick ‘em, kiss ‘em” strategy, wherein one lauds the soon-to-be butt of one’s jokes, then savages him or her, and then again praises the poor soul. Radner devotes two, albeit admittedly short, paragraphs to praising her mother:

It’s my contention that the things you remember about your childhood govern the way you raise your own children. Even though my other died when I was thirteen, I find myself constantly remembering the little things she did for me as I spend time with my daughter.

Kindness was my mother’s finest attribute; cooking was her downfall. Luckily, I was not a picky eater. Most of the things she cooked for me I found delicious.

Her chapter’s title, “Oh, Mother!,” by the way, is a play on words, recalling the exasperated cry, “Oh, brother!,” and sets the tone of the chapter--the narrator’s expression, mild and humorous, though it may be, of her exasperation with her mother’s lack of cooking “talent.”

Now that Radner has set up the chapter’s basic situation, she, through her narrator, presents the standard humorous examples to support and develop the chapter’s topic (her mother’s abominable cooking):

. . . Her most successful culinary creation (and my all-time favorite) was spaghetti mixed with ketchup and a semi-melted lump of butter. My second favorite was what I called Campbelled rice. This paired instant rice with Campbell’s Vegetarian Vegetable soup. Not only was it delicious, it was also educational (if not entirely sanitary), as I would spell out different words on the kitchen table with the gummy letters.

A technique for creating humor, seen in this paragraph, as previously in Radner’s book, is to mix categories, such as cuisine and education. The unlikely pairing is not only surprising, but amusing, for it brings together a ludicrous association that, despite its absurdity, nevertheless, in some way, seems to make sense. Radner’s use of this technique also taps into the familiar, because many adults are likely to remember playing with alphabet-shaped rice or pasta letters in their soup, just as Radner describes herself, as a girl, of having done. Absurdity mixes with familiarity to get a laugh. She then extends the humor by describing how her mother extended any leftovers from this meal to create another dish, employing, once again, a strange mixture of two disparate items, “soup,” a serving of food, and “Spackle,” a sealing compound used in construction:

If there was any Campbelled rice left the next day, the mixture would be poured into tomato soup, thus creating yet another unique variation: Campbelled tomato rice paste. It was midway between soup and Spackle.

Radner’s next paragraph begins with a list of items in a series which have no apparent relationship to one another. However, a link between these disparate items is formed by Radner’s identification of them as her “mother’s three most spectacular failures”: “My mother’s three most spectacular failures involved a can or corn, a duck, and matzo balls.” Having created a Lucy Ricardo-like caricature of her mother as an inept cook and having cited a couple of previous examples of her mother’s culinary incompetence, Radner has interested her readers in learning more about the poor woman’s “culinary failures.” Because of the nature of comedy, in which humorous anecdotes or jokes move steadily toward a crescendo, or climax, of mirth, readers also expect that the quips and gags will be funnier than the previous ones were, although these newer ones will be topped, in turn, by even funnier ones, until, at last, the climax of the series is reached.

Sure enough, Radner’s mother doesn’t disappoint, for she next turns a can of corn into a bomb; cooks inedible, rubbery matzo balls; and reduces the duck, which she seeks to cook as if it is chicken, to an unrecognizable, gelatinous mass that even the daughter, who is “not a picky eater,” refuses to sample, in any form (whether as a roast duck, a salad ingredient, or a sandwich filler). In detailing these “culinary failures,” Radner spices her descriptions with more than a dash of hyperbole:

I don’t know what prompted her to put a closed can of Niblets into the searing oven; I just remember the explosion. . . . I was in charge of picking bits of corn off the floor while she climbed the ladder and tackled the ceiling.

[Trying to consume the matzo balls] was like eating dried Silly Putty. We were fearful of breaking the garbage disposal, so the leaden bits of dough were finally tossed in the trash. . . .

I remember her taking the duck [that the narrator’s mother had prepared as she’d supposed a chicken should be cooked] out of the oven and encountering a sea of grease that in my brief life I had never seen emanate from a chicken. It was so slimy that as my mother served it, the poor bird almost slid off the plate.

Having “kicked” her mother--or a caricature of her mother--Radner now has her narrator “kiss” her again, as the chapter comes to a close, in a paragraph which, for humorous books, is unusually long, and which is followed by a shorter, final paragraph that rounds out the chapter. The longer paragraph begins, “Along with my mother’s lack of cooking talent, I also remember her remarkable personality. I remember the light in her eyes whenever she saw me. I remember her kind voice and her forgiving, patient nature. . . .”

Conclusion

Sometimes, a humorist may savage a friend or family member--or, actually, a caricature of such a person. To prevent alienating him- or herself from the reader, the humorist should adopt the “kick ‘em, kiss ‘em, kiss ‘em” strategy of first praising the victim-to-be, before verbally assaulting him or her with outlandish exaggerations of a defect, real or imagined, and then, once again, lauding the savaged party before concluding the chapter with a short, often single-sentence expression of appreciation for his or her overwhelmingly positive personality traits and behavior patterns, such as Radner does in the closure to her “Oh, Mother!” chapter: “Cooking aside, I only hope I’m half as good a mother to my daughter as my mother was to me.” This concluding comment will leave readers with an “awwwwwww” reaction, rather than a feeling of disdain for someone who would savage a friend or family member (even a caricaturized version) simply to get a laugh. In this chapter, Radner uses several devices she’s used before, including exaggeration, or hyperbole; ludicrous examples; conflated, absurd comparisons; and climactic sequences in which lesser jokes and gags are followed by greater jokes and gags. Her title, “Oh, Mother!,” is a play on words, recalling the exasperated cry, “Oh, brother!,” and sets the tone of the chapter--the narrator’s expression, mild and humorous, though it may be, of her exasperation with her mother’s lack of cooking “talent.”

Next: Chapter 5: Juvenalian Satire

How To Write Hilarious Humor: An Analysis of Professional Comedians' (and Comediennes') Techniques to Tickle the Funny Bone

Chapter 3: Metaphor, Hyperbole, Situational Humor

Like many chapters (and, sometimes, entire books), the chapter called “Catalogue Addiction” is based upon a metaphor which, as the title suggests, equates catalogue shopping with an addiction of some kind, probably one related to drugs or alcohol. The metaphor is extended with references to “treatment centers,” “a group of women with similar problems,” interventions, stashing catalogues as an addict stashes caches of drugs or alcohol, and “recovery.” However, as the need arises, for the sake of humor, the metaphor is occasionally abandoned in favor of the use of humorous techniques that are not related to or dependent upon the trope. For example, a shopping catalogue is personified as a stalker: “the company’s first final clearance catalogue made its way into my clutches three houses ago. It doesn’t matter how often I move; the catalogue knows where I’m living.” Likewise, a Victoria’s Secret catalogue is compared not to drugs but to “pornography,” as the addiction to the former becomes, as it were, an addiction to the latter. Exaggeration is used as well: the models in the Victoria’s Secret catalogue are endowed with such large breasts that their “bosoms” prevent the narrator from closing the publication: “The bosoms on the otherwise skinny women appear to be inflated. The last issue was so chock-full of overly endowed ladies, I couldn’t even keep the magazine closed.” Likewise, Radner employs hyperbole when she describes the mailman as having developed a hernia from delivering the many weighty catalogues that the narrator, like the other women in her neighborhood, receives on a regular basis.

In “Do It Again,” Radner’s humor comes not so much from a series of setups and punch lines or extended metaphors as from a familiar situation carried to extremes. The situation is continuous, from the beginning to the end of the chapter and is, as such, also the chapter’s main source of unity. As always, the opening paragraph establishes the situation in a few short sentences:

Because I was a child such a very long time ago and my contact with children until I had my own was so limited, I was entirely unaware of a child’s capacity for repetition.

Examples of the child, Molly’s, “capacity for repetition” follow, each of which will be likely to strike a familiar chord in reader‘s own experiences. First, a couple of shorter examples are supplied: the game of hide-and-seek, in which Molly continues to hide in the same place each time the game is played--or replayed--and her begging her mother to be carried upside down to the bathroom for her bath, just “one more time,” Then, a third, extended example fills out the rest of the chapter, humanizing the narrator as a mother who loves her daughter. At play at the beach, Molly finds a new way to hide. When the narrator fetches a seashell for her daughter, Molly hides behind her, turning as the narrator turns, so that the mother cannot see her. As a result, the mother is distraught, imagining that Molly might have wandered into the sea or been spirited away by an abductor. When the narrator finally discovers her daughter, the girl asks her mother whether she was “really scared,” and, when her mother confesses that, having imagined her daughter to be lost, she “really” was frightened, Molly, delighted, begs, “Let’s do it again,” her request providing the words of the chapter’s title and thereby bringing the chapter to a full circle.

Conclusion

A chapter’s humor can largely derive from the use of an extended metaphor or a familiar situation. However, as the need arises, either structural device is apt to alternate with other, secondary techniques for producing humor, such as personification, exaggeration, or repetition, with a line or a phrase of dialogue at the end of the chapter repeating the chapter’s title so as to bring the chapter full circle as the section of the book comes to a fitting close.

How To Write Hilarious Humor: An Analysis of Professional Comedians' (and Comediennes') Techniques to Tickle the Funny Bone

Chapter 2: Introductions, Set-Ups and Punch lines, Transitions as Loose Associations, Metaphors, Similes, Allusions, Malapropisms, and Other Techniques

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

 

Typically, since it sets up the theme, or central concept, of the entire book, the initial paragraph of the opening chapter is one of the longest in a humorous tome. Radner’s opening paragraph is no exception. Her book’s theme is aging, or “about a woman turning fifty,” which she describes as “traumatic,” so much so, in fact, that her turning this age reduced her to stuttering whenever she tried to utter the word. One of the first laughs comes when she admits that “I still stutter a bit, even in print,” which conflates eye dialect (“fffiffffty”) with the result of a speech disorder (stuttering). The equation of two disparate categories is both surprising and amusing (except, perhaps, to those who stutter or who have stuttered). Oddly appropriate, but seemingly altogether unrelated comparisons, whether direct or indirect, in the form of metaphors or similes, are often amusing, and many comedians and comediennes use this technique to get a laugh.

Another humorous technique is the making of a straightforward claim or observation, followed by a punch line. Sometimes, the punch line is absurd and anticlimactic. In her book’s opening introduction, Radner uses this technique in writing, “being healthy gives you the freedom to obsess over the things that don’t really matter, like wrinkles, veins, and how tricky it is these days just to be able to turn on--excuse me, I mean power up--a television.” Often a series of items, such as this one, begins by listing a couple of relatively important matters, such as “wrinkles” and “veins,” before concluding with a trivial, anti-climactic item, such as turning on a television set. Again, separately, none of these items seems to belong with one another, but the context creates a surprising and amusing link that gets a laugh.

Describing a cycle that returns back upon itself, with the ending creating the same set of affairs as that with which the sequence began, thereby suggesting that it is vain to expect progress, can be a source of humor, too. In a stand-alone paragraph that follows her initial paragraph, Radner uses this technique to get a laugh: “I feel life is broken down into these stages: you’re born and you don’t know how anything works; gradually you find out how everything works; technology evolves and slowly there are a few things you can’t work; at the end, you don’t know how anything works.”

Humorous books frequently use transitional sentences that connect one paragraph with another and, at the same time, set up the punch line that follows the transition. “With the passing of every decade, our mortality becomes a little clearer and our eyesight a little fuzzier,” Radner writes, offering a contrast that involves disparate categories (“mortality” and “eyesight”) that are linked by a common event or theme (age, or “the passing of every decade”). A humorous example or two is then supplied to illustrate her meaning: “One day the writing on the menu becomes so blurry you just can’t bluff anymore. Now I have to mention that in this optical respect, I’m lucky I can see close up and my husband can see far away, so we’re covered. He tells me who’s in the movie and I tell him what’s in his sandwich.” The example is followed by a humorous conclusion that rounds out the section and gives the upshot of the segment: “Together we’re human bifocals.”

This basic structure of seemingly serious and straightforward claim or observation as a setup, followed by a ludicrous, often anticlimactic, punch line or example, structures much of the entire humorous book, as it does, indeed, Radner’s next paragraph:

The comforting factor about age is that nobody is immune [claim]. The blonde-haired bombshells of today are the blue-haired ladies of tomorrow [humorous example]. When I turned fifty, it also gave me cause to reflect on all the things that have gone right in my life [observation]. Marrying the right man, choosing the right career, and making sure my closet had lots of hanging space were all good decisions [humorous example consisting of two serious items, followed by an absurd one].

The final paragraph includes a Malapropism, or a misused homophone (sound-alike word) that creates a ridiculous effect. Radner confuses such a pair of homophones with one another, “incontinent” and “incompetent”: “I hope I’m lucky enough to live until I’m incontinent--I mean incompetent.” She rounds out her first chapter by bringing it full circle with the allusion to “my filthies,” a euphemism which she employs, in the chapter’s opening paragraph, for “fifties”: “In the meantime, I’m determined to enjoy and celebrate everything about being in my filthies.”

The first chapter of I Still Have It contains five short paragraphs:

1. The initial, or opening, paragraph, which introduces book’s theme, uses “filthies” as a euphemism for “fifties,” conflates eye dialect with stuttering, and exemplifies a serious claim with an anticlimactic series of items which contains absurd instances
2.  A body paragraph that describes a vicious circle of incompetence, followed by competence, followed by changing technology, followed by incompetence
3.  A body paragraph that uses a contrast between two disparate categories, mortality and vision, to set up examples that show Radner and her husband to form, “together,” a pair of “human bifocals”
4.  A body paragraph that exemplifies a serious observation with a contrast between women of younger and older age groups and a claim concerning “things that have gone right” with an anticlimactic series of items which contains absurd instances
5.  A concluding paragraph that uses a Malapropism before returning full circle to the beginning of the chapter by alluding to the “filthies” euphemism that was employed for “fifties” in the opening paragraph

Radner uses these same, as well as numerous other, techniques to generate humor throughout her book.

She starts each chapter the same way, with a serious claim or a straightforward observation that establishes the chapter’s topic and, at the same time, sets up the punch line that follows the observation or the claim.

Here, for example, is how she starts chapters 2 through 4:

While I do occasionally order items on the Internet, it’s hard to teach an old shopper new tricks [observation]. I’m convinced that the catalogue will eventually disappear, but not until the last baby boomers have kicked off their Nikes and been buried in mulch [humor through exaggeration] (“Catalogue Addiction”)

Because I was a child such a very long time ago and my contact with children until I had my own was so limited, I was entirely unaware of a child’s capacity for repetition (“Do It Again”). 

It’s my contention that the things you remember about your childhood govern the way you raise your own children. Even though my other died when I was thirteen, I find myself constantly remembering the little things she did for me as I spend time with my daughter (“Oh, Mother!”)

My father’s annual visit always reminded me that as we age we do not become less strange (“Go Ahead, Open This Bag”).

Conclusion

Each chapter starts with a fairly short paragraph that, making a serious claim or a straightforward observation, sets up the punch line that follows. The jokes often take the form of humorously absurd examples, humorously odd comparisons or contrasts, items in a series which consist of two or more serious terms followed by a concluding absurd item, vicious circles that end with a return to the initial state of affairs and thereby show a lack of progress, a Malapropism, an exaggeration, and allusions to humorous euphemisms. Transitions link paragraphs while, at the same time, setting up additional punch lines and jokes to follow, most of which work on the same principles as the previous ones, these transitions and the chapter’s overall topic giving a weak unity to the otherwise disparate collection of situations and jokes.

Next:  Chapter 3: Metaphor, Hyperbole, Situational Humor

How To Write Hilarious Humor: An Analysis of Professional Comedians' (and Comediennes') Techniques to Tickle the Funny Bone

Chapter 1: Choosing Your Theme

Copyright 2011 by Gary Pullman 

Most humor books are based upon a theme, or central topic, as the following sample of titles indicates:

• Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys
• Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need
• Dave Barry’s History of the Millennium (So Far)
• Dennis Miller’s Rants
• Dennis Miller’s Still Ranting After All These Years
• Dennis Miller’s The Rant Zone: An All-Out Blitz Against Soul-Sucking Jobs, Twisted Child Stars, Holistic Loons, and People Who Eat Their Dogs!
• Dennis Miller’s I Rant, Therefore I Am
• Dennis Miller’s Rants Redux
• Art Buchwald’s You Can Fool All of the People All of the Time
• . . . And Then I Told the President: The Secret Papers of Art Buchwald
• Erma Bombeck’s At Wit’s End
• Erma Bombeck’s Just Wait Till You Have Children of Your Own
• Erma Bombeck’s If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits
• Eat Less Cottage Cheese and More Ice Cream: Thoughts on Life By Erma Bombeck
• Erma Bombeck’s I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression
• Erma Bombeck’s Family: The Ties That Bind. . . And Gag!
• Gilda Radner’s It’s Always Something
• Bunny, Bunny: Gilda Radner, A Sort of Romantic Comedy
• Gilda Radner’s I Still Have It . . . I Just Can’t Remember Where I Put It
• Gilda Radner’s Turning the Tables
• Gilda Radner’s Naked Beneath My Clothes
• Gilda Radner’s Tickled Pink
• Gilda Radner’s Guide to Men

That’s just a short list, of course, but it suggests several points that are useful to the aspiring humorist. Some of these points might not seem all that significant. However, notice that all the author’s names on this list have something in common. They’re professional comedians (or, in some cases, comediennes). They also have something else in common: they’re all hilarious! Therefore, if you can learn anything from any of them, whatever it is, it’s not insignificant.

 

Having made that point clear, let me list some of the significant points you can learn from considering the list:

• Many of the titles use alliteration. Although alliteration is not necessarily humorous in itself, it is pleasing both to the ear and the eye. In other words it’s attractive. No, make that aesthetically attractive. That’s alliterative.
• Several of the titles are long. More specifically, the subtitles are long (the titles themselves tend to be rather short, the better to fir the limited space available to book reviewers). Theirs is something funny about long subtitles. Why? You might as well ask why the sky is high or the snail is slow. They’re just funny: that’s why. (Keep that ion mind when you write your book’s title.)
• Puns and other plays on words (such as Post-Natal Depression, If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits, and Ties That Bind. . . And Gag!) are funny, even when they’re painful. Bombeck uses them, and, if they’re funny enough for Erma, they’re funny enough for you.
• By making a list and talking about it twice (or more), it’s possible to get off the track and stay off the track for some time without your reader realizing it, wasting a lot of his or her time without him or her realizing it, and filling a page or more with irrelevant digressions without your editor or publisher realizing it, as I have done here.

Sooner or later (later is usually better), even as a humorist, you have to come back to the point, which is, if the title of this chapter is any guide (which, of course, it isn’t), is “Choosing Your Theme.” As I mentioned at the outset of this chapter, a theme is the central topic that a humorist writes about throughout his or her whole book and the tie that binds (and gags!--Thanks, Erma) the book together, giving it unity. (It never hurts to repeat yourself in writing a humorous book, either, to stretch things out, as long as the reader, the editor, or the publisher doesn’t catch on.)

 

So, anyway, let’s talk theme.

 

A theme should be universal, appealing to as many people as possible, because you want to sell as many books as possible and make as much money for yourself (and your publisher, too, of course, who will be reading your manuscript if he or she isn’t too lazy to do so, in which case he or she will assign someone else to read the damned thing and report back to him or her).

 

The titles of the humorous books by Barry, Miller, Buchwald, Bombeck, and Radner suggest (at times, at least) their respective themes: Barry is into guys, travel, and history; Miller rants, rants again, and rants some more; Buchwald is obsessed with politics; Bombeck is up to her neck in family issues; and Radner is concerned with romance and aging.

 

Other good topics: animals (especially pets), babies and babysitters, camping, children, college, dating, friends, marriage, neighbors, sex, shopping, teenagers, vacation, weddings, women, and work.. Experiences that make people uncomfortable or anxious are, paradoxically, also good fodder for humorous treatments. That’s why there are chapters in some books concerning visiting doctors, dentists, and lawyers. That’s also the treason that there are whole books on marriage.

 

After you’ve chosen your theme (or, in some cases, it has chosen you), break it into topics. These will become the subject matter for your book’s chapters (except for the first chapter, which will introduce the theme for the whole book, rather than for its own chapter.) For example, let’s say you choose the theme of aging, as Radner does for her book, I Still Have It . . . I Just Don’t Know Where I Put It. Her first chapter, “I Can’t Believe I’m Filthy,” introduces it as the theme of the entire book. Other chapters consider various (usually only slightly, or loosely) related aspects of this topic, such as old-fashioned shopping by shopoholic (“Catalogue Addiction”); contrasts between children’s youthful behavior and Radner’s older perspective (“Do It Again”); a mother’s lasting influence on even her adult children (“Oh, Mother!”); the difficulty of opening packages that older people sometimes experience (“Go Ahead, Open This Bag”); and so forth. Notice, the chapter topics tend to be lighthearted; address relatively trivial, everyday situations; and pertain to familiar experiences. These characteristics endear these topics to millions of readers (one hopes) by offering humorous, knowing depictions of common annoyances and frustrations that make experiencing them (or remembering experiences concerning them) seem more tolerable and less exasperating than they actually are or were.

 

One other point. The titles of the chapters should be worded so as to disguise the fact that the chapters are really about just another of the aspects of the book’s overall theme. Each title should suggest that its chapter is about a brand-new, never-before-seen (or read) topic. Alternatively, at the very least, the chapter titles should be so vague, yet, somehow familiar-sounding, that they mean absolutely nothing (but still, somehow, seem to relate to the chapter’s contents). Check out some of the chapter titles from Radner’s book: “Catalogue Addiction,” “Do It Again,” “Oh, Mother!,” “Go Ahead, Open This Bag.” Although one chapter title does indicate its topic (“Catalogue Addiction” is obviously about obsessive catalogue shopping), another chapter title (“Do It Again”) seems to be about something other than what it is, in fact, about--sex, maybe--whereas the other chapter titles (“Oh, Mother!“ and “Go Ahead, Open This Bag”) are so vague that they could be about anything, from motherhood to collecting corpses in body bags.

 

So, what have you learned--or what have I taught, at any rate--in this chapter? It’s time to highlight the key points (because conclusions eat up even more space, enabling you, as a writer, to achieve your contracted word count).

 

Conclusion

 

Like the book’s title, which may contain either alliteration or a pun (or both) and will probably include a long subtitle, the first chapter introduces the theme, or central topic, that unifies the book’s contents, laying the groundwork for the topics that subsequent chapters will explore. The titles of the chapters should disguise the fact that the chapters are merely addressing yet another aspect of the central topic, or theme, by seeming to be about something--anything--else than what they really introduce. The book’s theme and the chapter’s topics are often about an annoying, frustrating, familiar, and universal experience with which readers can identify and appreciate. In writing the book, occasional digressions are welcome, as are needless repetitions (but not too many), lists, and end-of-chapter conclusions to round out (and, more importantly, lengthen) the book’s page count. That about sums it up 


Next:  Chapter 2: Introductions, Set-Ups and Punch lines, Transitions as Loose Associations, Metaphors, Similes, Allusions, Malapropisms, and Other Techniques

How To Write Hilarious Humor: An Analysis of Professional Comedians' (and Comediennes') Techniques to Tickle the Funny Bone

Introduction

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Some of us have it, and some of us don’t. Even when one has it, one can lose it, as the title of Gilda Radner’s hilarious book, I Still Have It . . . I Just Can’t Remember Where I Put It. The “it” in question is, in this book, not Radner’s, one’s sense of humor--and Radner certainly still has hers, that’s for sure.

Moreover, in my book, she’s going to teach you how to use it if you have it. She’s so funny herself that she might teach you how to use it even if you don’t have it yet but are doing everything you can to acquire and develop it

Her secrets will become your knowledge, as you learn how to make people laugh the same way that Radner herself makes her audiences laugh, through such techniques as thematic and topical humor, alliteration, allusions, puns, plays on words, catalogues or lists, intentional digressions, setups and punch lines, metaphors, similes, apt comparisons, personification, exaggeration or hyperbole, repetition, rhetorical questions, run-on text, and many others. End-of-chapter conclusions keep you focused on the meat of the lessons, rather than on the potatoes, and a discussion of her book’s format and her writing style suggests the importance even of these considerations to the generation of laughter.

It will be enormously helpful, to both you and Radner, if you buy her book as an adjunct textbook, because it displays in detail the many techniques for generating humor that are identified and discussed in this handout. Otherwise, you already have it all, because, about all How to Write Hilarious Humor cannot provide you is talent of Radner‘s caliber..

But, then, you already have that.

Next: Chapter 1: Choosing Your Theme

How To Read A Novel Without Really Reading It

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Professors don’t have any mercy on students. If they did, they wouldn’t make them read at all, much less a whole novel (or even several of the damned things). Haven’t these old fossils heard? We’re living in the Digital Age! Books are passé, as dead as the slaughtered trees from which they’re made. If they have to be printed (and they don’t), they’re best used as doorstops, not educational resources.

 

But, for good or ill, professors, like books, are here, it seems, to stay, and since they had to read the same books they’re forcing their students to read (payback is a bitch!), they’re not about to let any of their pupils off the hook.

 

What’s a student to do?

 

I have a few tips on how to read a novel without really reading it. Hence, my essay’s title, “How To Read A Novel Without Really Reading It.” (Always put the titles of articles or essays in quotation marks.)

Follow these easy steps, and the pain associated with reading, although it won’t go away completely, will be reduced to manageable proportions. 

1. First, read the blurb. A blurb is the text on the inside of a hardback book’s flyleaf (the paper cover in which hardback books are usually wrapped) or on the back cover of a paperback. I know, I know, you’re asking, Why would I want to read even more text than I already have to read? The damned novel is way more than enough already. No doubt, you’re also thinking, This is the stupidest advice I’ve ever run across for avoiding reading! Don’t quit reading! Not yet. Give me a chance to explain. You’ll see there’s a method to my madness. There’s somewhere between 200 and 250 words in the typical blurb. That sounds like a LOT of “extra” words to read, I know, but, by reading them, you’re saving yourself from having to read maybe fifty, or even 100, PAGES of the novel itself, each one of which can contain 400 word or more, so, conservatively, that’s a savings of between 20,000 to 40,000 words! (Aren’t you glad you didn’t quit reading my essay.) It gets better. As a result of having read the blurb, you will know certain facts about the novel that you can use in your book report, lit crit essay, or whatever the hell your professor’s making you write. For example, you will know the main character’s name. (In your essay, refer to him or her as the “protagonist”; professors are windbags, and they like to read, as well as speak, long words.) You will know the setting. You will know the basic storyline, or plot. You will probably learn the inciting moment. You may also learn the names of lesser, supporting characters. All this for only 250 words or less!
2. Realize that a chapter can be summarized in one sentence. Then, read the chapter only until you can summarize it in one sentence. (Unfortunately, a “Prologue” and an “Epilogue,” if they are part of the novel, must also be read and summarized.)
3. After each chapter, write a sentence that summarizes what it presented. Here are examples, summarizing the prologue and the first two chapters of Lincoln Child’s novel, Terminal Freeze (always italicize the title of a novel): (Prologue) A Native American shaman’s attempt to appease the gods for a woman’s careless violation of a taboo fails, requiring him to take the woman southward, to a mountain, where a greater violation of a different taboo has occurred. (Chapter 1) The face of a melting glacier falls away, revealing the mouth of an ice cave. (Chapter 2) Scientists exploring the cave find a monstrous beast frozen in the ice. (When you finish summarizing each chapter of the novel, you will have summarized the whole book. For example, there are 53 chapters, a “Prologue,” and an “Epilogue” in Terminal Freeze. Therefore, the whole damned thing can be summarized in 55 sentences. Not bad.)
4. Keep a list of characters’ names, brief phrases that identify them, and the names of the places in which the action takes place. Here are examples from the first three chapters of Terminal Freeze: (Prologue) Usuguk (shaman), Nulathe (woman who violates taboo), Koukdjuak the Hunter (god); igloo village in an “arctic desolation”; (Chapter 1) Evan Marshall (protagonist; a paleoecologist), Gerald Sully (research party leader)., Wright Faraday (evolutionary biologist)--they work for Northern Massachusetts University in Woburn and are researching global warming in Alaska’s federal Wildlife Zone; their base is at Mount Fear Remote Sensing Installation, which they’ve rented from the government; (Chapter 2) Penny Barbour (fourth member of the scientific research team, a computer scientist), Ang Chen (graduate student)
5. Most of the text in a novel is unnecessary. It’s filler, the rambling philosophical musings, existential questioning, and self-indulgent wishful thinking of the author, or descriptions of various persons, places, or things, including, believe it or not, the weather, little if any of which has any bearing on what is actually happening in the story itself and may be ignored without any ill effect on your grade, so SKIP IT. Instead, read just the dialogue (the words supposedly spoken by people--the characters--who don’t even exist). By reading just the dialogue, you will be able to keep track of the story well enough to summarize it (remember,. Each chapter can be reduced to a single sentence!). Only dip into the descriptive or expository (explanatory) blocks of text when you need to do so to reestablish a sense of continuity and context--maybe twice or so every four or five chapters. You will find that you are skipping entire pages of the text and still know what’s going on, kind of like returning to a movie after a bathroom break, which just goes to show you that most of a novel is unnecessary padding.
6. After reading and summarizing each chapter and updating your list of characters and settings, stop! You are done with the book. Do NOT return to the novel. Close the cover! You are finished! Do not second guess yourself, wondering whether you missed something (you didn’t) or whether your summaries are detailed enough (they are). It’s a novel you’re reading (or, if you follow my guidelines you are not reading, not the Bible or the Koran of the Bhagavad Vita or even the Kama Sutra. How important can a book of fiction be, anyway? (Not very!) You’ve done more than enough, so quit already!

That’s all there is to it, six simple steps. Now you have all the information you need to write your book review or your lit crit essay, or whatever the hell your professor’s making you write. What you do with the information is up to you.

 

Sights To See Along Dalton Highway

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Dalton Highway was just another Alaskan route to nowhere until Ice Road Truckers made it famous. Now, it’s a renowned Alaskan route to nowhere.

Well, that’s not exactly true. It goes places. In fact, it goes several places: Livengood, Coldfoot, Wiseman, Sagwon, Deadhorse, and Prudhoe Bay.

Come to think of it, even though Dalton Highway does go somewhere, technically speaking, it really is pretty much just another Alaskan route to nowhere, because, whether a traveler’s in Livengood or Prudhoe Bay, he or she’s still pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

People from any of the dots on the map along Dalton Highway who are arrogant enough to call their homes “towns” (no one’s supercilious enough to refer to such a speck as a “city”) are used to having conversations like this:

None-native: “Where are you from?”
Native: Livengood.
Non-native: Where’s that?
Native: Near Fairbanks.
Non-native: Where’s that?
Native: Alaska.
Non-native: Where’s that?

Named for James Dalton III, one of the original members of the Dalton Gang that harassed Coffeyville, Kansas, the highway runs through mountainous, snowy terrain, startling polar bears, white foxes, and caribou, for a distance of 414 miles before calling it quits at Deadhorse. It was built, Alaskan Eskimo spirits claim, to supply the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, or TAPS, back in 1974.

People with positively no lives whatsoever--we’re talking the walking dead here--actually travel the Dalton Highway so they can see the Arctic Ocean. Their first stop, as they travel north out of Fairbanks, is Livengood, where the living’s not all that good, the median annual family income being approximately $26,000. Travel time to work is roughly 16 years, round trip.

The population, which numbers 29, is three percent Asian, six percent Eskimo, and 91 percent Caucasian, neither African-Americans nor Pacific Islanders being stupid enough to live there. The good news about Livengood? It takes just three minutes, by bus, to pass through the town.

 

Coldfoot’s not a town per se. None of the “towns” along Dalton Highway are. It’s a glorified truck stop. It was founded by Dick Mackey, who, homeless after an illustrious career as an Iditarod dog musher, began selling dog meat “hamburgers” out of a broken-down school bus. Pitying the fool, truckers helped him build a truck stop and a decent café. Viola! Coldfoot was born.

That’s not the most interesting fact about Coldfoot, though. We saved that for last, so here it is. Before it became the sprawling metropolis it is today (population 13), the place was a mining camp called Slate Creek. Prospectors on their way to Koyukuk River got “cold feet” while wading the river’s icy waters and decided to turn back, figuring what good was all that gold if they froze to death trying to mine it. (Grammatically, the “town” should be called Coldfeet, but this is Alaska, where people are concerned with more important matters, such as getting through another endless winter without being eaten by a starving polar bear).

Today, Coldfoot boasts two stores, a gambling house, a post office, two roadhouses, seven saloons, and 124 brothels.

When the miners left Slate Creek, they had to have somewhere to go, so they started another camp, calling it Wiseman, because, settlers said, the name sounded better than Idiotsville.

Today, Wiseman is famous for its occasional mention on a “not reality, actuality” series, Ice Road Truckers, which features grizzle-bearded, mustachioed men (and one grizzle-bearded, mustachioed woman, named Lisa) who never bathe, smell really bad, and are too unskilled (and unkempt) to earn a living any other way than by delivering freight to Prudhoe Bay’s pipeline terminus and bitching to the camera crew who film their exploits. Topics of the truckers’ “conversation” are mostly limited to road conditions, the weather, and their own sad, pitiful lives.

There’s one other fact about Wiseman that travel guides claim merits mention. A log cabin post office, built over a century ago, has been sinking into the earth ever since, so that it is now a couple feet underground. There’s no denying it: Alaska is inhospitable, even to buildings.
 

Situated above the Arctic Circle, an imaginary arc that encircles the globe as a sort of antithetical equator to warn people not to journey any farther north because they’re entering a really, really cold and inhospitable, if not downright dangerous, part of the planet and should turn back immediately, Sagwon has one claim to fame: the Gallagher Flint Station Archaeological Site and Emergency Frostbite Treatment Center, discovered during the construction of TAPS.

Nothing is known about the archaeological significance, if any, of the site, but it was felt that some sort of tourist trap was needed as a “point of interest” to include on the Rand McNally road atlas’ map of the area.

Deadhorse was founded by a Pony Express rider who got lost in a blizzard in Kansas and wound up in Alaska. When his horse froze to death, leaving him stranded in the middle of nowhere, a. k. a. Alaska, he pitched a tent and incorporated himself as a “town,” named in honor of his deceased companion.

Deadhorse is famous for its caribou, geese, swans, seagulls, eagles, arctic foxes, arctic ground squirrels, grizzly bears, polar bears, musk oxen, and arctic hares. (It’s also a good place to lay in a supply of chewing tobacco and to catch an exciting episode of Ice Road Truckers as it’s being filmed.)

Prudhoe Bay (population, 5) is located on Prudhoe Bay, but that’s not how it got its name. It was named by a British explorer, Sir John Franklin, after his classmate, Captain Algernon Percy, Baron Prudhoe, with whom the explorer had, it appears, an unusually close personal relationship.

Because of the oil fields located just to the east and south of the “town,” it is the home away from home of thousands of transient workers, and a good time can be had there by all. Even the sun cooperates, extending daylight to twenty four hours a day, every day, for six months of the year, so bring plenty of suntan lotion, a swimsuit, and some dark shades. The beaches are plentiful, beautiful, and pristine, despite the massive oil spill that occurred here in 2006, spewing 267,000 gallons of crude across two acres of beachfront property and causing a spike in gasoline prices as far south as middle America.

In addition, Prudhoe Bay is one of the “Six Official Places Mentioned on Ice Road Truckers” and the place at which trucker Lisa had her upper body depilated during the inaugural episode of the show’s second series.

Note: In the interest of Full Disclosure, Ice Road Truckers is not the proud sponsor of this “article.”

Walking the Dog, or Why Dogs Are Not Man’s Best Friends

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

 

 

Recently, my wife Paula took a nasty header over the step that leads from my niece’s foyer to her sunken living room.

 

The tile is the same color in both rooms and it perfectly matches, so that the rows appear continuous and on the same level whereas, in fact, they are merely continuous. The step has sent many a visitor stumbling. More than once, I myself have resembled a clown juggling invisible bowling pins, balls, or hatboxes (since they’re invisible, they can look like whatever you want them to). Paula is the first one actually to have fallen headlong onto the tile.

 

Fortunately, although she’s petite, she has a hard head and didn’t break anything.

 

At the time, I thought she’d fallen by accident. She even made it look like an accident, careening off the furniture and flailing about like a pinball with arms. Then, with a perfectly executed splat!, there she was, lying on the floor, moaning with a sprained wrist and a knee the size of the Hidenburg, before the crash.

 

We were all horrified. In fact, I was so shocked and alarmed that I promised to do all the chores around the house while she recuperated.

 

At the time, in my concern for Paula’s welfare, I forgot that “all the chores” included walking the dog--and, more to the point--cleaning up after him.

 

Now, after having walked him for two weeks, I know the truth: Paula took the fall on purpose; she was setting me up.

 

I know what you’re thinking. Why would anyone fall down the steps--or even one step--and suffer a sprained wrist and a bruised and swollen leg just to get out of walking the dog?

 

Let me describe a typical walk. Then, my claim might not seem quite so incredible.

 

I know it’s 5:02 AM because I watched the local weather report on TV last night, and the meteorologist assured me that the sun would rise at precisely this time, and not a moment sooner or later. Teddy Bear Boo Boo knows it’s 5:02 AM because he’s been up all night, waiting for first light.

 

Why? He’s a dog, and dogs live to take their morning constitutionals, each and every day, precisely at the crack of dawn.

 

Why? So they can sniff things, pee on things, chase things, and poop. Like other dogs, Teddy isn’t discriminating: he’ll sniff pretty much anything--poison ivy, road kill, other dogs’ day-old urine--or anyone, for that matter. (I have to keep Teddy on a short leash when our neighbor, Ms. Baxter, is outdoors.) He’ll chase almost anything, too--cats, squirrels, Big Wheels--or anyone, including the mail carrier. Teddy will poop anyplace, too; he’s not picky: our driveway, the fairway, or the guardhouse at the entrance to our gated community, Painted Succulents. It’s as true of man’s best friend as it is of man himself: when he has to go, he has to go.

 

All night, while he’s waiting for dawn’s early light, Teddy’s probably dreaming of sniffing things, peeing on things, chasing things, and pooping, and, when the hour has finally come round at last, no power on earth is going to keep him from his appointed rounds!

 

Precisely at the moment of sunrise, Teddy bounds into our bedroom, where he bounces off the walls, tosses his head, wags his tail, and whines, a kinesthetic as well as an audible alarm clock in canine form, announcing--or insisting--that’s it’s sunrise and demanding to be taken on his morning walk.

 

Since I’m not quite ready to brave the day--I still have to get out of bed, go to the bathroom, comb my hair, get dressed, supply myself with plastic grocery bags (for cleaning up after Teddy), and find the leash--Paula occupies Teddy’s attention by petting him and talking baby talk to him. “Ahh! Is Teddy Bear Boo Boo ready for his walk? You have to give Daddy time to get ready, too, Teddy. But then you can make a big, big poo poo, just for daddy. Yes, that’s a good boy!”:

 

While I prepare for his walk, Teddy bounces off the walls, tosses his head, wags his tail, and whines, while he listens to Paula ask him deeply personal questions that would, no doubt, be offensive to him if he weren’t a Labrador retriever: “Teddy Bear Boo Boo have to go poo poo? Teddy going pee pee?” If he didn’t have to go before, he’ll have to go now. Hell, I have to go myself, now.

 

It takes me five minutes to pull myself together. By then, Paula’s pretty much a wreck, and so is our bedroom. Unless you have a big dog who’s eager to undertake his morning constitutional, you have no ideas what a few wags of a tail as large as Minnesota can do. It’s a good thing Paula collects knick-knacks and bric-a-brac; otherwise, the bedroom shelves and display cases would be empty.

 

During the walk itself, I have three simple goals in mind: manage to stay awake, keep Teddy out of our neighbors’ yards (unless I know for sure that one of them is out of town), and collect Teddy’s “golden nuggets” without choking to death on my own vomit.

 

Teddy, on the other hand, has a full agenda: identify the urine or spoor of ever other dog in the neighborhood that’s passed his way in the past six months, “mark” his territory by urinating where other dogs have previously urinated to “mark” their territory, chase cats or (if no feline prey is available) squirrels, entangle me in his leash, and, at the most inconvenient and/or embarrassing moment possible, defecate.

 

A creature of habit, Teddy insists upon taking the same route each day, which is comprised of visits to Mrs. McQueen’s azaleas, the Browns’ compost pile, the fire hydrant in front to the Kinkaids’ house, the wall along the Franks’ place, Mrs. Becker’s rhododendrons, a storm grate near Willow Way and Elm Street, and our side yard’s fence. He could be offered an all-expenses-paid trip to Disneyland--or Paris--and Teddy would insist upon his customary constitutional round his own stomping grounds.

 

Teddy dispenses the contents of his bladder as if he were sharing the very nectar of the gods with the shrubs, trees, and fire hydrants which he deems worthy of receiving his intermittent streams, but he’s not at all anal retentive about sharing the golden nuggets he’s all-too-eager to deposit upon any horizontal surface, natural or man-made, that he encounters. Unfortunately, not all that is gold glitters, and it’s up to me to clean up after him, which just proves who, man or dog, is man’s best friend.

 

Before the fall, Paula used to collect Teddy’s droppings, and, she insisted, when I took over the job, all I’d need were two plastic grocery bags, one for collecting and the other for the actual bagging (and storage). I should place one on the ground or street, next to the collectibles, and use the other bag as a makeshift glove to “scoop the poop.” After depositing Teddy’s deposit inside the storage bag, along with the bagging bag, I should tie the bag’s plastic handles together, and viola, the task would be completed. How difficult could that be?” she’d asked me.

 

So difficult, I’d replied, that I’d need nothing less that a biohazard suit and a commercial vacuum cleaner with a half-mile extension cord, to which Paula had said something equivalent to pshaw! Telling me to “man up,” she’d sent me forth the first morning of her now-protracted period of recuperation, bright and early, to “walk the dog.”

 

During the two weeks I have walked the dog since that fateful day, I’ve come up with a technique for collecting dog droppings that is so good that I could teach it as an adult extension class at the local community college. Instead, out of my concern for dog-walkers the world over and the goodness of my heart, I contribute it here, as a tax-deductible donation to charity.

 

Steps 1 through 7 of the collection process are performed before you and your dog leave your house. The remaining steps are executed after you leave your residence; they should be performed at a distance of no fewer than six feet from the dog’s deposit*:

1. Collect the following supplies: a backpack (for holding the other supplies, except those specified in step 2; for the backpack, Velcro is recommended over zippers, snaps, or other fasteners); a butterfly net (a lightweight aluminum version is recommended), lined with fastened-down plastic sheeting; thigh-high wading boots (rubber is best); a large hamper (lined with plastic sheeting--I prefer black; a wooden clothespin (which may be hard to find nowadays, but is worth whatever effort it takes to locate); a large (huge would not be too big) disposable (repeat, disposable) sponge, mounted upon a pole of a length not less than sex feet; a dog harness; a length of sturdy, but lightweight, chain; and a little red (toy) wagon.
2. Place all the supplies into the backpack, except the butterfly net, the wading boots, the hamper, the dog harness, the chain, and the little red wagon.
3. Put on the thigh-high boots.
4. Rest the butterfly net over one shoulder.
5. Harness your dog and attach the lightweight chain to the harness, connecting its opposite end to the handle of the little red wagon. Your dog will pull the wagon. You’ll be busy doing--well, let’s just say “other things.”
6. Place the plastic-lined hamper, with its lid open, into the little red wagon.
7. Walk the dog until he or she defecates. (Make sure that the canine collectibles are deposited on the street, not on a lawn or in gravel.)
8. Stop (even if you are tempted to run and hide).
9. Remove and dump (do not unpack--dump) the contents of the backpack onto the street. (You’ll want to make them available as soon as possible!)
10. Locate the clothespin, and attach it to your nose so that the prongs clamp your nostrils closed. (This will prevent gagging and/or vomiting, so it is a critical step; do not omit it.)
11. Using the butterfly net lined with fastened-down plastic sheeting, scoop up the canine’s collectibles.
12. Deposit the collectibles into the plastic-lined hamper.
13. If your dog’s droppings are more liquid than solid (yuck!), use the disposable sponge to mop up whatever’s left of the deposit.
14. Scrape the sponge off its pole, into the hamper.
15. Using the butterfly net, close the lid to the hamper.
16. Lay the handle of the butterfly net inside the little red wagon, alongside the hamper, the net facing away from you and (hopefully) downwind. (It’s okay if the net itself drags). Lay the pole upon which the sponge was mounted alongside the butterfly net handle, inside the wagon.
17. Return home. Do not let your dog dilly-dally. He or she has done his or her business.
18. Leaving the butterfly net, the sponge pole, and the hamper in the wagon, disconnect it from dog’s harness and leave the wagon and its contents in the driveway for about forty years, until the odor of the dog’s droppings are neutralized by wind, sunlight and whatever else Mother Nature throws their way.
19. Remove the thigh-high boots. Leave them in the garage (unless they were soiled by a splatter effect while you were collecting your dog’s droppings, in which case they must first be blasted, from a safe distance, with a hose connected to a high-pressure nozzle or, perhaps, a sand-blasting machine).
20. Retire to the house, with your dog. Remove the clothespin and enjoy the rest of your day. You’ve earned it!

* Yes, of course, a biohazard suit would be more efficient (and probably cheaper), but your wife will not think so. After all, if she’s like Paula, she’s taken a header down the stairs so she’s not the one who’s walking the dog.