CLAIM Your FREE Review Copy NOW at Booksprout!

 

RECRUITING REVIEWERS!

 

Claim your FREE copy of my urban fantasy novel A Whole World of Hurt at this link: https://booksprout.co/reviewer/review-copy/view/90470/a-whole-world-full-of-hurt Thank you!

 

Light Verse and Worse: A Wild West Newspaper's Extravagant Fillers

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Like the frontier itself, the newspapers of the Wild West weren't all that tame. Whether the content was news, entertainment, or even advertisements, the material was apt to be intriguing. Sometimes sensational, occasionally humorous, and, more often than not, a bit tongue in cheek, the newspapers' stories were, like its promotional copy, were welcome in prairie towns, on the high plains, and in wilderness locations far from home or, for that matter, civilization itself.

 

 

Newspapers allowed men and women on the frontier to keep abreast of what was happening in the rest of the country and enabled them to receive goods they couldn't always easily find in their own communities, if at all.

 

A survey of even one newspaper of the wild West shows fairly well what the others of its kind printed for its eager readers and, in our own day, offers us a glimpse of the life and times of the men and women who braved life on the edge of American civilization. Occasionally, the advertisements especially show the more devious side of human nature as well, just as the humor pokes fun at the absurdities or personal and social behavior.

 

The January 19, 1895, issue of The Courier, a newspaper that provided more entertainment than news, it appears, bore, among its other sundry contents, George Moss's light verse, “A Half-back from Wayback,” concerning a dude lately arrived on the Western frontier. The tenderfoot in question is “a young Yale graduate” who has taken the suggestion, attributed, by Josiah Bushnell Grinnell, its alleged recipient, to famed newspaper editor Horace Greeley, and gone West—in fashionable dress, yet:

 

He was a young Yale graduate

And he hied him to the west.

Oblivious of fear or fate

And fashionably dressed.

 

He ends up in Santa Fe, at “Dutchy's restaurant,” where he catches the eye (or eyes) of several frontiersmen who, each independently of the other, but unanimously, decide the newcomer “must go”:

 

He landed out a Santa Fe

And captured the town by storm,

Though naught he said, or didn't say

But chiefly because of his form.

On night in Dutchy's restaurant

Assembled a famous crowd:

Shanks, Deep Gulch Mike and Sandy Grant;

Red Thompson and Aleck Dowd.

A lawyer chap they called the Judge,

And Billings of Navajo;

Each pledged the other in Dutchy's budge

That the tenderfoot must go.

When the dude refuses “big Aleck Dowd's offer to have a drink with him, Dowd jerks his gun, demanding that the Easterner change his mind; instead, the tenderfoot disarms Dowd, breaking both the gunman's arm and the mirror into which the rowdy's liberated pistol flies:

Then Dowd, advancing, pulled his gun

And remarked in sneering tones:

“You'll take a drink, or they'll be fun,

Likewise some blood and groans.”

And sudden as the lightning's flash

Our youth worked the elbow charm;

The pistol flew through the mirror, crash!

And Dowd had a broken arm.

One of the others, Shank, by name, next flings himself upon the newcomer and is tackled for his trouble, while the intended victim's knee causes a third attacker, Billings to throw “up blood.” Apparently, the dandy fells Deep Gulch Mike, who splits his head open “on a stone spittoon.” Sandy Grant is knocked out, and Red Thompson, now thoroughly unnerved, beats a hasty retreat. Only the lawyer among the attackers is left, but the tenderfoot soon dispatches him, too, tossing the attorney over the restaurant's bar.

 

Amazed, Pete, the bartender, asks his guest how he managed to defeat seven of the West's worst scoundrels. If the poem's title hasn't given away the punchline, the student's reply makes clear the incident's “snapper”: “They were easy meat/ I've played on our football team.”

 

Wild though it may be, the West, it seems, is no match for a Yale Tiger!

 

The Courier itself, which was “published every Saturday” in Lincoln, Nebraska, offered itself at the rates of $2.00 per year, $1.00 for six months, 50 cents for three months, 20 cents for a month, or five cent per single copy, promising subscribers that only “a limited number of advertisements will be inserted.” The copy posted by The Library of Congress on its Chronicling America website doesn't bear out the veracity of the vow: five of the issue's twenty pages, or twenty-five percent of the publication, contain advertisements.

 

 

The advertisements, which might not have been of great interest, in their day, to the newspaper's readers, are more intriguing today, perhaps, now that time has put some distance between the wild and woolly West of yesteryear and the high-tech times in which we live our lives at present. The grocers Hotaling & Son make it clear that they cater to “family trade only,” as a consequence of which “their goods are the nicest and freshest in the market,” suggesting that, were they to deal also with commercial trade, their sundries might not be quite as nice or fresh.

 

Likewise, the Merchant's Hotel in Omaha pays “special attention to state trade, guest and commercial travelers.” The rest, we guess, can go to hell.

 

 

Presumably, Drs. Starkey & Palen, who offer to heal the sick and make strong the weak, have themselves been “sick or debilitated,” because, it is from their “own experience of twenty-five years” that they know that their Compound Oxygen is not just another dubious remedy, but one that actually works, and, to prove it, they offer a two-hundred page volume that details, with “numerous testimonials,” the efficacy of Compound Oxygen, not of its cures, mind you, but of its “cues” of no end of complaints, including “asthma, beonchitis [whatever that may be], consumption, catarrh, rheumatism, nervous prostration, neuralgia,” and whatnot. The physicians conclude their advertisement with a cautionary statement, urging readers to avoid fraudulent imitations and “disappointment and loss of money, as there is but one genuine Compound Oxygen.”

 

If a reader would rather have something perhaps a little stronger than Compound Oxygen, a neighboring advertisement recommends Old Elk Bourbon, which, perhaps, unlike some of its competitors' whiskey, is shipped pure and unadulterated direct from the distillery,” presumably to prevent any middlemen from introducing impurities or other adulteration. Not just one or a few, but “the medical fraternity everywhere,” wherever that may be, has endorsed Old Elk as a life-giving elixir that gives, if not a cure, “life, strength and happiness to the weak, sick, aged and infirm.” The bourbon should, but may not, be available at either the pharmacy or one's local “liquor dealers”; if not, no matter: it can be obtained from the distilleries themselves. For $1.50. in advance, Stoll, Vannatta & Co. Distillers, will ship “a quart sample bottle” anywhere by prepaid express mail.

On another page in the same issue, Dr. Price offers his Cream Baking Powder with the advisory that it alone is the world's “only pure Cream of Tartar Powder,” and, as such contains neither ammonia nor alum. No wonder it's been “used in millions of homes” and has been “40 years the standard”!

 

 

There's also good news, disguised, as it were, as another advertisement, in the form of a testimonial by James W. Goss, a likeness of the gentleman accompanying his statement, in the off-chance that no one has ever heard of him. “Gentlemen—I was pronounced by my home physician [name withheld] as having tuberculosis, and I went South [odd: Doc Holliday's physician recommended the West] without any apparent benefit.” The Southern climate, it appears, was unable to cure him of tuberculosis, but, glory be!, he found a remedy, not in climate, but in Shiloh's Consumption Cure, “and it's results have been wonderful!” One might even venture, without exaggeration, perhaps, to say miraculous. Is there any doubt, any at all, that the good Mr. Goss would “cheerfully recommend it to any one suffering from lung trouble”? The recommendation of this astounding cure alone is worth any number of years' subscriptions to The Courier!

The last page of the issue flanks a center column of amusing anecdotes with advertisements extolling the virtues of various snake oil products, one of which advertisements, for Ayers Sarsaparilla, states that it strengthened a ten-year-old boy (who “declines to give his name to the public,” most likely because he exists only in the mind of the copywriter who created him). The cure came in the proverbial nick of time, as the youngster had been told that he was too weak ever to walk and was, indeed, certain to die. Death might have been the least of the horrors his disease would visit upon him, the child suggests. A “gathering,” he says, “formed and broke under my arm.” (He doesn't say what, exactly, the “gathering” was, but it sounds ominous.) When he “hurt his finger,” he testifies, the digit somehow “gathered and threw out pieces of bone,” a complication which also sounds nothing short of dire. The consumption, which had killed the unfortunate's “mamma” when he was but “one year old” wasn't through with him yet, for, if he broke his skin, the injury “was sure to become a running sore.” In vain, he took “lots of medicine,” but it wasn't until he tried Ayers Sarsaparilla that he found a cure. “It has made me well and strong,” the child declares, and Dr. J. C. Ayer & Co. of Lowell, Mass., assures their prospective patients that the sarsaparilla that “cures others, will cure you.”

Another advertisement reveals a miracle cure at least as astounding and wonderful as that of Ayer's Sarsaparilla. “Dr. W. Queen, “The Specialist,” portrait included, all but guarantees The Courier's readers that his “scientific treatment and removal [of cancers] in twenty minutes without knife, pain or loss of a drop of blood” cures “Piles and Tumors . . . Catarrh Throat, Lungs, Heart and Nervous disability” as well as “diseases of the Stomach, Kidney, Liver, Blood, and Disease of Women,” which have been the good doctor's “specialty for thirty-five years.” He has also “restored hearing to the deaf and sight to the blind,” but there is no mention of his having raised the dead back to life. His secret seems to be electrical current, because he describes himself as “Dr. Queen, the Electrician” and practices his—well, whatever it is—in his “Institute and Electric Bath Rooms” in downtown Lincoln.

One advertisement, by F. J. Chenney & Co. of Toledo, Ohio, even goes so far as to offer $100 “reward” to anyone their product, Hall's Catarrh Cure, “fails to cure” and invites readers to “send for list of Testimonials.”

 

With such extravagant claims as these advertisements proclaim, it is little wonder that the humorous quips and anecdotes listed between them fail to compete. One such item, “Uncertain,” for example, courtesy of the Detroit Tribune reads:

 

They stood still and looked at her.

“Do you not,” they asked, “want to be a lady when you grow up?”

Their child gazed into their face wonderingly.

“Forsooth,” she answered, brushing the tangled curls away from her sad, sweet face. “The way styles are going I know not what to say.”

No, she would not commit herself in advance to the fashions.

Cute? To be sure. Sweet? Undoubtedly. But how can even so precious and dulcet a vignette as this vie with the melodramatic and sensational accounts of miracles that hem it in on both sides?

 

The Taxonomic Method

 Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

 

 

In The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny, authors Peter McGraw and Joel Warner share a method of generating humor based upon Greg Dean's taxonomy of comedy.

 

The method consists of a “target assumption,” a “connector,” a “reinterpretation,” and a “punchline.” The connector is a key word that allows a play on words by which the punchline is effected. The authors provide this example:

My wife is an excellent housekeeper.

The target assumption is that the word housekeeper, which is the connector, refers to a woman who keeps house.

To effect humor, however, the meaning of “keeps house” is reinterpreted, and the new meaning is presented in the punchline that follows:

When we got a divorce, the bitch got the house.

This method, involving plays on words, can be used to generate jokes about almost any topic, including a risque one. Here are a few original examples:

 

 

 

My wife doesn't much care for televised beauty pageants.

She claims they turn our TV into a boob tube.

My hot new girlfriend has put the joy back into my life.

She makes me feel ecstatic!

My wife thinks Marilyn is a class act.

I don't know why she's mad at me: I agreed that Marilyn most certainly is a class ass.

The taxonomic method of creating jokes works, but it tends to be a bit sophomoric, for which reason it's probably not effective more than once or twice in a routine, whether one's gig is on the stage or the page.

Mark Twain's Tips and Techniques of Humor

 Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

 

 

 

The McWilliamses Stories

 

Over a period of thirty-seven years, Mark Twain published three short stories about a married couple named the McWilliamses. Caroline (later, Evangeline—did her husband remarry?) is emotional, superstitious, argumentative, and gullible; Mortimer is rational, put-upon, long-suffering, and henpecked. Foils to one another, the spouses' characters, as well as the incidents in which they become involved, provide the fodder for Twain's humorous treatment of them.

 

The first story, “Experience of the McWilliamses with Membranous Croup,” was published in 1879; the others, “Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning” and “Mrs. McWilliams and the Burglar Alarm,” followed in 1892 and, posthumously, in 1916, respectively.

 

“Experience of the McWilliamses with Membranous Croup”

 

In the first of these stories, Mortimer is relating his and Evangeline's experience with membranous croup, “an acute obstructive laryngitis in young children, usually between the ages of three and six.” (The Free Dictionary by Farlex). Characterized by “a high-pitched cough and difficulty in breathing,” the condition can be caused by either bacteria or a virus ((The Free Dictionary).

 

The story starts with what appears to be a reference to an incident unrelated to the ailment: Mortimer suggests that their daughter ought not to be “chewing” a stick of pine. His comment prompts an argument from Evangeline for no other reason, according to Mortimer, than the fact that she, like married women in general, “cannot receive even the most palpably judicious suggestion without arguing it.” As evidence to support her view that the chewing of wood, in fact, has medicinal value, Evangeline references the statement of unidentified “doctors” who “all say that the turpentine in pine wood is good for [a] weak back and the kidneys.” When Mortimer presses her on this astonishing declaration, he learns that their child is not afflicted with either condition and further, that Evangeline never implied any such thing.

 

 

 

Like the situations in Twain's other McWilliamses stories, this one establishes a situation that lends itself to repetitions of behavior that are but variations upon themselves, as the couple take extraordinary and absurd measures to protect the health of their children, the ailing Penelope and their baby, moving the crib in and out of the nursery, nearer and farther from the fire in the couple's bedroom fireplace, adjusting the temperature of their room up and down, dismissing and recalling the nurse, and Caroline's awakening Mortimer from his sleep to carry out a series of absurd actions related to her nearly hysterical concern for their children. Through such repetition, both in this story and in the other two of the series, Twain extends the narratives' opportunities for humorous treatment, the humor resulting as much from situations involving such repetition of actions as from the opposing traits of the couple's characters.

 

 

 

 

During the course of the story, Twain employs a number of techniques, many of which are also used in his other McWilliamses stories:

 

Irony and exaggeration: In response to Caroline's refusal to concede the validity of his logic that the pine wood stick that Penelope chews is not of any nutritional or medicinal value, Mortimer says, “Say no more, my dear. I now see the force of your reasoning, and I will go and order two or three cords of the best pine wood to-day.”

 

Simile: “sleeps like a graven image”

 

Comparison: “you know no more what you are talking about than the child unborn”

 

Misdirected concern: Caroline is more concerned about the condition of her furniture and the family's cat than she is that of Mortimer.

 

Irony: Caroline insists that Mortimer sleep, letting her take care of Penelope and the baby, but she keeps waking him to ask that he undertake another useless task

 

Redundancy: “I did not finish, because I was interrupted.”

 

Irony, through impossibility: “he must come, dead or alive.”

 

Irony through motive: “Very few married men have such an experience as McWilliams's and so the author of this book thought that maybe the novelty of it would give it a passing interest to the reader.”

 

Situational irony: Penelope's condition is not the result of the membranous croup, after all, the doctor determines, but of her having swallowed “a bit of pine,” from which she “got some little slivers in her throat.”

 

“Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning”

 

My personal favorite of the three, “Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning,” is based on the wife's fear of lightning. Now known as Evangeline, Mrs. McWilliams awakens her sleeping husband with her panicked shouts of “Mortimer! Mortimer!”

 

The story makes good on Mortimer's claims, at the outset of the narrative, that his wife's “fear of lightning . . . . is something pitiful to see.”

 

As in the previous McWilliamses story, the wife is emotional, superstitious, argumentative, and gullible, while Mortimer is rational, put-upon, long-suffering, and henpecked. Only the name of the wife differs in regard to the characters; children are mentioned, but they play no substantial part in the plot.

 

Evangeline, who does her own share of arguing, all Mortimer seems to do, in response to her claims and her concerns is to “argue it, and argue it, and argue it!” Of course, in doing so, from a logical point of view, he is correct. He is right, for example, that a man cannot “be ashamed when he is asleep.” He is right that swearing does not cause lightning, and he is right that saying “confound it” is not swearing. He is right that ;light does not attract lightning. He is right that not having said his prayers does not cause lightning—or, for that matter, the past occurrences of earthquake and yellow fever that Evangeline blames on his swearing. He is right that his standing in front of their fireplace cannot result in lightning. Nevertheless, his reasoning does not win the argument; Evangeline remains persuaded, because of her readings of esoteric texts, that her husband is wrong and that his behavior is, in effect, a lightning rod that could bring destruction down on them both.

 

Evangeline's retorts to Mortimer's rational appeals show the tactics she uses to manage and subdue her husband; she charges him, directly or indirectly, with shame, carelessness, recklessness, profligacy, argumentativeness, irreverence, irrationality, and willful ignorance. Although it may be that he does not accept the validity or justice of such criticisms, Mortimer seems more concerned with allaying Evangeline's fears than with winning his argument, which suggests that he loves her, despite her eccentricity, just as her expressions of concern for him and their children implies her devotion to him and their family.

 

Another source of the humor in this story is Evangeline's attempt to translate an esoteric German text that is clearly incomprehensible to her (and to Mortimer). Believing the book to offer guidance concerning how to deflect lightning, she orders Mortimer to outfit himself in metal objects: his fireman's helmet, his military saber, and his spurs, and to ring their dinner bell, all while standing on a chair. The ringing of the bell causes his neighbors to appear, demanding to know “what in the nation is the matter here?”

 

The story's punchline comes as the neighbors notify Mortimer that the lightning and thunder he and Evangeline have perceived is, in fact, merely the sound and the flashes of the cannon fire celebrating Garfield's nomination for president. Outside, he is told, “It is a beautiful starlight night.” Due to his wife's superstition and fear, Mortimer has become the laughingstock of the neighborhood and appears himself to be superstitious and fearful.

 

 

 

 

This story also uses repetition ans a means to both extend the humor and to create a variety of humorous effects. However, this time Twain's use of repetition seems more sophisticated, allowing a greater diversity of sources of information that he can use to produce humorous observations and descriptions, such as science, superstition, rationality, emotionalism, religious beliefs, skepticism, pseudoscience, marital relationships, “book-learning,” private vs. public conduct, personal beliefs, and social and political influences.

 

In the course of the story, Twain uses these specific techniques to effect humor:

 

Ironic juxtaposition: “a woman . . . could face the very devil himself—or a mouse”

 

Concealed humor: Twain tucks humorous observations away among seemingly serious statements, the more to surprise his readers.

 

Mutual foils as the major source of conflict: a rational husband and an hysterical wife

 

Superstitious beliefs based on books: “all the books say that . . . .”

 

Mistaking correlation for causation: cursing causes the flash of lightning that immediately follows Mortimer's “swearing”

 

Verbal irony: “absolutely at the mercy of Providence”

 

Simile: “as dark as the inside of an infidel”

 

Repetition: lightning flashes and thunderbolts allow the extension of the humorous situation through variations of wit and humor; additionally, the husband's alleged profanity has caused not only the current thunderstorm but previous occurrences of earthquakes and yellow fever

 

Situational irony: a superstitious and irrational wife charges her husband with irrationality, and his actions (lying in bed, standing before an “open fireplace,” “swearing,” standing near a window, approaching a door, standing close to a wall, lighting a match, donning his pantaloons, failing to say his prayers, singing, admitting a draft of air into the bedroom, turning on water, failing to order a feather bed) attract lightning 

 

Categorical absurdity: the wife regards the use of the word “blessed” as an instance of profanity

 

Personification: lightning is a “marksman”—with bad aim, yet

 

Dubious cause-and-effect relationships: the wife's shutting herself inside the boot-closet with a book causes her husband to enjoy “a moment's peace”

 

Ridiculous, unnecessary action causes destruction: chasing a cat destroys $400 worth of furniture

 

Complex process with ludicrous goal results in absurd actions and husband's becoming a laughingstock

 

Ignorance compounded by arrogance: The McWilliamses' inability to understand a book written in a foreign language results in ad-libbing ridiculous “translations”

 

Mistaken effects: cannon fire, not storm, causes effects perceived by the McWilliamses as lightning and thunderbolts

 

Preliminary, apparent punchline trumped by actual, climactic punchline: not only is Mortimer a laughingstock (preliminary, apparent punchline), but he is also mistaken about the apparent cause of the “lightning” (cannon flashes) and thunder (cannon fire) (actual, climactic punchline)

 

“Mrs. McWilliams and the Burglar Alarm”

 

In “Mrs. McWilliams and the Burglar Alarm,” Twain uses the same structure of repetition to milk the situation of its humor. Despite the presence of an expensive, sophisticated burglar alarm, burglars repeatedly burglarize their house. Repeated repairs and adjustments to the burglar alarm merely make the situation worse or introduce new problems. First, the alarm fails to prevent burglaries; then, adjusted (a huge gong is added to the contraption), the alarm works too well, awakening the entire household every time the cook starts the day at five o'clock. In fact, it works so well, it literally wakes the dead. Another repair, due to a series of false alarms, results in so many burglaries that the residents no longer respond to the alarm, surrendering the run of the house to the thieves. The burglar alarm company seeks to remedy this problem by replacing the burglar alarm's clock every three months, which is not only expensive (as all the previous repairs have been), but each effort is “always a failure.”

 

 

This story features the following uses techniques:

 

Spurious cause and effect: “we found we had a little cash left over, on account of the plumber not knowing it.”

 

Irony through contrasting motives: “I was for enlightening the heathen . . . .[the motive sounds noble], for I was always unaccountably down on the heathen somehow” (but it is really base).

 

Definition: “whenever I want a thing, and Mrs. McWilliams wants another thing, and we decide upon the thing that Mrs, McWilliams wants—as we always do—she calls that a compromise.”

 

Punchline: The burglars finally steal the burglar alarm itself.

 

Play on words: “swear at—sear by, I mean.”

 

Riff on “summer”: “They [alarm firm workers] promised to have the whole thing finished in ten days. They began work, and we left for the summer. They worked a couple of days; then, they left for the summer. After which the burglars moved in, and began their summer vacation.”

 

Personification: clocks “would take it [the burglar alarm] off again as soon as your back was turned”

 

Verbal irony: “those things [burglar alarms] are made solely in the interest of the burglars”

 

What Could Go Wrong?

One theory of humor finds the source of humor in situations in which a character perceives that something is wrong. Obviously, Twain takes this approach in his McWilliamses stories. Being struck by lightning may not be funny, but as Twain shows, being hysterical about the possibility, which is fairly remote, can be hilarious. What's “wrong” isn't the lightning itself (which, in fact, in the story, never actually occurs), but the irrational fear of it and the behavior that such fear produces. “Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning” is an account of the multiple results of such hysteria. Twain uses the same approach in his other two stories: In “Experience of the McWilliamses with Membranous Croup,” Evangeline is terrified that her daughter and baby may die from the disease, and her fear fuels the story's humorous effects, as she puts Malcolm (and the rest of her household) through its paces in an effort to save her children, who, as the doctor reveals at the end of the tale, never were at risk, since neither Penelope nor her sibling actually had the membranous croup or any other sickness. “Mrs. McWilliams and the Burglar Alarm” uses the same formula, but, this time, it is an object, more than the characters of the story, that goes wrong, the burglar alarm failing to work at all, working too well, or working at inappropriate times. If such an approach works for Twain, it could work for others, provided, of course, they have Twain's considerable, perhaps unparalleled, gifts as a humorist.