Stand-up Comedians, Part 2

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Woody Allen is better known as a movie producer, but the funnyman started his career as a stand-up comedian. As such, he created a stock character unique to modern sensibilities. Known for expressing the angst of the set-upon everyman, Allen portrayed the putz, a nerdy, needy egghead who is unvalued and misunderstood. Typically, his character is a neurotic, if philosophical, lost soul. Much of his comedy involves an existential take on things. Much of his comedy alludes to psychoanalysis, reflecting the three decades that he spent on the Freudian couch. In his early years, Allen was also a comedy writer for Herb Shriner, Sid Caesar, Candid Camera, and other comedians and comedy shows.

According to Willy Loman, “spite” is the word of Biff’s “undoing.” This may or may not be true--Willy was hardly a good judge of character, after all, but one can say with certainty that “disrespect” is the word upon which Rodney Dangerfield built his career as a stand-up comedian. After a succession of failures--as a singing waiter, an acrobatic diver, and an aluminum siding salesman, Dangerfield came to understand that he needed an “image,” or a persona that would both define him as a comedian and resonate with his audiences. He found himself as a comedian when he complained that he didn’t get any respect from anyone. He often began a joke with his trademark grievance, “I get no respect,” following his protest with a humorous example to prove his contention: “When I was a kid I got no respect. The time I was lost on the beach and the cop helped me look for my parents I said, "Do you think we'll find them?" He said, "I don't know, kid, there's so many places they could hide.” Dangerfield’s career demonstrates how a simple gimmick, properly employed, can establish a comedian’s career.

Flip Wilson, one of the first black stand-up comedians, also banked on a well-established character--in his case, a female alter ego named Geraldine, who was, as it were a regular guest star on the Flip Wilson Show. Outspoken and irascible, a daughter of the ghetto, Geraldine delivered hip, modern maxims and proverbs, including “When you’re hot, you’re hot” and “The devil made me do it.” However, Wilson’s comedy sometimes offended some African-Americans who viewed his routines as fostering stereotypes of black culture. Some also did not appreciate the dialect in which some of his onstage characters spoke.

Although he wasn’t a comedian, major league baseball player and manager Yogi Berra misused the English language unlike anyone since Mrs. Malaprop and is unequalled in his use of malapropisms except, perhaps, by former president George W. Bush, and his fractured phrasing should be a continued inspiration to humorists and comedians for years to come. A few quotations demonstrate the comic effect that is derived from the oddly appropriate, but misspoken, quips for which Berra is famous:

• “Ninety percent of the game [of baseball],“ he contended, “is half mental.”
  
• His reason for foregoing meals at Ruggeri's, a St. Louis restaurant: “Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.”
  
• His take on when to call it quits: “It ain’t over till it's over.”
  
• Giving directions to Joe Garagiola as to how to get to his New Jersey home, which could be reached by two alternative routes: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
  
• On the benefits of observation: “You can observe a lot by watching.”
  
• Concerning the need to attend friends’ funerals: “Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't go to yours.”

George W. Bush is also known for his mangling of the English tongue, although not all of the former president’s misstatements take the form of the malapropism. Again, a sample of his tongue twisters shows the humorous effect of such speech:

• “One of the very difficult parts of the decision I made on the financial crisis was to use hardworking people's money to help prevent there to be a crisis.”
  
• “I'm telling you there's an enemy that would like to attack America, Americans, again. There just is. That's the reality of the world. And I wish him all the very best.”
  
• “I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.”
  
• “I've been in the Bible every day since I've been the president.”
  
• “This thaw--took a while to thaw, it's going to take a while to unthaw.”
  
• “Anyone engaging in illegal financial transactions will be caught and persecuted.”
  
• “The people in Louisiana must know that all across our country there's a lot of prayer--prayer for those whose lives have been turned upside down. And I'm one of them.”
  
• “Throughout our history, the words of the Declaration have inspired immigrants from around the world to set sail to our shores. These immigrants have helped transform 13 small colonies into a great and growing nation of more than 300 people.”
  
• “I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office."

Next: Applying Humorous Writing Techniques

Situation Comedy

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Like playwrights and screenwriters, television situation comedy writers often receive short shrift. They work behind the scenes, not on stage or behind the camera. As a result, many of them remain relatively anonymous. However, one can learn a tremendous amount from them as to how to write humor, even though their media are more visually than textually oriented.

There are too many situation comedies to review in anything less than several volumes, but we can learn much from considering the genre itself, its conventions, techniques, and some specific illustrations of each of these elements.

As the name “situation comedy” (or “sitcom,” as it is often abbreviated) implies, these stories emphasize comical situations, or sets of circumstances, over characters. As a result, their dramatic personae tend to be stock characters of the type which Durant identifies with respect to the ancient Greek’s New Comedy (“the cruel father, the benevolent old man, the prodigal son, the heiress mistaken for a poor girl, the bragging soldier, the clever slave, the flatterer, the parasite, the physician, the priest, the philosopher, the cook, the courtesan, the procuress, and the pimp”); which we have identified with regard to contemporary humor ( the country bumpkin, the con artist, the egghead, the fish out of water (displaced person), the hypocrite, and the blowhard); and which people the pages, as it were, of “An Excerpt of Character Writings of the 17th Century” (see Appendix A). These characters recur on a regular basis, often in a specific setting that reflects a location that is familiar with a wide audience. Homes and workplaces, schools and public places are frequently the settings for such comedies.

The sitcom tells a story, and, although the story is slight and often superficial, it is the occasion for the jokes, humorous anecdotes, and amusing situations that ensue. The story acts much like the string upon which beads or jewels are strung to make a necklace, with the beads or the jewels themselves representing the jokes, humorous anecdotes, and amusing situations. Thus, a sitcom is, at least potentially, doubly delightful: it offers both a comical story and plenty of laughs along the way. Sitcoms have been a major influence on modern humor, both in the United States and around the world, with hundreds and hundreds of them having been produced since their debut, which, arguably, was 1928, the year during which Amos and Andy was launched on American radio. Since their inception, situation comedies have taken on nearly every aspect of contemporary life, from domestic bliss to irascible bosses, from macabre neighbors and busybodies to sentimental slobs, from cute, precocious kids and rebellious teens to battling in-laws and quirky roommates. Therefore, anyone who is interested in writing hilarious humor needs to be aware of the conventions and techniques of the sitcom writer, for, even if one has no intention him- or herself ever of writing a sitcom, the genre has shaped and reshaped comedy and humor, changing audiences’ and readers’ expectations as to what should be regarded as funny. That doesn’t mean that a humorist must write only in the same vein as sitcom writers, but it does mean that the humorist should be aware of the major influence that sitcoms have had on humor in general and comedy in particular.

In The Comic Toolbox: How To Be Funny Even If You’re Not, John Vorhaus, a film and television writer with over 20 years of experience, offers tips concerning how to write speculation scripts, or “specs,” for television situation comedies. Some of his advice applies to humorists of every stripe. For example, Vorhaus advises his readers to “play to your strengths”: “Do you have a knack for gags? Then you want to spec a gag-driven show. Do you have ‘heart’? Then you want to write a sample for a show that has lots of ‘heartfelt’ moments. Can you write kids well? Write a kids’ show spec.” He also reminds his readers to remember that every sitcom has a “rule” that governs how the story will be told. A “rule” for Married. . . With Children, he says, is “that Al Bundy always loses.”

Likewise, “on Murphy Brown there’s often a gag, or even a running gag, about a secretary, but. . . the stories are never built around a secretary.” These rules, he says, affect every element of their respective sitcoms:

A show's rules extend to all aspects of that show. Which character gets the main story? Who gets the secondary stories? Is someone a straight man? Do characters tell jokes and make wisecracks, or do all the laughs come from the characters' comic perspectives? What sort of language do these people use? What topics are taboo? Do they make reference to the outside world, or do they live within a hermetically sealed sitcom bubble? Will given characters act the fool?

Vorhaus also offers excellent instruction as to how the typical sitcom is structured and how he himself applies the genre’s strict guidelines as to how such a comedy should be put together:

Situation comedies are structured either as two-act or three act tales. Mad About You, M*A*S*H and Married. . . with Children are two-act structures; Murphy Brown and The Simpsons play in three acts. Each act ends with an act break, a big dramatic moment which (one hopes) creates a sense of expectation and dread strong enough to hold the viewers' interest across the commercial break and bring them back for more. . . .

. . . In three-act structure, as in two-act structure, it's necessary for the moment before each commercial to have some real drama and urgency, to carry the viewer over the break. I like to think of my three-act act breaks in terms of trouble is coming and trouble is here. At the end of the first act, the characters know that a bad, bad thing is looming on the horizon. At the second act break, the consequences of that bad thing have been brought home. This second break corresponds roughly with the moment of maximum dread in traditional two-act structure. . . .

No matter what happens in your story, remember that situation comedies are essentially circular; things always end up more or less back where they started. If a
character gets fed up with his family and moves out of the house, clearly the act break is the moment when he leaves.

Just as clearly, the story will end with the character having moved back home.

Many sitcoms, Vorhaus points out, have a main story and a secondary, related story, the two of which may (or may not) be connected by their sharing of a common theme:

Many, though not all situation comedies slice themselves up into a-story and b-story. The a-story is the main story, the big problem, the heavy emotional issue with which a given half-hour of television reality chooses to concern itself. Typically, the a-story is given to the star of the show, the main character. Also, the a-story explores the theme of the episode. Whether that theme is, "tell the truth," or "be true to your school," or "don't do stupid things," it's played out in the largest, deepest, and most dramatic sense in the a story.

The b-story is much smaller and lighter than the a story. It usually involves secondary characters. It carries far less emotional weight and gets less screen time than the a-story. In a well crafted sitcom, there's a thematic connection between the a-story and the b-story, in which the b-story comments on and amplifies the meaning of the a-story.

Vorhaus also offers a “shortcut” for writing sitcoms that reveals the basic structure of this genre and provides the humorist with yet another tool for his or her humorists’ toolbox:

. . . I'd like to introduce yet another quick-and-dirty way to get a line on your sitcom story. To use this shortcut, think in the following terms: introduction, complication, consequence, and relevance. The introduction to a sitcom story is the thing that gets the trouble started or puts the tale in motion. An out-of-town guest arrives. An old girlfriend turns up. A first date looms. A driver's license expires. A party is planned.

The complication is the thing that makes the bad situation worse. If the introduction is one character taking cough medicine, the complication is another character bringing the boss home for dinner. If the introduction is one character running for school office, the complication is another character entering the race. If the introduction is a character weaving a lie into an English essay, the complication is that essay winning a major prize. If the introduction is Mr. Wacky going to the doctor, the complication is discovering he only has three weeks to live. The consequence is the result of the conflict created by the introduction and the complication. If two people are running for the same office, then the consequence is the outcome of the election. In the cough medicine story, the consequence is when the cough medicine blows up, so to speak, in the boss's face.

The consequenceof Mr. Wacky facing death is his coming to terms with his mortality, only to discover (since we'd like to run the series for another five years or so) that he's not actually dying after all. The relevance is simply a statement of the story's theme. Stand by your friends. Do the right thing. Don't fear the future. Stop and smell the roses. Accept your own mortality. Shower the people you love with love; that sort of thing.

Earlier, we identified some of the common stock characters of humor and comedy. Using the television sitcoms in which these characters appear as examples, we can get a better idea of how actual sitcoms were developed by referring to the summaries of these shows that are provided by the TV Land website.

The Beverly Hillbillies: Jed and Jethro (front seat); Elly May and Granny (back seat)
For our example of the country bumpkin, we used Jethro Bodine, a character on The Beverly Hillbillies. This show is based upon the premise that Jed Clampett, attempting to kill game he’s hunting near his mountain cabin in Bug Tussle, unearths an underground oil reserve, making him instantly wealthy. He and his family load up their truck and move to Beverly Hills, California, where life, for them (and everyone they encounter there) is decidedly different. TV Land describes the series as “always rich in the absurd”:

. . . The Beverly Hillbillies was chock full of lowbrow but hilarious situations. As sitcom humor would have it, Jed and his brood move next door to the greedy banker, Milburn Drysdale, who in an effort to make his financial institution the home of the Clampett millions, takes the fresh-off-the-farm family under his wing. Most of the early shows revolve around the impossible adjustments the poor mountain folk must make to city life, and Jed Clampett's backwoods brand of wisdom always wins out in the end. Despite their brand-new mansion with its cement pond and indoor plumbing, the Hillbillies stay true to their rustic roots. Many episodes center around
Drysdale's attempts to keep the Clampetts in good spirits in their big city setting (thus keeping their money in his bank). Enrolling Jethro in elementary school, buying Jed a movie studio, letting Granny open a medical practice and finding Elly May a beau are just a few of the silly but entertaining storylines.

Our example of the con artist, Mr. Haney, is taken from the sitcom Green Acres, in which attorney Oliver Wendell Douglas, wanting to get back to the basic way of life that he believes made America great, purchases a run-down farm, complete with ramshackle house and barn, from Mr. Haney, who is forever afterward selling the new farmer an assortment of junk that Douglas does not want or need. The show’s gags result from Douglas’ attempt to farm the unproductive land, producing sparse crops of miniature vegetables that are the laughingstock of his neighbors; the house’s lack of basic utilities, facilities, and utilities, such as a telephone, a closet, and dependable appliances; Douglas’ socialite wife Lisa’s ineptitude as a housewife and her longing to return to Manhattan; the Douglas’ incompetent employee Eb; zany neighbors; Douglas’ naiveté about country life; and his occasional trips to Hooterville.

TV Land describes the show:

Successful lawyer Oliver Wendell Douglas. . . longs to leave behind the complications of modern society and life as a Manhattanite, and despite the protestations of his glamorous, socialite, Hungarian wife Lisa. . . , Oliver buys a farm, sight unseen, from swindler Mr. Haney. The couple says “goodbye[,] city life!” and take up residence in Hooterville, U.S.A. While there is some debate amongst the show's fans as to the actual geographic location of Hooterville, one thing is clear; it exists in a state of mind-bending logic and hallucinatory natural laws, and is inhabited by an eccentric population that includes favorite son Arnold Ziffel, a multi-lingual, television watching pig. The farm Oliver has purchased is a shambles, the farmhouse in a state of advanced disrepair. Along with hired hand Eb, Oliver tries to make a go at being
a gentleman farmer.Meanwhile, Lisa settles in to her new surroundings despite herself, and attempts to bring gracious living and the finer things to the oddball residents of this off-the-map town.

The sitcom M*A*S*H supplied our example of the egghead character in the person, so to speak, of Major Charles Emerson Winchester III. This comedy is set in Korea, during the Korean War. It involves the medical and support personnel of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, or MASH. Commanded by Colonel Sherman T, Potter (who is later replaced by Lt. Col. Henry Blake), Dr. Hawkeye Pierce and Dr. John Francis Xavier McIntyre, who goes by the nickname “Trapper John,” are unconventional doctors who, despite their hatred of war (and the Army), do their best to save the lives of wounded soldiers by practicing “meatball surgery” under less-than-idea conditions. To maintain their sanity, they flaunt Army rules and regulations, play practical jokes on one another, and tease Major Frank Burns and his paramour, Major Margaret (“Hot Lips”) Houlihan, who, despite their affair with one another, insist that everyone else should do everything strictly by the book. Pierce and Honeycutt get away with their unorthodox behavior--keeping a still in their tent, wearing Hawaiian shirts instead of uniforms, and displaying a general lack of disrespect for their superiors--because their surgical skills are not only necessary but extraordinary. Besides Blake, Burns, Houlihan, and Winchester, other characters in the series include Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger, who sports a dress and wears high heels and carries a purse in the hope of receiving a psychiatric discharged; Colonel Water Eugene (“Radar”) O’Reilly, a clairvoyant clerk who announces that casualties are “incoming,” even before he receives official word; and Father Francis Mulcahy, a Catholic priest.

TV Land describes M*A*S*H from the protagonist’s point of view:

For Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, love and war, politics and
prose, collide at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. He was named Hawkeye
after a character in The Last of the Mohicans.

Hawkeye is originally assigned to work with Captain "Trapper John" McIntyre, the two become fast friends as they figure out a way to mix hi-jinks and humor with the stark reality of war. He forms a bond with seemingly psychic Corporal Walter "Radar" O. Reilly, Corporal Maxwell Klinger, who would do anything to be sent home, including dress in drag, and mild mannered Father Francis Mulcahy. After Trapper
is discharged Life at camp returns to normal for Hawkeye with the arrival of new best friend, Captain B.J. Hunnicutt. Growing more learned by war, through out his tour Hawkeye transforms from a wise cracking practical joker to a man of conscious; but perhaps his biggest strength is the ability to find humor, sanity and humanity in time of war.

We exemplified the fish out of water, or displaced person, character with Will Smith of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and with Jethro Bodine and the Clampetts of The Beverly Hillbillies. In Fresh Prince, Will, living in Philadelphia, starts to have trouble with members of a street gang, so his guardian aunt sends him to live with the Banks, well-to-do relatives who live in in Bel Air, California. In his new surroundings, as he is exposed to situations and characters he’d never dreamed of, Will struggles to develop a sense of identity that can include other people’s values, ways of life, beliefs, and concerns and to adjust to his new environment. He is changed for the better by his encounter with his uncle, a judge, his aunt, and their children, Will’s cousins dimwitted Hilary, pedantic Carlton, and young Ashley, just as they are changed for the better by him. Much of the series’ humor comes from Will’s struggle to fit in, from his encountering new ideas and situations, and from his conflict with his uncle and his cousins

Our examples of the hypocrite and the blowhard, Tartuffe and Sir John Falstaff, were taken from dramatic comedies, Tartuffe and King Henry IV, Parts I and II and the Merry Wives of Windsor, respectively, rather than from television sitcoms.

(Because sitcoms’ theme songs often provide a humorous way to introduce the concepts, or premises, of their respective shows, we have included the lyrics of several of them in Appendix C.)

Next: Standup Comedians

Literary Humorists

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

In learning how to write hilarious humor, there is no substitute for knowing the work of famous literary humorists. They are textbooks in themselves, for they have mastered the techniques of humor over careers spanning lifetimes and, indeed, generations. Any list of such humorists must include the following men and women: Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), Voltaire, Miguel de Cervantes, Erma Bombeck, Dave Barry, Dorothy Parker, Art Buchwald, Shirley Jackson, Jean Kerr, William Shakespeare, and Neil Simon.

In addition, many situation comedy writers deserve serious study as literary humorists, even if they write scripts for television shows or movies rather than short stories and novels. It is helpful to consider the influences of such men and women, too--the predecessors and contemporaries from whom they themselves learned how to be funny--and the sources of their humor, when these are discoverable. Of course, in the process, it’s enormously helpful to examine their work and the techniques they use to evoke laughter from their audiences.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (“Mark Twain”)

In learning to write hilarious humor, there is no substitute for studying the work of great humorists. Chief among them, by most people’s measure, is Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who is more familiar to many by his famous pen name, Mark Twain. The author of such timeless classics of humor as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Roughing It, Life on the Mississippi, A Tramp Abroad, Following the Equator, The Innocents Abroad, and a host of other comic masterpieces, Twain, more than any other writer, living or dead, established the genre.

From Twain, the student of horror learns that humor can have a purpose beyond mere entertainment. It can evoke laughter, but it can also lampoon social ills and satirize both the institutions of evil and the institutionalization of evil. Humor can poke fun at traditions, mores, hypocrisy, villainy, culture, and even civilization itself, as Twain’s humor does; at the same time, it can, and, indeed, must, make its readers laugh. Great humor is a double-edge sword, one edge of which provokes laughter while the other cuts through pretense, arrogance, and plain hogwash. Twain’s humor, like that of George Bernard Shaw’s, shows how it is done.

From Twain and other humorists, we also learn another requirement of written humor--that is, humor as it occurs in short stories, novels, plays, and movies, rather than in stand-up comedians’ one-liners and skits. Such humor must be comprised of more than simply a series of unconnected jokes. Written humor of the type with which we are concerned has to be about something; it must have a center and a purpose beyond itself. The jokes and anecdotes and other humorous sequences must be connected by a point of view and a theme.

The point of view, which will be closely allied with the tone of the humor, may be one of gentle censure, harsh satire, tolerant lampoon, insolent farce, or ribald burlesque. The theme, or the point, might be to acknowledge human folly, to identify social injustices, to highlight absurdities in human behavior, to condemn human cruelty, to right social wrongs, or any of a host of other purposes.

There must also be a means by which to unite the humor, the point of view, and the tone--a way, as it were, to give a backbone to the various parts of the organism. Often, this backbone is an analogy of some kind.

Erma Bombeck

In All I Know About Animal Behavior I learned in Loehman’s Dressing Room, Erma Bombeck, inspired, apparently, by Jane Goodall’s study of primate behavior, equates human conduct with animal behavior. This analogy is the spine of her book, allowing her to compare various human actions to those of their beastly counterparts over the length of a couple hundred pages rather than a few paragraphs. At the same time, it unifies her sketches, making them part of a bigger narrative and allows her to adopt a humorous, slightly critical point of view (which might be said to be people are such animals!“) and a matching gently chiding tone.

Analogies are commonly the devices by which humorists unify their jokes, anecdotes, and literary sketches, but they also employ ironic reversals upon common themes, almost as if to refute the wisdom, plausibility, or efficacy of the approach theirs is opposing. Twain takes uses this method, which we might call the antithetical approach, in The Innocents Abroad, explaining to his readers that his book is meant to be a sort of corrective to the travel accounts of others whose travelogues are more about what a traveler should see than what he or she would see:

This book is a record of a pleasure trip. If it were a record of a solemn scientific expedition it would have about it the gravity, that profundity, and that impressive incomprehensibility which are so proper to works of that kind, and withal so attractive. Yet not withstanding it is only a record of a picnic, it has a purpose, which is, to suggest to the reader how he would be likely to see Europe and the East if he looked at them with his own eyes instead of the eyes of those who traveled in those countries before him. I make small pretense of showing anyone how he ought to look at objects of interest beyond the sea–other books do that, and therefore, even if I were competent to do it, there is no need [italics added].

Likewise, Voltaire’s tongue-in-cheek masterpiece, Candide, is an argument, both implicitly and explicitly, against Dr. Pangloss’ (i. e., Gottfried Leibnitz’s) view that, in “the best of all possible worlds,” everything must happen for the best. When the protagonist, Candide, leaves the sheltered life he enjoys to embark (with the help of a boot to the rear) upon his travels in the wide world beyond, he encounters one calamity and catastrophe after another, realizing that the world is a dangerous, inhospitable place full of opportunities for sorrow and despair.

In a similar manner, but with respect to the idea that virtue is as precious as gold and should be sought and maintained at all costs, Donatien Alphonse Françiois de Sade, better known as the Marquis de Sade, puts the protagonist of his darkly humorous novel, Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue, through her paces until, at last, she is struck dead by bolt of lightning, as if nature itself were delivering his judgment against her.

Miguel de Cervantes

Also in a similar fashion, Miguel de Cervantes points out the absurdity of the values and traditions of medieval chivalry. In his immortal classic, the picaresque novel Don Quixote, Cervantes’ main character, an elderly rustic, becomes addlebrained as a result of reading chivalrous romances and, donning an old set of armor, mounts his dilapidated farm horse and rides to adventures, tilting at windmills, with his neighbor Sancho Panza, whom he convinces to serve as his squire. The theme seems clear: too much romance is antithetical not only to reason but to practical living as well.

Dave Barry

Humorists also connect their humorous content in various other ways as well. Dave Barry, who began his career as a columnist, sees the absurdity of human existence in the modern world as the source for much of his humor: He defines “sense of humor” as “a measurement of the extent to which we realize that we are trapped in a world almost totally devoid of reason,” and says, “Laughter is how we express the anxiety we feel at this knowledge.” Barry’s novels typically feature several subplots that seem to meander independently of one another in an episodic fashion until, ultimately, they merge toward the end of his narrative.

His more traditional humor tomes are tongue-in-cheek “how-to” books (Claw Your Way to the Top: How To Become the Head of a Major Corporation in Roughly a Week); fictionalized personal experience as the basis for advice to others (Dave Barry Turns 40, Dave Barry’s Guide to Life, Dave Barry’s Guide to Marriage and/or Sex, Dave Barry’s Gift Guide to End All Gift Guides, Dave Barry’s Guide to Guys); flippant travel guides (Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need, Dave Barry Does Japan); and fabricated histories (Dave Barry Slept Here: A Short History of the United States, Dave Barry’s Guide to the Millennium [So Far]). The tone is usually madcap to match his absurdist vision of contemporary America.

Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker is a departure of sorts in that much of her humorous material takes the form of poetry rather than of prose. One poem, “Resume,” appears to be a sort of humorous argument against the death penalty, locating the arguments not in any objection to the death of the executed, but in the faultiness of the means of execution. Furthermore, these means are objectionable not for any significant reason; they do not represent “cruel and unusual” means of execution, but are, if anything, nuisances or petty annoyances:

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Her method is similar to that of Woody Allen’s humor, which often juxtaposes the significant or somber against the trivial and ludicrous, and it frequently addresses subjects with which sophisticated urban readers can identify.

Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson is better known, perhaps, for her horror novels (The Haunting of Hill House is a classic) than for her humorous work. However, like Jean Kerr, she wrote novels about domestic tranquility gone haywire, centering her humor on the trials and tribulations of family and suburban or rural life. Laura Shapiro calls Jackson’s Life Among the Savages, a novel in which a series of short stories represent fictionalized accounts of her four children, “the literature of domestic chaos.”

The treatment of one of the four, newborn Barry, only recently arrived home from the hospital, is typical of Jackson’s detached, ironic portrayal of her fictionalized children. He is the center of attention of his three siblings, Laurie, Jannie, and Sally (ages nine, six, and “the baby”--at least, until Barry’s birth) only briefly. Disappointed that he’s not “something a little bigger,” they soon lose interest in him except as a distraction for their mother to take their places now that they have “all grown up.”

Jackson also wrote another book about her “domestic chaos” as a wife and mother, Raising Demons. Deborah Kerr’s Please Don’t Eat the Daisies is similar to Jackson’s books, offering a collection of essays concerning the domestic bliss that results from rearing four boys in suburbia. The book became the basis of the film starring Doris Day and David Niven and, later, a television series starring Patricia Crowley and Mark Miller.

Art Buchwald

Art Buchwald is the grandfather, so to speak, of humorous political commentary. A columnist for The Washington Post, his wry commentaries on the political machinations and abuses inside the Capitol Beltway made this iconoclastic humorist an American icon, winning him the Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Commentary in both 1982 and 1986. He maintained that sound in the missing 18-and-an-half-minute segment of the Watergate tape was President Richard Nixon humming.

The titles of his many books suggest their political themes; some of the more memorable ones include Son of the Great Society, The Establishment Is Alive and Well in Washington, Washington Is Leaking, While Reagan Slept, and Beating Around the Bush. Buchwald may be regarded as establishing the genre of the modern satirical political commentary that now includes works by such divergent humorists as Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You!), Andy Borowitz’s The Republican Playbook, P. J. O’Rourke’s Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire Government, Ann Coulter’s How To Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), Michael Savages’ The Political Zoo, and Dave Barry’s Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway.

Neil Simon

We mentioned one of Shakespeare’s great comic creations, Sir John Falstaff, but the bard has given many other gifts to the humor genre, not the least of which are plots that involve mistaken identities, cross dressing, a series of unlikely errors, star-crossed lovers, and the participation of supernatural beings in human affairs.

A more contemporary playwright whose comic plots are heavily laced with humor is Neil Simon, who wrote Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, The Goodbye Girl, and many other contemporary plays. The means by which he unifies the action (and the humor) of his dramas is to juxtapose two strongly contrasting characters who live together.

In Barefoot in the Park, newlyweds Corie and Paul Bratter move into a postage-stamp size apartment in downtown Manhattan. Their tiny residence is miserable. There is no heat, the skylight has a large hole in it, they must ascend and descend several flights of stairs, they live next to screwball neighbor, Victor Velasco. Free-spirited Corie and priggish Paul are mismatched in personality traits and temperaments, and the humor of the play results from their contrary traits and disposition as much as from the petty annoyances they must endure.

Most people have seen The Odd Couple, either as a play, a movie, or a television series. Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, two divorced men, share an apartment. Easygoing Oscar is a total slob. Edgy Felix insists upon keeping an immaculate household. The only things that the “odd couple” have in common is that each is divorced and each is a writer. Their opposing personality traits and temperaments are the bases of the shows’ humor.

The Goodbye Girl pits a single mother, Paula McFadden, against Elliot Garfield, the man to whom her ex-boyfriend sublet the apartment that he’d shared with Paula. From the beginning, the pair get on one another’s nerves. Nevertheless, they manage to fall in love, right before Elliot is offered a once-in-a lifetime opportunity in another city and Paula fears that he will leave her, as all the other men in her life have done. As with The Odd Couple, the characters’ opposing personality traits and temperaments are the bases of the movie’s humor, and their only common interests (besides the happiness and welfare of Paula’s 10-year-old daughter, Lucy) are their being reluctant roommates and their career choices: Paula is a former dancer who is trying to make a comeback, and Elliot is an actor trying to get established in his profession.

These plays show Simon’s basic approach to unifying his stories and their humor. He confines two characters with strongly contrasting personality traits and temperaments to a relatively small place where their interaction is both inevitable and frequent, allowing their personality differences to ignite sparks; the humor results from the ensuing interactions between the characters and is tempered with romance, friendship, or affection. As a result of their relationships, whether as husband and wife, friends and roommates, or romantic couple, the characters teach one another something important about each other, helping one another to mature.

Next: Cartoonists and Other Humorists