Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker (30 page)

A—Because he is a highly respected member of the community.

Q—Mr. Arbuthnot, what kind of hopes do you have?

A—High hopes, and I don’t have them; I entertain them. I express concern. I discard precedent. When I am in earnest, I am in deadly earnest. When I am devoted, I am devoted solely. When a task comes along, it confronts me. When I stop, I stop short. I take but one kind of steps—those in the right direction. I am a force to be reckoned with. Oh, ask me anything, Mr. Dewey, anything.

Q—All right. How about the weather? Where does weather occur?

A—You think you can stump me with that? Well, you can’t. Weather occurs over widespread areas. Winter holds the entire Eastern seaboard in its icy grip. Snow blankets the city, disrupting train schedules and marooning thousands of commuters. Traffic is at a standstill—

Q—Hold on a minute, my friend. You’ve left out something.

A—I have not. What?

Q—Traffic is
virtually
at a standstill.

A—Oh, a detail, Mr. Dewey. All right, I concede you that. Ten thousand unemployed are placed at work removing the record fall as cold wave spells suffering to thousands. Old residents declare blizzard worst since ’88—

Q—Mr. Arbuthnot—

A—Mayor fears milk shortage. Now, in the summer, things are different. Then the city swelters in record heat wave. Thousands flock to beaches to seek relief. Mercury continues to soar. In the spring, on the other hand, the first robin—

Q—Hold on, Mr. Arbuthnot. I concede you the weather clichés for all four seasons. I would like to ask you another question.

A—Go ahead, you can’t stump me, Mr. Dewey. You would like to, though, wouldn’t you?

Q—Well, it would be rather a feather—

A—Yes, I know. In your cap. Well, proceed.

Q—What kind of fires happen?

A—Fires don’t happen. They occur. And they are frequently fires of undetermined origin.

Q—What do the victims do at fires?

A—They flee, scantily clad.

Q—What happens to the building?

A—It is completely gutted.

Q—If you fall off your horse, what kind of a spill do you take, Mr. Arbuthnot?

A—A nasty spill.

Q—And how do you escape from any accident?

A—Unscathed.

Q—If you don’t escape unscathed, what happens?

A—I sustain cuts, contusions, and abrasions. Or maybe I suffer a fracture.

Q—What kind of fracture?

A—A possible fracture.

Q—How do they get a doctor for you if you have a possible fracture?

A—Our society recognizes only one approved method by which a doctor may be got. He is hastily summoned.

Q—And the ambulance?

A—The ambulance responds.

Q—Well, Mr. Arbuthnot, I must give you credit. You have passed through the ordeal of this cross-examination in a manner nothing short of admirable. I congratulate you, sir.

A—Thanks, Mr. Dewey. You know what I am, don’t you?

Q—No. What?

A—I’m a foeman worthy of your steel. Goodbye.

1936

RUTH SUCKOW

HOW TO ACHIEVE SUCCESS AS A WRITER

E
VERY
writer, having become a writer, should be able to answer a question which besets him on all sides: How can I become a writer? There may be several people now living in the United States to whom this question is of no moment. I have myself met one or two who went so far as to declare they couldn’t be writers if they were to be paid for it. But such defeatists grow fewer day by day.

For the encouragement of the dauntless majority, there are always, of course, those newspaper interviews with successful authors who are only too ready to tell everybody else how to turn the trick. They all give the same advice: You can achieve success as a writer by writing. Obviously, if the questioners
could
be satisfied by such a simple answer as that, they wouldn’t have asked in the first place. Still, I must confess that for many years I couldn’t think of any better reply myself. Now, at last, I am convinced that I have the real solution to the problem and the very one that the inquirers have all been hoping to hear. The answer is, of course: You can achieve success as a writer by
not
being a writer.

It is plain to see that writers who aren’t writers have it all over writers who are writers. In the first place, there is the saving in time. I have often had to spend several hours a day on writing while being a writer. If I had only kept myself busy at something else, such labor would have been unnecessary. Some other occupation, plus the consequent success in writing, is more profitable, besides. It is uphill work for a writer to sell his writings with only the narrow appeal of his own name as a writer, but if he were engaged in doing something quite different, he could be assured of a respectful audience. The surefire way to achieve success as a writer is to be a celebrity in any other line. The opportunities in other fields are so numerous, in fact, that the real difficulty lies in making a choice. A hasty glance through the publishers’ lists will give a fascinating view of the range of occupations that really do lead to success in writing.

Aviation is a splendid preparation for writing, and is open to men and women alike. As soon as any flier reaches the end of his flight, he may find that he is a writer. Sport is a good line, on the whole. Tennis stars readily become writers by being tennis stars. Baseball stars, sprinters, swimmers, even prize-fighters, need have little or no trouble with their writing. Big-game hunters have still less.

Having been a Russian aristocrat is fine training for writing on any topic. Great scientists and big executives long ago entered what is sometimes known as the writing game. The latter, having learned the advantage of delegating power, were among the first to become writers by handing their writing over to some writer.

The government offers broad opportunities for success in writing by not being writers—to Presidents, ex-Presidents, First Ladies, ex-First Ladies; in fact, to all government officials and ex-government officials. Writers may wonder that a well-filled career as a government official, with all the social duties that follow in its wake, should bring with it more leisure for writing than they would have as writers. But that’s because writers have started off on the wrong foot.

Nearly all the girls and boys of today hope to become movie stars. They could adopt no better method of achieving versatility as writers, although probably they aren’t thinking about that. Once they are stars, beauty hints, health hints, hostess hints, fashion hints, and suggestions for interior-decorating will flow from their pens, putting the so-called experts to shame. They may write descriptions of Ideal Mates; authoritative discussions on love, sex, and marriage; articles telling what swell people other movie stars are who are playing in the same production, telling how it feels to be Mae West’s leading man, telling why they’ll never get divorced from their wives just before they get divorced from their wives. These suggestions only begin to indicate the possible range in subject matter. Nor is the field of belles-lettres closed to the cinema stars, if these other topics seem rather workaday. A movie star will have spare time to turn out a novel or two, and a bit of profound philosophy, along with a rhapsody on Lux toilet soap.

IF, however, the candidate for success in writing should be without qualifications in these or any other lines, he still need not attempt to become a writer by writing. If worst comes to worst, he can turn to crime, and find his gift right there. Criminal careers offer some of the finest training today in the art of narration. Or if a man prefers to stay on the side of the law, he can come into contact with outlaws as a warden, detective, G-man, or gas-station attendant, and thus develop talent as a writer.

In fact, celebrity in itself is not absolutely necessary. If it seems a little hard to attain, any touch with celebrity will do just about as well. The wives, sweethearts, mothers, and fathers of criminals are almost more likely to discover a bent for writing than the criminals themselves. The mothers, wives, ex-wives, sweethearts, and ex-sweethearts of movie stars can all become writers, or they can just tell their writings to some writer who does writing, if they feel a bit shy. Those who cannot claim any other relationship can cut the hair, design the clothes, slap off the extra pounds, foretell the future, or perform the marriage ceremonies of the stars, and so uncover their hidden gifts for writing. One very interesting way of getting in touch, and developing writing powers, is by acting as hostess to celebrities. The celebrities may even be writers.

But in this democratic country, even the everyday callings may be the roads to literary success. A doctor in the midst of active practice can turn out a column of writing a day, while if he were a columnist, he might find that writing his column alone took up far too much of his time. Any man who would or would not marry his wife, any woman who would or would not marry her husband (if the choice were open again), can do pretty well as a writer. Even as humble a person as a sharecropper would find excellent opportunities today. His appeal would not be so general as that of a murderer or a detective—a bit on the literary side, in fact—but worth considering, at that. It is not very up-and-coming of sharecroppers to let writers have share-cropping all to themselves, as seems now to be the case.

BUT what about the writer? Suppose he has followed the advice and started out to achieve success in writing by writing? There is an answer for him, too. He may just possibly succeed if he manages not to
look
like a writer. Today, for example, it is no longer advisable that a literary man look like Shelley. Indeed, to look like a poet, or even like a writer, is clearly an affectation. He may be mistaken for a businessman or, better still, for
any
businessman, thus proving his sincerity as a writer. Or he may resemble a sportsman or a gentleman farmer. English writers, however, have this down almost too pat. They look such thorough country gentlemen that it is becoming too easy to tell that they are writers. The American writer should be taken for some big, out-of-doors type—say a longshoreman, or a hunter. Then it will seem that here is a writer who is actually anything but a writer, thus pleasing both his readers and himself. If he is a novelist, though, it should be apparent that he is the main character of his own book, and has passed through the same interesting experiences. But he must never look “literary,” an appearance too horrid to merit description. No matter what nature may have indicated in the matter, if he goes about it with a will to succeed, soon no one but the writer himself will remember the unpleasant fact that the writer is a writer.

So there it is. Either way, the prospects grow brighter and brighter: being somebody else to be a writer, and being a writer to be somebody else.

1936

LEONARD Q. ROSS

THE RATHER DIFFICULT CASE OF MR. K♦A♦P♦L♦A♦N

I
N
the third week of the new term, Mr. Parkhill was forced to the conclusion that Mr. Kaplan’s case was rather difficult. Mr. Kaplan first came to his special attention, out of the forty-odd adults in the beginners’ grade of the American Night Preparatory School for Adults (“English—Americanization—Civics—Preparation for Naturalization”), through an exercise the class had submitted. The exercise was entitled “Fifteen Common Nouns and Their Plural Forms.” Mr. Parkhill came to one paper which included the following:

Mr. Parkhill read this over several times, very thoughtfully. He decided that here was a student who might, unchecked, develop into a “problem case.” It was clearly a case that called for special attention. He turned the page over and read the name. It was printed in large, firm letters, with red crayon. Each letter was outlined in blue. Between every two letters was a star, carefully drawn, in green. The multicolored whole spelled, unmistakably, “H♦
Y
♦
M
♦
A
♦
N
K♦
A
♦
P
♦
L
♦
A
♦
N.
”

This Mr. K♦
A
♦
P
♦
L
♦
A
♦
N
was in his forties, a plump, red-faced gentleman, with wavy blond hair,
two
fountain pens in his outer pocket, and a perpetual smile. It was a strange smile, Mr. Parkhill remarked; vague, and consistent in its monotony. The thing that emphasized it for Mr. Parkhill was that it never seemed to leave the face of Mr. Kaplan, even during Recitation and Speech period. This disturbed Mr. Parkhill considerably, because Mr. K♦
A
♦
P
♦
L
♦
A
♦
N
was particularly bad in Recitation and Speech.

Mr. Parkhill decided he had not applied himself as conscientiously as he might to Mr. Kaplan’s case. That very night he called on Mr. Kaplan first.

“Won’t
you
take advantage of Recitation and Speech practice, Mr. Kaplan?” he asked, with an encouraging smile.