Words Fail Me (18 page)

"It may at first sight seem unlikely that the pull of gravity will depress the center of a light cord, held horizontally at a high lateral tension; and yet no force, however great, can stretch a cord, however fine, into a horizontal line that shall be absolutely straight."

Years after the work was published, a careful reader discovered the perfect little rhymed poem hidden in the second half of the sentence. Someone was listening.

To judge the cadences of your own writing, speak the lines aloud, or at least recite them in your head. For comparison, think of some familiar rhythms. If you ride, think of a horse's gaits: walk, trot, canter, gallop. If you're musical, use your toe or an imaginary baton to mark the tempo: adagio, andante, allegro, presto. Think of an oncoming train, the waves of the sea, wheels on a cobblestone street.

If speaking your own words makes you feel silly, rest assured that you're not the first to do it. Flaubert went outdoors and tested his phrases by shouting them from his terrace. C. K. Scott Moncrieff, the translator of Proust, held forth out on the moors. When words don't sound right, something's wrong. Next time, don't just write. Listen.

This is probably my favorite joke in the whole world:A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Hey, buddy, why the long face?"

Well, it works for me. I first heard it about ten years ago from a colleague at the
New York Times Book Review,
where the level of humor is extremely elevated. I was useless for the rest of the day. You'd think I'd be sick of the joke by now, but it still reduces me to Jell-O.

I like to think of myself as a woman of the world, a person of some sophistication. Then what do I see in such a corny joke? I've been giving this some thought, and I have a few conclusions.

First, I like jokes that begin with animals walking into bars: ducks, parrots, French poodles, kangaroos, and so on. Another joke I like starts with a duck walking into a hardware store. Heard it from the same guy, in fact.
^*
Second, I like the juxtaposition of the ridiculous and the routine. Third, I like plays on words. And finally, I like a joke I can remember.

Now you know how to make me laugh. How do you make your readers laugh?

While no piece of writing is funny to everyone, it's safe to say that some things are inherently humorous. Penguins are funnier than seagulls. A rutabaga is funnier than a carrot, and a nose job is funnier than an appendectomy. Three clergymen in a lifeboat are funnier than one in a canoe. A jock strap sounds funnier than an athletic supporter, and a truss is funnier still (unless you're the guy who needs one). We know this instinctively, even if we've never stopped to wonder why.

It's certainly more fun to laugh at humor than to analyze it. But putting comedy on the couch can make your own writing funnier. Read humorous writing and look for a method to the madness. Is it parody? Ridicule? Gross exaggeration? Slapstick? Absurd juxtaposition? Incongruous situations? Great timing? Euphemism gone mad? Pomposity deflated?

Look for opportunities to use humor. An amusing anecdote at the beginning of a long essay, for instance, might draw readers in and make it seem less formidable. A few well-placed laughs along the way could provide comic
relief. And a light note at the end might be precisely what it takes to drive home your point and make it stick. No kidding.

Remember that most writers aren't relentlessly funny from beginning to end, and they don't have to be. A pinch of humor that works is better than a potful that doesn't. For most of us humor is merely seasoning; it's not the whole dish. Some of the following examples are from humorists and some from writers who use only a strategic giggle here or there. Enjoy them.

We've all had to suffer through the boring lecture or sermon or sales pitch that never seems to stop. You know the kind. Just as you think the speaker is coming to the end, you find he's only reached the small intestine.

Remember your sufferings next time you have to write something packed with information. Have mercy on your readers. So what if they don't expect to be entertained? Surprise them. See how the astronomer Fred Hoyle, in his book
The Nature of the Universe,
lightens up what could have been a weighty discussion of the immensity of space:

"One of the questions we shall have to consider later is what lies beyond the range of our most powerful instruments. But even within the range of observation there are about 100,000,000 galaxies. With upward of 1,000,000 planetary systems per galaxy the combined total for the parts of the Universe that we can see comes out at more than a hundred million million. I find myself wondering whether somewhere among them there is a cricket team that could beat the Australians."

When you have to rattle off a list of numbers, facts, projections, or whatever, give your audience a break. Put something light at the end of the tunnel.

I don't find insects amusing. And scientific writing isn't usually a lot of laughs. Still, a good writer can find humor in almost anything. I couldn't help smiling at this passage about ants, from Lewis Thomas's
The Lives of a Cell.

"Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into wars, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves. The families of weaver ants engage in child labor, holding their larvae like shuttles to spin out the thread that sews the leaves together for their fungus gardens. They exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television."

Yes, it's funny that ants are so much like us at our worst, with their armies, chemical weapons, slavery, and child labor. But what makes the paragraph work is its timing: The best line is saved for last. When you write, be sure you haven't buried a punch line.

In humor, the next best thing to understatement is overstatement. Or maybe it's the other way around. Either way, I can't exaggerate the place of exaggeration in funny writing. So I'll let P. G. Wodehouse do it for me. In this excerpt from
Right Ho, Jeeves,
Bertie Wooster describes drinking his man Jeeves's famous pick-me-up, a remarkably effective morning-after concoction:

"For perhaps the split part of a second nothing happens. It is as though all Nature waited breathless. Then, suddenly, it is as if the Last Trump had sounded and Judgement Day set in with unusual severity.

"Bonfires burst out in all parts of the frame. The abdomen becomes heavily charged with molten lava. A great wind seems to blow through the world, and the subject is aware of something resembling a steam hammer striking the back of the head. During this phase, the ears ring loudly, the eyeballs rotate and there is a tingling about the brow.

"And then, just as you are feeling that you ought to ring up your lawyer and see that your affairs are in order before it is too late, the whole situation seems to clarify. The wind drops. The ears cease to ring. Birds twitter. Brass bands start playing. The sun comes up over the horizon with a jerk.

"And a moment later all you are conscious of is a great peace."

Like Wodehouse, you can make excess a virtue. Pile it on. Use embellishment for its own sake. Sometimes too much is just enough.

The mighty, it seems, were meant to fall. When this happens in Greek drama, the mighty one is brought down by some tragic flaw. When it happens in comedy, he trips over an ottoman or slips on a banana peel or gets a pie in the face. We love to laugh at the evil figure cut down to size, the pompous one humbled, the bully put in his place.
In his short story "The Schmeed Memoirs," Woody Allen whittles down some oversized villains. The narrator is a barber reminiscing about his celebrity clients:

"In the spring of 1940, a large Mercedes pulled up in front of my barbershop at 127 Koenigstrasse, and Hitler walked in. 'I just want a light trim,' he said, 'and don't take too much off the top. I explained to him there would be a brief wait because von Ribbentrop was ahead of him. Hitler said he was in a rush and asked Ribbentrop if he could be taken next, but Ribbentrop insisted it would look bad for the Foreign Office if he were passed over. Hitler thereupon made a quick phone call, and Ribbentrop was immediately transferred to the Afrika Korps, and Hitler got his haircut. This sort of rivalry went on all the time. Once, Göring had Heydrich detained by the police on false pretenses, so that he could get the chair by the window. Göring was a dissolute and often wanted to sit on the hobbyhorse to get his haircuts."

Monsters can make us shudder or they can make us laugh. If laughter is what you're after, the next time you peer into the jaws of evil don't forget to examine the bridgework.

Have you ever been in an awkward situation, the kind that makes you squirm even in retrospect? This same predicament might be hilarious to somebody else. Sure, you get hives when you think about the time you were stuck with your ex in an elevator for three hours. But it might make a great anecdote to liven up that speech you have to give at the divorce lawyers conference next week.

Damon Runyon was a master at finding humor in uncomfortable situations. In his short story "Butch Minds the Baby," a former safecracker is watching Junior while his wife is out for the evening. As he fans the sleeping baby, three former associates drop by and ask him to come out of retirement and take on one last job. Butch agrees, but there's a catch: "I dast not leave little John Ignatius Junior for a minute." So the baby comes along on the heist. (They cut him in for five percent.) Let's listen to the narrator, who's "more nervous than somewhat," as he describes the artist at work:

"He starts drilling into the safe around the combination lock, working very fast and very quiet, when all of a sudden what happens but John Ignatius Junior sits up on the blanket and lets out a squall. Naturally this is most disquieting to me, and personally I am in favor of beaning John Ignatius Junior with something to make him keep still, because I am nervous enough as it is. But the squalling does not seem to bother Big Butch. He lays down his tools and picks up John Ignatius Junior and starts whispering, 'There, there, there, my itty oddleums. Da-dad is here. "

The safe is forgotten as Butch gets out the Sterno and warms a bottle. Later, the job completed, somebody trips an alarm, and soon the streets are full of police. But little John Ignatius Junior saves the day. Butch walks away a free man, since no cop in his right mind would suspect a party carrying a baby.

As you cast about for humorous subjects to lighten that op-ed piece or alumni newsletter or address to the Odd Fellows, don't overlook the sticky situation. That fine
mess you got yourself into may be a million laughs—to somebody else.

Let's admit it. We get most of our laughs at the other guy's expense. You can make anyone or anything look ridiculous by picking out a tiny flaw and magnifying it out of all proportion. Unfair, you say? So what else is new?

Mark Twain didn't much care for James Fenimore Cooper, the author of those adventure novels about Indians and woodsmen. In what must be one of the funniest book reviews ever written, Twain mercilessly dissects some of Cooper's sillier literary techniques:

"A favorite one was to make a moccasined person tread in the tracks of the moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own trail. Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick. Another stage-property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently was his broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any book of his when somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred handier things to step on, but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one."

Think of that dry twig when you next set out to skewer something. By exaggerating one or two weaknesses, you
can puncture an inflated ego or expose the ridiculous. Or you can be just plain ornery.

Now and then euphemisms come in handy. They let you tell a caller that your hubby is indisposed, not that he's sitting on the loo. (Come to think of it,
loo
is a euphemism, too.) But what's useful in small doses can be a dandy comic technique when taken to extremes.

I know of no better example of euphemism run amok than the famous dead-parrot sketch written by John Cleese and Graham Chapman for television's Monty Python troupe and embellished over the years. We'll join the conversation as a customer returns to a pet shop to complain about a recent purchase:

"He's bleedin' demised! He's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! He's expired and gone to meet his maker! He's a stiff! Bereft of life, he rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed him to the perch he'd be pushing up the daisies! His metabolic processes are now history! He's off the twig! He's kicked the bucket, he's shuffled off his mortal coil, rung down the curtain and joined the bleedin choir invisible! This is an ex-parrot!"

We don't normally find death funny. In fact, death makes us so uncomfortable that we talk about it in euphemisms. But taken to ridiculous lengths, the forbidden subject itself becomes ridiculous. If you want to write humorously about sex or money or the Grim Reaper or some other delicate matter, get out your thesaurus and collect every outrageous euphemism you can find.

Remember Wile E. Coyote, the inept villain in the Road Runner cartoons? His intricate schemes always went awry. Bombs exploded prematurely in his face; giant rubber bands hurled him into boulders; jet-propelled skates shot him through billboards, where he left behind a hole in the shape of his silhouette. Imagine if he had sued the manufacturer of all those faulty products. Ian Frazier imagined it, and the result is his short story "Coyote v. Acme." Let's listen in as the plaintiff's attorney delivers his opening statement in the United States District Court for the Southwestern District, Tempe, Arizona: