Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! Epizeuxis! Epizeuxis! Epizeuxis! “Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa!” The Toads are back in town The Toads are back in town The Toads are back in town And they won’t be bot out! No, they won’t be bot out! And won’t be fooled again!
An astonishing revival! An awesome comeback! Wysiwyg! Wysiwyg! Wysiwyg!
Who’s this? What’s that? I didn’t know they’d gone! Yeah, meet the new toad, same as the old toad. But with a twist you say now the toads are everywhere – “Here Comes Everybody,” or Everytoad, Joyce’s streaming “riverrun” full of toads blinking from every hand on every riverrun road.
Here Comes Everyone and every zero where everything gets down: h → 01101000 e → 01100101 l → 01101100 l → 01101100 o → 01101111 ! → 00100001
The easiest piece to write is sarcasm. The difference between sarcasm and satire is that satire has a point, while sarcasm has none, except maybe to offend, at worst, or rib, at best. Sarcasm is a backbite often confused with humor. “It’s not funny,” the bitten one says, the sarcastic one curling up smiling like Uriah Heep in his sorry ways, heaping more free helpings upon his plate to stowaway for future use.
Irony can be used as a tool to tickle or torture, its mixture of satire with sarcasm effective as a rhetorical device, intended at bottom to persuade, of what, exactly, the audience might remain unaware, this too funny: A muse meant nothing by it. What was meant or not its placement lost can only confuse.
Hemingway utilizes irony in his book “The Sun Also Rises”:
“Show irony and pity.” I started out of the room with the tackle-bag, the nets and the rod-case. “Hey! Come back!” I put my head in the door. “Aren’t you going to show a little irony and pity?” I thumbed my nose. “That’s not irony.” (102)
Later, Bill and Jake replace irony with utility, but it’s the same idea:
“Let us rejoice in our blessings. Let us utilize the fowls of the air. Let us utilize the product of the vine. Will you utilize a little, brother?” “After you, brother.” (109)
Irony is explained by Charlie in Steve Martin’s film “Roxanne,” in the scene where he’s walking with Roxanne back to her place to help her regain entry after she’s locked herself out. Charley pretends not to understand why Roxanne turns down his offer of a coat on such a cold night. She explains she was being ironic, and Charley says he didn’t understand that because they don’t use irony in the town anymore. He was the last one to use it, and he gave it up because people were staring at him. Irony often means the opposite of what’s said. It can be confusing. Martin’s film is a rewrite of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” the 1897 play (which takes place in 1640 France) by Edmond Rostand. I only mention that now should any readers think I was unaware of Martin’s source. “Cyrano” was assigned reading in the 10th grade in the high school I attended. It’s theme is panache, which I doubt I understood in the 10th grade. Not sure I understand it now, ten decades later. More irony there than I care to pursue further at this point.
The so-called dry sense of humor is favored by the higher class comic, whose main focus is to keep out of the pit, where things get wet and muddy. In that sense, the dry humorist is aristocratic, surrounded by the minion followers who protect his repressed emotions with gratuitous likes and guarded comments. The noir detective sometimes makes use of the dry sense of humor, though hardly an aristocrat, but he often finds himself in service to society’s higher-ups. A dry wit seems to suit a hard boiled attitude, and the Dick has many followers, among them many cynics.
The facetious humor accountant will often make fun of himself, pretending, for example, to be stupid – but that’s to show actually his superiority to his target. He will be droll, flirting around with what’s considered serious or not, with what is serious or not. Tongue-in-cheek provides a vivid cartoon illustration opportunity.
Then there’s the wisecrack, the comment, usually shouted but as effectively whispered, croaked anonymously from the audience, which may have come to resent being pandered to, the speaker now a standing joke and nothing further said can mollify or sooth the hurt feelings of failure. But, after all, it was only a sketch. But when does sketch become sketchy? A standalone wisecrack probably won’t qualify as a sketch, more the property of the cartoon.
Charles Dickens wrote sketches, though not necessarily with humorous intent. In his preface to “Sketches by Boz,” written long after the sketches were first published in newspapers and magazines, Dickens almost apologizes for their style or substance, in spite of their obvious popularity. He said the sketches were “sent into the world with all their imperfections (a good many) on their heads,” and that he’s “conscious of their often being extremely crude and ill-considered, and bearing obvious marks of haste and inexperience.” But again a Boz sketch purpose was not primarily humor. They were accompanied by drawings and were essentially goings on about his London parish at the time – the 1830s. The subtitle of the book collection reads “Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People.” And within the Dickens sketch anyone indeed could have, probably already did, see or observe the very thing Dickens was writing about. But to see it in print, Illustrated, no less, not as news, by which is meant an edited selection of events to emphasize a certain viewpoint (selection itself – among all the events of a day – being an editing process, and the birth of bias), but as the familiar and close and therefore noteworthy and comment worthy, where one saw oneself or someone one knew and understood but probably with not quite the same focus as found in the sketch. Or one saw a street or alley or place or person one knew about but only as some mystery yet to be solved, which the Boz sketch resolves. The Boz sketches often go indoors.
Mark Twain did much to popularize the humorous sketch as a newspaper feature. It was Twain’s intent to write humor, so we find embellishment and variations on the truth of things, exaggerations. Exaggeration, hyperbole in rhetorical diction, is a comedian’s tool, as is its counterpart, understatement, litotes, first cousin to euphemism. Here is a sample excerpt from a Twain sketch featuring an unexpected subject, titled “Speech on Accident Insurance“:
“Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance line of business—especially accident insurance. Ever since I have been a director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a better man. Life has seemed more precious. Accidents have assumed a kindlier aspect. Distressing special providences have lost half their horror. I look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest—as an advertisement. I do not seem to care for poetry any more. I do not care for politics—even agriculture does not excite me. But to me now there is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable.”
Insurance for accidents occurring to individuals riding a train was first introduced in England, and insurance as an industry grew expansively in the latter half of the 19th Century, but it wasn’t then nor is it now considered by many to be a subject of humor. Twain was able to find humor in just about any subject. Twain’s use of the word cripple in his context would not be acceptable today, and indeed humorists are inevitably at risk of their word choices landing as offences.
It’s interesting, thinking now of insurance, how some things, like the old saying goes, never change, in spite of what Twain says below, from his visit to a barbershop:
“All things change except barbers, the ways of barbers, and the surroundings of barbers. These never change. What one experiences in a barber’s shop the first time he enters one is what he always experiences in barbers’ shops afterward till the end of his days. I got shaved this morning as usual. A man approached the door from Jones Street as I approached it from Main—a thing that always happens. I hurried up, but it was of no use; he entered the door one little step ahead of me, and I followed in on his heels and saw him take the only vacant chair, the one presided over by the best barber. It always happens so.”
If you want to write a humorous sketch, it might work best to start with something familiar, that any reader should recognize. Otherwise, you might too soon and too easily drift off into a piece redolent of surrealism, which is seldom very funny. If the easiest piece to write is sarcasm, it might be because the only skill required is mean-spiritedness, which probably comes from a deficiency of generosity. There’s also a tradition of vindictiveness associated with some humor, sublimated in the speeches at roasts that ridicule the honored guest. But writing humor is not easy. Not everyone is a wit. Nor wants to be a twit.
References:
“The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway (1926). Quotes from 2022 Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition.
Mark Twain Project Online. In discussing what is meant by a written sketch, the editor Edgar Branch, from the Introduction to “Early Tales and Sketches” Volume 1, has this to say:
“The great preponderance of short items, however, are sketches—and these range from ambitious magazine articles several thousand words long to short, hundred-word trifles tossed off by the newspaperman during a working day. The sketches include comic letters to the editor, hoaxes, exaggerated accounts of the author’s personal activities, burlesques of many kinds, comic or satirical feuds with fellow journalists, ingeniously contrived self-advertisements, commentary in a light and personal vein, descriptive reporting, reminiscences of past pleasures and adventures, and so on—but neither this nor any other list can easily be exhaustive.”
Most writing begins in Purpose, a very crowded city, with directions out unclear amid contradictory signs. North of Purpose is Poetry, South is Prose. East is essay. West is Uncharted Territory. It doesn’t matter which direction you choose; Purpose is surrounded by ocean. The easiest and most travelled conveyance out of Purpose uses words. Words come from Language, some say the oldest of cities. But not all languages use words, semaphore, for example. Other examples of language without words might include body language, talking drums, whistling, smoke signals, music. We might say that those languages are not written, but music is written, and without words.
But I do use words, and because I’m only an average speller, poor pronouncer, mostly monolingual, and usually lost in Purpose, I keep a dictionary open while I write, but also because individual words are like recipes; I want to know what’s in them. Sometimes I spend so much time in a dictionary nothing gets written. One easily gets sidetracked in Genealogy and never reaches far from Purpose.
That one uses words doesn’t necessarily mean that one writes. One might talk, achieve one’s purpose, no need for pen and paper. Others might commit what someone said to memory, and repeat it themselves for a ticket out of Purpose. Talking is not writing, but it is a kind of writing.
And I don’t always use words. I draw cartoons. But if the cartoon is an argument, it is at least a kind of writing.
Sometimes it’s enough to ramble around Purpose, maybe with a camera in hand, walking through the neighborhoods, down to the industrial section, out to the ballpark.
If writing were a sport, it might be baseball. The outfielders adept at prose. At third base and first, essayists. At shortstop and second base, poets. The battery of pitcher and catcher a thesaurus of pitches: location, intent, speed, deceit. Readers may want to put the Shift on here.
We might say our purpose is to entertain, so we give our writing twists and shouts, a preacher’s sermon. The purpose of most writing is argument, an attempt to persuade. Purpose should not be confused with occasion. The occasion of writing is an assignment: a query, a synopsis, a critique or analysis. And occasion should not be confused with form. A postcard (from Purpose) is form, not content, but we begin to see how one shapes the other: “Wish you were here!” “You should have come!” “Can’t wait to get home!” “Not coming home, ever!”
In short, how we write is not quite the same thing as what we write or why we write. When we write is not important, nor where.
But it’s very hard to get out of Purpose. You never know when you’ll be stopped by the Authorities and asked to present your papers. Documents, photographs, identifications, QR Codes. They might even want to draw blood or have you pee into a bottle.
Purpose can be a mean place, a town without pity.
So I mostly try to avoid Purpose, and that’s how I write, or try to.
A diarist keeps a daily record of everyday experience, regardless of relevance or importance to the outside world. The prototype might be Pepys. One of the characteristics of a diary is that it is usually meant to be private, and it might become more interesting the farther it gets from its time of origin. In that sense, a diary might be that letter to the world that never wrote to you, because it was unable, that world being a future after your time. A diary is not a blog.
“Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)” was a John Cage project that went on for 16 years. And Cage made it a public project. A diary need not have rules. It doesn’t even need to be written. It might make use of photographs, or drawings, or quilting or needlepoint. A diary might be impressionistic, or some other artistic or technical expression. Or it might be cut and dry and matter of fact and as unambiguous as possible. But of course what readers can’t know is what the diary has left out.
Out, for a morning walk up to the park, my thoughts distracted by a sign at the outset: “Drive Like Your Kids Live Here.” I thought of the days I was busy with rhetoric, argument. That sign was an argument of proposal. The appeal is logical but also of pathos, for it causes us to think of our own kids. But what if we have no kids? Or, we do, but we are not particularly safe with them, either? Another assumption the sign makes is that children are in harm’s way. No doubt. But if you care about your children, shouldn’t you keep them out of harm’s way? And what of old people? Should we not also drive as if our grandparents live here? Maybe a more effective sign would read: Drive as if you love your neighbor like yourself. But note that assumes one love’s oneself. I’ve never quite understood that biblical proposal, having known so many people whose behavior, full of bad habits, suggested they did not love themselves. Maybe an even more effective sign might read: Drive Like You Are The Child.
By the time I got up to the park, my thoughts had cleared of argument, and I was in among the trees, and I continued as if they were my trees.
The shallow depth of the unstated warrants at the Becker-Posner blog makes for good fodder for rhetoric foragers. Consider this, from Posner’s half of their 15 Nov 09 post: “Should the U.S. economy grow more rapidly than the public debt, we’ll be okay. But the government’s focus appears to be not on economic growth, but on redistribution (the major goal of health reform) and on creating at least an aura of prosperity, at whatever cost in deficit spending and future inflation, in time for the November 2010 congressional elections.”
Redistribution may be an effect of health care reform, but there’s no evidence that it’s a goal; at the same time, distribution, and redistribution, is always a goal or effect or both of most legislative programs, so why mention it? Because redistribution is always viewed as a negative value (something one doesn’t want), particularly for those who do value the current distribution.
Posner’s claim is that the “major goal of health [care] reform” is “redistribution.” In Posner’s view, wealth should not be redistributed to achieve health care reform (redistribution by definition is a wrong).
Yet it’s impossible to have meaningful health care reform without some form of redistribution, so Posner’s unstated warrants here include that we should not have health care reform, that redistribution is a wrong, an economic wrong, and that he values this wrong over the health care uninsured – and over the inflated costs being paid by those who do have health insurance. Posner values the wealth of a minority over the physical and economic health of the majority, and the support for this is found in his cynical reference to yet another assumption – that any legislation that involves redistribution has as its root cause an upcoming election. It’s no wonder we never get anything accomplished.
Posner’s claim is that the government should not take something from someone who has and give it to someone who has not. Redistribution is a trigger word intended to attract those that have with its click. It’s quick draw rhetoric. Posner’s use of “government’s focus” also serves as a trigger, for the word government in this context is meaningless, or can only mean one thing – that entity constantly at work to take something from one and give it to someone else – it’s the government of Huck Finn’s father.
There are many entities at work on health care reform, including doctors and hospitals. For a thorough discussion of health care costs and what’s at stake in trying to lower those costs while insuring everyone, see Atul Gawande’s article “The Cost Conundrum,” in the June 1, 2009 issue of the New Yorker.
The Coming of the Toads 