"What's another word for Thesaurus?"

I went to a restaurant that serves "breakfast at any time". So I ordered
French Toast during the Renaissance. -- Steven Wright

A proposition ...

A deconstruction of the pun appeared as an essay in the New York Times last week: "To Ambrose Bierce it was a 'form of wit to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.'"

Puns, however, even appear in what should be taken as serious news writing.

Police: Man skips out of paying for prosthetic leg
AP
Tue Mar 31, 9:10 pm ET
DES MOINES, Iowa – A man who police say skipped out of paying for a prosthetic leg has been arrested.

Is punning not humor? Stephen Wright, that most literately elegant of whimsical humorists, often sees puns as left-handed commentary.

Humor writing is difficult. Perhaps that's because humor is like pornography: indefinable but recognizable.

A response by Richard Bylina ...

I have always contended that writing humor is the toughest slice of writing out there. Those who can do it, probably cut their teeth on a myriad of mistakes, gaffs, and awkward sideshows for unappreciative, or worse, over-appreciative relatives ("Grandma please, I can't breath between these two round mounds of silicon compounds."). From demented childhood antics through high school class clown acknowledgments to the student that professors in college hated to see on their enrollment sheets (and who took advantage on every occasion to flunk that student out of their seven-year plan to do undergraduate study of three-toed sloths), these individuals have honed those humor skills throughout their life. They have a leg-up on those of us who came to the realization late in life that humor in a depression (recession) can make you money.

But...I think a fair amount of humor writing can be learned, because like all aspects of writing, there are ample examples and explanations of what is funny and sometimes even why. It can be crafted. So just like Data on "Star Trek: TNG," you can tell a funny anecdote, but not everyone will laugh along with you. It's timing, audience prep, and comediatic prep that counts. I saw Rosanne Barr when her Domestic Goddess bit was a few nervous jokes in a short stand-up routine. Lots and lots of practice made it better.

The audience must also be prepped for your humor. A "Seinfeld" episode touched on this about how Jerry was forever warming up the audience for another comic who always followed him, but who really wasn't all that funny, yet would have a warm and receptive audience thanks to Jerry. Set-up is a truism. When you pick up a book by an author, everything about it sets up the expectation for your reaction to the words on the page: the author's name (Stink E. Butt), the title (Sea Monkeys Strike Back), the genre aisle you're in (Humor), the short synopsis on the back cover (Mutant Sea Monkeys seek revenge on a Colorado fifth-grader's amoral antics by controlling two comedy writers to create skits sympathetic to the Sea Monkey's plight and disastrous for the child.). If it's not funny out of the gate...it was probably ghost-written by me and gets thrown in the dumper.

Audience anticipation counts; reader set up counts more. It is harder to
pass a camel through an eye of a needle than to inject humor into the funny bone of reader if it's not infused in the first few pages either by joke, pun, or a set-up worth guffawing over. And herein lies the odd thing about humor in novels. With no scientific research by me at all, it seems that novel humor is either short one or two line bursts or the long, slow burn of bizarrely braided plot twists that come together in the second half of the novel for an outlandish finish. The movie version for me is "A Fish Called Wanda".

But the written page is a harsh mistress and even a strong muse has a rough time directing the writer to get all the elements of funny down on a page that is more naturally on display in other mediums. Imagine the Three Stooges in a book! By the time Moe gets around to poking Curly in the each eye with a single finger from each hand instead of the usual two fingers from one hand that was originally stymied by a pole that has by now been shoved up Larry's nose without anyone noticing...whew! A 2.5 - 3 second routine takes two pages to describe the physical, emotional, and psychological intent. Who can wait that long to laugh?

And then there's the X factor...everyone's sense of humor is unique and
subjective. When "The Cosby Show" was in its "Hey, hey, hey-day," "Sixty Minutes" did a story on humor, I believe it was George Will who had said he'd never seen an episode of "TCS". He watched one and commented that there wasn't a single thing funny on the show despite a live studio audience howling with laughter. Don't pick on the collective intelligence of a studio audience versus George Will...not the point. (I'm almost certain all theirs together would exceed George's.) My wife thinks my one-off thoughts are funny. I make her laugh every day, because laughter is good for the heart, soul, and other rooms in the house, but some of my off-the-wall story lines are just plain weird to her, and I question my long-term humor quotient and potential. Others have told me that "I" should be writing humor, but I enjoy killing off people too much; however, I'm trying to combine the two.

As far as Robin Williams is concerned, he stands on a playing field of one for stream of conscious humor. No one else has a grappling hook that can be thrown to the level on which he has raised that art form. We should enjoy it, for we shall never see the likes of him again in our lifetime. But it doesn't mean that what he does translates to humor on the written page. And on some days, humor is found where you find it: In a "Family Circle" cartoon that resonates with your life experience, at a prat in a playground, or a funny remembrance of a fallen friend during a solemn funeral procession. Humor drifts about us like pollen to land and tickle us at its fancy.

A Prize Winning Title for only $795

The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais (Paperback)


From the New York Times ...

" ... the book, geared to that slender segment of the population that both cares about dairy product cartons and is happy to spend hundreds of dollars to learn more about them, has just won an actual literary award. This is the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, sponsored by The Bookseller magazine."

If You Like Words ...

... and found yesterday's post about Ben Schott's new Vocab Blog on The New York Time site, you should subscribe to the most interesting word-lover's newsletter delivered on the Internet v ia email:

World Wide Words

New Vocabulary Column

Ben Schott, the author of Schott’s Original Miscellany, its two sequels, and the yearbook Schott’s Almanac, is blogging on Vocabulary for The New York Times.

"Schott’s Vocab is a repository of unconsidered lexicographical trifles — some serious, others frivolous, some neologized, others newly newsworthy."

Follow this link.

The Kindle II and Audio Rights

From an opinion piece in the New York Times by Roy Blount, Jr., now president of the Authors Guild.

Serves readers, pays writers: so far, so good. But there’s another thing about Kindle 2 — its heavily marketed text-to-speech function. Kindle 2 can read books aloud. And Kindle 2 is not paying anyone for audio rights.

For the record: no, the Authors Guild does not expect royalties from anybody doing non-commercial performances of “Goodnight Moon.” If parents want to send their children off to bed with the voice of Kindle 2, however, it’s another matter.

• Complete article here.

It Ain't Gonna Be Your Grandpa's Newsweek

From the New York Times ...

Newsweek Plans Makeover to Fit a Smaller Audience

Newsweek is about to begin a major change in its identity, with a new design, a much smaller and, it hopes, more affluent readership, and some shifts in content. The venerable newsweekly’s ingrained role of obligatory coverage of the week’s big events will be abandoned once and for all, executives say.

This may mean a limited chance to secure a byline for one of the highest-paying essay markets for freelancers, Newsweek's "My Turn."

Here are the guidelines, in case you want one last shot.

About the Use of Words, Not Politics

"Barack Obama’s inaugural address is proving to be more powerful in the reading than it was in the hearing."

A rhetorical dissection of President Obama's inaugural address by Dr. Stanley Fish, " ... the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago."

• Read the essay in the New York Times.
• A Glossary of Rhetorical Terms with Examples (link posted to the IWW discussion list by a member).

"I Shall Be Sober"

The television host and sometime actor Dick Cavett writes the Talk Show blog for the New York Times.

This week's offering is particularly droll.

Donald Westlake Dies

Since his first novel, “The Mercenaries,” was published by Random House in 1960, Mr. Westlake had written under his own name and several pseudonyms, including Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Samuel Holt and Edwin West. Despite the diversity of pen names, most of his books shared one feature: They were set in New York City, where he was born.

• Read the full story in the New York Times.

Oprah Loved the Story, Part II

Here's more of the back-story about the magic memoir that never happened, Angel at the Fence ...

In that case Ms. Winfrey was in part trusting the credibility of Mr. Frey’s publisher, an imprint of Random House, when she anointed “A Million Little Pieces” as a selection of her book club and propelled it to best seller status. But in the case of Mr. Rosenblat it was Ms. Winfrey who gave his story a mass hearing long before he ever secured a book deal.

According to the prologue in a galley copy of “Angel at the Fence,” Mr. Rosenblat entered a contest in The New York Post for the “best love story sent in by a reader.”

“On a whim, I wrote a couple of paragraphs and mailed them in,” he wrote. He won the 1995 contest, he said, and he and his wife received a candlelit dinner overlooking Central Park and a trip to Broadway and were featured in the newspaper. As a result of that media exposure, Mr. Rosenblat wrote, Ms. Winfrey invited him on the show.

Mr. and Mrs. Rosenblat appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 1996, telling their story of meeting as children while Mr. Rosenblat was a prisoner at a subcamp of the infamous Buchenwald. Eleven years later the couple returned to Ms. Winfrey’s show, and Mr. Rosenblat got down on his knees to give his wife a new ring. Ms. Winfrey called it “the single greatest love story, in 22 years of doing this show, we’ve ever told on the air.”

• Read the full story in the New York Times

Two More Literary Lights Gone

Last week the bard of Shiprock, Tony Hillerman, died, and then the publishing world was further sadden by the death of two other prominent writers, Studs Terkel and Michael Crichton.

• An Appraisal: Edward Rothstein on Studs Terkel in the New York Times.
  

The oral historian does little more than hold up a mirror, just making sure the glass is clean. The practice claims to be self-effacing and world-revealing. How can a collection of interviews be anything else?

But if you look closely at these oral histories, you can never forget who has shaped them and to what end. It often seems easy to guess whom Mr. Terkel liked and who is there to make a particular point or provide ironic contrast.

• Charles McGrath in the New York Times on Michael Crichton.
  

Michael Crichton, who died on Tuesday at the age of 66, was like a character in a Michael Crichton novel. He was unusually tall (6 feet 7 inches), strikingly handsome and encyclopedically well informed about everything from dinosaurs to medieval banquet halls to nanotechnology. As a writer he was a kind of cyborg, tirelessly turning out novels that were intricately engineered entertainment systems. No one — except possibly Mr. Crichton himself — ever confused them with great literature, but very few readers who started a Crichton novel ever put it down.

Tony Hillerman, RIP

From the New York Times...

Tony Hillerman, a former newspaperman whose evocative mystery novels set among the Navajos of the Southwest took the American detective story in new directions and made him a best-selling author, died Sunday in Albuquerque, where he lived. He was 83.

One member of the Internet Writing Workshop said, "It's with good reason that the northwest corner of New Mexico is commonly called Hillerman Country. Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee lived there, moved easily among the Navajo on the Rez and inhabited the spirit of the land. Tony is gone, but his characters will grace the region from Gallup to Shiprock for decades to come.

That thought was reflected in the Times piece ...

In the world of mystery fiction, Mr. Hillerman was that rare figure: a best-selling author who was adored by fans, admired by fellow authors and respected by critics. Though the themes of his books were not overtly political, he wrote with an avowed purpose: to instill in his readers a respect for Native American culture.

• The Unofficial Tony Hillerman Homepage
• Tony Hillerman in the Wikipedia

Oprah? Kindle? Prepare to Read On Screen!

"Oprah Winfrey, the empress of taste-makers, is about to anoint the Kindle."

• CNET

"Winfrey's support could lead to more than just a sales boost. It could go a long ways toward moving the e-book reader into the mainstream from just a niche market."

• InformationWeek

"After today, it will be a lot harder to argue that the Kindle is just a niche device for tech nerds."

• The New York Times