Académique Documents
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comedy
winter 2014
Dan Leno, king of the jesters, as Idle Jack in Dick Whittington, 1894.
editor
lewis h. lapham
publisher
david rose
executive editor
timothy don
graphics designer
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editorial board
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interns
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publisher emeritus
www.laphamsquarterly.org
Volume 7, No. 1. www.laphamsquarterly.org. Laphams Quarterly (ISSN 1935-7494) is published four times yearly (December, March, June,
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comedy
Introductory
program notes
map
preamble
Voices in Time
situational
2001: new york city
1945: palermo
1452: florence
1731: dublin
1988: baltimore
c. 810: baghdad
1838: springfield, il
1777: mannheim
Voices in Time
1925: leningrad
1456: paris
1952: dublin
1830: eafield
1993: springfield, il
1895: london
observational
2005: new york city
1532: lyon
c. 975: england
c. 300: greece
1860: london
1791: steventon
1921: baltimore
1985: blacksmith
1748: bath
1940: ireland
c. 1576: aquitaine
c. 205 bc: rome
1996: washington, dc
1927: new york city
1947: washington, dc
4
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
110. h. l. mencken
Voices in Time
confrontational
2000: new york city
c. 1255: baghdad
1905: vienna
2002: somers, ny
1605: spain
Voices in Time
c. 1958: washington, dc
1993: belfast
c. 1030: constantinople
1842: russia
2007: liphook
1948: chicago
1555: paris
1875: london
c. 1592: padua
Further Remarks
essays
Split Personalities
departments
conversations
miscellany
sources
6
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Dorothy Parker (18931967) described herself as a plain, disagreeable little child with stringy hair
who was fired from her religious
school for saying, The Immaculate
Conception was spontaneous combustion. A lover of animals, she
owned at various times a parakeet
named Onan, a dog named Woodrow Wilson, and two unnamed
baby alligators she sequestered in
her bathtub.
In 1937, six years after being arrested for his so-called anti-Soviet
childrens stories, Daniil Kharms
(19051942) wrote, I am interested only in nonsense; only in that
which has no practical meaning.
Life interests me only in its most
absurd manifestations. He was
arrested again in 1941, largely on
account of his having been arrested
the first time.
Key
Applied classical rules of dramatic
realism such as a five-act structure and
the three unities to the comedy of
manners; Molires farces ridiculing
hypocrisy are the pinnacle
of the form.
Map by Daupo
12
LAPHAMS QUARTERLY
Preamble
wain for as long as Ive known him has been true to his word, and so
Im careful never to find myself too far out of his reach. The Library
of America volumes of his Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays
(18521910) stand behind my desk on a shelf with the dictionaries and the atlas.
On days when the news both foreign and domestic is moving briskly from bad to
worse, I look to one or another of Twains jests to spring the trap or lower a rope,
to summon, as he is in the habit of doing, a blast of laughter to blow away the
peacock shams of the worlds colossal humbug.
Laughter was Twains stock in trade, and for thirty years as best-selling author
and star attraction on Americas late-nineteenth-century lecture stage, he produced
it in sufficient quantity to make bearable the acquaintance with grief that he knew
to be generously distributed among all present in the Boston Lyceum or a Tennessee
saloon, in a Newport drawing room as in a Nevada brothel. Whether the audience
was sober or drunk, topped with top hats or snared in snakebitten boots, Twain
understood it likely in need of a remedy to cover its losses. No other writer of
his generation had seen as much of the young nations early sorrow, or become as
familiar with its commonplace scenes of human depravity and squalor. As a boy on
Jimmy Armstrong the dwarf, Clyde Beatty Circus, New Jersey, 1958. Photograph by Bruce Davidson.
13
the Missouri frontier in the 1830s he attended the flogging and lynching of fugitive
slaves; in the California gold fields in the 1860s he kept company with underage
murderers and overage whores; in New York City in the 1870s he supped at the
Gilded Age banquets of financial swindle and political fraud, learning from his travels
that the hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel
for us to know and touch them year after year without some mitigating influence.
Twain bottled the influence under whatever label drummed up a crowdas comedy,
burlesque, satire, parody, sarcasm, ridicule, witany or all of it presented as the
solid nonpareil, guaranteed to fortify the blood and restore the spirit.
Humor for Twain was the hero with a thousand faces, and so it shows itself
to be in this issue of Laphams Quarterly, seen to be wearing a Japanese mask or a
buddhas smile, dancing to a tune called Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, striking poses
rigged by Samuel Beckett, Dorothy Parker, Charlie Chaplin, and Molire. The text
and illustration show but dont tell, the purpose not to present a collection of the
best tales ever told by a fool in a forest but to suggest that since man first knew
himself as something other than an ape, he has
looked to laughter to bind up the wound of that
unfortunate discovery.
A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on
With Groucho Marx (Los Angeles, page 91)
the affections.
George Eliot, 1876
I share the opinion that comedians are a much
rarer and far more valuable commodity than all
the gold and precious stones in the world, but the assaying of that commodity
of what does it consist in its coats of many colors, among them cocksure pink,
shithouse brown, and dead-end blackis a question that I gladly leave to the
French philosopher Henri Bergson (Paris, page 35), Twains contemporary who
in 1900 took note of its primary components: The comic does not exist outside
the pale of what is strictly humanLaughter has no greater foe than emotion
Its appeal is to the intelligence, pure and simpleOur laughter is always the
laughter of a group.
Which is to say that all jokes are inside jokes and the butts of them are us,
the only animal that laughs, but also the only one that is laughed at. The weather
isnt amusing, neither is the sea. Wombats dont do metaphor or standup. What
is funny is mans situation as a scrap of mortal flesh entertaining intimations of
immortality, President Richard Nixon believing himself the avatar of William
the Conqueror, President George W. Bush in the persona of a medieval pope
preaching holy crusade against all the worlds evil. The confusion of realms is the
substance of Shakespeares comedies (Padua, page 194)as a romantic exchange
of mistaken identities in As You Like It, in Measure for Measure as an argument
for the forgiveness of sin:
But man, proud man,
Dressed in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what hes most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.
14
LAPHAMS QUARTERLY
Spleens in the Elizabethan anatomy give rise to mirth because they also
produce the melancholy springing from the bowels to remind man that although
unaccountably invested with the power to conceive of himself as a vessel of pure
and everlasting light, he was made, as were toads, of foul and perishable stuff.
Apes play games in zoos and baobab trees, but, not knowing that theyre bound
to die, they dont discover ludicrous incongruities between the physical and the
metaphysical, dont invent, as does Franois Rabelais Gargantua (Lyon, page 89),
the most lordly, the most excellent way to remove the smell and fear of death
from the palace of his jolly asshole, by wiping it first with silk and velvet, lastly
and most gloriously, with the neck of a well-downed goose.
All humor is situational, but the forms of it that survive the traveling in time
Shakespeares romance and Rabelais bawdy as well as Juvenals satire (Rome, page
159) and Molires ridicule (Paris, page 27)speak to the fundamental truth of the
human predicament, which is that men die from time to time and worms do eat them.
The jokes dependent upon a specific historical setting dont have much of a shelf life;
the voice between the lines gets lost, and with it
the sharing of the knowledge of what is in or out
of place. To look at the early-seventeenth-century
A cheerful heart has a continual feast.
painting Interior with Merry Company (page 128)
Book of Proverbs, c. 350 bc
or at a mosaic of strolling masked musicians from
a wall in second-century-bc Pompeii (page 137)
is to understand that a good time is being had by all, to infer that for as long as men
have walked the earth, they have found in the joy of laughter a companion more
faithful than the dog. But exactly what prompts the lace-trimmed Dutch girls to
their lovely smiling, or whether the Roman drum is tapping out a cadence or a song,
I cannot say. I wasnt in the loop; four or twenty-one centuries out of touch, I dont
know who first said what to whom, or why the merriment is merry.
More to the point, Id only twice been inside a church, for an uncles wedding
and a police chief s funeral. The latter ceremony Id attended with my grandfather
during his tenure as mayor of San Francisco during the Second World War, one
of the many occasions on which, between the ages of seven and eleven, I listened
to him deliver an uplifting political speech. Out of the loop within the walls of
the chapel, I assumed that the headmasters sermon was a canvassing for votes,
whether for or from God I didnt know, but either way a call to arms, and as I
had been taught to do when an admiral or a parks commissioner completed his
remarks, I stood to attention with the tribute of firm and supportive applause.
The appalled silence in the chapel was as cold as a winter in Milwaukee. The
entire school turned to stare in disbelief, the headmaster nearly missed his step
down from the pulpit, the boys to my left and right edged away, as if from a longdead rat. Never mind that my intention was civil, my response meant to show
respect. During the next four years at school, I
never gained admission to the company of the
elect. Id blotted my copybook, been marked
Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced,
down as an offensive humorist from the wrong
not because it has been sober, responsible,
side of the Hudson River.
and cautious but because it has been playful,
In the troubled sea of the worlds ambition,
rebellious, and immature.
men
rise by gravity, sink by levity, and on my
Tom Robbins, 1980
first Sunday in Connecticut I had placed
myself too far below the salt to indulge the
hope of an ascent to the high-minded end of the tablenot to be trusted with
the singing of the school song, or with the laughing at people who didnt belong
to beach clubs on Long Island. The sense of being off the team accompanied
me to Yale College (I never saw the Harvard game) and shaped my perspective
as a young newspaper reporter in the 1950s. A potentially free agent, not under
contract to go along with the programable to find fault with an official press
release, put an awkward question to a department-store mogulI was looked
upon with suspicion by the wisdoms in office. The attitude I took for granted
on the part of real-estate kingpins and ladies enshrined in boxes at the opera,
but I didnt recognize it as one adjustable to any and all occasions until the
winter night in 1958 when the San Francisco chapter of Mensa International
(a society composed of persons blessed with IQ test scores above the ninetyeighth percentile) staged a symposium meant to plumb to its utmost depths
(intellectual, psychological, and physiological) the mystery of human gender.
Wine and cheese to be served, everybody to remove his or her clothes before
being admitted to the discussion. Dispatched by the San Francisco Examiner to
report on the event, I didnt make it past the coatracks on which the seekers of
the naked truth draped their fig leaves. But even with the embodiments of genius,
Mensa wasnt taking any chances. Confronted with a display of for the most
part unlovely and decomposing flesh, the doorkeepers distributed identifying
wrist bracelets, blue silk for boys, pink velvet for girls, one of each for gays,
lesbians, and transsexuals. What was wonderful was the utter seriousness of the
proceeding. Nobody laughed or risked the semblance of a smile; the company
of the elect looked with proud disdain upon the fully clothed reporters standing
around in unpolished shoes.
16
LAPHAMS QUARTERLY
aughter follows from the misalignment of a reality and a virtual reality, and
the getting of the joke is the recognition of which is which. The notions
of what is true or beautiful or proper held sacred by the other people in
the caucus or the clubhouse set up the punch linethe sight of something where
its not supposed to be, the story going where its not supposed to go, Groucho
Marx saying, Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot and look like an
idiot, but dont let that fool you. He really is an idiot.
Grouchos appeal is to the faculty named by Bergson as intelligence, pure
and simple, and I laugh out loud for the reason given by Arthur Schopenhauer:
simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real
object. Being in or out of the loop is not only a question of separations in space
and time, it is also a matter of the distance between different sets or turns of mind.
Sudden and happy perceptions of incongruity are not hard to come by in a society
that worships its machines, regards the sales pitch and the self-promotion as its
noblest forms of literary art. What Twain understood to be the worlds colossal
humbug enjoys a high standing among people who define the worth of a thing
as the price of a thing and therefore make of money, in and of itself a colossal
humbug, the true and proper name for God.
There are, said Twain, certain sweet-smelling, sugarcoated lies current in
the world which all politic men have apparently tacitly conspired together to
support and perpetuateWe are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is
going and then go with drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are
afraid to express, and another onethe one we usewhich we force ourselves to
wear to please Mrs. Grundy.
17
It is the Mrs. Grundy of the opinion polls from whom President Barack
Obama begs the favor of a sunny smile, to whom the poets who write the nations
advertising copy sing their songs of love, for whom the Aspen Institute sponsors
summer and winter festivals of think-tank discussion to reawaken the American
spirit, redecorate the front parlor of the American soul. The exchanges of platitude
at the higher altitudes of moral and social pretension Twain celebrated as festive
occasions on which taffy is being pulled. Some of the best of it gets pulled at the
Council on Foreign Relations in New York when it is being explained to a quorum
of the monied elite (contented bankers, corporate lawyers, arms manufacturers)
that American foreign policy, rightly understood, is a work of Christian charity
and an expression of mans goodwill to man. Nobody pulls the taffy better than
Dr. Henry Kissinger, the White House National Security Advisor in 1970 who
by way of an early Christmas greeting that year to the needy poor in Cambodia
secured the delivery of thousands of tons of high explosive, but as often at the
council as Ive heard him say that the nuclear
option trumps the China card, that the lines in
the Middle Eastern sand connect the Temple of
Jesters do oft prove prophets.
Solomon to the Pentagon, that America under
William Shakespeare, c. 1605
no circumstances is to be caught holding Neville
Chamberlains umbrella, I seldom find the hint
of a sign that the other gentlemen in the room know or care that Chicolini here
really is an idiot. Even if the gentlemen had their doubts about Chicolini, where
would be the percentage of letting them out of the bag? Chicolini is rich, and
therefore Chicolini is wise. To think otherwise is an impiety; to say otherwise is
a bad career move.
Twain was careful to mind his manners when speaking from lecture platforms
to crowds of Mrs. Grundys in both the western and eastern states. He bottled his
ferocious ridicule in the writing (much of it in newspapers) that he likened to
painted fire, bent to the task of burning down with a torch of words the pestilent
hospitality tents of self-glorifying cant. He had in mind the health of the society
on which in 1873 he bestowed the honorific The Gilded Age in recognition
of its great contributions to the technologies of selfishness and greed, a society
making itself sick with the consumption of too many sugarcoated lies and one
that he understood not to be a society at all but a state of war.
We have today a second Gilded Age more magnificent than the first, but our
contemporary brigade of satirists doesnt play with fire. The marketing directors
who produce the commodity of humor for prime-time television aim to amuse
the sheep, not shoot the elephants in the room. They prepare the sarcasm-lite in
the form of freeze-dried sound bites meant to be dropped into boiling water at
Gridiron dinners, Academy Award ceremonies, and Saturday Night Live. There
is a hell of a distance, said Dorothy Parker, between wisecracking and wit. Wit
has truth in it. George Bernard Shaw seconded the motion: My way of joking is
to tell the truth. Its the funniest joke in the world.
Twain didnt expect or intend his satire to correct the conduct of Boss
Tweed, improve the morals of Commodore Vanderbilt, or stop the same-day
deliveries of Congress from Washington to the banks in New York. Nor did he
exclude himself from the distinguished company of angry apes rolling around in
18
LAPHAMS QUARTERLY
the mud of their mortality. He knew himself made, like all other men, as a poor,
cheap, wormy thinga sarcasm, the Creators prime miscarriage in inventions,
easily seduced by the paltry materialisms and mean vanities that made both
himself and America great. A man at play with the life of his mind overriding
the decay of his matter, his laughter the digging himself out of the dung heap of
moralizing cowardice that is the consequence of ingesting too much boardwalk
taffy. His purpose is that of a physician attending to the liberties of the people
shriveled by the ambitions of the state, his belief that it is the courage of a
democracys dissenting citizens that defends their commonwealth against the
despotism of a plutocracy backed up with platitudes, billy clubs, surveillance
cameras, and subprime loans.
Which is why in times of trouble I reach for the saving grace of the nearby
Twain. Laughter in all of its conjugations and declensions cannot help but
breathe the air of freedom, and in the moment of delight and surprise that is my
laughing out loud at his Extracts from Adams Diary or To the Person Sitting in
Darkness, I escape, if only briefly, from the muck of my own ignorance, vanity,
and fear, bind up the festering wound inflicted on the day I was born with the
consolation of the philosophy named by Charlie Chaplin: Life is a tragedy
when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long shot.
19
20
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Voices in Time
SituationAL
2001:
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Aoki: So we should just keep bad jokes and offend people over and over again.
Silverman: Youre a douchebag, man.
Aoki: [with mock surprise] Oh oh! Oh oh!
Bill was pretty spectacular in his defense of me
and, more important, in defense of comedy, subjectivity, and free speech. Spade was hilarious as
my no-help-whatsoever friend on the panel.
He said practically nothing until the third or
fourth segment, when he eked out something
like, How come there arent any white-people
parades? Thanks, David. Anne-Marie was a
typical C-list actress who was superpsyched to
be on Politically Incorrect and show the world
how smart she wasnt.
With all the religious and racial material
Ive done, the bulk of complaints and outcry
has come from the advocates of what must be
the hardest suffering of all minorities: uberrich, thin, young blonds.
In June 2007, I was hired to host the MTV
Movie Awards. As part of my duties, I went
onstage at the top of the show and told jokes
about celebrities and current events in pop culture. In general, I dont do those kinds of jokes
in my regular standup. The only time I really do
that is when its required, like at a roast (and
that is done with love), or at events like the
Movie Awards.
One of the biggest events in pop culture
at that time was the impending lockup of Paris
Hilton. To refresh your memory, Paris was sentenced to a brief stay at the LA county jail for
drunk driving, then violating her parole and
driving drunk again. Heres what I said onstage
about her (a great joke written by Jonathan
Kimmel, with a tagline by me): In a couple of
days, Paris Hilton is going to jail. The judge says
that its gonna be a no-frills thing, and that is
ridiculous. As a matter of fact, I hear that in order to make her feel more comfortable in prison,
the guards are gonna paint the bars to look like
penises. I just worry that shes gonna break her
teeth on those things.
23
Guard and child in Bugs Bunny mask in the Forbidden City, Beijing, 1984. Photograph by Thomas Hoepker.
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1913:
Los Angeles
a lady. I turned and raised my hat apologetically, then turned and stumbled over a cuspidor,
then turned and raised my hat to the cuspidor.
Behind the camera they began to laugh.
Quite a crowd had gathered there, not only
the players of the other companies who left
their sets to watch us, but also the stagehands,
the carpenters, and the wardrobe department.
That indeed was a compliment. And by the
time we had finished rehearsing we had quite a
large audience laughing. Very soon I saw Ford
Sterling peering over the shoulders of others.
When it was over, I knew I had made good.
At the end of the day, when I went to the
dressing room, Ford Sterling and Roscoe Arbuckle were taking off their makeup. Very little
was said, but the atmosphere was charged with
crosscurrents. Both Ford and Roscoe liked me,
but I frankly felt they were undergoing some
inner conflict.
It was a long scene that ran seventy-five
feet. Later Mr. Sennett and Mr. Lehrman debated whether to let it run its full length, as the
average comedy scene rarely ran over ten. If its
Genre Scene, by Giuseppe Bonito, c. 1740.
26
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1659:
Paris
Cathos: Superb!
Magdelon: Nothing could possibly be finer.
Mascarille: You stole my heart, that is, you
robbed me, you carried it away. Stop, thief !
Stop, thief ! Stop, thief ! Stop, thief ! Stop,
thief ! Wouldnt you say it was a man shouting and running after a robber to try to catch
him? Stop, thief ! Stop, thief ! Stop, thief !
Stop, thief ! Stop, thief ! [He rises, runs around
the stage, and collapses in his chair.]
Mascarille: Dont you rather like I was so carefree and imprudent? Carefree and imprudent,
taken off my guard, so to speak; a perfectly
everyday turn of speech, carefree and imprudent. I was just gazing at you, that is, innocently, respectfully, like an unhappy little sheep.
As who wouldnt? That is, the most natural
thing in the world, I observe you, I contemplate
you, I gaze upon you, as who wouldnt? You
stole my heart, engulfing me in grief. How do
you like engulfing me in grief ?
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Mascarille: I must sing you the tune Ive composed for it.
Mascarille: What, me? Not at all.
Cathos: How is it possible, then
Mascarille: People of quality know everything
without ever having learned anything.
Magdelon: Hes perfectly right, my dear.
Mascarille: See if the tune suits your taste.
[clears his throat] La, la, la, la, la. The brutality of
the season has furiously outraged the delicacy
of my voice. But no matter; its just an offhand
performance. [sings]
Bull farting at a knight, manuscript illumination from Aelians On the Nature of Animals, c. 1275.
29
1945:
Palermo
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Italian boys sitting and posing for the camera as they smile and laugh, c. 1915. Photograph by A. W. Cutler.
national-security adviser
32
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
34
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1900:
Paris
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1452:
Florence
37
1731:
Dublin
parthian shot
The time is not remote, when I
Must by the course of nature die:
When I foresee my special friends,
Will try to find their private ends:
Though it is hardly understood,
Which way my death can do them good.
Yet, thus methinks, I hear em speak;
See, how the dean begins to break:
Poor gentleman, he droops apace,
You plainly find it in his face:
That old vertigo in his head,
Will never leave him till hes dead:
Besides, his memory decays,
He recollects not what he says;
He cannot call his friends to mind;
Forgets the place where last he dined:
Plies you with stories oer and oer,
He told them fifty times before.
How does he fancy we can sit,
To hear his out-of-fashioned wit?
But he takes up with younger folks,
Who for his wine will bear his jokes:
Faith, he must make his stories shorter,
Or change his comrades once a quarter:
In half the time, he talks them round;
There must another set be found.
For poetry, hes past his prime,
He takes an hour to find a rhyme:
His fire is out, his wit decayed,
His fancy sunk, his muse a jade.
Id have him throw away his pen;
But theres no talking to some men.
And then their tenderness appears,
By adding largely to my years:
Hes older than he would be reckoned
And well remembers Charles the Second.
He hardly drinks a pint of wine;
And that, I doubt, is no good sign.
His stomach too begins to fail:
Last year we thought him strong and hale;
But now, hes quite another thing;
I wish he may hold out till spring.
38
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Three Roman comic masks, from left to right: prostitute, angry old man, slave. Floor mosaic, Hadrumetum, third century.
39
1988:
Baltimore
keystone cops
Tuesday, January 19
Pulling one hand from the warmth of a pocket,
Jay Landsman squats down to grab the dead
mans chin, pushing the head to one side until the wound becomes visible as a small, ovate
hole, oozing red and white.
Heres your problem, he said. Hes got
a slow leak.
Wit enables us to act rudely with impunity.
La Rochefoucauld, 1678
A leak? says Tom Pellegrini, picking up
on it.
A slow one.
You can fix those.
Sure you can, Landsman agrees. They
got these home repair kits now
Like with tires.
Just like with tires, Landsman says.
Comes with a patch and everything else you
need. Now a bigger wound, like from a .38,
youre gonna have to get a new head. This one
you could fix.
Landsman looks up, his face the very picture of earnest concern.
Sweet Jesus, thinks Pellegrini, nothing like
working murders with a mental case. One in
the morning, heart of the ghetto, half a dozen
uniforms watching their breath freeze over another dead manwhat better time and place
for some vintage Landsman, delivered in perfect deadpan until even the shift commander is
laughing hard in the blue strobe of the emergency lights. Not that a Western District midnight shift is the worlds toughest audience;
you dont ride a radio car for any length of time
in Sector One or Two without cultivating a
diseased sense of humor.
Anyone know this guy? asks Landsman.
Anyone get to talk to him?
Fuck no, says a uniform. He was ten40
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Parade: Pierrot Presents to the Audience His Companions Harlequin and Punchinello (detail), by Octave Penguilly LHaridon, 1846.
more than its share of violence, filth, and despair. Then they surround him with a chorus
of blue-jacketed straight men and let him play
the role of the lone, wayward joker that somehow slipped into the deck. Jay Landsman, of
the sidelong smile and pockmarked face, who
tells the mothers of wanted men that all the
commotion is nothing to be upset about, just
a routine murder warrant. Landsman, who
leaves empty liquor bottles in the other sergeants desks and never fails to turn out the
mens-room light when a ranking officer is
indisposed. Landsman, who rides a headquarters elevator with the police commissioner
and leaves complaining that some son of a
bitch stole his wallet. Jay Landsman, who as a
Southwestern patrolman parked his radio car
at Edmondson and Hilton, then used a Quaker Oatmeal box covered in aluminum foil as a
radar gun.
Im just giving you a warning this time,
he would tell grateful motorists. Remember,
only you can prevent forest fires.
And now, but for the fact that Landsman
can no longer keep a straight face, there might
well be an incident report tracked to Central
Records in the department mail, complaint
number 88-7A37548, indicating that said victim appeared to be shot once in the head and
twice in the back through the same bullet hole.
41
c. 810:
Baghdad
wet dreams
Young men assembled, sterling coins at the count,
To whom chance time delivered me.
Sunday is close, they said, so I ambled to the promised location
And was the first to arrive,
Dressed like a preacher, in full-covering robes
Kept fast by a plaited cord.
When they had purchased what they wanted,
Eager to slake their desire,
I approached and offered, Ill carry this stuff;
I have the necessary saddlebags:
My ropes are sturdy, and I am brisk and dependable.
Take it, they said, You seem to be what you claim,
And well reward you according to your efforts.
So I advanced in their company
And was told to climb with them to the spot we were making for.
There vessels were unveiled for them (like wives exposed for the first time)
While a bird warbled in a melancholy strain.
Thirty-five Expressive Heads, by Louis-Lopold Boilly, c. 1825.
42
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
43
1974:
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Im surprised you werent stopped, walking into the hotel dressed like that, I said. The
house dick can usually spot an intellectual.
A five spot cools him.
Shall we begin? I said, motioning her to
the couch.
She lit a cigarette and got right to it. I
think we could start by approaching Billy Budd
as Melvilles justification of the ways of God to
man, nest-ce pas?
Interestingly, though, not in a Miltonian
sense. I was bluffing. I wanted to see if shed
go for it.
No. Paradise Lost lacked the substructure
of pessimism. She did.
Right, right. God, youre right, I
murmured.
I think Melville reaffirmed the virtues of
innocence in a naive yet sophisticated sense
dont you agree?
I let her go on. She was barely nineteen
years old, but already she had developed the
hardened facility of the pseudointellectual.
She rattled off her ideas glibly, but it was all
45
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
47
Comic Relief
Name
Richard Tarlton
Lifespan
first century bc
Lifespan
died 1588
Occupation
Occupation
Career
Career
Legacy
Legacy
Career
Legacy
48
Name
Name
Joseph Grimaldi
Name
Dan Rice
Lifespan
17781837
Lifespan
18231900
Occupation
Occupation
Name
Lifespan
18801959
Career
Legacy
Name
Edgar Bergen
Lifespan
19031978
Occupation
American actor
and ventriloquist
Career
Career
Legacy
Legacy
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1518:
Rome
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
his grain for a good price, and then seen the price
tumble, hanged himself from a rafter in his bedroom; however, a servant heard the noise, ran in
to see his master hanging there, and quickly cut
the rope, saving him from death. Subsequently,
after the miser had recovered, he insisted that
the servant pay him for the rope. The same kind
of joke was what Lorenzo de Medici said to a
very tedious clown: You couldnt make me laugh
if you tickled me. And in the same vein he replied to another buffoon who, one morning, had
found him in bed late and reproached him for
sleeping so long in these words: Ive already
been to the new market and the old, and outside
the San Gallo Gate and around the walls for
exercise, and Ive done a thousand other things
besides, and here you are still asleep! Lorenzo
retorted, What I have dreamed in an hour is
worth more than what youve done in four.
A very sophisticated kind of joke relies
on a certain amount of dissimulation, when
one says one thing and means another. I do not
mean saying the exact opposite, such as calling
a dwarf a giant, or a Negro white, or a very ugly
man extremely handsome; for these are contraries that are only too obvious, even though they,
too, may sometimes raise a laugh. I mean when
speaking gravely and seriously, one says in an
amusing way what is not really meant. For example, it was said by Don Giovanni di Cardona
concerning a person who wanted to leave Rome,
In my opinion, he is making the wrong decision, because hes such a rascal that if he stayed
in Rome, given time hed become a cardinal. Alfonso Santa Croce made a joke of the same kind,
shortly after he had been subjected to various
outrages at the hands of the cardinal of Pavia,
when he was strolling with certain gentlemen
outside Bologna near the place of public execution and noticed a man who had recently been
hanged; for he turned toward the corpse with
a reflective expression and remarked in a voice
loud enough for all to hear, Happy you, who do
not have to deal with the Cardinal of Pavia!
This sort of joke, with an element of irony,
is very suitable on the lips of men of some importance, for it is both grave and pungent and
can be used whether talking of amusing or serious matters. For this reason it was popular
among those of the ancient world, including
very distinguished figures, such as Cato and
Scipio Africanus the Younger, but the philosopher Socrates is said to have been the most witty
in this regard.
It is also splendid when a person is stung
regarding the same thing in which he has
previously scored over his companion. Thus
when at the court of Spain, Alonso Carrillo
was guilty of some youthful misdemeanors,
on the orders of the king, he was thrown into
prison for the night. The following day he was
released, and that morning he made his way to
the palace, where, as he entered the hall and
encountered many lords and ladies laughing
at his imprisonment, Signora Bobadilla said,
Signor Alonso, I am very grieved by this misadventure of yours, for all those who know
you thought the king should have had you
hanged. Then straightaway Alonso retorted,
Madam, I was also very afraid of that, but
then I formed the hope that you would ask to
marry me. You see how sharp and witty this
51
419 bc:
Athens
thrice-happy socrates
Strepsiades: Ill wing a prayer and go off to the Thinkpot for training.
But how is an old relic like me,
forgetful and lumbering, going to master the art
of logic chopping and hairsplitting? [starts walking]
But Ive got to go. [He reaches the hut of the Thinkpot and stands wavering outside.]
Why am I shilly-shallying like this?
Why dont I just knock on the door?
[He bangs on the door, shouting.]
Hey, boy! Boyakins!
First Pupil: [from inside] Go to blazes, whoevers banging on my door!
[He opens the door.]
Strepsiades: Strepsiades, son of Phidon, from Cicynna.
First Pupil: A real dumbo, by God! Kicking the door down
and causing a thought to miscarry!
Strepsiades: Please excuse me. My homes in the country,
but do tell me about the thought thats got miscarried.
First Pupil: To tell anyone not a pupil is a sacrilege.
Gathering of one of Mumbais thirty-seven laughing clubs, 1996. Photograph by Steve McCurry.
52
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Socrates: Do you really want to know the real truth about the gods?
Strepsiades: Absolutely! If thats possible.
Socrates: And to converse with the Cloudsour very own deities?
Strepsiades: Totally.
Socrates: Then seat yourself on this sacred couch.
Strepsiades: Right! Im sitting.
Socrates: Now take in your hands this wreath.
Strepsiades: The wreath? Oh dear,
youre not going to sacrifice me, Socrates, like Athamas?
Socrates: Of course not!
We do this for all initiates.
Strepsiades: And what does it do for me?
Socrates: In speaking youll become as smooth as a salesman,
voluble as a rattle, insidious as pollen.
Now dont move.
Strepsiades: [He sees Socrates taking a handful of flour from a bag.]
No, by Zeus, you wont fool me:
pollenized by sprinkled flour!
Socrates: [taking up a wand and incanting, priestlike]
Let the dotard hold his tongue
And listen to my orison.
O lord and king, unmeasured Air
Who holds the earth up everywhere,
And you the sparkling atmosphere,
And Clouds, you holy goddesses
Of lightnings thunderous prodigies:
Arouse yourselves on high, appear
To the contemplator here.
Strepsiades: [hurriedly throwing a cloak over his head]
Not yet, not yet, until Im cloaked
And keep myself from being soaked.
To think I left the house with not
Even a cap on! What a clot!
Aristophanes, from The Clouds. In addition to this sendup of Socrates,
Aristophanes often took current events and his contemporaries as subjects for
playshe attacked the influential politician Cleon in The Knights, satirized
the Peloponnesian War by portraying a peace treaty brokered by Athenian and
Spartan women in Lysistrata, and condemned the tragedian Euripides to death
in The Women at the Thesmophoria Festival. He is thought to have written
some forty plays, eleven of which are extant, and he died around 388 bc.
56
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1838:
Springfield, IL
Undercover
B. Brian Nuallin
3. Tom Tomorrow
C. Georges Remi
4. C. P. West
D. Alexander Pope
5. Guy Fawkes
E. Franois-Marie Arouet
F. Benjamin Franklin
7. Astrea
G. Thomas Nashe
9. Alcofribas Nasier
I. Henry Fielding
10. O. Henry
J. P. G. Wodehouse
K. Dan Perkins
M. Aphra Behn
O. Washington Irving
17. Herg
R. Jean-Baptise Poquelin
Answers:
57
There was an old Derry Down Derry, 1875 colored illustration from A Book of Nonsense, by Edward Lear.
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
handsome, which, but for her unfortunate corpulency, was actually true. Exclusive of this, no
woman that I have ever seen has a finer face. I
also tried to convince myself that the mind was
much more to be valued than the person, and in
this she was not inferior, as I could discover, to
any with whom I had been acquainted.
Shortly after this, without attempting to
come to any positive understanding with her, I
set out for Vandalia, when and where you first
saw me. During my stay there I had letters from
her which did not change my opinion of either
her intellect or intention but, on the contrary,
confirmed it in both.
All this while, although I was fixed firm
as the surge-repelling rock in my resolution, I
found I was continually repenting the rashness
which had led me to make it. Through life I
have been in no bondage, either real or imaginary, from the thralldom of which I so much
desired to be free. After my return home I saw
nothing to change my opinion of her in any
particular. She was the same, and so was I. I
now spent my time in planning how I might
get along in life after my contemplated change
of circumstances should have taken place, and
how I might procrastinate the evil day for a
time, which I really dreaded as much, perhaps
more, than an Irishman does the halter.
After all my sufferings upon this deeply
interesting subject, here I am, wholly, unexpectedly, completely out of the scrape, and I now
want to know if you can guess how I got out of
itout, clear, in every sense of the termno
violation of word, honor, or conscience. I dont
believe you can guess, and so I might as well
tell you at once. As the lawyer says, it was done
in the manner following, to wit: after I had delayed the matter as long as I thought I could in
honor do (which, by the way, had brought me
round into the last fall), I concluded I might as
well bring it to a consummation without further delay, and so I mustered my resolution and
made the proposal to her direct; but, shocking
to relate, she answered, No. At first I supposed
she did it through an affectation of modesty,
which I thought but ill became her under the
59
1777:
Mannheim
in the toilet
Dearest cozz buzz!
I have received reprieved your highly esteemed writing biting, and I have noted doted
that my Uncle Garfuncle, my Aunt Slant, and
you too, are all well mell. We, too, thank god, are
in good fettle kettle. Today I got a letter setter
from my Papa Haha safely into my paws claws. I
hope you too have gotten rotten my note quote
that I wrote to you from Mannheim. So much
the better, better the much so! But now for
something more sensuble.
The comic man is happy under any fate, and
he says funny things at funerals and when the
bailiffs are in the house or the hero is waiting to
be hanged.
Jerome K. Jerome, 1889
So sorry to hear that Herr Abbate Salate
has had another stroke choke. But I hope with
the help of God fraud the consequences will
not be dire mire. You are writing fighting that
youll keep your criminal promise which you
gave me before my departure from Augspurg,
and will do it soon moon. Well, I will most
certainly find that regretable. You write further,
indeed you let it all out, you expose yourself,
you let yourself be heard, you give me notice,
you declare yourself, you indicate to me, you
bring me the news, you announce onto me, you
state in broad daylight, you demand, you desire,
you wish, you want, you like, you command
that I, too, should could send you my portrait.
Eh bien, I shall mail fail it for sure. Oui, by the
love of my skin, I shit on your nose, so it runs
down your chin.
I now wish you a good night, shit in your
bed with all your might, sleep with peace on
your mind, and try to kiss your own behind;
I now go off to never-never land and sleep as
much as I can stand. Tomorrow well speak
freak sensubly with each other. Things I must
60
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1939:
Friar Pedro Shoots El Maragato as His Horse Runs Off, by Francisco Jos de Goya y Lucientes, c. 1806.
61
c. 1690: Sichuan
deadly joke
62
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
cannon increased; there was the rat-a-tattatting of machine guns, and from somewhere
came the menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of
the new flamethrowers. Walter Mitty walked
to the door of the dugout humming Auprs
de Ma Blonde. He turned and waved to the
sergeant. Cheerio! he said
Something struck his shoulder. Ive been
looking all over this hotel for you, said Mrs.
Mitty. Why do you have to hide in this old
chair? How did you expect me to find you?
Things close in, said Walter Mitty vaguely.
What? Mrs. Mitty said. Did you get the
whats-its-name? The puppy biscuit? Whats in
that box? Overshoes, said Mitty. Couldnt
you have put them on in the store? I was
thinking, said Walter Mitty. Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking? She
looked at him. Im going to take your temperature when I get you home, she said.
They went out through the revolving doors
that made a faintly derisive whistling sound
when you pushed them. It was two blocks to
the parking lot. At the drugstore on the corner
she said, Wait here for me. I forgot something.
I wont be a minute. She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It began
to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up against
the wall of the drugstore, smokingHe put
his shoulders back and his heels together. To
hell with the handkerchief, said Walter Mitty
scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint,
fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced
the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud
and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated,
inscrutable to the last.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. At the age of thirtytwo in 1927, Thurber published his first story in The
New Yorker and befriended one of its editors, E. B.
White, who recommended Thurber to the magazines
founder, Harold Ross. Thurber and White went on
to share a cubicle at the office and cowrite the Talk of
the Town feature. In 1933 Thurber published My
Life and Hard Timescritic Dwight Macdonald
judged it the best humor to come out of the post
World War I periodand in 1959 The Years with
Ross. He died two years later.
Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor in a scene from California Suite, directed by Herbert Ross, 1978.
1925:
Leningrad
rent control
The other day, citizens, I saw a cartload of bricks
going down the road. Im not joking!
You know, my heart palpitated with joy. It
must mean were building something, citizens.
They dont just transport bricks for no reason
at all. They must be building a nice little house
somewhere. Theyve started, touch wood.
In maybe twenty years time, and who
knows, even less, every citizen will probably
have a whole room to himself. And if the population doesnt grow too quickly and they allow
everyone to have abortions, then two rooms. Or
might even be three. With a bathroom. What
a life well lead then, eh, citizens! In one room
well sleep, say, in another receive guests, and in
a third something elseWho knows? With all
that freedom, well find something to be getting on with.
But just now things are a bit difficult with
floor space. Theres not a lot of it about, on account of the housing crisis.
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1456:
Paris
last testament
The Zaparozhye Cossacks Writing a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan (detail), by Ilya Repin, c. 1880.
67
Young man with painted face laughing during Holi festival, Kokata, India, 2007. Photograph by Prasanta Biswas.
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1952:
Dublin
Estragon: Wait.
Estragon: Who?
Vladimir: Godot.
Vladimir: Go ahead.
Punked!
70
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1830:
Eafield
non-apology
Dear Sir,
It is an observation of a wise man that moderation is best in all things. I cannot agree with
him in liquor. There is a smoothness and oiliness in wine that makes it go down by a natural
channel, which I am positive was made for that
descending. Else, why does not wine choke us?
Could Nature have made that sloping lane not
to facilitate the downgoing? She does nothing in
vain. You know that better than I. You know how
often she has helped you at a dead lift, and how
much better entitled she is to a fee than yourself
sometimes, when you carry off the credit. Still
there is something due to manners and customs,
and I should apologize to you and Mrs. Asbury
for being absolutely carried home upon a mans
shoulders through Silver Street, up Parsons
Lane, by the Chapels (which might have taught
me better), and then to be deposited like a dead
log at Gaffar Westwoods, who it seems does not
Still from Clown Torture: Dirty Joke, sixty-minute loop, video installation by Bruce Nauman, 1987.
71
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
obtained in a horizontal posture or perpendicular (as foolish men and apes affect for dignity) I
think is little to the purpose. The end is always
greater than the means. Here I am, able to compose a sensible rational apology, and what signifies how I got here? I have just sense enough
to remember I was very happy last night, and to
thank our kind host and hostess, and thats sense
enough, I hope.
N.B. What is good for a desperate headache? Why, patience, and a determination not
to mind being miserable all day long. And that
I have made my mind up to. So, here goes. It is
better than not being alive at all, which I might
have been, had your man toppled me down at
Lieutenant Barkers coal shed. My sister sends
her sober compliments to Mrs. A. She is not
much the worse.
Yours truly,
Charles Lamb, from a letter to James Vale Asbury.
Lamb began writing personal and critical essays for
London Magazine under a pseudonym in 1820,
collecting the works into the books Elia in 1823
and The Last Essays of Elia in 1833. He wrote to
his friend William Wordsworth in 1801, Separate
from the pleasure of your company, I dont much
care if I never see a mountain in my life. Twentynine years later, he wrote to the same correspondent,
What have I gained by health? Intolerable dullness.
What by early hours and moderate meals?a total
blank. Lamb died in 1834.
1993:
Springfield, IL
in the trade on the Toss-a-Quarter-Onto-thePlates game and got, like, transferred over to
the Tilt-a-Whirl in 91. He smokes Marlboro
100s but wears a cap that says winston. He
wants to know if Native Companiond like to
take a quick walk back across the Hollow and
see something way out of the usual range of
what shes used to. All around us are booths for
various carny-type games. All the carny-game
barkers have headset microphones; some are
saying testing and reciting their pitches lines
in tentative warmup ways. A lot of the pitches
seem frankly sexual: You got to get it up to
get it in; Take it out and lay er down, only
a dollar; Make it stand up. Two dollars, five
Laughter always arises from a gaiety of
disposition, absolutely incompatible with
contempt and indignation.
Voltaire, 1736
chances. Make it stand up. In the booths, rows
of stuffed animals hang by their feet like game
put out to cure. One barkers testing his mike by
saying testes instead of testing. It smells like
machine grease and hair tonic down here, and
theres already a spoiled, garbagey smell. My
media guide says 1993s Happy Hollow is contracted to one of the largest owners of amusement attractions in the country, one Blomsness
and Thebault All-Star Amusement Enterprises
of Crystal Lake, Illinois, up near Chicago. But
the carnies themselves all seem to be from the
middle SouthTennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma. They are visibly unimpressed by the press
credentials clipped to my shirt. They tend to look
at Native Companion like shes food, which she
ignores. I promptly lose four dollars trying to get
it up and in by tossing miniature basketballs into
angled straw baskets in such a way that they dont
bounce back out. The games barker can toss the
balls behind his back and get them to stay in, but
hes right up next to the baskets. My shots carom
out from eight feet awaythe straw baskets look
soft, but their bottoms make a suspicious steely
sound when the balls hit.
73
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
rebel yell and pulls a lever. Native Cs cage begins to ascend. Pathetic little fingers appear in
the cages mesh. The Zipper operator is ageless
and burned-brown and has a mustache waxed
to wicked points like steers horns, rolling a
Drum cigarette with one hand as he nudges
levers upward and the ellipse speeds up and
the individual cages start to spin independently
on their hinges. Native Companion is a blur of
color inside her cage, but the operator and colleague (whose jeans have worked down his hips
to the point where the top of his butt crack is
clearly visible) watch studiously as her spinning
cage and the clanking empty cages circle the
ellipse approximately once a second. I have a
particular longstanding fear of things that spin
independently inside a larger spin. I can barely
even watch this. The Zipper is the color of unbrushed teeth, with big scabs of rust. The operator and colleague sit on a little steel bench
before a panel full of black-knobbed levers. Do
testicles themselves sweat? Theyre supposed
to be very temperature sensitive. The colleague
spits Skoal into a can he holds and tells the operator, Well, then take her to eight then, you
pussy. The Zipper begins to whine and the
thing to spin so fast that a detached car would
surely be hurled into orbit. The colleague has
a small American flag folded into a bandanna
around his head. The empty cages shudder and
clank as they whirl, spinning independently.
One long scream, wobbled by Doppler, is
coming from Native Cs cage, which is going
around and around on its hinges while a shape
inside tumbles like stuff in a dryer. My particular neurological makeup (extremely sensitive: carsick, airsick, heightsick; my sister likes
to say Im lifesick) makes even just watching
this an act of enormous personal courage. The
scream goes on and on. Then the operator stops
the ride abruptly with Native Cs car at the top,
so shes hanging upside down inside the cage.
I call up, Is she okay, but the response is just
high-pitched noises. I see the two carnies gazing upward very intently, shading their eyes.
The operators stroking his mustache contemplatively. The cages inversion has made Native
75
still got her chewing gum in, for Gods sake. She
turns to the carnies: You sons bitches that was
fucking great. Assholes. The colleague is half
draped over the operator; theyre roaring with
laughter. Native Companion has her hands on
her hips sternly, but shes grinning. Am I the
only one who was in touch with the manifestly
overt sexual-harassment element in this whole
episode? She takes the steel stairs down three
at a time and starts up the hillside toward the
food booths. There is no sanctioned path up the
incredibly steep hill on the Hollows western
side. Behind us the operator calls out, They
dont call me King of The Zipper for nuthin,
76
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
The faltfhaker fhall be replenifhed inftantly, replied the waiter, with a superior
gleam in his eyes.
I smiled and my companion unbent a little.
Lets try for hard ones, he invited.
Fure, I said.
Farcafm, he said.
Fubftance.
Fubfiftence, he scored.
Fcythe.
Ss inside now, he ruled.
Perfuafive, I said instantly.
Languifh.
Bafilifk.
Quiefcent.
Nonfenfe, I finished. Fon of a fpeckled
fea monfter.
Ftepfon of a poifonous fnake! he cried.
You dont fay fo! I retorted.
I do fo fay fo! he replied, getting up and
leaving the diner.
Fool! I called after him, fniffling.
Frances Warfield, Fpafm. Warfield contributed
light pieces like this one to The New Yorker in
the 1920s and into the 1930s, when she began to
experience hearing loss. About people whose lips
it was hard to read, she wrote, The deadpans,
the mealymouths, the shybirds, I called them. The
people who mumble; the people who race; the people
who fidget, cover their mouths, turn their backs
The men with mustaches. I wanted to murder the
men with mustaches. After two operations, she
regained her hearing in the 1940s and published
her memoir, Keep Listening.
77
c. 1225:
France
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
79
1981:
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
81
1895:
London
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Steve Martin, Beverly Hills, 1981, edition 5/40 (silver dye-bleach photograph), by Annie Leibovitz.
Lady Bracknell: Both?That seems like carelessness. Who was your father? He was evidently a man of some wealth. Was he born
in what the radical papers call the purple of
commerce, or did he rise from the ranks of the
aristocracy?
84
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
my parents seem to have lost meI dont actually know who I am by birth. I wasWell,
I was found.
Lady Bracknell: Found!
Jack: The late Mr. Thomas Cardew, an old
gentleman of a very charitable and kindly
disposition, found me, and gave me the name
of Worthing, because he happened to have a
first-class ticket for Worthing in his pocket at
the time. Worthing is a place in Sussex. It is a
seaside resort.
Lady Bracknell: Where did the charitable gentleman who had a first-class ticket for this seaside resort find you?
Jack: [gravely] In a handbag.
Lady Bracknell: A handbag?
Jack: [very seriously] Yes, Lady Bracknell. I was
in a handbaga somewhat large, black leather
handbag, with handles to itan ordinary handbag, in fact.
Lady Bracknell: In what locality did this Mr.
James, or Thomas, Cardew come across this ordinary handbag?
Jack: In the cloakroom at Victoria Station. It
was given to him in mistake for his own.
Lady Bracknell: The cloakroom at Victoria
Station?
Jack: Yes. The Brighton line.
Lady Bracknell: The line is immaterial. Mr.
Worthing, I confess I feel somewhat bewildered by what you have just told me. To be
born, or at any rate bred, in a handbag, whether
it had handles or not, seems to me to display a
contempt for the ordinary decencies of family
life that remind one of the worst excesses of the
French Revolution. And I presume you know
85
86
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Voices in Time
Observational
2005:
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1532: Lyon
on the fundamentals
About the end of Gargantuas fifth year, Grandgousier visited his son, and he was filled with joy,
as such a father would be at the sight of such
a child. While he kissed and embraced him, he
asked the boy various childish questions of one
kind and another, and he drank quite a bit, too,
with him and his governesses, of whom he most
earnestly inquired whether they had kept him
sweet and clean. To this Gargantua answered
that he had taken these precautions himself and
that there was not a cleaner boy in all the land.
Howd you do that? asked Grandgousier.
By long and curious experiments, replied
Gargantua. I have invented a method of wiping
my ass which is the most lordly, the most excellent,
and the most convenient that ever was seen.
Whats that? asked Grandgousier.
I shall tell you in a moment, said Gargantua. Once I wiped myself on a ladys velvet
mask, and I found it good. For the softness of
the silk was most voluptuous to my fundament.
Another time on a ladys neckerchief, another
time on some earflaps of crimson satin. But
there were a lot of turdy gilt spangles on them,
and they took all the skin off my bottom. May
St. Anthonys Fire burn the bum gut of the
goldsmith who made them and of the lady who
wore them! That trouble passed when I wiped
myself on a pages bonnet, all feathered in the
Swiss fashion.
Then, as I was shitting behind a bush, I
found a March-born cat; I wiped myself on him,
but his claws exulcerated my whole perineum. I
healed myself of that next day by wiping myself
on my mothers gloves, which were well scented
with perfumes. Then I wiped myself with sage,
fennel, anise, marjoram, roses, gourd leaves,
cabbage, beets, vine shoots, marsh mallow,
mulleinwhich is red as your bumlettuces,
and spinach leaves. Then with dogs mercury,
persicaria, nettles, and comfrey. But that gave
me the bloody flux of Lombardy, from which I
was cured by wiping myself with my codpiece.
c. 975: England
double entendre
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1959:
Los Angeles
was inventive, he would gradually discard the stolen jokes and the ones that died and try out some
of his own. In time, if he was any good, he would
emerge from the routine character he had started
with and evolve into a distinct personality of his
own. This has been my experience and also that
of my brothers, and I believe this has been true of
most of the other comedians.
My guess is that there arent a hundred
top-flight professional comedians, male and
female, in the whole world. They are a much
rarer and far more valuable commodity than all
the gold and precious stones in the world. But
because we are laughed at, I dont think people
really understand how essential we are to their
sanity. If it werent for the brief respite we give
the world with our foolishness, the world would
see mass suicide in numbers that compare favorably with the death rate of the lemmings.
Im sure most of you have heard the story of
the man who, desperately ill, goes to an analyst
and tells the doctor that he has lost his desire to
live and that he is seriously considering suicide.
The doctor listens to this tale of melancholia
and then tells the patient that what he needs
is a good belly-laugh. He advises the unhappy
man to go to the circus that night and spend the
Toba-e: Fukubiki subject, by Keisai Eisen, c. 1810.
91
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
c. 1000:
Kyoto
points of interest
Things later regrettedAn adopted child who
turns out to have an ugly face.
Things people despiseA crumbling earth
wall. People who have a reputation for being
exceptionally good-natured.
Infuriating thingsThinking of one or
two changes in the wording after youve sent a
message to someone, or written and sent off a
reply to someones message. Having hurriedly
sewn something, youre rather pleased with
how nicely youve done itbut then when you
come to pull out the needle, you find that you
forgot to knot the thread when you began. Its
also infuriating to discover youve sewn something inside out.
Things its frustrating and embarrassing to
witnessSomeone insists on telling you about
some horrid little child, carried away with her
own infatuation with the creature, imitating its
voice as she gushes about the cute and winning
things it says. Witnessing the servingmen in
the place youre visiting overnight being playful
and silly.
Deeply irritating thingsRain on the day
when youre to go out for some special event or
a temple pilgrimage. Someone you dont particularly care for who jumps to ridiculous conclusions and gets upset about nothing, and generally
behaves with irritating self-importance.
Miserable-looking thingsA poorly dressed
woman of the lower classes with a baby strapped
to her back on a very cold or very hot day.
Awkward and pointless thingsA large
ship left beached by the tide. A great tree thats
blown over in the wind and lies there on its side
with its roots in the air. An inconsequential little man strutting about scolding a retainer.
Awkward and embarrassing thingsGoing
confidently out to greet a visitor on the assumption that its for you, when hes in fact called
to see a different person. Its even worse when
hes brought along a gift as well. You happen to
say something rude about someone, and a child
93
1896:
London
1. No ducks waltz;
2. No officers ever decline to waltz;
3. All my poultry are ducks.
Answer: My poultry are not officers.
94
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
95
c. 300:
Greece
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1995:
By order of
Outlawed
Penalty
c. 600 bc:
Athens
Athenian constitution,
as revised by Solon
c. 450 bc:
Rome
Singing or composing a
slanderous or offensive song
Death
213 bc:
Qin
Li Si, chancellor
to Shihuangdi
c. 650:
France
1189:
Chinon
c. 1644:
England
Commonwealth Parliament
Christmas celebrations
1926:
New York City
1939:
Germany
Joseph Goebbels,
minister of propaganda
c. 1976:
Albania
Labor camps
c. 2003:
Turkmenistan
President Saparmurat
Niyazov
Imprisonment, potential
torture
97
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1860:
London
roots of laughter
Why do we smile when a child puts on a mans
hat? What induces us to laugh on reading that
the corpulent Edward Gibbon was unable to
rise from his knees after making a tender declaration? The usual reply to such questions is that
laughter results from a perception of incongruity. Even were there not on this reply the obvious
criticism that laughter often occurs from extreme
pleasure or from mere vivacity, there would still
remain the real problemhow comes a sense of
the incongruous to be followed by these peculiar
bodily actions? Some have alleged that laughter
is due to the pleasure of a relative self-elevation,
which we feel on seeing the humiliation of others. But this theory, whatever portion of truth
it may contain, is, in the first place, open to the
fatal objectionthat there are various humiliations to others which produce in us anything
but laughter, and in the second place, it does not
apply to the many instances in which no ones
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1923:
101
1688: France
character study
102
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Shocking.
Positively shocking.
Sean Connery, Goldfinger (1964)
Inspector Callahan interrupts a robbery,
tells criminal We wont allow him to get
away, and is asked, Whos we?
Kevin Costner,
The Untouchables (1987)
Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Welcome to earth.
Stick around.
105
c. 330 bc:
Athens
categorical imperatives
As the objects of imitation are the actions of
men, and these men of necessity are either
good or bad (for on this does character principally depend, the manners being in men most
strongly marked by virtue and vice), it follows
that we can only represent men either as better than they actually are, or worse, or exactly
as they arejust as, in painting, the pictures of
Polygnotus were above the common level of
nature, those of Pauson below it, those of Dionysius, faithful likenesses.
Now it is evident that each of the imitations mentioned above will admit of these
differences, and become a different kind of
imitation, as it imitates objects that differ in
106
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
this respect. This may be the case with dancing, with the music of the flute and of the
lyre, and also with the poetry which employs
wordsor verse only, without melody or
rhythm. Thus, Homer has drawn men superior to what they are; Cleophon, as they
are; Hegemon the Thasian, the inventor of
parodies, and Nicochares, the author of the
Deliad, worse than they are.
Tragedy also, and comedy, are distinguished
in the same manner, the aim of comedy being
to exhibit men worse than we find them; that
of tragedy, better.
Poetry, following the different characters
of its authors, naturally divided itself into two
different kinds. They who were of a grave and
lofty spirit chose for their imitation the actions and the adventures of elevated characters:
while poets of a lighter turn represented those
107
1791:
Steventon
briefly noted
The history of England from the reign of Henry
IV to the death of Charles I by a partial, prejudiced, and ignorant historian. N.B. There will be
very few dates in this history.
Henry IV
Henry IV ascended the throne of England
much to his own satisfaction in the year 1399
after having prevailed on his cousin and predecessor, Richard II, to resign it to him and to
retire for the rest of his life to Pomfret Castle,
where he happened to be murdered. It is to be
supposed that Henry was married, since he had
Young Boy Wearing a Feathered Hat Laughing While Pointing at Something with His Right Hand (detail),
by Bartolom Esteban Murillo, c. 1670.
108
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Edward IV
This monarch was famous only for his beauty
and his courage, of which his portrait and his
undaunted behavior in marrying one woman
while he was engaged to another are sufficient
proofs. His wife was Elizabeth Woodville, a
widow whopoor woman!was afterward
confined in a convent by that monster of iniquity and avarice Henry VII. One of Edwards
mistresses was Jane Shore, who has had a play
written about her, but it is a tragedy and therefore not worth reading. Having performed all
these noble actions, His Majesty died and was
succeeded by his son.
Edward V
This unfortunate prince lived so little that nobody had him to draw his picture. He was murdered by his uncles contrivance, whose name
was Richard III.
Richard III
The character of this prince has been in general
very severely treated by historians, but as he was a
York, I am rather inclined to suppose him a very
respectable man. It has indeed been confidently
asserted that he killed his two nephews and his
wife, but it has also been declared that he did not
kill his two nephews, which I am inclined to believe trueand if this is the case, it may also be
affirmed that he did not kill his wife. Whether
innocent or guilty, he did not reign long in peace,
for Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, as great a
villain as ever lived, made a great fuss about getting the crown, and having killed the king at the
Battle of Bosworth, he succeeded to it.
Jane Austen, from The History of England from
the Reign of Henry IV to the Death of Charles I.
Austen composed this parody of Oliver Goldsmiths
history of England at the age of fifteen; she filled a
family copy of his work with marginalia, which often
expressed royalist sympathies. Oliver Cromwell was
a detestable monster, and, adjacent to a statement
that he inherited a very small paternal fortune,
she noted, and that was more than he deserved. In
a five-year period in the 1810s, Austen published
Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice,
Mansfield Park, and Emma.
109
1921:
Baltimore
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark
abysm (I was about to write abscess!) of pish, and
crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh.
It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It
is balder and dash.
But I grow lyrical. More scientifically, what
is the matter with it? Why does it seem so flabby,
so banal, so confused and childish, so stupidly
at war with sense? If you had first read the inaugural address and then heard it intoned, as I
did (at least in part), then you will perhaps arrive
at an answer. That answer is very simple. When
Dr. Harding prepares a speech he does not think
of it in terms of an educated reader locked up
in jail, but in terms of a great horde of stoneheads gathered around a stand. That is to say, the
thing is always a stump speech; it is conceived as
a stump speech and written as a stump speech.
More, it is a stump speech addressed to the sort
of audience that the speaker has been used to
all of his life, to wit, an audience of small-town
yokels, of low political serfs, or morons scarcely
able to understand a word of more than two syllables, and wholly unable to pursue a logical idea
for more than two centimeters.
Such imbeciles do not want ideasthat is,
new ideas, ideas that are unfamiliar, ideas that
challenge their attention. What they want is
simply a gaudy series of platitudes, of sonorous
nonsense driven home with gestures. As I say,
they cant understand many words of more than
two syllables, but that is not saying that they
do not esteem such words. On the contrary,
they like them and demand them. The roll of
incomprehensible polysyllables enchants them.
They like phrases which thunder like salvos of
artillery. Let that thunder sound, and they take
all the rest on trust. If a sentence begins furiously and then peters out into fatuity, they are
still satisfied. If a phrase has a punch in it, they
do not ask that it also have a meaning. If a word
slips off the tongue like a ship going down the
ways, they are content and applaud it and wait
for the next.
Brought up amid such hinds, trained by
long practice to engage and delight them, Dr.
Harding carries his stump manner into everything he writes. He is, perhaps, too old to learn
a better way. He is, more likely, too discreet to
experiment. The stump speech, put into cold
type, maketh the judicious to grieve. But roared
from an actual stump, with arms flying and eyes
flashing and the old flag overhead, it is certainly and brilliantly effective. Read the inaugural address, and it will gag you. But hear it
recited through a sound magnifier, with grand
gestures to ram home its periods, and you will
begin to understand it.
Let us turn to a specific example. I exhume a sentence from the latter half of the
eminent orators discourse: I would like government to do all it can to mitigate, then, in
understanding, in mutuality of interest, in
concern for the common good, our tasks will
be solved. I assume that you have read it. I
also assume that you set it down as idiotica
series of words without sense. You are quite
right; it is. But now imagine it intoned as it
111
Allegory of comedy, justice, and truth, Pompeian-style fresco, by Giuseppe Borsato, c. 1837.
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1974:
Los Angeles
timing is everything
I was appearing on The Tonight Show, but because Johnny Carson hadnt liked me the first
time I had been on with him, I was only getting
booked with a guest host, doing material that
I was developing on the road. Then I got a surprise note from the shows booker, Bob Shayne:
We had a meeting with Johnny yesterday, told
him youd been a smash twice with guest hosts,
and he agrees you should be back on with him.
So I think that hurdle is over. In September I
was booked on the show with Johnny.
This was welcome news. Johnny had comic
savvy. The daytime television hosts, with the
exception of Steve Allen, did not come from
comedy. I had a small routine (suggested by my
writer friend Michael Elias) that went like this:
I just bought a new car. Its a prestige car. A
65 Greyhound bus. You know you can get up to
thirty tons of luggage in one of those babies? I
put a lot of money into itI put a new dog on
the side. And if I said to a girl, Do you want to
get in the backseat? I had, like, forty chances.
Etc. Not great, but at the time it was working. It
did, however, require all the pauses and nuance
that I could muster. On The Merv Griffin Show
I decided to use it for panel, meaning I would
sit with Merv and pretend it was just chat. I began, I just bought a new car. A 65 Greyhound
bus. Merv, friendly as ever, interrupted and said,
Now, why on earth would you buy a Greyhound
bus? I had no prepared answer; I just stared at
him. I thought, Oh my God, because its a comedy routine. And the bit was dead. Johnny, on
the other hand, was the comedians friend. He
waited; he gave you your timing. He lay back
and stepped in like Ali, not to knock you out but
to set you up. He struggled with you, too, and
sometimes saved you.
I was able to maintain a personal relationship with Johnny over the next thirty years, at
least as personal as he or I could make it, and I
was flattered that he came to respect my comedy. On one of my appearances, after he had
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1856:
London
a german comedy is
like a german sentence
Wit is an electric shock which takes us by violence
quite independently of our predominant mental
disposition, but humor approaches us more deliberately and leaves us masters of ourselves. Hence
it is that while coarse and cruel humor has almost
disappeared from contemporary literature, coarse
and cruel wit abounds. Even refined men cannot
help laughing at a coarse bon mot or a lacerating personality if the shock of the witticism is a
powerful one; while mere fun will have no power
over them if it jars on their moral taste. Hence,
too, it is that, while wit is perennial, humor is liable to become superannuated.
As is usual with definitions and classifications, however, this distinction between wit and
humor does not exactly represent the actual fact.
Like all other species, wit and humor overlap
and blend with each other. There are bon mots,
like many of Charles Lambs [Eafield, page 71],
which are a sort of facetious hybrids; we hardly
know whether to call them witty or humorous.
There are rather lengthy descriptions or narratives which, like Voltaires Micromgas, would
be humorous if they were not so sparkling and
antithetic, so pregnant with suggestion and satire
that we are obliged to call them witty. We rarely
find wit untempered by humor, or humor without a spice of wit, and sometimes we find them
both united in the highest degree in the same
mind, as in Shakespeare [Padua, page 194] and
Molire [Paris, page 27]. A happy conjunction
this, for wit is apt to be cold and thin-lipped and
Mephistophelean in men who have no relish for
humor, whose lungs do never crow at fun and
drollery; and broad-faced rollicking humor needs
the refining influence of wit. Indeed, it may be
said that there is no really fine writing in which
wit has not an implicit, if not an explicit, action.
The wit may never rise to the surface, it may never flame out into a witticismbut it helps to give
brightness and transparency, it warns off from
flights and exaggerations which verge on the
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1985:
Blacksmith
warmup act
Silence in the halls, shadows on the sloping
lawn. We closed the door and disrobed. The
bed was a mess. Magazines, curtain rods, a
childs sooty sock. Babette hummed something
from a Broadway show, putting the rods in a
corner. We embraced, fell sideways to the bed
in a controlled way, then repositioned ourselves,
bathing in each others flesh, trying to kick the
sheets off our ankles. Her body had a number
of long hollows, places the hand might stop to
solve in the dark, tempo-slowing places.
What do you want to do? she said.
Whatever you want to do.
I want to do whatevers best for you.
Whats best for me is to please you, I said.
I want to make you happy, Jack.
Sign hanging at the shop of a coffin maker, Bombay, 1988. Photograph by Steve McCurry.
117
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1748:
Bath
119
1940:
Ireland
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Your talk, I said, is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do
I understand.
Did you never study atomics when you
were a lad? asked the sergeant, giving me a
look of great inquiry and surprise.
No, I answered.
That is a very serious defalcation, he
said, but all the same I will tell you the size of
it. Everything is composed of small particles of
itself, and they are flying around in concentric
circles and arcs and segments and innumerable other geometrical figures too numerous
to mention collectively, never standing still or
resting but spinning away and darting hither
and thither and back again, all the time on the
go. These diminutive gentlemen are called atoms. Do you follow me intelligently?
Yes.
They are lively as twenty leprechauns doing a jig on top of a tombstone.
Now take a sheep, the sergeant said.
What is a sheep, only millions of little bits of
sheepness whirling around and doing intricate
convolutions inside the sheep? What else is it
but that?
That would be bound to make the beast
dizzy, I observed, especially if the whirling
was going on inside the head as well.
The sergeant gave me a look which I am sure
he himself would describe as one of non-possum
[I cant] and noli-me-tangere [dont touch me].
That remark is what may well be called
buncombe, he said sharply, because the nerve
strings and the sheeps head itself are whirling
into the same bargain, and you can cancel out
one whirl against the other, and there you are
like simplifying a division sum when you have
fives above and below the bar.
To say the truth, I did not think of that,
I said.
Atomics is a very intricate theorem and
can be worked out with algebra, but you would
want to take it by degrees, because you might
spend the whole night proving a bit of it with
rulers and cosines and similar other instruments
and then at the windup not believe what you
c. 1576: Aquitaine
not as wretched as we
are worthless
Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first, finding the condition of man vain and ridiculous, never went
out in public but with a mocking and laughing face; whereas Heraclitus, having pity and
compassion on this same condition of ours,
wore a face perpetually sad, and eyes filled
with tears, One always, when he over his
threshold stepped, / Laughed at the world;
the other always wept ( Juvenal).
I prefer the first humor, not because it is
pleasanter to laugh than to weep, but because
it is more disdainful, and condemns us more
than the other. And it seems to me that we
can never be despised as much as we deserve.
Pity and commiseration are mingled with
some esteem for the thing we pity; the things
we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not
think there is as much unhappiness in us as
vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We
are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not
as wretched as we are worthless.
Thus Diogenes, who pottered about by
himself, considering us as flies or bags of
wind, was really a sharper and more stinging judge, and consequently juster, to my
taste, than Timon, who was surnamed the
hater of men. For what we hate we take
seriously. Timon wished us ill, passionately
desired our ruin, shunned association with
us as dangerous, as with wicked men depraved by nature.
Diogenes esteemed us so little that contact with us could neither disturb him nor
affect him, and he avoided our company,
not through fear of association with us, but
through disdain of it; he considered us incapable of doing either good or evil.
Our own peculiar condition is that we are
as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh.
Michel de Montaigne, from On Democritus
and Heraclitus. At the age of thirty-seven in 1570,
Montaigne sold his seat in the Bordeaux parliament,
and around two years later, working in the tower of
his chateau, began composing essays. He published the
first of three books in 1580 with a prefatory To the
Reader that included the observation, I am myself
the matter of my book; you would be unreasonable
to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a
subject. Montaigne elsewhere wrote, Man is quite
insane. He wouldnt know how to create a maggot
and he creates gods by the dozen.
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L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Old Woman Studying the Alphabet with a Laughing Girl, by Sofonisba Anguissola, c. 1555.
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
hurry. Her bicycle was gone, but here was Gilhaneys, leaning there conveniently and trying
to look very small and comfortable and attractive. Need I inform you what the result was or
what happened?
You need not, I said.
Well, there you are. Gilhaney has a day
out with the ladys bicycle and vice versa contrarily, and it is quite clear that the lady in
the case had a high numberthirty-five or
forty, I would say, in spite of the newness of
the bicycle. Many a gray hair it has put into
my head, trying to regulate the people of this
parish. If you let it go too far, it would be the
end of everything. You would have bicycles
wanting votes, and they would get seats on the
county council and make the roads far worse
than they are for their own ulterior motivation. But against that and on the other hand,
a good bicycle is a great companion, there is a
great charm about it.
How would you know a man has a lot of
bicycle in his veins?
If his number is over fifty, you can tell
it unmistakable from his walk. He will walk
smartly always and never sit down, and he will
lean against the wall with his elbow out and
stay like that all night in his kitchen instead of
going to bed. If he walks too slowly or stops in
the middle of the road, he will fall down in a
heap and will have to be lifted and set in motion again by some extraneous party. This is the
unfortunate state that the postman has cycled
himself into, and I do not think he will ever
cycle himself out of it.
I do not think I will ever ride a bicycle,
I said.
From The Third Policeman. Born Brian
Nuallin in Ireland in 1911, the author published
his novelsamong them At Swim-Two-Birds
and The Hard Lifeusing the pseudonym Flann
OBrien and his newspaper column for the Irish
Times, which ran for twenty-six years, using the
pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen. He also served
in the Irish civil service from 1935 to 1953.
OBrien died of a heart attack in 1966. The Third
Policeman, the novel he had completed in 1940 but
could not get published, appeared posthumously.
c. 205 bc:
Rome
Don Rickles
To actor Cliff Robinson: Youre a fantastic actor,
Cliff. Youve told me that many, many times.
Totie Fields
Im so tired of being everyones buddy. Just once to
read in a newspaper, Totie Fields raped in an alley.
Van Harris
My youngest son: hes named after my
grandfather. We have a son named Grandpa.
Traditional
The food here stinks, and the portions are so small.
Red Buttons
On George Burns: A man who is old enough to
be his own father.
Joan Rivers
I was the last girl in Larchmont, New York, to
get married. My mother had a sign up:
last girl before freeway.
Jackie Mason
I have a girlfriend. To me she is the most
remarkable, the most wonderful person in the
world. Thats to me. But to my wife?
Woody Allen
My grandfather was a very insignificant man. At
his funeral, his hearse followed the other cars.
125
Postcard from Pablo Picassos private collection, depicting a female matador and a bull in the shape of a phallus.
126
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
127
1996:
Washington, DC
making distinctions
We got a lot of racism going on in the world
right now. Whos more racist, black people or
white people?
Black people. You know why, because we
hate black people too. Everything white people
dont like about black people, black people really dont like about black people. Theres some
shit going on with black people right now. Its
like the Civil War going on with black people,
and theres two sides. Theres black people, and
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
129
1927:
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1947: Washington, DC
new hires
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Titania Awakes, Surrounded by Attendant Fairies, Clinging Rapturously to Bottom, Still Wearing the Asss Head (detail),
by Henry Fuseli, c. 1793.
133
134
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Voices in Time
confrontational
2000:
The Magic Ring, by Maxfield Parrish, illustration from Dream Days, by Kenneth Grahame, 1902.
135
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Scene from The Possessed Girl, by Menander, mosaic in Villa of Cicero, Pompeii, by Dioskourides of Samos, c. 100 bc.
137
138
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
was Youngman saying, My wife and I had an argument. She wanted a new fur coat, and I wanted to buy a car. So we compromised. We bought
the coat and hung it in the garage. I thought of
Burry thensome sixty years after our sidewalk
conclaveand wondered whether even he could
have resisted giving that one at least a grin.
A couple of weeks after the interview was
published, I received a cutting from Daily Variety, a half-page ad, signed Henny Youngman,
which quoted my praise of him and ended,
Thank you, Arthur Miller. I promise never
to play Willy Loman. He died not long after,
in his nineties. Ive never known when Burry
139
Towards the Corner, by Juan Muoz, 1998. Wood, resin, paint, and metal.
c. 1870:
Boston
schadenfreude
I began as a lecturer in 1866, in California and
Nevada; in 1867 lectured in New York and in
the Mississippi River valley a few times; in
1868 made the whole western circuit; and in
the two or three following seasons added the
eastern circuit to my route. We had to bring
out a new lecture every season now and explode it in the Star CourseBoston, for a
first verdict, before an audience of 2,500 in the
old Music Hall; for it was by that verdict that
all the lyceums in the country determined the
lectures commercial value. The campaign did
not really begin in Boston, but in the towns
around; we did not appear in Boston until we
had rehearsed about a month in those towns
140
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
141
1764:
Ferney
a history of revisions
All councils are undoubtedly infalliblefor
they are composed of men. It is impossible for
passions, intrigues, the lust for dispute, hatred,
jealousy, prejudice, ignorance ever to reign in
these assemblies.
But why, it will be asked, have so many
councils contradicted each other? It is to try
our faith. Each was in the right in its turn.
Roman Catholics now believe only in
councils approved by the Vatican, and the
Greek Catholics believe only in those approved
in Constantinople. Protestants deride them
both. Thus everybody should be satisfied.
Even in laughter the heart is sad, and the end
of joy is grief.
Book of Proverbs, c. 50
I shall refer here only to the great councils;
the small ones are not worth the trouble.
The first one was that of Nicaea. It was assembled in 325 of the common era, after Constantine had written and sent by the hand of
Ozius this noble letter to the rather confused
clergy of Alexandria: You are quarreling about
something very trivial. These subtleties are unworthy of sensible people. The thing was to determine whether Jesus was created or uncreated.
This has nothing to do with morality, which is
the essential point. Whether Jesus was in time
or before time, we must nonetheless be good.
After many altercations it was finally decided
that the son was as old as the father, and consubstantial with the father. This decision is hardly
comprehensible, but it is all the more sublime
on that account. Seventeen bishops protested
against the decree, and an ancient chronicle of
Alexandria, preserved at Oxford, says that two
thousand priests also protested; but prelates pay
little attention to simple priests, who are usually
poor. Be that as it may, there was no question
whatever of the Trinity in this first council. The
formula reads, We believe Jesus consubstan142
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
The French and Italian Comic Actors of the Past Sixty Years and More, attributed to Verrio, 1670.
143
c. 1255:
Baghdad
subject of ridicule
You must know that one of my brothers is
called the Babbler, and he is semiparalyzed.
One day when he was walking along on some
errand of his, he met an old woman who asked
him to stop for a moment so that she could
propose something to him, adding, And if
you like the sound of it, then do it for me,
with Gods guidance. He stopped, and she
went on: I shall tell you of something and
guide you to it, but you must not question me
too much. Tell me, said my brother, and she
asked, What do you say to a beautiful house
with a pleasant garden, flowing streams, fruit,
wine, a beautiful face, and someone to embrace you from evening until morning? If you
do what I shall suggest to you, you will find
something to please you.
When my brother heard this, he said, My
lady, how is it that you have singled me out
Body Talk
1560:
Clicket gate
c. 1300: Buttocks
c. 1300: Pintle
1398: Semen
1290: Seed
1440: Fist
1405: Let flee
c. 1300: Swiving
1450: Kind
c. 1350: Pillicock
1297: Fundament
144
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Buttocks
1552:
To break
wind
1500
1480: Melling
1400
1325: Cunt
1300
1200
1250: Fart
1480: Semence
1390: Nature
1568:
Fucking
1541:
Virile member
1475: Rump
c. 1555:
Prick
1483: Copulation
1549:
Let a scape
1553:
Tool
1544:
Occupying
1653: Crack
1897: Roar
1772: Shagging
1700
1600
1623: Crepitate
1794: Bottom
1955: Kootch
1927: Poontang
1927: Beaver
1800
1708: Frigging
1891: Dick
1900
1594: Foist
1967: Scum
2014
1578: Penis
1602: Mawkin
1618: Cock
1682: Vagina
1675: Bumfiddle
1594: Crupper
1640: Manhood
1635: Natures treasury
1627: (To play at) Hot cockles
1930: Nookie
1823: Ultimatum
1935: Bim
1930: Ass
1904: Snatch
1899: Jism
145
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
147
1905:
Vienna
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
149
Only when we rise into more cultivated society do we find the addition of the formal requirements for jokes. The bawdry becomes witty,
and is tolerated only if it is witty. The technical
device it uses most is allusion, i.e. replacement
by something small, something remotely related
that the listener can reconstruct in his imagination into a full and plain obscenity. The greater
the disproportion between what is given directly
in the joke and what it has necessarily aroused in
the listener, the subtler the joke, and the higher
it may dare enter into good society. Apart from
allusion, coarse or subtle, the bawdy joke has all
the other devices of verbal and intellectual jokes
at its disposal.
All comedies are ended by a marriage.
Lord Byron, c. 1821
Here at last we can understand what a joke
can do for its tendency. It makes the satisfaction of a drive possible (be it lustful or hostile)
in the face of an obstacle in its way; it circumvents this obstacle and in doing so draws pleasure from a source that the obstacle had made
inaccessible. The obstacle in the way is actually
nothing other than womans increased inability,
in conformity with a higher cultural and social
level, to tolerate sexual matters undisguised.
The woman thought of as being present in the
original situation is simply kept on as if she
were there or, even in her absence, her influence continues to have the effect of making the
men abashed. One may observe how men of a
higher social level are prompted by the presence of girls of a lower class to let their bawdy
jokes revert to simple bawdy talk.
The power that makes it difficult or impossible for women, and to a lesser extent men, too,
to enjoy undisguised obscenity we call repression,
and we recognize in it the same psychical process which in cases of serious psychological illness keeps entire complexes of impulses as well
as their issue far from consciousness, and which
has turned out to be one of the main causal factors in what are called the psychoneuroses. We
150
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Name Calling
Dorothy Parker on Katharine Hepburn
She ran the whole gamut of emotion from A to B.
Oscar Wilde on Alexander Pope
There are two ways of disliking poetry,
one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.
151
2002:
Somers, NY
152
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1963:
Los Angeles
Portrait of the Artist with the Features of a Mocker (detail), by Joseph Ducreux, c. 1793.
153
boundaries of the editorial outlook of his particular publication, so that he will be given the
wherewithal to make the payment on his MG.
Therefore this writer prostitutes his integrity
by asking questions, the answers to which he
already has, much like a cook who follows a
recipe and mixes the ingredients properly.
Concomitant with the sick comic label is the
carbon cry, What happened to the healthy comedian who just got up there and showed everybody a good time and didnt preach, didnt have
to resort to knocking religion, mocking physical
handicaps and telling dirty toilet jokes?
Yes, what did happen to the wholesome
trauma of the 1930s and 1940sthe honeymoon jokes, concerned not only with what they
did but also with how many times they did it;
the distorted wedding-night tales, supported
visually by the trite vacationland postcards of
an elephant with his trunk searching through
the opening of a pup tent, and a womans
head straining out the other end, hysterically
The Storyteller, by Eugenio Zampighi, c. 1900.
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L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
That night I go to my hotelIm staying at the local show-business hotel; the other
show people consist of two people, the guy who
runs the movie projector and another guy who
sells Capezio shoesand I read a little, write a
little. I finally get to sleep about seven oclock
in the morning.
The phone rings at nine oclock.
Hello, hello, hello, this is the Sheckners
the people from last night. We didnt wake you
up, did we?
No, I always get up at nine in the morning. I like to get up about ten hours before work
so I can brush my teeth and get some coffee.
Its good you got me up. I probably would have
overslept otherwise.
Listen, why we called youwe want to
find out what you want to eat.
Oh, anything. Im not a fussy eater, really.
I went over there that night, and I do eat anythinganything but what they had. Liver. And
Brussels sprouts. Thats really a double threat.
And the conversation was on the level of,
Is it true about Liberace?
Thats all I have to hear, then I really start
to lay it on them: Oh, yeah, theyre all queer
out there in Hollywood. All of them. Rin Tin
Tins a junkie.
Then they take you on a tour around the
house. They bring you into the bedroom with
the dumb dolls on the bed. And what the hell
can you tell people when they walk you around
in their house? Yes, thats a very lovely closet,
thats nice the way the towels are folded. They
have a piano, with the big lace doily on top, and
the bowl of wax fruit. The main function of
these pianos is to hold an eight-by-ten picture
of the son in the army, saluting. Thats Morty;
he lost a lot of weight.
The trouble is, in these townsMilwaukee;
Lima, Ohiotheres nothing else to do, except
look at stars. In the daytime, you go to the park
to see the cannon, and youve had it.
One other thingyou can hang out at
the Socony Gas Station between shows and
get gravel in your shoes. Those night attendants really swing.
Buster Keaton, film still from The Cameraman, directed by Edward Sedgwick, 1928.
1974: London
toning it down
Dear Mike,
The censors representative, Tony Kerpel,
came along to Fridays screening at Twickenham, and he gave us his opinion of the films
probable certificate.
He thinks the film will be AA, but it
would be possible, given some dialog cuts, to
make the film an A rating, which would increase the audience. (AA is 14 and over, and
A is 514.)
For an A we would have to:
Lose as many shits as possible
Take Jesus Christ out, if possible
Lose I fart in your general direction
Lose the oral sex
Lose oh, fuck off
Lose We make castanets out of your
testicles.
I would like to get back to the Censor
and agree to lose the shits, take the odd Jesus Christ out, and lose Oh, fuck off, but to
retain fart in your general direction, castanets of your testicles, and oral sex, and ask
him for an A rating on that basis.
Please let me know as soon as possible
your attitude to this.
Yours sincerely,
Mark Forstater, a letter to Michael White, a
fellow producer of Monty Python and the Holy
Grail. Forstater wrote this letter a few days after
a representative from the British Board of Film
Censors had seen a preview screening of the comedy
groups second feature film. I fart in your general
direction, mentions of Jesus, two of the shits, oral
sex, and the castanet-testicle line all stayed in the
picture, released in 1975, eight months after this
missive was written.
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c. 105:
Rome
159
160
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Honestys praised, but honest men freeze. Wealth springs from crime:
Landscape gardens, palaces, furniture, antique silver
Those cups embossed with prancing goatsall, all are tainted.
Who can sleep easy today? If your greedy daughter-in-law
Is not being seduced for cash, itll be your bride: mere schoolboys
Are adulterers now. Though talent be wanting, yet
Indignation will drive me to verse, such as Ior any scribbler
May still command. All human endeavors, mens prayers,
Fears, angers, pleasures, joys, and pursuits, these make
The mixed mash of my verse.
Juvenal, from Satires. The origins of what the Romans called satura were debated
in the ancient world and have not been agreed upon since. The first-century
rhetorician Quintilian claimed that the form was wholly Roman, suggesting
it began with second-century-bc writers like Lucilius, while Horace, who wrote
his own satires in the first century bc, posited that Lucilius was entirely reliant
on such Greeks as Aristophanes. Failing to obtain a post in Emperor Domitians
administration in the 80s, Juvenal disparaged court favoritism in one of his
satires and is believed to have been banished. About the Roman people, he wrote
that they craved only bread and circuses.
161
1882:
San Francisco
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
c. 1650:
Paris
164
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
c. 1180 bc:
Lemnos
165
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
167
c. 1937:
Leningrad
tall tales
Blue Notebook #10
There was a redheaded man who had no eyes or
ears. He didnt have hair either, so he was called a
redhead arbitrarily. He couldnt talk, because he
had no mouth. He didnt have a nose either. He
didnt even have arms or legs. He had no stomach, he had no back, no spine, and he didnt have
any insides at all. There was nothing! So we dont
even know who were talking about.
Wed better not talk about him anymore.
Tumbling Old Women
Because of her excessive curiosity, one old woman
tumbled out of her window, fell, and shattered to
pieces. Another old woman leaned out to look
at the one whod shattered but, out of excessive
curiosity, also tumbled out of her window, fell,
and shattered to pieces. Then a third old woman
168
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
169
1605:
Spain
mistaken identity
As they were talking, Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza saw thirty or forty of the windmills found
in that countryside, and as soon as Don Quixote
caught sight of them, he said to his squire, Good
fortune is guiding our affairs better than we
could have desired, for there you see, my friend
Sancho Panza, thirty or more enormous giants
with whom I intend to do battle and whose lives
I intend to take, and with the spoils we shall begin to grow rich, for this is righteous warfare, and
it is a great service to God to remove so evil a
breed from the face of the earth.
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L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
his squire, Sancho, who warned him that, beyond any doubt, those things he was about to
attack were windmills and not giants. But he
was so convinced they were giants that he did
not hear the shouts of his squire, and could not
see, though he was very close, what they really
were; instead, he charged and called out, Flee
not, cowards and base creatures, for it is a single
knight who attacks you.
Just then a gust of wind began to blow, and
the great sails began to move, and, seeing this,
Don Quixote said, Even if you move more arms
than the giant Briareus, you will answer to me.
And saying this, and commending himself with all his heart to his lady Dulcinea,
asking that she come to his aid at this critical moment, and well-protected by his shield,
with his lance in its socket, he charged at
Rocinantes full gallop and attacked the first
mill he came to; and as he thrust his lance
into the sail, the wind moved it with so much
force that it broke the lance into pieces and
picked up the horse and the knight, who then
dropped to the ground and were very badly
battered. Sancho Panza hurried to help as fast
as his donkey could carry him, and when he
reached them, he discovered that Don Quixote
could not move because he had taken so hard a
fall with Rocinante.
God save me! said Sancho. Didnt I
tell your grace to watch what you were doing,
that these were nothing but windmills, and
only somebody whose head was full of them
wouldnt know that?
Be quiet, Sancho my friend, replied Don
Quixote. Matters of war, more than any others, are subject to continual change; moreover,
I think, and therefore it is true, that the same
Frestn the Wise who stole my room and my
books has turned these giants into windmills in
order to deprive me of the glory of defeating
them: such is the enmity he feels for me; but in
the end, his evil arts will not prevail against the
power of my virtuous sword.
Gods will be done, replied Sancho Panza.
He helped him to stand, and Don Quixote
remounted Rocinante, whose back was almost
broken. And, talking about their recent adventure, they continued on the road to Puerto
Lpice, because there, said Don Quixote, he
could not fail to find many diverse adventures
since it was a very heavily trafficked place; but he
rode heavyhearted because he did not have his
lance, and expressing this to his squire, he said,
I remember reading that a Spanish knight
named Diego Prez de Vargas, whose sword
broke in battle, tore a heavy bough or branch
from an oak tree and with it did such great
deeds that day, and thrashed so many Moors,
that he was called Machuca, the Bruiser, and
from that day forward he and his descendants
were named Vargas y Machuca. I have told
Big head, little wit.
French proverb
you this because from the first oak that presents itself to me I intend to tear off another
branch as good as the one I have in mind, and
with it I shall do such great deeds that you will
consider yourself fortunate for deserving to see
them and for being a witness to things that can
hardly be believed.
Its in Gods hands, said Sancho. I believe everything your grace says, but sit a little
straighter, it looks like youre tilting, it must be
from the battering you took when you fell.
That is true, replied Don Quixote, and if
I do not complain about the pain, it is because
it is not the custom of knights errant to complain about any wound, even if their innards are
spilling out because of it.
If thats true, I have nothing to say, Sancho responded, but God knows Id be happy
if your grace complained when something hurt
you. As for me, I can say that Ill complain
about the smallest pain I have, unless what you
said about not complaining also applies to the
squires of knights errant.
Don Quixote could not help laughing at
his squires simplemindedness, and so he declared that he could certainly complain however and whenever he wanted, with or without
cause, for as yet he had not read anything to
171
he did not think about any promises his master had made to him, and he did not consider
it work but sheer pleasure to go around seeking adventures, no matter how dangerous they
might be.
In short, they spent the night under some
trees, and from one of them Don Quixote
tore off a dry branch to use as a lance and
placed on it the iron head he had taken from
the one that had broken. Don Quixote did
not sleep at all that night but thought of his
lady Dulcinea, in order to conform to what
he had read in his books of knights spending
c. 1958: Washington, DC
courtesy call
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L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
many sleepless nights in groves and meadows, turning all their thoughts to memories
of their ladies. Sancho Panza did not do the
samesince his stomach was full, and not
with chicory water, he slept the entire night,
and if his master had not called him, the rays
of the sun shining in his face and the song of
numerous birds joyfully greeting the arrival
of the new day would have done nothing to
rouse him. When he woke he made another
pass at the wineskin and found it somewhat
flatter than it had been the night before, and
his heart grieved, for it seemed to him they
were not likely to remedy the lack very soon.
Don Quixote did not wish to eat breakfast
because he meant to live on sweet memories.
They continued on the road to Puerto Lpice,
and at about three in the afternoon it came
into view.
Here, said Don Quixote when he saw
it, we can, brother Sancho Panza, plunge our
hands all the way up to the elbows into this
thing they call adventures. But be advised that
even if you see me in the greatest danger in
the world, you are not to put a hand to your
sword to defend me, unless you see that those
who offend me are baseborn rabble, in which
case you certainly can help me; but if they are
gentlemen, under no circumstances is it licit or
permissible for you, under the laws of chivalry,
to help me until you are dubbed a knight.
Theres no doubt, Seor, replied Sancho,
that your grace will be strictly obeyed in this;
besides, as far as Im concerned, Im a peaceful man and an enemy of getting involved in
quarrels or disputes. Its certainly true that
when it comes to defending my person I wont
pay much attention to those laws, since laws
both human and divine permit each man to
defend himself against anyone who tries to
hurt him.
I agree, Don Quixote responded, but as
for helping me against gentlemen, you have to
hold your natural impulses in check.
Then thats just what Ill do, replied Sancho, and Ill keep that precept as faithfully as I
keep the sabbath on Sunday.
words, and they responded, Seor, we are neither wicked nor monstrous, but two religious of
St. Benedict who are traveling on our way, and
we do not know if there are captive princesses
in that carriage or not.
No soft words with me; I know who you
are, perfidious rabble, said Don Quixote.
And without waiting for any further reply,
he spurred Rocinante, lowered his lance, and
attacked the first friar with so much ferocity
and courage that if he had not allowed himself
to fall off the mule, the friar would have been
thrown to the ground and seriously injured or
even killed. The second friar, who saw how his
companion was treated, kicked his castle-size
mule and began to gallop across the fields, faster than the wind.
Sancho Panza, who saw the man on the
ground, quickly got off his donkey, hurried over
to the friar, and began to pull off his habit. At
this moment, two servants of the friars came
over and asked why he was stripping him.
Sancho replied that these clothes were legitimately his, the spoils of the battle his master,
Don Quixote, had won. The servants had no
sense of humor and did not understand any-
Four entertainers, pottery group from a Han Dynastyera tomb, China, c. 125.
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L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1993:
Belfast
[A desolate warehouse or some such. James, a barechested, bloody, and bruised man, hangs upside
down from the ceiling, his feet bare and bloody.
Padraic idles near him, wielding a cutthroat razor,
his hands bloody. Around Padraics chest are strapped
two empty holsters, and there are two handguns on
a table stage left. James is crying.]
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Stock Characters
177
It Was Abadie Who Made the Sacre-Coeur, but God Made This! color lithograph, by Adolphe Lon Willette, c. 1895.
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
c. 360 bc:
Athens
179
c. 1030:
Constantinople
impossible relics
Many sayI know not if this be true,
but I do believe itthat you, holy father,
rejoice when you acquire venerable bones
of ascetics or revered holy martyrs,
and that you have many coffers of relics
which you open for all your friends to see:
ten hands that belonged to the martyr St. Procopius,
fifteen jaws belonging to Holy Theodore,
at least eight legs belonging to St. Nestor,
no fewer than four heads belonging to St. George,
five breasts of martyred Barbara, twelve femurs
of the glorious martyr Demetrius,
and twenty thigh bones of Panteleimon. O what bounty!
You maintain that you gather these in fervent faith, never doubting,
never wavering as you kneel before these caskets,
groveling before them as if they were the martyrs of Christ.
Blessed be your vibrant faith, Father Andreas,
which makes you believe that Christs ascetics are Hydras
and His martyrs wild dogsthe former with countless heads,
the latter with the many teats of the bitch.
Your faith has turned martyred Nestor into a fish,
or rather into an octopus with eight tentacles,
and Procopius into Briareus, the hundred-armed giant.
You humbly claim to own sixty teeth of the great martyr Thecla
(what madness!) and white hairs from great Prodromus head.
You proudly boast that you own hairs from the beards
of the slaughtered infants of Bethlehem.
You say these must be revered with deep devotion.
If your faith leads you to accept these things as true,
and you are happy to squander all your money,
you will never be at a loss for relics.
Why squander all your gold?
Why not go to the citys graveyard
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L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
181
1842:
Russia
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
themI, and not you; I will take all the obligations upon myself. Ill even have the deed drawn
up at my own expense, do you understand that?
The old woman fell to thinking. She saw
that the business indeed seemed profitable,
yet it was much too novel and unprecedented;
and therefore she began to fear very much that
this buyer might somehow hoodwink her; he
had come from God knows where, and in the
night, too.
So then, dearie, shall we shake hands on
it? said Chichikov.
Really, my dear, it has never happened to
me before to sell deceased ones. I did let two
living ones go, two wenches, for a hundred rubles each, to our priest, the year before last, and
he was ever so gratefulthey turned out to be
such good workers; they weave napkins.
Laughter, by Charles Le Brun, c. 1645.
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2007: Liphook
emerging markets
186
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1948:
Chicago
some reservations
Look here at these headlines, man, where
Congress is busy passing laws. While theyre
making all these laws, it looks like to me they
ought to make one setting up a few game preserves for Negroes.
Whatever gave you that fantastic idea?
I asked.
A movie short I saw the other night, said
Simple, about how the government is protecting wildlife, preserving fish and game, and setting aside big tracts of land where nobody can
fish, shoot, hunt, nor harm a single living creature with furs, fins, or feathers. But it did not
show a thing about Negroes.
I thought you said the picture was about
wildlife. Negroes are not wild.
No, said Simple, but we need protection. This film showed how they put aside a
thousand acres out West where the buffaloes
roam and nobody can shoot a single one of
American soldiers having fun while riding a camel, Tunisia, 1943. Photograph by Robert Capa.
187
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1555:
Paris
merry pranksters
There was a long strife between Brusquet,
court fool to the French king, and the Marshal
Strozzi, a summary of which will reveal more
of the lighter side of court life than do many
of the genteel examinations of the learned.
Pierre Strozzi, son of Philippe Strozzi
and Clarice de Medici, is one of the great
names of French military annals. In his private life, he was easy, agreeable, and facetious.
He loved to laugh, to clown, and to frisk forth
a quip, and in Brusquet he found the worthiest of adversaries.
One day when the Lord Marshal, in a
fine mantle of black velvet with silver-worked
sleeves, was bowing and bending before his
sovereign, Brusquet stole up behind him with
a larding pin and a provision of bacon strips.
He promptly larded the skirt of that noble
cloak, and when the Marshal turned from his
interview, Brusquet cried to the king, Sire,
are not those fine golden aglets that my Lord
Marshal wears in his cloak? Loud laughed
the king, the marshal, and the bystanders, and
Strozzi exclaimed, Come, good Brusquet, and
you did want this mantletake it, and tell my
men to bring me anotherbut I vow to you
that you will pay me this!
A few days later, the marshal came to
Brusquets house with a band of gentlemen,
among them a skillful locksmith. With a very
honest and open visage, he invited Brusquet
to a stroll in the garden, but meanwhile he
slyly pointed to the locksmith the chest where
Brusquet kept the fruits of his rapine. While
the marshal and Brusquet conversed in the
garden, the artisan had the chest open in a
jiffy, passed the treasures to the gentlemen,
who escaped with bundles of plate under their
cloaks, and clapped the strongbox shut again.
Soon Brusquet came to the king with a very
long face to tell of his misfortune. Thereupon
the marshal returned all but five hundred
crowns worth of his spoils, and this he gave
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1875:
London
self-incrimination
Chapter XV
We endeavor to point out that the obstreperous
and meaningless habit of laughing is, if not the
entire cause, at least one of the principal causes, of
the existence and continuance of the follies, frivolities, mischiefs, and lewd conversations which
are now so rampant in every class of society, and
which sink it so low in the moral scale.
The actors of all practical jokes, the authors of every species of mischief, the retailers
of low, vulgar, and obscene anecdotes, together
with utterers of scandal, are all instigated by the
very contemptible ambition of raising a laugh,
a giggle, or a smirk at someones expense.
This Just In
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L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
1978:
what if?
So what would happen if suddenly, magically,
men could menstruate and women could not?
Clearly, menstruation would become an
enviable, boastworthy, masculine event:
Men would brag about how long and how
much.
Young boys would talk about it as the envied beginning of manhood. Gifts, religious
ceremonies, family dinners, and stag parties
would mark the day.
To prevent monthly work-loss among the
powerful, Congress would fund a National Institute of Dysmenorrhea. Doctors would research little about heart attacks, from which
men were hormonally protected, but everything about cramps.
Sanitary supplies would be federally funded
and free. Of course, some men would still pay for
the prestige of such commercial brands as Paul
Newman Tampons, Muhammad Alis Ropea-Dope Pads, John Wayne Maxi Pads, and Joe
Namath Jock ShieldsFor Those Light Bachelor Days.
Generals, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation (men-struation) as proof that only men
could serve God and country in combat (You
have to give blood to take blood), occupy high
political office (Can women be properly fierce
without a monthly cycle governed by the planet Mars?), be priests, ministers, God Himself
(He gave this blood for our sins), or rabbis
(Without a monthly purge of impurities,
women are unclean).
Male liberals or radicals, however, would
insist that women are equal, just different, and
that any woman could join their ranks if only
she were willing to recognize the primacy of
menstrual rights (Everything else is a single issue) or self-inflict a major wound every month
(You must give blood for the revolution).
Street guys would invent slang (Hes
a three-pad man) and give fives on the
193
c. 1592:
Padua
wordplay
Petruchio: Good morrow, Kate, for thats your name, I hear.
Katherine: Well have you heard but something hard of hearing.
They call me Katherine that do talk of me.
Petruchio: You lie, in faith, for you are called plain Kate,
And bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the cursed,
But Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom,
Kate of Kate Hall, my superdainty Kate
For dainties are all cates, and therefore Kate
Take this of me, Kate of my consolation:
Hearing thy mildness praised in every town,
Thy virtues spoke of, and thy beauty sounded
Yet not so deeply as to thee belongs
Myself am moved to woo thee for my wife.
Katherine: Moved? In good time. Let him that moved you hither
Re-move you hence. I knew you at the first
You were a movable.
Petruchio: Why, whats a movable?
Katherine: A joint stool.
Petruchio: Thou hast hit it. Come, sit on me.
Katherine: Asses are made to bear, and so are you.
Petruchio: Women are made to bear, and so are you.
Katherine: No such jade as you, if me you mean.
Petruchio: Alas, good Kate, I will not burden thee,
For knowing thee to be but young and light.
Katherine: Too light for such a swain as you to catch,
And yet as heavy as my weight should be.
Petruchio: Should be?should buzz.
Katherine: Well taken, and like a buzzard.
Petruchio: O slow-winged turtle, shall a buzzard take thee?
Katherine: Aye, for a turtle, as he takes a buzzard.
Petruchio: Come, come, you wasp, ifaith you are too angry.
Katherine: If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
Petruchio: My remedy is then to pluck it out.
Katherine: Aye, if the fool could find it where it lies.
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L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Petruchio: Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting?
In his tail.
Katherine: In his tongue.
Petruchio: Whose tongue?
Katherine: Yours, if you talk of tales, and so farewell.
Petruchio: What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again,
Good Kate, I am a gentleman.
Katherine: That Ill try. [She strikes him]
Petruchio: I swear Ill cuff you if you strike again.
Katherine: So may you lose your arms.
If you strike me you are no gentleman,
And if no gentleman, why then, no arms.
Petruchio: A herald, Kate? O, put me in thy books.
Katherine: What is your cresta coxcomb?
Caricature of Queen Victoria as an Edgar Degas ballet dancer, by Aubrey Beardsley, c. 1893.
195
Girl laughing while holding condoms filled with water, Daulatdia Brothel, Bangladesh.
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
197
198
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Further Remarks
n November 18, 1865, the New York Saturday Press published a short sketch called
Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog about a
frog-jumping contest in rural California. It set
all New York in a roar, reported one journalist, and soon went viral, reprinted in papers from
San Francisco to Memphis. The storys author
was Mark Twain, the pseudonym of a twentynine-year-old writer born Samuel Clemens. At
the time, Twain was living in California, enjoying provincial renown as a Western humorist.
The success of Jim Smiley made him nationally famous. No reputation was ever more rapidly
won, observed the New York Tribune.
Twains stature quickly grew. Within a decade, he would publish his bestselling book The
Innocents Abroad, perform to sold-out audiences
at home and overseas, and build a mansion in
Ben Tarnoff is the author of A Counterfeiters Paradise. His second book, The Bohemians: Mark Twain
and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature, will be published by the Penguin
Press in March. His last essay for Laphams Quarterly appeared in the Fall 2011 issue, The Future.
Pie in the face. Film still from an undocumented silent movie, featuring Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle.
199
200
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L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
pagne, and the company of young and ambitious writers like Bret Harte. At Jackass Hill,
the food was simpler, the society less sophisticated. In the glory days of 49, the region had
been the heart of the gold rush. By 1864, the
mines were mostly spent, and the old boomtowns had gone bust. Only a forlorn remnant
of marooned miners remained, Twain wrote,
swapping tall tales in their drawling, graphic
talk at the tavern, recalling great gold strikes
and fights and curious incidents of any kind.
One day, a man told a story about a
jumping frog. Twain jotted down the plot in
his notebook:
Coleman with his jumping frogbet
stranger $50stranger had no frog, & C
got him onein the meantime stranger
filled Cs frog full of shot & he couldnt
jumpthe strangers frog won.
What struck Twain was the narrators seriousness: the man spun the ludicrous yarn as if it
were the gravest sort of history, a series of austere facts that his listeners received as solemnly
as if the story were delivered from a pulpit. Nobody in the tavern seemed aware that a firstrate story had been told in a first-rate way, and
that it was brimful of a quality whose presence
they never suspectedhumor, Twain wrote.
Twain wanted to reproduce the effect in
prose. A friend later remembered him saying
that he would make that frog jump around the
world, if only he could write the tale the way
the man told it. An opportunity soon arose.
When Twain returned to San Francisco in
February 1865, he found a letter waiting for
him from Artemus Ward, Americas reigning
king of comedy. Ward asked if Twain wanted
to contribute a piece to a new book he was
putting together, and Twain, replying months
later, suggested the jumping-frog story. Write
it, Ward responded. There is still time to get
it into my volume of sketches.
The story emerged only gradually, and by
October 1865, eight months after his return
from mining country, Twain still wasnt done.
Girls in kimonos laughing and playing outside a house near a stream, Japan.
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L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
frontiersman. The strange language of the frontier grew out of the need to describe something
new, to create word pictures commensurate with
the otherworldliness of the West.
These homespun bits of brilliance inspired
Twain, who mined them for maximum literary effect. As 1865 drew to a close, he found
a way out of his crisis and into the jumping
frog. He immersed himself in the manuscript,
and constructed a tale that closely resembled
the Southwestern humor sketches of his Missouri childhood. But by the time Twain finally
finished Jim Smiley, Wards book had already
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist
makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun
of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself
with peoplethat is, people everywhere, not
for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply
revealing their true nature.
James Thurber, 1959
gone to press. The missed deadline was fortuitous: the publisher passed the item along to
the editor of the Saturday Press, who wasted
little time in printing it.
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Dangerous Wit
Assailant
1673: London
Target
Ammunition
In poem A Satyr on Charles II, the king is accused of disregarding
the law in pursuit of sexual pleasures, for he loves fucking much.
Repercussions
Rochester banned temporarily from court.
John Wilmot,
second earl of
Rochester
Assailant
Alexander Pope
King Charles II
1728: London
Target
Ammunition
In poem Dunciad, editor Theobald is called Tibbald, King of Dunces,
son of the Goddess of Dullness.
Repercussions
Pope was said to have armed himself against reprisals, going everywhere
with loaded pistols and his Great Dane, Bounce.
Lewis Theobald
Assailant
1933: Moscow
Target
Ammunition
In poem The Stalin Epigram, references to Stalin rolling the executions on
his tongue like berries and laughing cockroaches on his top lip.
Repercussions
Mandelstam arrested, tortured, and exiled along with his wife.
Osip
Mandelstam
Assailant
Charlie
Chaplin
Assailant
Ai Weiwei
Joseph Stalin
1940: Hollywood
Target
Ammunition
In film The Great Dictator, Chaplin caricatured Hitler as
Adenoid Hynkel and denounced Nazis as machine men,
with machine minds and machine hearts.
Repercussions
Chaplin supposedly on Hitlers death list, branded a
pseudo-Jew in German anti-Semitic book.
Adolf Hitler
2011: Beijing
Target
Ammunition
In photograph, Ai showed himself naked except for toy horse covering his
genitals and caption, Fuck your mother, the party central committee.
Repercussions
Ai detained at Beijing airport, held and interrogated for
nearly three months by police officers.
Communist Party
of China
207
Conversations
thomas hobbes
Leviathan, 1651
Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those
grimaces called laughter, and is caused either by
some sudden act of mens own that pleaseth
them or by the apprehension of some deformed
thing in another, by comparison whereof they
suddenly applaud themselves. And it is incident most to them that are conscious of the
fewest abilities in themselves who are forced to
keep themselves in their own favor by observing the imperfections of other men. And therefore much laughter at the defects of others is a
sign of pusillanimity. For of great minds, one
of the proper works is to help and free others
from scorn, and compare themselves only with
the most able.
On the contrary, sudden dejection is the
passion that causeth weeping, and is caused
by such accidents as suddenly take away some
vehement hope or some prop of their power:
and they are most subject to it who rely principally on helps external, such as are women and
children. Therefore some weep for the loss of
friends, others for their unkindness, others for
the sudden stop made to their thoughts of revenge by reconciliation. But in all cases, both
laughter and weeping are sudden motions, custom taking them both away. For no man laughs
at old jests or weeps for an old calamity.
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L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
viktor frankl
Mans Search for Meaning, 1946
It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human makeup, can afford an
aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. The attempt
to develop a sense of humor and to see things in
a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned
while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible
to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent. To
draw an analogy: a mans suffering is similar to
the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas
is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the
chamber completely and evenly, no matter how
big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills
the human soul and conscious mind, no matter
whether the suffering is great or little.
It also follows that a very trifling thing can
cause the greatest of joys. Take as an example
something that happened on our journey from
Auschwitz to the camp affiliated with Dachau.
We had all been afraid that our transport was
heading for the Mauthausen camp. We became
more and more tense as we approached a certain
bridge over the Danube which the train would
have to cross to reach Mauthausen, according
to the statement of experienced traveling companions. Those who have never seen anything
similar cannot possibly imagine the dance of
joy performed in the carriage by the prisoners
when they saw that our transport was not crossing the bridge and was instead heading only
for Dachau.
la rochefoucauld
Maxims, 1678
We give nothing so liberally as our advice.
To point out that one never flirts is in itself a
form of flirtation.
The reason why lovers never tire of each others company is that the conversation is always
about themselves.
We often forgive those who bore us, but we
cannot forgive those who find us boring.
Whatever discoveries have been made in the
land of self-love, many regions still remain
unexplored.
Old people are fond of giving good advice; it
consoles them for no longer being capable of
setting a bad example.
The most dangerous absurdity of elderly persons who have been attractive is to forget that
they are so no longer.
Most young people think they are being natural when really they are just ill-mannered
and crude.
We all have strength enough to endure the
troubles of others.
When vanity is not prompting us, we have
little to say.
rob delaney
Tweets, c. 2012
Youve really got to hand it to short people.
Because they often cant reach it.
Never judge a man until youve walked a mile
in his shoes. Unless theyre Crocs, then fuck
that guy.
Children give terrible gifts because theyre poor.
The Jews run Hollywood! Which is probably
why its a fun place to work with a lot of great
restaurants.
Probably the worst thing you can do to a person is leave them a voicemail.
Ask any guy: if you dont know all the sex tips
from the latest Cosmo, we are not interested.
It just feels so good to have a clean
apartment!Someone whos never killed a
bear with a sword.
Hed come off as way less pretentious if he went
by Daniel Dave Lewis.
Made my wife a surprise appointment for
lap-band surgery. April Fools! She left me a
few weeks ago.
Sometimes I put dog poop in the toilet at
work so the guys dont think I only went in
there to cry.
209
quintilian
Institutes of Oratory, c. 93
In the first place, all ridicule has something in it
that is buffoonish; that is, something that is low,
and oftentimes purposely rendered mean. In the
next place, it is never attended with dignity, and
people are apt to construe it in different senses
because it is not judged by any criterion of reason
but by a certain unaccountable impression that it
makes upon the hearer. I call it unaccountable
because many have endeavored to account for
itbut, I think, without success. Here it is that
a laugh may arise, not only from an action or a
saying, but even the very motion of the body may
raise it; add to this that there are many different
motives for laughter. For we laugh not only at actions and sayings that are witty and pleasant but
such as are stupid, passionate, and cowardly. It is
therefore of a motley composition, for very often
we laugh with a man as well as laugh at him.
Our maxim is of use not only to the purpose
of an orator but to the purposes of life, which is:
never to attack a man whom it is dangerous to
provoke, lest you be brought to maintain some
disagreeable enmities or to make some scandalous submissions. It is likewise highly improper
to throw out any invectives that numbers of people may take to themselves, or to arraign, by the
lump, nations, degrees, and ranks of mankind, or
those pursuits that are common to many. A man
of sense and good breeding will say nothing that
can hurt his own character or probity. A laugh
is too dearly bought when purchased at the expense of virtue.
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L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
joan rivers
Interview with The Hollywood Reporter, 2013
Ive learned: When you get older, who cares? I
dont mince words, I dont hold back. What are
you gonna do to me? Fire me? Its been done.
Threaten to commit suicide? Done. Take away
my show? Done! Not invite to me to the Vanity
Fair party? Ive never been invited! If I ever saw
the invitation, Id use it as toilet paper. My gardener Jose is invitedhe asks me to bring him
his sombrero to clean it for him.
Ive learned to have absolutely no regrets
about any jokes Ive ever done. I got a lot of
flack for a joke I made about Heidi Klum and
the Nazis (The last time a German looked this
hot was when they were pushing Jews into the
ovens), but I never apologized for it. I said
Justin Bieber looked like a little lesbianand I
stand by it: hes the daughter Cher wishes shed
had. You can tune me out, you can click me
off, its okay. I am not going to bow to political correctness. But you do have to learn, if you
want to be a satirist, you cant be part of the
party. Meaning, you cant go horseback riding
with Jackie O in Central Park if youre going to
make a joke about her that night.
charles baudelaire
On the Essence of Laughter, 1855
Laughter is satanic; it is therefore profoundly
human. In man it is the consequence of his
idea of his own superiority; and in fact, since
laughter is essentially human, it is essentially
contradictory, that is to say, it is at one and the
same time a sign of infinite greatness and of
infinite wretchedness in relation to the beasts.
It is from the constant clash of these two infinites that laughter flows. The comic, the power
of laughter, is in the laugher, not at all in the
object of laughter. It is not the man who falls
down who laughs at his own fall, unless he is a
philosopher, a man who has acquired, by force
of habit, the power of getting outside himself
quickly and watching, as a disinterested spectator, the phenomenon of his ego. While laughter
is a sign of superiority in relation to animals,
and I include in that category the numerous
outcasts of intelligence, it is a sign of inferiority in relation to the wise men, who, by the
contemplative innocence of their minds, have
something childlike about them. If, as we have
the right to, we compare humanity to man, we
can see that the primitive nations cannot begin to conceive the idea of caricature, and have
no comic drama (holy books, whichever nation
they belong to, never laugh), and that, as they
move slowly upward toward the misty peaks of
intelligence or peer into the gloomy furnaces
of metaphysics, nations begin laughing diabolically; and finally that if, in these selfsame ultracivilized nations, one intelligent being, driven
on by a noble ambition, wants to break through
the limits of worldly pride and launch out
boldly into pure poetry, that limpid poetry as
profound as nature, laughter will not be there
any more than in the soul of the sage.
211
miscellany
Gioachino Rossini was known to possess strong
opinions about other composers. Wagner has
some fine moments, he estimated, but some
bad quarters of an hour. After hearing Hector
Berliozs Symphonie Fantastique, he remarked,
What a good thing it isnt music.
Dorothy Parker [New York City, page 130]
was once asked to use the word horticulture in
a sentence. You can lead a horticulture, she
replied, but you cant make her think.
Austrian-born philosopher Ludwig
Wittgenstein observed in 1947, A typical
American film, naive and silly, canfor all its
silliness and even by means of itbe instructive.
A fatuous, self-conscious English film can teach
one nothing. I have often learned a lesson from
a silly American film.
A review of the sitcom The Hank McCune Show
in a 1950 issue of Variety magazine described
the first known use of a laugh track on TV:
Although the show is lensed on film without
a studio audience, there are chuckles and yucks
dubbed in. Whether this induces a jovial mood
in home viewers is still to be determined, but
the practice may have unlimited possibilities if
its spread to include canned peals of hilarity,
thunderous ovations, and gasps of sympathy.
According to his biographer Aelius Lampridius,
the Roman emperor Elagabalus would amuse
himself at dinner by seating his guests on air
pillows instead of cushions and let the air out
while they were dining, so that often the diners
were suddenly found under the tables.
Niccol Machiavelli, author of The Prince, was
well known in his lifetime as a comic dramatist.
An early performance in Florence of The
Mandrake caused Pope Leo X to insist that
212
L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
Aubrey Boucicault and Charles Bigelow in a scene from the burlesque Higgledy-Piggledy,
produced by Joe Weber and Florenz Ziegfeld, Weber Music Hall, New York City, 1904.
Split Personalities
by Andrew McConnell Stott
Andrew McConnell Stott is Professor of English at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, and the author,
most recently, of The Vampyre Family: Passion, Envy, and the Curse of Byron. His last essay for
Laphams Quarterly appeared in the Summer 2012 issue, Magic Shows.
214
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Two Fools of Carnival, engraving by Hendrik Hondius, after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1642.
216
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L A P H A M S QUA RT E R LY
dians have been conceived of ever since. Newspapers claimed that, when not onstage, Grimaldi
was somber and prone to depression. As soon as
Mother Goose closed, one periodical wrote that he
was resolved to betake himself to sackcloth and
ashes!, reports he himself chose to confirm with
a punning quip: I am grim all day, but I make
you laugh at night. Without doubt, the apex
of these rumors was an anecdote that appeared
some time in the 1820s and is still used, frequently misattributed, even to this day. The story
involves Grimaldis reported visit to the famous
surgeon John Abertheny, to whom the clown
had gone in search of a cure for his melancholy.
Abertheny, unable to identify his patient without
his slap and motley, briskly prescribed the diversions of relaxation and amusement:
But where shall I find what you require?
said the patient.
In genial companionship, was the reply; perhaps sometimes at the theatergo
and see Grimaldi.
Alas! replied the patient. That is of
no avail to me; I am Grimaldi.
Grimaldis moment coincided with developing attempts in psychology to understand
the hidden reaches of the brain. In 1815, a
Dr. Dyce of Aberdeen reported the case of a
sixteen-year-old servant girl named Maria
who would take on different personalities after
she fell asleep. As Maria would set the table
and dress the children with her eyes half-shut,
this was initially thought to be a simple case of
sleepwalking, until her episodes began to take
on a more unusual cast. During one she acted
the role of an Episcopal clergyman conducting a baptismal ceremony on the children in
her care, and in another believed herself to be
riding in a horse race as she jockeyed a stool
across the kitchen floor. With each new visitation, these personas grew more complex, until
eventually she reached a point where she had
developed two distinct identities, each with its
own consistent and unbroken memories but
entirely separate from the other. So utterly
I Died Laughing
c. 450 bc
Greek painter Zeuxis, contemplating a portrait
he had just completed of an ugly old woman.
c. 206 bc
Athenian philosopher Chrysippus, watching
an old woman give his donkey unmixed wine,
having asked her to do so after being amused at
seeing it eat figs.
1410
Martin, king of Aragon, prone from gorging
himself on aphrodisiac-infused goose, upon
hearing a joke made by his jester Borra, who had
rushed into the room to amuse his ailing master.
1556
Italian satirist and playwright Pietro Aretino,
falling backward in a chair. The cause for the fall
is said to have been laughter over a dirty joke
about his sisters.
1660
Scottish author and translator of Franois
Rabelais, Thomas Urquhart, upon hearing that
Charles II had been restored to the British throne.
1782
Northamptonshire resident Mrs. Fitzherbert,
after attending a Wednesday-night performance
of John Gays The Beggars Opera. The whimsical
appearance of the actor playing Polly made
her laugh without intermission until Friday
morning, when she expired.
1975
English bricklayer Alex Mitchell, suffering
from Long QT syndromewhich can cause
heart attacks when triggered by exertion or
adrenalinewatching sketch-comedy show
The Goodies. During an episode called Kung
Fu Capers, Mitchell gave a tremendous belly
laugh, slumped on the sofa, and died.
2009
Last known member of the Fore people of
Papua New Guinea infected with kuru, or
laughing death. Among symptoms of the
neurological disease, which infected Fore
who ate the flesh of their dead, were bursts of
uncontrollable laughter.
2013
California visitor Mun Jang, punched and kicked
to death in a Los Angelesarea doughnut shop,
having laughed at Ronald Eugene Murray II
when some of the pastrami in Murrays sandwich
fell to the floor.
219
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