Ha-Ha, part two

Humor, being fun­ny, is an immense­ly sub­jec­tive phe­nom­e­non. I tell a pun, you groan. You tell a joke, and I do not get it. Alter­na­tive­ly, some­one tells a joke which offends some­one else. There­fore, when it comes to writ­ing some­thing that is meant to be fun­ny, it is any­thing but a fun­ny sit­u­a­tion. I would not pre­sume to tell any­one how to be fun­ny. I can only describe my process—during those times when I sit down and try to be funny.

To begin, I need to be in a cer­tain mood. I think, speak­ing for myself, it is that some­times I see the world not as fun­ny per se, but iron­ic, beg­ging for a satir­i­cal response. An old book of mine, Punch with Judy, is the sto­ry of a 19th cen­tu­ry trav­el­ing med­i­cine show. Falling on hard times, they decide to change their show to one full of com­e­dy. Alas, when they try to be fun­ny, they are not. How­ev­er, when they become sad and morose, they are fun­ny. Does it work? You will have to read it and tell me.

The book which I think is the fun­ni­est I have writ­ten is Who Was That Masked Man Any­way? The sit­u­a­tion is two boys, Frankie and Mario, who are so enam­ored of the 1940 radio shows for kids, (The Lone Ranger, The Shad­ow, Sky King, etc.) that they try to live their lives as if they were in radio shows. Thus, the book is entire­ly writ­ten in dia­logue (not one “he said” or “she said”) and the boys are con­stant­ly shift­ing in and out of char­ac­ter, as they try to help Frankie’s old­er brother—a depressed World War II veteran—come back to a full and roman­tic life. Why is it fun­ny? Because the sit­u­a­tion is absurd.

Or, there is the sit­u­a­tion in the last of the Pop­py books, Pop­py and Ereth, in which the for­ev­er grumpy Ereth tries to teach him­self how to smile.

There­fore,  in my present cir­cum­stance, in which I am being called upon to write some­thing fun­ny, I don’t try to think of a char­ac­ter that is comical—that’s not my way—but  rather  a state of affairs that is iron­i­cal, or absurd.

Will I suc­ceed in writ­ing the hilar­i­ous sto­ry I have been asked to do? If I do not, I will not get the con­tract and the joke will be on me. Get it?