Tag: literature

Here I am, as a professional joke writer, letting my essentially analytical spirit take me and dissecting the elements of quality humor. I think of Voltaire. The irony, if well applied, does not lead to laughter but delivers lasting satisfaction, sustainable over a long interval. In Voltaire’s case, the effects of irony come out as secondary to a philosophical posture that dictates the tone of his work. But let’s get back to the jokes: absurdity and exaggeration seem to me to be the fundamental elements of the best ones, and surprise as the essential result. Here, the laughter. Voltaire himself provides a good example: it is impossible not to remember the unforgettable Anabaptist Jacques, described as “bon“, “honnête” and “charitable” for several pages in Candide, whose appearance always tries to evoke good feelings and who, suddenly, when asking a sailor for help in the middle of a storm, is brutally thrown into the sea by the stranger. The exaggeration of the violence, the absurdity of the cruel, sudden, and unjustifiable act bring, of course, full laughter, but not for the mere exaggeration or absurdity, but for the naturalness with which both are presented. In this detail, it seems to me, lies the secret of the best humor: in the exposure of the grotesque as if it were vulgar.

I remember the day I decided to start these notes. Like all important decisions, this one came to me like a gust, seizing my mind and forcing immediate action. In the next instant, the thought of what to write. The consensus: start with the acknowledgments. So I wrote about Nelson, Dostoevsky, Swift, Pondé and a few others, and it was not a week from the decision to the publication of the first notes. Fair enough. To the initiate, I see no reasonable posture other than that of humility; it is necessary to be accountable to those who contributed in some way to his initiation. Gratitude is a noble and profitable exercise, recognition is a requirement of character. I say this to conclude: the faculty of gratitude seems to me a good parameter to distinguish the one who, by voluntary effort, strives to be greater than his vanity.

Details, in art, are valid as long as they invigorate an immediate impression. When they merely hide “secret treasures” they are, at best, useless. Subtlety and care in a composition of innocuous first impression constitute a waste. The art of not saying everything risks the ridicule of not saying anything; we just have to look at the movies…