Humor Writing 101

 

Atlantic.com, Molly Jong-Fast:

I’m here to tell you Thanksgiving is terrible, and if you at least spend the time trying to deprogram your niece, you won’t be bored or depressed (though you might be enraged that Fox News or Infowars has convinced her Trump can ‘save America’ from Joe Biden’s radical agenda of giving people hearing aids and free pre-K). Maybe it won’t work. Maybe you’ll leave Thanksgiving dinner as divided as you were when you sat down at the table five hours and 4,000 calories ago. Or maybe you’ll plant the seed, sow just a little doubt about whatever Tucker Carlson is saying now. Maybe you’ll even change a heart or a mind. Maybe you’ll bring the temperature down just a tiny bit. Or maybe you’ll need to report a relative to the FBI! Either way, it’s something to do besides just eat.

Jong-Fast is one of those uninteresting writers who pops up from time to time in an outlet with a solid rep. The New York Times, The Atlantic. I doubt the editors think her work is toppermost of the poppermost when it comes to style or insight, but … it’ll do. Every editor has a stable of names whose work falls into this category. The editor isn’t excited to run the piece, but it’ll do.

MJF was duly dinged for the piece, particularly the FBI remark. People whose humor gland has withered to the size of an ant’s gonad thought she was serious. Whereupon she went on Twitter and said that the piece was intended to be humorous. 

I saw that right away, because it’s a fine example of something that has plagued the “humorous writing” genre for a long time: things that appear to be technically funny but are not funny, at all. Let’s take a look at it, line by line.

I’m here to tell you Thanksgiving is terrible.

Good line, really. Make a brassy assertion that shocks — yes, shocks! — the reader and establishes a persona that’s a truth teller who cares not where the chips fall. A good humorist follows this up with something that instantly subverts the assertion. Something like this: 

“There are only three kinds of pies, the dogs can’t eat the bones, yams are delicious but make me start talking in a Popeye voice, and the smooth, savory gravy reminds you of the Thanksgiving in 1987 when there was a lump in the sauce. It turned out to be a Midol Mom put in the sauce in the hopes it would dissolve and keep her daughter from snapping at everyone.”

Or something like that. You qualify the assertion so the reader knows you really don’t think Thanksgiving is horrible, but you have stories, observations, silly complaints, and so on. Unless, of course, you want your audience to consist entirely of people who agree that Thanksgiving is horrible, in which case you’re writing “humor” for people who spin in a bariatric chamber of personal neuroses.

Let’s just see how this idea builds:

I’m here to tell you Thanksgiving is terrible, and if you at least spend the time trying to deprogram your niece

Of all the people the middle-aged, boxed-wine cat lady is least likely to deprogram, it would be a niece, right? 

I’m here to tell you Thanksgiving is terrible, and if you at least spend the time trying to deprogram your niece, you won’t be bored or depressed 

OK, ha ha, I guess. Also, “and” should be “but.” 

The full sentence:

I’m here to tell you Thanksgiving is terrible, and if you at least spend the time trying to deprogram your niece, you won’t be bored or depressed  (though you might be enraged that Fox News or Infowars has convinced her Trump can ‘save America’ from Joe Biden’s radical agenda of giving people hearing aids and free pre-K).

Somewhere the shade of S.J. Perelman has taken off his wire-rimmed glasses and squinted through the veil that stands between this world and the next, and said, “A link? You ended a punchline with a link? A link to a government program?

It’s not funny, but it’s technically funny. The audience — which has self-selected within 14 words of her piece — knows that Joe Biden is not radical, and anyone who says there’s anything radical at all about the administration is NUTS and also Trump amirite and pre-K is a holy thing right up there with abortion except for the part about a live kid. Stupid niece! 

It has all the contours of something that might be funny, but it is not, in fact, funny. It could be proof of the multiverse: You look at that sentence and think If the multiverse contains every possible iteration of everything, there is a universe of vast dimensions that is identical to ours in every way, except this line is different somehow, in a way that makes it funny. If we put this piece into a particle accelerator and bombard it with neutrons, we may hear someone, somewhere, laughing.

Maybe it won’t work. Maybe you’ll leave Thanksgiving dinner as divided as you were when you sat down at the table five hours and 4,000 calories ago.

Ha ha, people eat a lot at Thanksgiving. Is that the joke? 

No. This is a transitional line that lets the reader breathe between killer jokes but also maintains a state of Elevated Comic Tone, achieved through exaggeration. Five hours, 4,000 calories. But you have to follow it with something that has a quantity of humor detectable by the naked eye, not an electron microscope. Let us continue:

Or maybe you’ll plant the seed, sow just a little doubt about whatever Tucker Carlson is saying now. 

Okay, not funny, inasmuch as “Tucker Carlson” is not intrinsically funny as a series of syllables, but it does serve to flatter the audience, and that can pass for the warm feeling people get from actually laughing. 

If she’d realized why the line was mirthless celery and wanted to put in some effort, she might have said, “Or maybe you’ll plant the seed, sow just a little doubt about whether it was wise for Tucker Carlson to crash a COVID ICU dressed as the QAnon shaman, looking for children stashed under beds by Epstein and Hillary.” Turn it up to eleven, use the other side’s crazies, show some familiarity with the situation. But no: “whatever Tucker Carlson is saying now.”

The reader’s face, which cracked a smile upon seeing this was a piece by Mollie Jong-Fast — she’s witty and snarky! — is now slightly frozen and aches a little from holding the smile in an act of comradeship.

Maybe you’ll even change a heart or a mind.

Another placeholder. Here you should switch tactics: “Maybe you could shout ‘Pass the BBB!’ And explain you meant big, buttered biscuits, because who would be against that?”

Maybe you’ll bring the temperature down just a tiny bit.

Mind you, this paragraph doesn’t have anyone saying anything, just presumptive, prophylactic reeducation of the hypothetical niece who hasn’t even said anything.

Or maybe you’ll need to report a relative to the FBI! Either way, it’s something to do besides just eat.

That’s the laff line to which she was building up. Ha ha, awesome, maybe that would be a good thing, there’s always a kernel of truth in good humor! Of course it’s absurd, no one would, and that’s what makes it funny! 

LOL, as they say, when they mean that no one has, in fact, laughed out loud, or laughed at all, but has detected the technical outlines of humor, agrees with the author’s predicates, and has settled in for some breezy affirmations. 

In other words, it’s humorous in form, but not in texture, substance, aroma, or flavor.

Molly Jong-Fast is the vegan turkey of humor. 

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There are 40 comments.

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  1. The Scarecrow Thatcher
    The Scarecrow
    @TheScarecrow

    At this time of thanksgiving, I give thanks that I have never heard of her.

    But I will always read Lileks, because he does know how to bring the funny. 

    • #31
  2. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    The Scarecrow (View Comment):

    At this time of thanksgiving, I give thanks that I have never heard of her.

    But I will always read Lileks, because he does know how to bring the funny.

    He has been cursed with wit in an age of witlessness. 

    • #32
  3. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    One difference is, on our side, we don’t pretend our sarcastic bitterness is actually funny. On their side, they act like every little pronouncement from these jokester wokesters is hilarious wit. 

    We know that our righteousness is separate from our politics. 

    • #33
  4. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Randy Weivoda (View Comment):

    So is she serious about trying to convert people politically over dinner or not? Every member of this site has strong opinions on a number of issues, but in all my years here I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say, “This Thanksgiving I am going to talk some sense into my relatives on this budget bill!” Maybe you can also pin them down and sell them some life insurance or Amway while you’re at it.

    This is literally a cartoon posted on the official department of transportations twitter. 

    • #34
  5. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    A color TV can make any color out of three primary colors: red, green, and blue. There’s a type of lazy feminist writer who believes she can paint a true picture of any reality using just three primaries: smugness, rage, and self-pity. Seriously: next time you see something written like this, you can tick through the three ingredients and they’re always in the recipe. 

    • #35
  6. BastiatJunior Member
    BastiatJunior
    @BastiatJunior

    Douglas Pratt (View Comment):

    Vegan turkey is funnier than tofu, but tofu is funny in itself, along with the idea that people actually eat it. It always reminds me of Dave Barry’s line that tofu is a Japanese word meaning “whale snot.”

    Damn militant space Vegans anyway. So smug.

    I remember a car commercial featuring a vegan dinner party.  The main offering was “beet loaf.”

    Now that was funny.

    • #36
  7. Seawriter Contributor
    Seawriter
    @Seawriter

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    This is literally a cartoon posted on the official department of transportations twitter. 

    Can you say Hatch Act violation? I knew you could.

    • #37
  8. Seawriter Contributor
    Seawriter
    @Seawriter

    Damn. James. That’s gonna leave a mark.

    • #38
  9. Podkayne of Israel Inactive
    Podkayne of Israel
    @PodkayneofIsrael

    I’ll pass. I’m on a Molly Jong Fast this week.

    • #39
  10. DrewInWisconsin, Oaf Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Fixed it.

    • #40
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