Volume VII, Number 1 winter 2014

comedy
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find
no common denominator, but among those
whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
 —W. H. Auden, 1963

Dan Leno, king of the jesters, as Idle Jack in “Dick Whittington,” 1894.
 editor
lewis h. lapham
publisher
david rose
executive editor
kira brunner don
associate editors
elias altman • aidan flax-clark • michelle legro
art director
timothy don
graphics designer
jason david brown
executive assistant
ann k. gollin
circulation and accounting management
acme publishing services
director of development
laurie eustis
development and editorial associate
anne-louise brittain
deputy web editor
angela serratore
editorial board
noga arikha • jack beatty • warren breckman • carl bromley • d. graham burnett
richard cohen • simon critchley • john crowley • annie dillard • michael dirda
barbara ehrenreich • peter foges • anthony gottlieb • anthony grafton • michael hudson
jonathan lyons • john major • greil marcus • peter mayer • ben metcalf • karl meyer
james miller • theodore rabb • ron rosenbaum frances stonor saunders • gregory shaya
mark slouka • peter struck • jennifer szalai • michael m. thomas • jack weatherford
curtis white • sean wilentz • brenda wineapple • simon winchester
interns
olivia caroline geraci • hilary ilkay • john michael kilbane
adjunct scholars
sebastian hendra • ioana pala • dan wilbur

the american agora foundation board

thomas m. siebel, chairman
lewis h. lapham, president
arthur yorke allen, secretary
larry berger • george david • robert r. gould • raymond a. lamontagne
george lund • sandy gotham meehan • rebecca rapoport • jaqui e. safra
additional principal support
carnegie corporation of new york • the gladys krieble delmas foundation • the dyson foundation
ejmp fund for philanthropy • michael moritz and harriet heyman • newman’s own foundation
the pinkerton foundation • thomas and stacey siebel foundation • the walbridge fund
publisher emeritus
louisa daniels kearney

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 comedy
Introductory
program notes 8. among the contributors
map 10. The Human Comedy
preamble 13. lewis h. lapham, The Solid Nonpareil

Voices in Time
situational
2001: new york city 21. sarah silverman
1913: los angeles 25. charlie chaplin
1659: paris 27. molière
1945: palermo 30. joseph heller
c. 1000 bc: mesopotamia 32. dialog of pessimism
1900: paris 35. henri bergson
1452: florence 37. poggio bracciolini
1731: dublin 38. jonathan swift
1988: baltimore 40. david simon
c. 810: baghdad 42. abu nuwas
1974: new york city 44. woody allen
1518: rome 49. baldassare castiglione
419 bc: athens 52. aristophanes
1838: springfield, il 57. abraham lincoln
1777: mannheim 60. wolfgang amadeus mozart
1939: new york city 61. james thurber
c. 1690: sichuan 62. pu songling

3
 Voices in Time

1925: leningrad 65. mikhail zoshchenko

1456: paris 67. françois villon
1952: dublin 69. samuel beckett
1830: eafield 71. charles lamb
1993: springfield, il 73. david foster wallace
1932: new york city 76. frances warfield
c. 1225: france 78. fabliau
1981: new york city 80. jewish jokes
1895: london 82. oscar wilde

observational
2005: new york city 87. kurt vonnegut
1532: lyon 89. françois rabelais
c. 975: england 90. the exeter book
1959: los angeles 91. groucho marx
c. 1000: kyoto 93. sei shōnagon
1896: london 94. lewis carroll
c. 300: greece 96. hierocles & philagrius
1995: new york city 97. calvin trillin
1860: london 99. herbert spencer
1923: new york city 101. robert benchley
1688: france 102. jean de la bruyère
c. 330 bc: athens 106. aristotle
1791: steventon 108. jane austen
1921: baltimore 110. h. l. mencken
1974: los angeles 113. steve martin
1856: london 115. george eliot
1985: blacksmith 117. don delillo
1748: bath 119. philip dormer stanhope
1940: ireland 120. flann o’brien
c. 1576: aquitaine 122. michel de montaigne
c. 205 bc: rome 125. plautus
1996: washington, dc 128. chris rock
1927: new york city 130. dorothy parker
1947: washington, dc 131. harry s. truman

4 | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
 Voices in Time

confrontational
2000: new york city 135. arthur miller
c. 1985: united states 138. carol leifer
c. 1870: boston 140. mark twain
1764: ferney 142. voltaire
c. 1255: baghdad 144. the thousand and one nights
1905: vienna 148. sigmund freud
2002: somers, ny 152. billy collins
1963: los angeles 153. lenny bruce
1974: london 158. mark forstater
c. 105: rome 159. juvenal
1882: san francisco 162. ambrose bierce
c. 1650: paris 163. edmond rostand
c. 1180 bc: lemnos 165. homer
c. 1937: leningrad 168. daniil kharms
1605: spain 170. miguel de cervantes

Mosaic with theatrical masks, Rome, second century.

5
 Voices in Time
c. 1958: washington, dc 172. stanley kubrick, terry southern & peter george
1993: belfast 175. martin mcdonagh
c. 360 bc: athens 179. plato
c. 1030: constantinople 180. christopher of mytilene
1842: russia 182. nikolai gogol
2007: liphook 186. nigel johnson-hill
1948: chicago 187. langston hughes
1555: paris 189. morris bishop
1875: london 191. george vasey
1978: new york city 193. gloria steinem
c. 1592: padua 194. william shakespeare

Further Remarks
essays
Once upon a Time in the West 199. ben tarnoff
Split Personalities 214. andrew mcconnell stott

departments
conversations 208. hobbes, la rochefoucauld, rivers, baudelaire
miscellany 212. laugh tracks, murderous clowns, horticulture
sources 222. readings & art

Smiling mask with attached glass eye, Turkish, twentieth century.

Many of the passages in this issue have been abbreviated without the use of ellipses; some punctuation
has been modified, and while misspellings have been corrected, archaic grammar and word usage
remains unchanged. The words are faithful to the original texts.

6 | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
art, photography, and illustrations
Cover: Japanese theater mask, nineteenth century.
IFC: Dan Leno, 1894.
5: Mosaic, Rome, second century.
6: Smiling mask with attached glass eye, Turkish, twentieth century.
8–9: Voltaire; Woody Allen, Molière; Dorothy Parker; Plautus;
George Eliot; Charlie Chaplin; Daniil Kharms; Abu Nuwas;
Ambrose Bierce; Aristotle; Sei Shōnagon; Baldassare Cas-
tiglione; Samuel Beckett; François Villon; Chris Rock; Lewis
Carroll; Jonathan Swift.
12: Jimmy Armstrong, New Jersey, 1958.
Photograph by Bruce Davidson.
17: Terracotta female head, sixth century.
19: The Joke, by Ethel Spowers, 1932.
20: Democritus, by Antoine Coypel, 1692.
24: Guard and child, Beijing, 1984. Photograph by Thomas Hoepker.
26: Genre Scene, by Giuseppe Bonito, c. 1740.
29: Bull farting at knight, c. 1275.
31: Italian boys, c. 1915. Photograph by A.W. Cutler.
34: For What Was I Created?, by William Holbrook Beard, 1886.
36: Fanny Brice and Bea Lillie, 1945.
Photograph by Louise Dahl-Wolfe.
39: Comic masks, Hadrumetum, third century.
41: Parade: Pierrot Presents to the Audience His Companions Harlequin
and Punchinello, by Octave Penguilly L’Haridon, 1846.
42: Thirty-five Expressive Heads, by Louis-Léopold Boilly, c. 1825.
45: “Madrid, Spain: Prado Museum,” 1995.
Photograph by Elliott Erwitt.
47: “The Charge,” Japanese erotic scroll print.
48: Comic Relief.
51: Young women with satyr, by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, c. 1765.
52: Mumbai laughing club, 1996. Photograph by Steve McCurry.
55: A Singer and a Drinker, style of Caravaggio, c. 1600.
57: Undercover.
58: “There was an old Derry Down Derry,” by Edward Lear, 1875.
61: Friar Pedro Shoots El Maragato as His Horse Runs Off,
by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, c. 1806.
65: California Suite, directed by Herbert Ross, 1978.
67: Th
 e Zaparozhye Cossacks Writing a Mocking Letter to the Turkish
Sultan, by Ilya Repin, c. 1880.
68: Young man, India, 2007. Photograph by Prasanta Biswas.
70: Punked!
71: Still from “Clown Torture,” by Bruce Nauman, 1987.
72: Private Concert, The Wrong Note, by Vittorio Reggianini, c. 1890.
75: Teasing a Sleeping Girl, by Gaspare Traversi, c. 1760.
77: Entertainer, Meiji period, nineteenth century.
81: Two Clowns, by Walt Kuhn, 1940.
83: Steve Martin, Beverly Hills, 1981, by Annie Leibovitz.
84: Harlequin and Pierrot, by André Derain, 1924.
86: The Hairdresser, by Marc Chagall, 1921.
88: Happy Moments, by Pompeo Massani, c. 1890.
91: Toba-e: Fukubiki subject, by Keisai Eisen, c. 1810.
92: Stanczyk, by Jan Matejko, 1862.
94: Mona Lisa, Age Twelve, by Fernando Botero, 1959.
97: The Fun Police.
99: Studies of heads, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1485.
101: Monkeys as Judges of Art, by Gabriel Cornelius von Max, 1889.
103: “Having the Giggles,” France, 1905.
105: It’s All in the Delivery.
106: Actor Wearing a Comic Mask, by Paul Klee, 1903.
108: Young Man Wearing a Feathered Hat While Pointing at Something
with His Right Hand, by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, c. 1670.
111: Crispin and Scapin, by Honoré Daumier, c. 1864.
112: Allegory of comedy, justice, and truth,
by Giuseppe Borsato, c. 1837.
114: The Two Clowns, by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, c. 1600.
117: Sign, Bombay, 1988. Photograph by Steve McCurry.
118: Caricature of Pope Innocent XI, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1676.
121: Golconda, by René Magritte, 1953.
123: Old Woman Studying the Alphabet with a Laughing Girl,
by Sofonisba Anguissola, c. 1555.
125: On the Borscht Belt.
126: Pornographic postcard from Pablo Picasso’s private collection.
128: Portrait head vessel, Peru, c. 400.
130: Interior with Merry Company,
by Willem Pietersz Buytewech, c. 1623.
133: Titania Awakes, Surrounded by Attendant Fairies, Clinging
Rapturously to Bottom, Still Wearing the Ass’s Head,
by Henry Fuseli, c. 1793.
134: “The Magic Ring,” by Maxfield Parrish, 1902.
137: Scene from The Possessed Girl,
by Dioskourides of Samos, c. 100 bc.
139: The Triumph of Ridicule, by Basset, 1773.
140: Towards the Corner, by Juan Muñoz, 1998.
143: The French and Italian Comic Actors of the Past Sixty Years and
More, attributed to Verrio, 1670.
144: Body Talk.
147: John with Drawing of a Clown, by Francesco Caroto, c. 1520.
149: Banjo player, c. 1920.
151: Name Calling.
153: Portrait of the Artist with the Features of a Mocker,
by Joseph Ducreux, c. 1793.
154: The Storyteller, by Eugenio Zampighi, c. 1900.
157: The Cameraman, directed by Edward Sedgwick, 1928.
159: A Caricature Group, by John Hamilton Mortimer, c. 1766.
161: The Journalists, by Hannah Höch, 1925.
162: The dwarf Yaksa, Maharashtra, India, c. 100 bc.
165: One Good Turn Deserves Another, by Edmé Gustave Brun, 1878.
167: “ The Soviet of Turkmenistan,” 1972.
Photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson.
168: March of the Clowns, by Albert Bloch, 1941.
170: Benoît de Tyskiewicz, c. 1890. Self-portrait.
174: Four entertainers, China, c. 125.
177: Stock Characters.
178: “It Was Abadie Who Made the Sacre-Coeur, but God Made
This!” by Adolphe Léon Willette, c. 1895.
181: Wall Street Bubbles—Always the Same,
by Joseph Keppler Jr., 1901.
183: Laughter, by Charles Le Brun, c. 1645.
184: Laurel and Hardy, c. 1930.
187: American soldiers, Tunisia, 1943. Photograph by Robert Capa.
188: Feast in an Inn, by Jan Havicksz Steen, 1674.
190: Budai Heshang, by Liu Zhen, 1486.
192: Teacher Asleep, by André Henri Dargelas, c. 1860.
195: Caricature of Queen Victoria, by Aubrey Beardsley, c. 1893.
196: Girl holding condoms, Bangladesh.
198: Pie in the face.
200: Fountain, by Marcel Duchamp, 1964.
203: Girls in kimonos, Japan.
204: The Buffoon Sebastian de Morra,
by Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez, c. 1646.
207: Dangerous Wit.
208: Thomas Hobbes; Victor Frankl.
209: La Rochefoucauld; Rob Delaney.
210: Quintilian; Joan Rivers.
211: St. John Chrysostom; Charles Baudelaire.
214: Higgledy-Piggledy, 1904.
216: Two Fools of Carnival, by Hendrik Hondius, 1642.
219: I Died Laughing.
221: Harpo Marx, c. 1930.
IBC: Portrait of a Laughing Violinist, by Gerrit van Honthorst, 1624.
The cover image for Volume VI, Number 4, “Death,” was miscap-
tioned. The caption should have read, “c. 1917 copy of a mask of
Abraham Lincoln, by Clark Mills, made two months before the
assassination of the President in 1865.”
7
Among the Contributors
Writing about his Philosophical
Dictionary, Voltaire (1694–1778)
espoused the virtue of testify-
ing to “how ridiculous are many
things alleged to be respectable.”
The book, whose authorship Vol-
taire disavowed, was banned by the
Church. The novelist, poet, and
dramatist once complained, “The
greatest misfortune of a writer…is
to be judged by fools.”
Woody Allen (1935–) has named
Ingmar Bergman and the Marx
Brothers as his two biggest
influences. He sold his first jokes
while in high school to a publicity
firm, and later wrote for Sid Caesar
and his own forty-four films,
remarking in 1992, “I think being
funny is not anyone’s first choice.”
Church authorities were so in-
censed by the plays of Molière
(1622–1673) that they had pro-
duction of Tartuffe halted for five
years and ensured the permanent
closing of Don Juan after fifteen
performances. The actor and com-
ic died after collapsing onstage
during the fourth showing of his
final play, The Imaginary Invalid.
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) de-
scribed herself as a “plain, disagree-
able little child with stringy hair”
who was “fired” from her religious
school for saying, “The Immaculate
Conception was spontaneous com-
bustion.” A lover of animals, she
owned at various times a parakeet
named Onan, a dog named Wood-
row Wilson, and two unnamed
baby alligators she sequestered in
her bathtub.
The comedies of the playwright
Plautus (c. 254–c. 184 bc) are the
oldest surviving complete works of
Latin literature. Adapted largely
from older Greek material, they
brought him financial success and a
lasting reputation as one of ancient
Rome’s greatest comedians.
Mary Ann Evans took the pseud-
onym George Eliot (1819–1880)
in 1857 while trying to sell her
first story, “The Sad Fortunes of
the Reverend Amos Barton,” to
a publisher in Edinburgh. The
author of Middlemarch borrowed
George from her lover G. H.
Lewes and chose Eliot, she said,
for being “a good, mouth-filling,
easily pronounced word.”
English-born Charlie Chaplin
(1889–1977) signed his first Amer-
ican film deal for $150 per week. By
1917 he had signed a million-dollar
contract for eight short films with
complete creative control. By 1952
he’d left the U.S. a virtual exile,
plagued by accusations of adultery
and communist sympathies.
In 1937, six years after being ar-
rested for his so-called anti-Soviet
children’s stories, Daniil Kharms
(1905–1942) wrote, “I am inter-
ested 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.
The Devil reportedly appeared to
one lover of the Arabian poet Abu
Nuwas (c. 755–c. 814) to warn him,
“I will lead astray the community
of Muhammad with this youth of
yours; I will not be satisfied until I
sow love for him in the hearts of all
hypocrites and lovers on account of
his sweet and pleasant verse.”
Before traveling to Mexico in
1913, newspaperman and short-
story writer Ambrose Bierce
(1824–c. 1914) wrote in a letter to
his niece, “If you hear of my being
stood up against a Mexican stone
wall and shot to rags, please know
that I think that a pretty good way
to depart this life.” He was never
heard from again.
The biographer Diogenes Laer-
tius relates that when Aristotle
(384–322 bc) heard of someone
insulting him behind his back, he
said, “He may beat me too, if he
likes, in my absence.” To an abuser
who asked, “Have I not been jeer-
ing you properly?” the philosopher
replied, “Not that I know of, for I
have not been listening to you.”
Among the amusements listed by
Sei Shōnagon (c. 966–c. 1017) in
The Pillow Book, her description
of Japanese court life in Kyoto,
is witnessing “someone for some
reason lose her temper and burst
into tears, and roundly abuse
whoever has struck her. Even the
more exalted people in the palace
join in the day’s fun.”
Baldassare Castiglione (1478–
1529) began writing The Book of
the Courtier, his treatise on gentle-
manly virtues, in 1508 while serv-
ing the rulers of Urbino; it was not
published until 1528. Castiglione
covered half the printing costs, sav-
ing one copy for himself, “the pages
gilded and well-pressed and covered
with leather of some rich color.”
Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
wrote Waiting for Godot, a play that
won him worldwide fame, “as a re-
laxation, to get away from the aw-
ful prose I was writing at that time,”
the prose being his novels Molloy,
Malone Dies, and The Unnamable.
Unhappy in the public eye, he de-
clined in 1969 to accept his Nobel
Prize in Literature in person.
“I am François, they have caught
me,” wrote François Villon (1431–
c. 1463) in 1462, shortly before be-
ing banished from Paris for theft
and then disappearing forever.
The French lyric poet had fled the
city once before, after he had run
a priest through with a sword, and
had also been arrested multiple
times for fighting and stealing.
Chris Rock (1966–) began regu-
larly performing standup comedy
after dropping out of high school
at the age of seventeen. He landed
a role on Saturday Night Live from
1990 to 1993 and released his
career-making HBO special Bring
the Pain in 1996. Of his success, he
has said, “I love being famous. It’s
almost like being white.”
Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) spent
his first eleven years in “complete
seclusion from the world,” amus-
ing himself by adopting snails
and toads for pets, befriending
earthworms, and building a fake
train car. His pseudonym he took
in 1856, inverting his first name,
Charles, and his matronymic,
Lutwidge, then translating them
into Latin and back into English.
“The chief end I propose to myself
in all my labors is to vex the
world, rather than divert it,” wrote
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) in
1725. “And if I could compass
with that design without hurting
my own person or fortune, I
would be the most indefatigable
writer you have ever seen.”
The Human Comedy
Human folly is played out on and off
the world stage across time and place.
This map highlights six of its theatrical
forms, but everywhere it details
humanity’s hypocrites, buffoons,
lechers, lovers, schemers, and fools.

Variety shows of diverse, unrelated acts

catering to male, working-class audiences;
featured dancers, comedians, and
magicians; with coarseness removed,
shows later became popular
family entertainment.

Lavish productions with bawdy, war-of-

the-sexes plots, prose dialog, and
female performers; encouraged by
King Charles II upon his return to
the throne after era of
Puritan Commonwealth.

Key

Applied classical rules of dramatic

realism such as a five-act structure and
the “three unities” to the comedy of
manners; Molière’s farces ridiculing
hypocrisy are the pinnacle
of the form.
Performed alongside tragedies during Great
Dionysia festival in Athens; with choruses,
dancing, and singing, actors in mask
satirized public figures and current
events; Aristophanes’ works are
the only fully-extant
examples.

Independent plays expanded from

brief, comical interludes of Noh drama;
implemented highly choreographed
movements and intoned speech on a
bare wooden stage; accompanied
by flutes, drums, and
vocal calls.

Largely improvised farces, often

concerning thwarted young lovers,
performed by touring troupes of male
and female actors; included
acrobatics and dance; masks
worn to denote stock
characters.

Map by Daupo
12  | LAPHAM’S QUARTERLY
Preamble

The Solid Nonpareil

by Lewis H. Lapham

Well, humor is the great thing, the saving thing, after all.
 —Mark Twain

T
wain for as long as I’ve known him has been true to his word, and so
I’m careful never to find myself too far out of his reach. The Library
of America volumes of his Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays
(1852–1910) 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 Twain’s 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 world’s “colossal humbug.”
Laughter was Twain’s stock in trade, and for thirty years as best-selling author
and star attraction on America’s 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 nation’s 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 crowd—as comedy,
burlesque, satire, parody, sarcasm, ridicule, wit—any 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 Lapham’s Quarterly, seen to be wearing a Japanese mask or a
buddha’s smile, dancing to a tune called Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, striking poses
rigged by Samuel Beckett, Dorothy Parker, Charlie Chaplin, and Molière. The text
and illustration show but don’t 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
A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on unfortunate discovery.
the affections. —George Eliot, 1876 With Groucho Marx (Los Angeles, page 91)
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 black—is a question that I gladly leave to the
French philosopher Henri Bergson (Paris, page 35), Twain’s contemporary who
in 1900 took note of its primary components: “The comic does not exist outside
the pale of what is strictly human…Laughter has no greater foe than emotion…
Its appeal is to the intelligence, pure and simple…Our 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
isn’t amusing, neither is the sea. Wombats don’t do metaphor or standup. What
is funny is man’s 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 world’s evil. The confusion of realms is the
substance of Shakespeare’s 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 he’s 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  | LAPHAM’S 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 they’re bound
to die, they don’t discover ludicrous incongruities between the physical and the
metaphysical, don’t invent, as does François 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—
Shakespeare’s romance and Rabelais’ bawdy as well as Juvenal’s satire (Rome, page
159) and Molière’s 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 don’t 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 wasn’t in the loop; four or twenty-one centuries out of touch, I don’t
know who first said what to whom, or why the merriment is merry.

T
his issue of the Quarterly relies on sources predominantly British or
American, many of them drawn from within the frame of the last two
centuries, because I can hear what isn’t being said. Usually, not always.
Even in one’s own day and age it’s never a simple matter to catch the drift in the
wind or judge the lay of the land. Lenny Bruce (Los Angeles, page 153) remarks
on the collapse of his off-color nightclub act in front of a milk-white audience
in Milwaukee—“They don’t laugh, they don’t heckle, they just stare at me in
disbelief ”—and I’m reminded of my own first encounter, at the age of thirteen,
with a silence casting me into an outer darkness in a galaxy far, far away.
In the autumn of 1948 on my first Sunday at a Connecticut boarding school,
the headmaster (a pious and confiding man, as grave as he was good) welcomed
the returning and newly arriving students with an edifying sermon. Protestant but
nondenominational, the chapel had been built to the design of an early-eighteenth-
century New England spiritual simplicity—white wood, unstained glass, straight-
backed pews set in two sternly disciplined rows before an unobtrusive pulpit. The
students were arranged alphabetically by class, seniors to the fore, preps, myself
among them, fitted into the choir loft above the doors at the rear. My family
having moved east from California only a few weeks prior to my being sent off to
school, I’d never before seen a Connecticut landscape.

15
 More to the point, I’d only twice been inside a church, for an uncle’s wedding
and a police chief ’s funeral. The latter ceremony I’d 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 headmaster’s sermon was a canvassing for votes,
whether for or from God I didn’t 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 long-
dead 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
Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, elect. I’d blotted my copybook, been marked
not because it has been sober, responsible, down as an offensive humorist from the wrong
and cautious but because it has been playful, side of the Hudson River.
rebellious, and immature. In the troubled sea of the world’s ambition,
 —Tom Robbins, 1980 men rise by gravity, sink by levity, and on my
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 table—not to be trusted with
the singing of the school song, or with the laughing at people who didn’t 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 program—able to find fault with an official press
release, put an awkward question to a department-store mogul—I 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 didn’t 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 ninety-
eighth 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 didn’t 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 wasn’t 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  | LAPHAM’S QUARTERLY
 Terracotta female head, Medma, Italy, sixth century bc.

L
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 line—the sight of something where
it’s not supposed to be, the story going where it’s not supposed to go, Groucho
Marx saying, “Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot and look like an
idiot, but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.”
Groucho’s 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 world’s 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 perpetuate…We 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 one—the one we use—which 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 nation’s
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 man’s 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 I’ve heard him say that the nuclear
option trumps the China card, that the lines in
Jesters do oft prove prophets. the Middle Eastern sand connect the Temple of
 —William Shakespeare, c. 1605 Solomon to the Pentagon, that America under
no circumstances is to be caught holding Neville
Chamberlain’s 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 doesn’t 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. It’s the funniest joke in the world.”
Twain didn’t 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  | LAPHAM’S QUARTERLY
 The Joke, by Ethel Spowers, 1932.

the mud of their mortality. He knew himself made, like all other men, as “a poor,
cheap, wormy thing…a sarcasm, the Creator’s 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
democracy’s 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 Adam’s 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: New York City
sarah silverman responds to a critic
The second-worst disaster in American history
preceded the first by exactly two months to the
day. On July 11, 2001, I appeared on Late Night
with Conan O’Brien. Although you wouldn’t
know it by looking on my IMDb page, it’s not
listed there. It’s as if this gig never happened.
The day that never happened went like this:
I arrive at 30 Rock and meet with Frank, the seg-
ment producer, to go over the plan. He tells me
there’s a problem with one of my jokes. The joke
goes like this: “I got a jury duty form in the mail,
and I don’t wanna do jury duty. So my friend
said, ‘Write something really racist on the form
so they won’t pick you, like “I hate niggers.”’ I
was like, Jeez—I don’t want people to think I’m
racist, I just wanna get out of jury duty. So I filled
out the form, and I wrote ‘I love niggers.’”
Frank says I can’t say “nigger” on the show,
even though it’s obviously not a racist joke, it’s a
joke about an idiot, me, trying to get out of jury
duty. But no way could that word be uttered on
NBC. Period. “What about saying ‘the N word’?”
Frank suggests, but I tell him that won’t work. It
has to be brutal. The N word is the opposite of
brutal; it’s the phrase one uses when being deli-
cate. He tries again: “What about substituting
‘dirty Jew’?” At first I like the idea but decide that
because I actually am Jewish, it would dilute the
humor. The more offensive the word, the more
sharply it highlights the idiocy of the speaker.
So I say, “Nah. ‘Dirty Jew’ makes it too soft,
since I am a dirty Jew. How about ‘Chink’?”
Democritus, by Antoine Coypel, 1692.
“No,” Frank says. “How about ‘Spic’? You
can say ‘Spic.’”
“How come I can say ‘Spic’ and not
‘Chink’? That doesn’t make sense. Fuck that—if
I can say ‘Spic’ then I can say ‘Chink.’ I’m say-
ing ‘Chink’—it’s a funnier-sounding word.”
He doesn’t argue. Chink it is.
I go out and sit on the couch with Conan
to do the show. It turns out great. The joke about
jury duty gets huge laughs. I go home to my sub-
let in the Village, feeling pleased with myself.
The next morning I woke up to my cell
phone ringing. I couldn’t get to it before voice-
mail picked up, but I saw the caller ID—it was
Mom. “Hi, Honey, it’s Mom. I was just watch-
ing The View, and they were talking about you!
They said that some guy from an Asian Ameri-
can watchdog group is very upset that you said
‘Chink’ and wants an apology, and then Lisa Ling
agreed that that word is racist, and they played
the clip from last night of you on Conan and you
looked gorgeous! But I really wish you would wear
earrings. Earrings always frame a face…”
I was in shock. I went online and found the
man my mother was talking about. His name was
Guy Aoki, and he was from the Media Action
Network for Asian Americans, or MANAA.
I felt terrible that he was upset and want-
ed to explain myself, so I found Guy’s email
address on his website and wrote him a long
message. I really worked hard on it, too. I en-
listed my sister Susan, who’s a rabbi, and her
21
 husband—he’s a super-Jew with the super-
Jewiest of names, Yosef Israel Abramowitz—to
help me craft the email just right.
After doing the Conan show, I flew back
to LA and met with my then-manager, Geoff
Cheddy, a curly-haired Jew with a goofy smile.
Geoff sat me down and started talking: “I
pitched you for an all-comedian Fear Factor.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?? Do you
know me at all? In a million fucking years I
wouldn’t do—”
“They don’t want you.”
Suddenly, I wasn’t feeling so cocky.
“They don’t want me on Fear Factor??”
“They don’t want you on NBC. At all.”
I was devastated. All of NBC? To be ban-
ished by an entire network is scary for a young
comedian. It’s not that I wanted, per se, to be cast
on a show where you’re forced to eat the maggot-
filled rotting intestines of a dead yak, but when
the people who cast the maggot-eating show
don’t want you, that’s a whole new career low.
Geoff went on to tell me that NBC had
already released an apology for my behavior. As
soon as Aoki complained, the network released
this statement: “The joke was clearly inappro-
priate and the fact that it was not edited by
our standards and practices department was a
mistake. We have reviewed our procedures to
ensure such an incident does not reoccur, and
we will edit the joke out of any future repeats.”
Wow. You can really tell that this message
came straight from the network’s heart, and it’s
not surprising. Of course mucky-mucks at NBC
would be deeply dismayed and apologetic about
my offensive joke and quick to apologize for it.
After all, any network that shows people eat-
ing the maggot-filled rotting intestines of dead
yaks—during primetime, no less—is a network
devoted to the preservation of human dignity.
Back at my apartment I picked up a mes-
sage from one of the producers of Politically
Incorrect with Bill Maher, inviting me to defend
myself on the show; Guy Aoki would be on the
panel. I accepted, having yet to learn that there
is nothing more pointless, and nothing less
funny, than defending your own material.
22  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
I arrived alone at Television City studios,
but I had two comic friends on my guest list—
Doug Benson and Brian Posehn. I was ushered
past the greenroom where Guy Aoki was sit-
ting. He had black, pin-straight hair, cut in the
exact bowl shape I had when I was five, and the
same mustache I had till I was fifteen. (That’s
when I started bleaching it—the thinking be-
ing that if it’s bright yellow, it’s invisible.)
The segment producer came into my
dressing room to prepare me for the show. The
typical format of Politically Incorrect involved a
discussion about topics in the news that day,
ranging from politics to pop culture. But this
show, I was told, would be almost entirely about
us—Guy and me. My plan was to keep it light
and jokey, but also sincere.
The producer said Bill would ask me to
repeat the joke in question.
“No! Really? It will die like that! Can’t you
play the clip from Conan?”
“No. We can’t get the rights.”
NBC had vowed never to rebroadcast the
joke in any form, including clips. The only topic
of tonight’s show was that joke, and there was
no clip available. I would have to repeat the
joke; it was the only way. Great.
Before the producer left the room, she men-
tioned her annoyance over Guy Aoki’s request
for extra seats in the audience.
“Really?” I asked. “How many people does
he have out there?”
“Sixty.”
“Sixteen??? He has sixteen people in the
audience?? Are you fucking serious? I’m dead.”
I had misheard her. Then she rallied: “Um,
Sixtee.”
That motherfucker had sixty pissed-off
people in the audience, and all I had were two
professional stoner-comedians in the green
room. I had one more question: “How many
seats are there in the audience all together?”
“One hundred and twenty-five.”
Kill me. Please. Please take my life.
As it happened, there was no way to stop
time, and before I knew it, this was happening:
Bill Maher introduced Guy Aoki, me, David
Spade, and an actress named Anne-Marie
Johnson, most famous for being on the spinoff
of What’s Happening!! called What’s Happening
Now! Right off the bat, Bill asked me to repeat
the joke. I did my best, but I was pretty mojo-
less. The punch line was met with boos—sixty
of them, as promised—which sent me spiraling
downward and into a sinkhole of incoherence.
Here’s a partial transcript I found on Guy
Aoki’s Wikipedia page that pretty much says it
all—feel free to wince at my enlistment of the
word dude:
Maher: So you are telling me, sir, that there is
some joke that could use the word Chink done
correctly, satirically, that would be okay.
Aoki: I think it would definitely be okay.
Maher: Give me an example—
Aoki: No, I am just addressing one of the points
she said, which was satire. I’m saying it wasn’t
good satire, anyway.
Maher: That’s implying that some joke would
be of such good satire that she could have said
“Chink.”
Aoki: She could have said, “I hate Chinese peo-
ple. I love Chinese people.” Would have gone,
“Okay, funny joke, ha ha.” And that would have
been over with.
Silverman: That’s not the point of the joke. The
joke is making fun—
Anne-Marie Johnson: That’s the question. Where
is the joke? [applause]
Aoki: The point is you used a slur that you thought
you could get away with on national television.
Silverman: That’s true. Racism is so—exists,
you know, and it’s not gonna go away. It’s not
gonna go away through censorship. Especially
censorship with comics.
Aoki: So we should just keep bad jokes and of-
fend people over and over again.
Silverman: You’re 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, sub-
jectivity, 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 aren’t 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 wasn’t.
With all the religious and racial material
I’ve done, the bulk of complaints and outcry
has come from the advocates of what must be
the hardest suffering of all minorities: uber-
rich, 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 cul-
ture. In general, I don’t do those kinds of jokes
in my regular standup. The only time I really do
that is when it’s 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 sen-
tenced to a brief stay at the LA county jail for
drunk driving, then violating her parole and
driving drunk again. Here’s 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 it’s gonna be a no-frills thing, and that is
ridiculous. As a matter of fact, I hear that in or-
der to make her feel more comfortable in prison,
the guards are gonna paint the bars to look like
penises. I just worry that she’s 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.
What can’t be conveyed in the above quote
is the audience’s reaction. When I said, “Paris
Hilton is going to jail,” the crowd erupted into
a sustained, almost primal frenzy of cheers and
applause. Not even the announcement of free
universal healthcare could have incited such
passion. The camera trained on her coupled
with the eruption of cheers at her impending
imprisonment made my heart sink. This was
not a jibe at the roast of an old salt. She was
a Christian thrown to the lions in an arena of
Romans cheering her imminent demise.
I had no moral qualms, in theory, with
joking about Paris’ incarceration—it’s what
late-night talk-show hosts had been doing for
weeks. But to set her up to be jeered to her face
by thousands on live television during the most
vulnerable, frightening moment of her life—
needless to say, that took the fun out of the “all
in good fun” essence I intended. Whether it was
an innocent oversight, or a very calculating one,
no one producing the show informed me until
minutes before I went onstage that Paris would
be in the audience. With that very late piece of
information, I didn’t stop to concentrate, to se-
riously imagine how that whole moment might
come together.
The next morning I Googled myself and
discovered that my joke had set the Internet
ablaze. The Los Angeles Times described it as “a
cruel beat-down on Hilton.” Even on my own
unofficial website, one visitor, presumably a fan,
posted, “That was one of the meanest things I
have ever witnessed.” Everywhere I looked, I
24  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
saw words like cruel, mean, vicious, and nasty.
Websites and blogs were consumed with the
question of whether or not I had gone too far,
of whether or not I was a bitch. Paris weighed
in with an unequivocal yes. If Guy Aoki had
stirred up just a fraction of this level of outrage
with my “Chink” joke, he would still be jacking
off to it now.
In fact, I felt much worse about this than I
did about upsetting Aoki. He’d misunderstood a
joke. Paris was genuinely a victim of a joke. I felt
horribly guilty. At the time, I was writing the sec-
ond season of The Sarah Silverman Program, but I
was so disturbed that I could not focus on work.
I left the writers’ room and wrote a letter to Paris,
who was now, on top of being hurt, in jail.
It was surely one of the least important me-
dia controversies in history. And I was probably
the only person specifically Googling the story,
so most of it was probably just playing out in
the space between my laptop and my eyeballs.
But what I took away from it all was, if I ever
did another MTV awards show, I needed to be
more careful about the jokes I told.
From The Bedwetter. In the foreword to this
memoir, published in 2010, Silverman wrote, “When
I first selected myself to write the foreword for my
book, I was flattered, and deeply moved.” The comic
and actress is well-known for her controversial jokes.
“Everybody blames the Jews for killing Christ,” she
said in a standup routine. “And then the Jews try
to pass it off on the Romans. I’m one of the few
people that believe it was the blacks.” The Sarah
Silverman Program ran on Comedy Central from
2007 to 2010.
1913: Los Angeles
charlie chaplin invents himself
Mack Sennett was away on location with
Mabel Normand as well as the Ford Sterling
Company, so there was hardly anyone left in
the studio. Mr. Henry Lehrman, Keystone’s
top director after Sennett, was to start a new
picture and wanted me to play a newspaper
reporter. Lehrman was a vain man and very
conscious of the fact that he had made some
successful comedies of a mechanical nature; he
used to say that he didn’t need personalities,
that he got all his laughs from mechanical ef-
fects and film cutting.
We had no story. It was to be a documentary
about the printing press done with a few com-
edy touches. I wore a light frock coat, a top hat,
and a handlebar mustache. When we started, I
could see that Lehrman was groping for ideas.
And of course, being a newcomer at Keystone,
I was anxious to make suggestions. This was
where I created antagonism with Lehrman. In
a scene in which I had an interview with an
editor of a newspaper, I crammed in every con-
ceivable gag I could think of, even suggesting
business for others in the cast. Although the
picture was completed in three days, I thought
we contrived some very funny gags. But when
I saw the finished film, it broke my heart, for
the cutter had butchered it beyond recognition,
cutting into the middle of all my funny busi-
ness. I was bewildered and wondered why they
had done this. Henry Lehrman confessed years
later that he had deliberately done it, because,
as he put it, he thought I knew too much.
The day after I finished with Lehrman,
Sennett returned from location. Ford Sterling
was on one set, Roscoe Arbuckle on another; the
whole stage was crowded with three companies
at work. I was in my street clothes and had noth-
ing to do, so I stood where Sennett could see me.
He was standing with Mabel, looking into a ho-
tel lobby set, biting the end of a cigar. “We need
some gags here,” he said, then turned to me. “Put
on comedy makeup. Anything will do.”
I had no idea what makeup to put on. I did
not like my getup as the press reporter. However,
on the way to the wardrobe, I thought I would
dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane, and a der-
by hat. I wanted everything a contradiction: the
pants baggy, the coat tight; the hat small, and
the shoes large. I was undecided whether to look
old or young, but remembering Sennett had ex-
pected me to be a much older man, I added a
small mustache, which, I reasoned, would add
age without hiding my expression.
I had no idea of the character. But the mo-
ment I was dressed, the clothes and the makeup
made me feel the person he was. I began to
know him, and by the time I walked on to the
stage he was fully born. When I confronted
Sennett, I assumed the character and strutted
about, swinging my cane and parading be-
fore him. Gags and comedy ideas went racing
through my mind.
The secret of Mack Sennett’s success was
his enthusiasm. He was a great audience and
laughed genuinely at what he thought funny. He
stood and giggled until his body began to shake.
This encouraged me and I began to explain the
character: “You know this fellow is many sided,
a tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely
fellow, always hopeful of romance and adven-
ture. He would have you believe he is a scientist,
a musician, a duke, a polo player. However, he is
not above picking up cigarette butts or robbing a
baby of its candy. And, of course, if the occasion
warrants it, he will kick a lady in the rear—but
only in extreme anger!”
I carried on this way for ten minutes or
more, keeping Sennett in continuous chuckles.
“All right,” he said, “get on the set and see what
you can do there.” As with the Lehrman film,
I knew little of what the story was about, other
than that Mabel Normand gets involved with
her husband and a lover.
In all comedy business, an attitude is most
important, but it is not always easy to find an
attitude. However, in the hotel lobby I felt I
was an imposter posing as one of the guests,
but in reality I was a tramp just wanting a little
shelter. I entered and stumbled over the foot of
25
 a lady. I turned and raised my hat apologeti-
cally, 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 Ar-
buckle 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 de-
bated whether to let it run its full length, as the
average comedy scene rarely ran over ten. “If it’s
Genre Scene, by Giuseppe Bonito, c. 1740.
26  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
funny,” I said, “does length really matter?” They
decided to let the scene run its full seventy-five
feet. As the clothes had imbued me with the
character, I then and there decided I would
keep to this costume whatever happened.
That evening I went home on the street-
car with one of the small-bit players. Said he,
“Boy, you’ve started something; nobody ever
got those kind of laughs on the set before, not
even Ford Sterling—and you should have seen
his face watching you, it was a study!”
“Let’s hope they’ll laugh the same way
in the theater,” I said, by way of suppressing
my elation.
From My Autobiography. Chaplin began this book’s
first chapter, “I was born on April 16, 1889, at eight
o’clock at night, in East Lane, Walworth,” and the
childhood he then recounted was no less Dickensian,
replete with Victorian workhouses, reversals of
fortune, and a drunken father. Chaplin directed his
first silent film in 1914 and his last one, Modern
Times, in 1936—the last silent film to be produced
for forty years. His first talkie, The Great Dictator,
was released in 1940. It parodied Adolf Hitler, who
had been born four days after Chaplin in 1889.
1659: Paris
molière presents a fop
Mascarille: [after seating himself, combing his
hair, and adjusting his stockings] Well, ladies,
and how do you find Paris?
Magdelon: Dear me, what is there to say? It
would be the very antipodes of reason not to
confess that Paris is the great central office of
marvels, the clearinghouse of good taste, wit,
and gallantry.
Mascarille: As for me, I insist that outside of Paris
there is no salvation for people of breeding.
Cathos: That is an incontestable truth.
Mascarille: It’s a little muddy, of course, but we
have the sedan chair.
Magdelon: It is true that the sedan chair is a
sweet sanctuary against the insults of the mud
and bad weather.
Mascarille: You receive many visits; what cel-
ebrated wit belongs to your circle?
Magdelon: Alas! We are hardly known as yet,
but we are becoming so, and we have a special
friend who has promised to bring here all the
gentlemen who write for The Wits’ Intelligencer.
Cathos: And certain others who have been in-
dicated to us as the final authorities on gra-
cious living.
Mascarille: I am the person to arrange that.
They all come to see me, and I may say that I
never rise in the morning without a half-dozen
of the wits in attendance.
Magdelon: Heavens, we shall be obliged to
you, with a really perfervid obligation, if you
will do us that kindness. For after all, one
must be acquainted with all those gentle-
men, if one wants to belong to the world of
elegance. They are the ones who make and
break reputations in Paris, and you know well
that there is a certain individual whom you
merely have to know personally to acquire
the reputation of being an insider, even if
you have no other qualifications. But person-
ally, what I regard as most important is that
by means of these feasts of wit and soul one
learns hundreds of things that are absolutely
essential, the very quintessence of smartness.
Thus one finds out every day the chitchat of
the gallant world and all the quips and verses
that are being passed around. We learn at just
the right moment that so-and-so has com-
posed the neatest little thing on such-and-
such a subject; and a certain lady has supplied
the words for a new tune; and a gentleman
has written a madrigal on gaining a lady’s fa-
vors; and another has composed some stan-
zas on an infidelity; Monsieur Blank wrote
last night an epigram in verse to Mademoi-
selle Dash, and she sent him the reply this
morning about eight; an author has a certain
plot for a new book; another has reached part
three in his new novel; and another’s works
have just gone to press. That is what brings
you regard in society, and if you don’t know
that sort of thing, I wouldn’t give a penny for
all the wit you might have.
Cathos: In fact, I think anyone who makes the
slightest claim to smartness is quite too ridicu-
lous if he doesn’t know the most trifling little
quatrain which has just been written, and for
my part, I should be abominably ashamed if
someone should chance to ask me if I had seen
something new, and I hadn’t seen it.
Mascarille: It is certainly shaming not to have
the first sight of everything which is being
turned out. But don’t distress yourselves. I am
thinking of establishing in your house an Acad-
emy of the Wits, and I promise you that not a
scrap of verse will turn up in all Paris without
your knowing it by heart before anyone else.
Why, for myself, not to boast, I toss them off
when I’m in the mood. You will hear quoted in
the most exclusive coteries of Paris two hun-
dred songs of mine, the same number of son-
nets, four hundred epigrams, and more than a
thousand limericks, not counting the enigmas
and the portraits.
27
 Magdelon: I’ll admit that I’m stupendously fond
of portraits; I can’t think of anything smarter.
Mascarille: Portraits are hard; they require
depth, depth. You will see some of mine that
won’t displease you.
Cathos: As for me, I love enigmas definitely
monstrously.
Mascarille: A good exercise for the brains. I
popped off four this morning, which I’ll give
you to guess.
Magdelon: Limericks are agreeable, when
they’re deftly done.
Mascarille: They’re my specialty! I’m busy now
putting the whole of Roman history into lim-
erick form.
Magdelon: Oh, certainly that’s immoderately
lovely! Reserve a copy for me, if you have it
printed.
Mascarille: I promise you each a copy, very
handsomely bound. Publication is beneath my
rank; I only do it to help out the booksellers,
who simply persecute me.
Magdelon: I should think it would be a great
pleasure to see oneself in print.
Mascarille: Yes, rather. But while I think of it,
I must tell you an impromptu I did yesterday
when I was visiting a friend of mine, a duchess.
I’m devilishly good at impromptus.
Cathos: The impromptu is the absolute touch-
stone of wit.
Mascarille: Then listen.
Magdelon: We are all ears.
Mascarille: Oh, oh! I was so carefree and
imprudent!
I was just gazing at you, as who wouldn’t?
You stole my heart, engulfing me in grief;
Stop thief! Stop thief! Stop thief! Stop thief!
Stop thief!
Cathos: Dear heavens! That’s the last word in
the gallant style!
28  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
Mascarille: Everything I do has a certain dash;
there’s nothing pedantic about it.
Magdelon: Oh, it’s a thousand leagues from the
pedantic!
Mascarille: Don’t you rather like “I was so care-
free and imprudent”? Carefree and imprudent,
taken off my guard, so to speak; a perfectly
every­day turn of speech, carefree and impru-
dent. “I was just gazing at you,” that is, inno-
cently, respectfully, like an unhappy little sheep.
“As who wouldn’t?” That is, the most natural
thing in the world, I observe you, I contemplate
you, I gaze upon you, as who wouldn’t? “You
stole my heart, engulfing me in grief.” How do
you like “engulfing me in grief ”?
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 !” Wouldn’t you say it was a man shout-
ing 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.]
Magdelon: One must admit that it is extremely
witty and gallant.
Mascarille: I must sing you the tune I’ve com-
posed for it.
Cathos: You’ve studied music?
Mascarille: What, me? Not at all.
Cathos: How is it possible, then—
Mascarille: People of quality know everything
without ever having learned anything.
Magdelon: He’s 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; it’s just an offhand
performance. [sings]
 Bull farting at a knight, manuscript illumination from Aelian’s On the Nature of Animals, c. 1275.
Cathos: Oh, what passion in that tune! I don’t
know why I don’t die of it.
Magdelon: It’s the positive cream of art, the
cream of the cream, or even the cream of the
cream of the cream. I assure you, it’s marvel-
ous; I am enchanted with both words and
music.
Cathos: I’ve never heard anything quite so
powerful.
Mascarille: Everything I do comes to me natu-
rally; I’ve never studied.
Magdelon: Nature has been your doting mother,
and you are her spoiled child.
Mascarille: Tell me, how do you pass your time?
Cathos: Ah, we barely do.
Magdelon: Till now, we have been enduring a
ghastly starvation of amusement.
Mascarille: I shall be happy to take you to
the theater one of these days, if you like. As
it happens, they are about to put on a new
play that I should be happy to have you attend
with me.
Magdelon: That’s an offer not to be refused.
Mascarille: But I must ask you to applaud prop-
erly when we are there, for I have promised to
help put the play over; the author came to re-
quest it just this morning. It’s the custom here
for the authors to come and read their new
plays to us gentlemen of quality, to persuade us
to approve them and give them some advance
reputation. You may well suppose that when we
say something, the commoners in the pit won’t
dare to contradict us. For my part, I am very
scrupulous about it, and when I’ve promised
some playwright, I always shout, “Beautiful!
Beautiful!” before they’ve lit the footlights.
Magdelon: No doubt about it, Paris is a won-
derful place.
From The Precious Damsels. Born Jean-Baptiste
Poquelin in Paris in 1622, the dramatist renounced
his inherited right to a royal appointment in 1643,
and one year later helped to found a theater company
for which he served as casting director. He then adopted
Molière as his stage name. In the mid-1660s, the
Catholic Church denounced his comedies Don Juan
and Tartuffe. In a public letter defending the latter,
Molière wrote, “The comic is the outward and visible
form that nature’s bounty has attached to everything
unreasonable, so that we should see, and avoid, it.”
29
 1945: Palermo
joseph heller explains the logic
Milo insisted to Orr and Yossarian on leaving
at once for Malta.
“We’re sleepy,” Orr whined.
“That’s your own fault,” Milo censured
both of them self-righteously. “If you two had
spent the night in your hotel room instead of
with these immoral girls, you’d both feel as
good as I do today.”
“You told us to go with them,” Yossarian
retorted accusingly. “And we didn’t have a hotel
room. You were the only one who could get a
hotel room.”
Wrinkle not thy face with too much laughter,
lest thou become ridiculous; neither wanton thy
heart with too much mirth, lest thou become
vain: the suburbs of folly is vain mirth, and the
profuseness of laughter is the city of fools.
 —Francis Quarles, 1640
“That wasn’t my fault, either,” Milo ex-
plained haughtily. “How was I supposed to
know all the buyers would be in town for the
chickpea harvest?”
“You knew it,” Yossarian charged. “That
explains why we’re here in Sicily instead of
Naples. You’ve probably got the whole damned
plane filled with chickpeas already.”
“Shhhhhh!” Milo cautioned sternly, with
a meaningful glance toward Orr. “Remember
your mission.”
The bomb bay, the rear and tail sections of
the plane, and most of the top turret gunner’s
section were all filled with bushels of chickpeas
when they arrived at the airfield to take off for
Malta.
Yossarian’s mission was to distract Orr
from observing where Milo bought his eggs,
even though Orr was a member of Milo’s syn-
dicate and, like every other member of Milo’s
syndicate, owned a share. His mission was silly,
Yossarian felt, since it was common knowledge
30  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
that Milo bought his eggs in Malta for seven
cents apiece and sold them to the mess halls in
his syndicate for five cents apiece.
“I just don’t trust him,” Milo brooded in
the plane, with a backward nod toward Orr,
who was curled up like a tangled rope on the
low bushels of chickpeas, trying torturedly to
sleep. “And I’d just as soon buy my eggs when
he’s not around to learn my business secrets.
What else don’t you understand?”
Yossarian was riding beside him in the
copilot’s seat. “I don’t understand why you buy
eggs for seven cents apiece in Malta and sell
them for five cents.”
“I do it to make a profit.”
“But how can you make a profit? You lose
two cents an egg.”
“But I make a profit of three and a quar-
ter cents an egg by selling them for four and
a quarter cents an egg to the people in Malta
I buy them from for seven cents an egg. Of
course, I don’t make the profit. The syndicate
makes the profit. And everybody has a share.”
Yossarian felt he was beginning to under-
stand. “And the people you sell the eggs to at
four and a quarter cents apiece make a profit of
two and three quarter cents apiece when they sell
them back to you at seven cents apiece. Is that
right? Why don’t you sell the eggs directly to you
and eliminate the people you buy them from?”
“Because I’m the people I buy them from,”
Milo explained. “I make a profit of three and a
quarter cents apiece when I sell them to me and
a profit of two and three quarter cents apiece
when I buy them back from me. That’s a total
profit of six cents an egg. I lose only two cents
an egg when I sell them to the mess halls at five
cents apiece, and that’s how I can make a profit
buying eggs for seven cents apiece and selling
them for five cents apiece. I pay only one cent
apiece at the hen when I buy them in Sicily.”
“In Malta,” Yossarian corrected. “You buy
your eggs in Malta, not Sicily.”
Milo chortled proudly. “I don’t buy eggs in
Malta,” he confessed, with an air of slight and
clandestine amusement that was the only de-
parture from industrious sobriety Yossarian had
 Italian boys sitting and posing for the camera as they smile and laugh, c. 1915. Photograph by A. W. Cutler.
even seen him make. “I buy them in Sicily for
one cent apiece and transfer them to Malta se-
cretly at four and a half cents apiece in order to
get the price of eggs up to seven cents apiece
when people come to Malta looking for them.”
“Why do people come to Malta for eggs
when they’re so expensive there?”
“Because they’ve always done it that way.”
“Why don’t they look for eggs in Sicily?”
“Because they’ve never done it that way.”
“Now I really don’t understand. Why don’t
you sell your mess halls the eggs for seven cents
apiece instead of for five cents apiece?”
“Because my mess halls would have no
need for me then. Anyone can buy seven-cents-
apiece eggs for seven cents apiece.”
“Why don’t they bypass you and buy the
eggs directly from you in Malta at four and a
quarter cents apiece?”
“Because I wouldn’t sell it to them.”
“Why wouldn’t you sell it to them?”
“Because then there wouldn’t be as much
room for a profit. At least this way I can make
a bit for myself as a middleman.”
“Then you do make a profit for yourself,”
Yossarian declared.
“Of course I do. But it all goes to the syndi-
cate. And everybody has a share. Don’t you un-
derstand? It’s exactly what happens with those
plum tomatoes I sell to Colonel Cathcart.”
“Buy,” Yossarian corrected him. “You don’t sell
plum tomatoes to Colonel Cathcart and Colonel
Korn. You buy plum tomatoes from them.”
“No, sell,” Milo corrected Yossarian. “I dis-
tribute my plum tomatoes in markets all over
Pianosa under an assumed name, so that Colo-
nel Cathcart and Colonel Korn can buy them
up from me under their assumed names at four
cents apiece and sell them back to me the next
day for the syndicate at five cents apiece. They
make a profit of one cent apiece, I make a profit
of three and a half cents apiece, and everybody
comes out ahead.”
“Everybody but the syndicate,” said Yos-
sarian with a snort. “The syndicate is paying
five cents apiece for plum tomatoes that cost
you only half a cent apiece. How does the syn-
dicate benefit?”
31

c. 1000 bc: Mesopotamia
national-security adviser
Slave, listen to me.
Here I am, sir, here I am.
I will lead a revolution.
So lead, sir, lead. Unless you lead a revolution,
where will your clothes come from? Who will
enable you to fill your belly?
No, slave, I will by no means lead a revolution.
The man who leads a revolution is either killed
or flayed, or has his eyes put out, or is arrested,
or is thrown in jail.
Slave, listen to me.
Here I am, sir, here I am.
I am going to love a woman.
So love, sir, love. The man who loves a woman
forgets sorrow and fear.
No, slave, I will by no means love a woman!
Do not love, sir, do not love. Woman is a
pitfall—a pitfall, a hole, a ditch. Woman is a
sharp iron dagger that cuts a man’s throat!
Slave, listen to me.
Here I am, sir, here I am.
I am going to make loans as a creditor.
So make loans, sir, make loans. The man who
makes loans as a creditor—his grain remains
his grain, while his interest is enormous.
No, slave, I will by no means make loans as
a creditor.
Making loans is like loving a woman; getting
them back is like having children. They will
eat your grain, curse you without ceasing, and
deprive you of the interest on your grain.
Slave, listen to me.
Here I am, sir, here I am.
What, then, is good?
To have my neck and your neck broken and to
be thrown into the river is good.
No, slave, I will kill you and send you first.
And my master would certainly not outlive
me by even three days.
From “The Dialog of Pessimism.” Little is known
about the provenance of this work, which some
scholars have classified with other similar texts,
such as the Theodicy and “Advice to a Prince,”
as Babylonian wisdom literature. Slavery was
common in ancient Mesopotamia, and in the
eighteenth-century-bc Code of Hammurabi there
was a provision, similar to the manumission laws
in the Old Testament, that stipulated a man could
settle a debt if he or a family member became a slave,
serving the creditor for a term of three years.
32  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
“The syndicate benefits when I benefit,”
Milo explained, “because everybody has a share.
And the syndicate gets Colonel Cathcart’s and
Colonel Korn’s support so that they’ll let me go
out on trips like this one. You’ll see how much
profit that can mean in about fifteen minutes
when we land in Palermo.”
“Malta,” Yossarian corrected him. “We’re
flying to Malta now, not Palermo.”
“No, we’re flying to Palermo,” Milo an-
swered. “There’s an endive exporter in Palermo
I have to see for a minute about a shipment
of mushrooms to Bern that were damaged
by mold.”
“Milo, how do you do it?” Yossarian in-
quired with laughing amazement and admira-
tion. “You fill out a flight plan for one place and
then you go to another. Don’t the people in the
control towers ever raise hell?”
“They all belong to the syndicate.” Milo
said. “And they know that what’s good for the
syndicate is good for the country, because that’s
what makes Sammy run. The men in the con-
trol towers have a share, too, and that’s why
they always have to do whatever they can to
help the syndicate.”
“Do I have a share?”
“Everybody has a share.”
“Does Orr have a share?”
“Everybody has a share.”
“And Hungry Joe? He has a share too?”
“Everybody has a share.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” mused Yossarian,
deeply impressed with the idea of a share for
the very first time.
Milo turned toward him with a faint glim-
mer of mischief. “I have a sure-fire plan for
cheating the federal government out of six
thousand dollars. We can make three thousand
dollars apiece without any risk to either of us.
Are you interested?”
“No.”
Milo looked at Yossarian with profound
emotion. “That’s what I like about you,” he ex-
claimed. “You’re honest! You’re the only one I
know that I can really trust. That’s why I wish
you’d try to be of more help to me. I really was
disappointed when you ran off with those two
tramps in Catania yesterday.”
Yossarian stared at Milo in quizzical disbe-
lief. “Milo, you told me to go with them. Don’t
you remember?”
“That wasn’t my fault,” Milo answered with
dignity. “I had to get rid of Orr some way once we
reached town. It will be a lot different in Palermo.
When we land in Palermo, I want you and Orr to
leave with the girls right from the airport.”
“With what girls?”
“I radioed ahead and made arrangements
with a four-year-old pimp to supply you and
Orr with two eight-year-old virgins who are
half Spanish. He’ll be waiting at the airport in
a limousine. Go right in as soon as you step out
of the plane.”
“Nothing doing,” said Yossarian, shaking
his head. “The only place I’m going is to sleep.”
Milo turned livid with indignation, his
slim long nose flickering spasmodically be-
tween his black eyebrows and his unbalanced
orange-brown mustache like the pale, thin
flame of a single candle. “Yossarian, remember
your mission,” he reminded reverently.
“To hell with my mission,” Yossarian re-
sponded indifferently. “And to hell with the
syndicate too, even though I do have a share.
I don’t want any eight-year-old virgins, even if
they are half Spanish.”
“I don’t blame you. But these eight-year-old
virgins are really only thirty-two. And they’re not
really half Spanish but only one-third Estonian.”
“I don’t care for any virgins.”
“And they’re not even virgins,” Milo con-
tinued persuasively. “The one I picked out for
you was married for a short time to an elderly
schoolteacher who slept with her only on Sun-
days, so she’s really almost as good as new.”
But Orr was sleepy—and Yossarian and
Orr were both at Milo’s side when they rode
into the city of Palermo from the airport and
discovered that there was no room for the two
of them at the hotel there either, and, more im-
portant, that Milo was mayor.
The weird, implausible reception for Milo
began at the airfield, where civilian laborers who
recognized him halted in their duties respectfully
to gaze at him with full expressions of controlled
exuberance and adulation. News of his arrival
preceded him into the city, and the outskirts
were already crowded with cheering citizens
as they sped by in their small uncovered truck.
Yossarian and Orr were mystified and mute and
pressed close against Milo for security.
Inside the city, the welcome for Milo grew
louder as the truck slowed and eased deeper
toward the middle of town. Small boys and
girls had been released from school and were
lining the sidewalks in new clothes, waving
I used to think that everyone was just being
funny. But now I don’t know. I mean, how can
you tell? —Andy Warhol, 1970
tiny flags. Yossarian and Orr were absolutely
speechless now. The streets were jammed with
joyous throngs, and strung overhead were huge
banners bearing Milo’s picture. Milo had posed
for these pictures in a drab peasant’s blouse
with a high round collar, and his scrupulous,
paternal countenance was tolerant, wise, criti-
cal, and strong as he stared out at the populace
omnisciently with his undisciplined mustache
and disunited eyes. Sinking invalids blew kisses
to him from windows. Aproned shopkeepers
cheered ecstatically from the narrow doorways
of their shops. Tubas crumped. Here and there
a person fell and was trampled to death. Sob-
bing old women swarmed through each other
frantically around the slow-moving truck to
touch Milo’s shoulder or press his hand. Milo
bore the tumultuous celebration with benevo-
lent grace. He waved back to everyone in el-
egant reciprocation and showered generous
handfuls of foil-covered Hershey kisses to the
rejoicing multitudes. Lines of lusty young boys
and girls skipped along behind him with their
arms linked, chanting in hoarse and glassy-eyed
adoration, “Mi-lo! Mi-lo! Mi-lo!”
Now that his secret was out, Milo relaxed
with Yossarian and Orr and inflated opulently
with a vast, shy pride. His cheeks turned
33
 flesh colored. Milo had been elected mayor
of Palermo—and of nearby Carini, Monreale,
Bagheria, Termini Imerese, Cefalù, Mistretta,
and Nicosia as well—because he had brought
Scotch to Sicily.
Yossarian was amazed. “The people here
like to drink Scotch that much?”
“They don’t drink any of the Scotch,” Milo
explained. “Scotch is very expensive, and these
people here are very poor.”
“Then why do you import it to Sicily if no-
body drinks any?”
“To build up a price. I move the Scotch
here from Malta to make more room for profit
when I sell it back to me for somebody else. I
created a whole new industry here. Today Sic-
ily is the third-largest exporter of Scotch in the
world, and that’s why they elected me mayor.”
For What Was I Created? (detail), by William Holbrook Beard, 1886.
34  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
“How about getting us a hotel room if
you’re such a hotshot?” Orr grumbled imperti-
nently in a voice slurred with fatigue.
Milo responded contritely. “That’s just what
I’m going to do,” he promised. “I’m really sorry
about forgetting to radio ahead for hotel rooms
for you two. Come along to my office and I’ll
speak to my deputy mayor about it right now.”
From Catch-22. Heller flew sixty missions over
France and Italy while serving in the Air Force during
World War II, an experience that informed this novel,
originally titled Catch-18 but renamed after it was
discovered that Leon Uris’ novel, also to be published
in 1961, was called Mila 18. After publishing four
more novels in the 1970s and 1980s, among them
Something Happened, Heller said in 1993, “When
I read something saying I’ve not done anything as
good as Catch-22, I’m tempted to reply, ‘Who has?’”
He died at the age of seventy-six in 1999.
1900: Paris
the human element
The first point to which attention should be
called is that the comic does not exist outside
the pale of what is strictly human. A landscape
may be beautiful, charming, and sublime, or in-
significant and ugly; it will never be laughable.
You may laugh at an animal, but only because
you have detected in it some human attitude or
expression. You may laugh at a hat, but what you
are making fun of, in this case, is not the piece
of felt or straw but the shape that men have
given it—the human caprice whose mold it has
assumed. It is strange that so important a fact,
and such a simple one, too, has not attracted to
a greater degree the attention of philosophers.
Several have defined man as “an animal which
laughs.” They might equally well have defined
him as an animal which is laughed at; for if any
other animal, or some lifeless object, produces
the same effect, it is always because of some
resemblance to man, of the stamp he gives it or
the use he puts it to.
Here I would point out, as a symptom
equally worthy of notice, the absence of feeling
which usually accompanies laughter. It seems
as though the comic could not produce its
disturbing effect unless it fell, so to say, on
the surface of a soul that is thoroughly calm
and unruffled. Indifference is its natural envi-
ronment, for laughter has no greater foe than
emotion. I do not mean that we could not
laugh at a person who inspires us with pity, for
instance, or even with affection, but in such
a case we must, for the moment, put our af-
fection out of court and impose silence upon
our pity. In a society composed of pure intel-
ligences there would probably be no more tears,
though perhaps there would still be laughter;
whereas highly emotional souls, in tune and
unison with life, in whom every event would be
sentimentally prolonged and reechoed, would
neither know nor understand laughter. Try for
a moment to become interested in everything
that is being said and done; act, in imagination,
with those who act, and feel with those who
feel; in a word, give your sympathy its widest
expansion—as though at the touch of a fairy
wand you will see the flimsiest of objects as-
sume importance and a gloomy hue spread
over everything. Now step aside, look upon life
as a disinterested spectator: many a drama will
turn into a comedy. It is enough for us to stop
our ears to the sound of music in a room where
dancing is going on for the dancers at once to
appear ridiculous. How many human actions
would stand a similar test? Should we not see
many of them suddenly pass from grave to gay,
The stupidest book in the world is a book of
jokes, and the stupidest man in the world is one
who surrenders himself to the single purpose of
making men laugh.
 —Josiah Gilbert Holland, 1876
on isolating them from the accompanying mu-
sic of sentiment? To produce the whole of its
effect, then, the comic demands something like
a momentary anesthesia of the heart. Its appeal
is to intelligence, pure and simple.
This intelligence, however, must always
remain in touch with other intelligences. And
here is the third fact to which attention should
be drawn. You would hardly appreciate the
comic if you felt yourself isolated from others.
Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo.
Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate,
clear, well-defined sound; it is something which
would fain be prolonged by reverberating from
one to another, something beginning with a
crash, to continue in successive rumblings, like
thunder in a mountain. Still, this reverberation
cannot go on forever. It can travel within as
wide a circle as you please: the circle remains,
nonetheless, a closed one. Our laughter is al-
ways the laughter of a group. It may, perchance,
have happened to you, when seated in a railway
carriage or at table d’hôte, to hear travelers re-
lating to one another stories which must have
been comic to them, for they laughed heartily.
Had you been one of their company, you would
35
 Fanny Brice and Bea Lillie, 1945. Photograph by Louise Dahl-Wolfe.
have laughed like them, but as you were not,
you had no desire whatever to do so. A man
who was once asked why he did not weep at
a sermon, when everybody else was shedding
tears, replied, “I don’t belong to the parish!”
What that man thought of tears would be still
more true of laughter. However spontaneous it
seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret
freemasonry, or even complicity, with other
laughers, real or imaginary. How often has it
been said that the fuller the theater, the more
uncontrolled the laughter of the audience! On
the other hand, how often has the remark been
made that many comic effects are incapable of
translation from one language to another, be-
cause they refer to the customs and ideas of a
particular social group! It is through not un-
derstanding the importance of this double fact
that the comic has been looked upon as a mere
curiosity in which the mind finds amusement,
and laughter itself as a strange, isolated phe-
nomenon, without any bearing on the rest of
human activity. Hence those definitions which
36  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
tend to make the comic into an abstract relation
between ideas: “an intellectual contrast,” “a pal-
pable absurdity,” etc.—definitions which, even
were they really suitable to every form of the
comic, would not in the least explain why the
comic makes us laugh. To understand laughter,
we must put it back into its natural environ-
ment, which is society, and above all must we
determine the utility of its function, which is
a social one. Laughter must answer to certain
requirements of life in common. It must have a
social signification.
Henri Bergson, from Laughter: An Essay on the
Meaning of the Comic. Born in Paris in 1859 to
Jewish parents, Bergson published Time and Free
Will in 1899, Matter and Memory in 1896, and
Creative Evolution in 1907. He was awarded the
1927 Nobel Prize in Literature. Although drawn to
Roman Catholicism, Bergson died in 1941 having
never joined the church, stating in his will, “I would
have become a convert, had I not seen in preparation
for years the formidable wave of anti-Semitism
which is to break upon the world. I wanted to remain
among those who tomorrow will be persecuted.”
1452: Florence
have you heard the one about
the doltish venetian?
Amusing Remark by a Young Woman in Labor
In Florence, a young woman, somewhat of a
simpleton, was on the point of being deliv-
ered. She had long been enduring acute pain,
and the midwife, candle in hand, inspected her
private parts, in order to ascertain if the child
was coming. “Look also on the other side,” said
the poor creature. “My husband has sometimes
taken that road.”
A Doltish Venetian Made a Fool of by an
Itinerant Quack
We laughed heartily at a story Giannino told
us. He related that an itinerant quack came to
Venice, on whose sign was pictured a Priapus
divided at certain intervals by band strings.
A certain Venetian came up and inquired the
meaning of those partitions. The quack, for
the fun of the thing, replied that his mem-
ber was endowed with such a peculiar prop-
erty, that if, with a woman, he used but the
first part, he begot merchants; if the second,
soldiers; up to the third, generals; up to the
fourth, popes—his fee being proportionate to
the rank and quality ordered. The dolt took
his word for it and, after a conference with his
wife, brought him to his house and bargained
for a soldier. As soon as the quack had set
about the job, the husband made a pretense
of withdrawing, but hid himself behind the
bed: when he saw the pair hard at work man-
ufacturing the agreed-upon soldier, he rushed
forward, giving the man’s backside a vigorous
push, so as to secure the advantage even of
the fourth division. “By God’s holy gospel,”
he shouted. “This will be a pope!” fancying he
had diddled the fellow.
A Mountaineer Who Thought of Marrying a Girl
A mountaineer, of the village of Pergola, was
inclined to marry the quite youthful daughter
of one of his neighbors, but after close inspec-
tion, he found her too young, too delicate, and
refused. “She is riper than you think,” said the
stupid father, “for she has already had three
children by the vicar’s clerk.”
Conclusion
I think I should not omit to mention the
place where most of the above tales were re-
lated, I might almost say, acted. That place is
our Bugiale, a sort of laboratory for fibs, which
the pope’s secretaries had formerly instituted
for their amusement. Until the reign of Pope
Martin we were wont to select, within the
precincts of the court, a secluded room where
we collected the news of the day, and con-
versed on various subjects, mostly with a view
to relaxation, but sometimes also with serious
intent. There nobody was spared, and what-
ever met with our disapprobation was freely
censured; oftentimes the pope himself was the
first subject matter of our criticism, so that
many people attended our parties, lest they
should themselves be the objects of our first
chapter. Foremost among the relaters were
Razello of Bologna, many of whose contribu-
tions are found in our tales; Antonio Lusco,
a most witty man, whom we have frequently
referred to; and the Roman Cincio, who was
also very fond of a joke; I have also added
some good things of my own. Now that those
boon companions have departed this life, the
Bugiale has come to an end: whether men or
the times are to be held responsible, it is a fact
that genial talk and merry confabulation have
gone out of fashion.
Poggio Bracciolini, from Jocose Tales. During his
fifty years serving as secretary to eight successive popes,
Bracciolini hunted for manuscripts in European
monasteries: in one he discovered Quintilian’s
Institutes of Oratory—tucked away in a place “into
which one would not cast a criminal condemned to
death”—and in another Lucretius’ On the Nature
of Things. Both books had been thought to be lost for
hundreds of years. He wrote to a fellow scholar and
copyist in 1429, “ You have now kept the Lucretius for
twelve years…and the Petronius Arbiter for seven or
more; it seems to me that your tomb will be finished
sooner than your books will be copied.”
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 he’s 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 o’er and o’er,
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, he’s 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.
I’d have him throw away his pen;
But there’s no talking to some men.
And then their tenderness appears,
By adding largely to my years:
“He’s 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, he’s 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.

Then hug themselves, and reason thus;

“It is not yet so bad with us.”

In such a case they talk in tropes,

And by their fears express their hopes:
Some great misfortune to portend,
No enemy can match a friend;
With all the kindness they profess,
The merit of a lucky guess,
(When daily “how-d’ye’s” come of course,
And servants answer, “Worse and worse”)
Would please ’em better than to tell,
That, God be praised, the dean is well.
Then he who prophesied the best,
Approves his foresight to the rest:
“You know, I always feared the worst,
And often told you so at first.”
He’d rather choose that I should die,
Than his prediction prove a lie.
Not one foretells I shall recover;
But, all agree, to give me over.

Jonathan Swift, from “Verses on the Death of

Dr. Swift.” In late 1731 Swift mentioned his
writing of this poem to his friends Alexander
Pope and John Gay, describing it to the latter
as “on a pleasant subject, only to tell what my
friends and enemies will say on me after I am
dead.” One couplet of the poem reads, “Poor Pope
will grieve a month, and Gay /A week, and
Arbuthnot a day.” Having been ordained an
Anglican priest in 1695 at the age of twenty-
seven, Swift published A Tale of a Tub in 1704,
Gulliver’s Travels in 1726, and A Modest
Proposal in 1729. He died in 1745 at the age
of seventy-seven.

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
man’s chin, pushing the head to one side un-
til the wound becomes visible as a small, ovate
hole, oozing red and white.
“Here’s your problem,” he said. “He’s 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,
you’re gonna have to get a new head. This one
you could fix.”
Landsman looks up, his face the very pic-
ture 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 an-
other dead man—what better time and place
for some vintage Landsman, delivered in per-
fect deadpan until even the shift commander is
laughing hard in the blue strobe of the emer-
gency lights. Not that a Western District mid-
night shift is the world’s toughest audience;
you don’t 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 ten-
40  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
seven when we got here.”
Ten-seven. The police communication code
for “out of service” artlessly applied to a human
life. Beautiful. Pellegrini smiles, content in the
knowledge that nothing in this world can come
between a cop and his attitude.
“Anyone go through his pockets?” asks
Landsman.
“Not yet.”
“Where the fuck are his pockets?”
“He’s wearing pants under the sweatsuit.”
Pellegrini watches Landsman straddle the
body, one foot on either side of the dead man’s
waist, and begin tugging violently at the sweat-
pants. The awkward effort jerks the body a few
inches across the sidewalk, leaving a thin film
of matted blood and brain matter where the
head wound scrapes the pavement. Landsman
forces a meaty hand inside a front pocket.
“Watch for needles,” says a uniform.
“Hey,” says Landsman. “Anyone in this
crowd gets AIDS, no one’s gonna believe it
came from a fucking needle.”
The sergeant pulls his hand from the dead
man’s right front pocket, causing perhaps a dol-
lar in change to fall to the sidewalk.
“No wallet in front. I’m gonna wait and let
the ME roll him. Somebody’s called the ME,
right?”
“Should be on the way,” says a second uni-
form, taking notes for the top sheet of an inci-
dent report. “How many times is he hit?”
Landsman points to the head wound, then
lifts a shoulder blade to reveal a ragged hole in
the upper back of the dead man’s leather jacket.
“Once in the head, once in the back.”
Landsman pauses, and Pellegrini watches him
go deadpan once again. “It could be more.”
The uniform puts pen to paper.
“There is a possibility,” says Landsman,
doing his best to look professorial, “a good pos-
sibility, he was shot twice through the same
bullet hole.”
“No shit,” says the uniform, believing.
A mental case. They give him a gun, a
badge and sergeant’s stripes, and deal him
out into the streets of Baltimore, a city with
Parade: Pierrot Presents to the Audience His Companions Harlequin and Punchinello (detail), by Octave Penguilly L’Haridon, 1846.
more than its share of violence, filth, and de-
spair. Then they surround him with a chorus
of blue-jacketed straight men and let him play
the role of the lone, wayward joker that some-
how 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 ser-
geants’ desks and never fails to turn out the
men’s-room light when a ranking officer is
indisposed. Landsman, who rides a headquar-
ters 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 Quak-
er Oatmeal box covered in aluminum foil as a
radar gun.
“I’m 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 vic-
tim appeared to be shot once in the head and
twice in the back through the same bullet hole.
“No, hey, I’m joking,” he says. “We won’t
know anything for sure until the autopsy.”
He looks at Pellegrini. “Hey, Phyllis, I’m
gonna let the ME roll him.”
Pellegrini manages a half smile. He’s been
Phyllis to his squad sergeant ever since that long
afternoon at Riker’s Island in New York, when a
jail matron refused to honor a writ and release a
female prisoner into the custody of two male de-
tectives from Baltimore; the regulations required
a policewoman for the escort. After a sufficient
amount of debate, Landsman grabbed Pellegrini,
a thick-framed Italian born to Allegheny coal-
miner stock, and pushed him forward.
“Meet Phyllis Pellegrini,” Landsman said,
signing for the prisoner. “She’s my partner.”
“How do you do?” Pellegrini said with no
hesitation.
“You’re not a woman,” said the matron.
“But I used to be.”
David Simon, from Homicide: A Year on the
Killing Streets. This 1991 book derived from the
year Simon, a Baltimore Sun reporter, spent covering
the homicide department of the city’s police force. The
subject matter was adapted for NBC’s Homicide:
Life on the Streets, on the air between 1993 and
1999. Simon’s show The Wire, in which the real-life
detective Jay Landsman played Lieutenant Dennis
Mello, was on HBO for five seasons. He received a
MacArthur Fellowship in 2010, the same year that
his subsequent HBO series, Treme, premiered.
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, “I’ll 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 we’ll 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-Léopold Boilly, c. 1825.

42  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
I skipped up to the glasses and polished them,
  Leaving them like dazzling snow;
My dexterity impressed the beardless young men
  (Though with my skill I intended no good for them);
I served them without respite wine mixed with water
  —It was as warming and bright as kindled fire—
Until I noticed their heads incline,
  Bent and crooked with drunkenness
And their tongues tied and heavy;
  They now either slept or reclined.
I got up, trembling, to have sex with them
  (All those who creep stealthily tremble at the thought!);
Their trouser bands stymied my pleasure at first
  But then, with subtle art, I untied them
To reveal each man’s quivering backside
 Oscillating supply like a green bough.
O, for this night which I spent enraptured
 In continual enjoyment and excess,
Making from this to that man,
  Screwing whomever I could find in the house
Until the first one awoke and got up
  Feeling bruised at the thighs.
Then I rose with fear to wake up the others,
  Saying, “Do you feel the same thing as me?
Is this sweat we’ve all been stained with?”
  They said, “It looks more like butter.”
And when I saw them now alert
 I went off to relieve myself.
And when they all came to life anew
 I joined them, as the cups passed briskly around,
Draped in the finest colored robes,
 All spanking new.
I was asked, “Who are you?” And replied, “Your servant;
  From whom you need fear no rude behavior.”

Abu Nuwas, “Turning the Tables.” Born sometime in the mid-

eighth century, “He of the Dangling Locks” is most famous for his
poems in praise of wine, although he also extolled the pleasures
of love, hunting, and general debauchery. There is a story in The
Thousand and One Nights in which a caliph sends his eunuch
to bring Nuwas to him. Found drunk at a tavern and unable to
settle his debt to a young boy, the poet is still capable of versifying
extemporaneously about the boy’s beauty. The amused caliph heard of
it and promptly settled Abu Nuwas’ debt.

43
 1974: New York City
woody allen, private eye
One thing about being a private investigator,
you’ve got to learn to go with your hunches.
That’s why when a quivering pat of butter
named Word Babcock walked into my office
and laid his cards on the table, I should have
trusted the cold chill that shot up my spine.
“Kaiser?” he said. “Kaiser Lupowitz?”
“That’s what it says on my license,” I
owned up.
“You’ve got to help me. I’m being black-
mailed. Please!”
He was shaking like the lead singer in a
rumba band. I pushed a glass across the desk
top and a bottle of rye I keep handy for non-
medicinal purposes. “Suppose you relax and tell
me all about it.”
“You…you won’t tell my wife?”
“Level with me, Word. I can’t make any
promises.”
He tried pouring a drink, but you could
hear the clicking sound across the street, and
most of the stuff wound up in his shoes.
“I’m a working guy,” he said. “Mechanical
maintenance. I build and service joy buzzers.
You know—those little fun gimmicks that give
people a shock when they shake hands?”
“So?”
“A lot of your executives like ’em. Particu-
larly down on Wall Street.”
“Get to the point.”
“I’m on the road a lot. You know how it
is—lonely. Oh, not what you’re thinking. See,
Kaiser, I’m basically an intellectual. Sure, a guy
can meet all the bimbos he wants. But the re-
ally brainy women—they’re not so easy to find
on short notice.”
“Keep talking.”
“Well, I heard of this young girl. Eighteen
years old. A Vassar student. For a price, she’ll
come over and discuss any subject—Proust,
Yeats, anthropology. Exchange of ideas. You see
what I’m driving at?”
“Not exactly.”
44  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
“I mean, my wife is great, don’t get me
wrong. But she won’t discuss Pound with me.
Or Eliot. I didn’t know that when I mar-
ried her. See, I need a woman who’s mentally
stimulating, Kaiser. And I’m willing to pay
for it. I don’t want an involvement—I want
a quick intellectual experience, then I want
the girl to leave. Christ, Kaiser, I’m a happily
married man.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Six months. Whenever I have that crav-
ing, I call Flossie. She’s a madam with a mas-
ter’s in comparative lit. She sends me over an
intellectual, see?”
So he was one of those guys whose weak-
ness was really bright women. I felt sorry for the
poor sap. I figured there must be a lot of jokers
in his position, who were starved for a little in-
tellectual communication with the opposite sex
and would pay through the nose for it.
“Now she’s threatening to tell my wife,”
he said.
“Who is?”
“Flossie. They bugged the motel room.
They got tapes of me discussing ‘The Waste
Land’ and Styles of Radical Will, and, well, really
getting into some issues. They want ten grand
or they go to Carla. Kaiser, you’ve got to help
me! Carla would die if she knew she didn’t turn
me on up here.”
The old call-girl racket. I had heard rumors
that the boys at headquarters were on to some-
thing involving a group of educated women,
but so far they were stymied.
“Get Flossie on the phone for me.”
“What?”
“I’ll take your case, Word. But I get fifty
dollars a day, plus expenses. You’ll have to re-
pair a lot of joy buzzers.”
“It won’t be ten G’s worth, I’m sure of
that,” he said with a grin, and picked up the
phone and dialed a number. I took it from him
and winked. I was beginning to like him.
Seconds later, a silky voice answered, and I
told her what was on my mind. “I understand you
can help me set up an hour of good chat,” I said.
“Sure, honey. What do you have in mind?”
 “I’d like to discuss Melville.”
“Moby-Dick or the shorter novels?”
“What’s the difference?”
“The price. That’s all. Symbolism’s extra.”
“What’ll it run me?”
“Fifty, maybe a hundred for Moby-Dick.
You want a comparative discussion—Melville
and Hawthorne? That could be arranged for
a hundred.”
“The dough’s fine,” I told her and gave her
the number of a room at the Plaza.
“You want a blond or a brunette?”
“Surprise me,” I said, and hung up.
I shaved and grabbed some black coffee
while I checked over the Monarch College
Outline series. Hardly an hour had passed be-
fore there was a knock on my door. I opened it,
and standing there was a young redhead who
was packed into her slacks like two big scoops
of vanilla ice cream.
“Hi, I’m Sherry.”
They really knew how to appeal to your
fantasies. Long, straight hair, leather bag, silver
earrings, no makeup.
“Madrid, Spain: Prado Museum,” 1995. Photograph by Elliott Erwitt.
“I’m surprised you weren’t stopped, walk-
ing 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 Melville’s justification of the ways of God to
man, n’est-ce pas?”
“Interestingly, though, not in a Miltonian
sense.” I was bluffing. I wanted to see if she’d
go for it.
“No. Paradise Lost lacked the substructure
of pessimism.” She did.
“Right, right. God, you’re right,” I
murmured.
“I think Melville reaffirmed the virtues of
innocence in a naive yet sophisticated sense—
don’t 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
 mechanical. Whenever I offered an insight,
she faked a response: “Oh yes, Kaiser. Yes,
baby, that’s deep. A Platonic comprehension
of Christianity—why didn’t I see it before?”
We talked for about an hour and then she
said she had to go. She stood up and I laid a
C note on her.
“Thanks, honey.”
“There’s plenty more where that came
from.”
“What are you trying to say?”
I had piqued her curiosity. She sat down
again.
“Suppose I wanted to—have a party?” I said.
“Like, what kind of a party?”
I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure,
“What use is it?”
 —Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 225 bc
“Suppose I wanted Noam Chomsky ex-
plained to me by two girls?”
“Oh, wow.”
“If you’d rather forget it…”
“You’d have to speak with Flossie,” she
said. “It’d cost you.”
Now was the time to tighten the screws.
I flashed my private-investigator’s badge and
informed her it was a bust.
“What!”
“I’m fuzz, sugar, and discussing Melville
for money is an 802. You can do time.”
“You louse!”
“Better come clean, baby. Unless you want
to tell your story down at Alfred Kazin’s office,
and I don’t think he’d be too happy to hear it.”
She began to cry. “Don’t turn me in, Kai-
ser,” she said. “I needed the money to complete
my master’s. I’ve been turned down for a grant.
Twice. Oh, Christ…”
It all poured out—the whole story. Central
Park West upbringing, socialist summer camps,
Brandeis. She was every dame you saw waiting
in line at the Elgin or the Thalia, or penciling
the words Yes, very true into the margin of some
book on Kant. Only somewhere along the line,
46  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
she had made a wrong turn.
“I needed cash. A girlfriend said she knew
a married guy whose wife wasn’t very profound.
He was into Blake. She couldn’t hack it. I said
sure, for a price I’d talk Blake with him. I was
nervous at first. I faked a lot of it. He didn’t
care. My friend said there were others. Oh, I’ve
been busted before. I got caught reading Com-
mentary in a parked car, and I was once stopped
and frisked at Tanglewood. Once more and I’m
a three-time loser.”
“Then take me to Flossie.”
She bit her lip and said, “The Hunter Col-
lege Book Store is a front.”
“Yes?”
“Like those bookie joints that have barber-
shops outside for show. You’ll see.”
I made a quick call to headquarters and
then said to her, “Okay, sugar. You’re off the
hook. But don’t leave town.”
She tilted her face up toward mine grate-
fully. “I can get you photographs of Dwight
Macdonald reading,” she said.
“Some other time.”
I walked into the Hunter College Book
Store. The salesman, a young man with sensitive
eyes, came up to me. “Can I help you?” he said.
“I’m looking for a special edition of Ad-
vertisements for Myself. I understand the author
had several thousand gold-leaf copies printed
up for friends.”
“I’ll have to check,” he said. “We have a
WATS line to Mailer’s house.”
I fixed him with a look. “Sherry sent me,”
I said.
“Oh, in that case, go on back.” he said. He
pressed a button. A wall of books opened, and
I walked like a lamb into that bustling pleasure
palace known as Flossie’s.
Red-flocked wallpaper and a Victorian
decor set the tone. Pale, nervous girls with
black-rimmed glasses and blunt-cut hair lolled
around on sofas, riffling Penguin Classics pro-
vocatively. A blond with a big smile winked
at me, nodded toward a room upstairs, and
said, “Wallace Stevens, eh?” But it wasn’t just
intellectual experiences—they were peddling

emotional ones, too. For fifty bucks, I learned,
you could “relate without getting close.” For
a hundred, a girl would lend you her Bartók
records, have dinner, and then let you watch
while she had an anxiety attack. For one-fifty,
you could listen to FM radio with twins. For
three bills, you got the works: a thin Jewish
brunette would pretend to pick you up at the
Museum of Modern Art, let you read her mas-
ter’s, get you involved in a screaming quarrel
at Elaine’s over Freud’s conception of women,
and then fake a suicide of your choosing—the
perfect evening, for some guys. Nice racket.
Great town, New York.
“Like what you see?” a voice said behind
me. I turned and suddenly found myself stand-
ing face to face with the business end of a .38.
I’m a guy with a strong stomach, but this time
it did a backflip. It was Flossie, all right. The
voice was the same, but Flossie was a man. His
face was hidden by a mask.
“You’ll never believe this,” he said, “but I
don’t even have a college degree. I was thrown
out for low grades.”
“Is that why you wear that mask?”
“I devised a complicated scheme to take
over The New York Review of Books, but it
meant I had to pass for Lionel Trilling. I went
to Mexico for an operation. There’s a doctor in
Juárez who gives people Trilling’s features—
“The Charge,” a phallic contest, Japanese erotic scroll print.
for a price. Something went wrong. I came out
looking like Auden, with Mary McCarthy’s
voice. That’s when I started working the other
side of the law.”
Quickly, before he could tighten his fin-
ger on the trigger, I went into action. Heav-
ing forward, I snapped my elbow across his jaw
and grabbed the gun as he fell back. He hit the
ground like a ton of bricks. He was still whim-
pering when the police showed up.
“Nice work, Kaiser,” Sergeant Holmes said.
“When we’re through with this guy, the FBI
wants to have a talk with him. A little mat-
ter involving some gamblers and an annotated
copy of Dante’s Inferno. Take him away, boys.”
Later that night, I looked up an old account
of mine named Gloria. She was blond. She had
graduated cum laude. The difference was she
majored in physical education. It felt good.
“The Whore of Mensa.” Born Allen Konigsberg in
New York City in 1935, the author at the age of
seventeen began using Woody Allen as a pen name
for submitting jokes and one-liners to various
newspapers. By the age of twenty-three, he was
writing for Sid Caesar and had signed with
managers Jack Rollins and Charles Joffe, who went
on to produce most of his films. Take the Money
and Run was released in 1969, Manhattan in
1979, and Crimes and Misdemeanors in 1989.
Allen once quipped, “Not only is there no God, but
try getting a plumber on weekends.”
47
 Comic Relief
Clowns, jesters, and other performers
Name Publilius Syrus
Lifespan first century bc
Mime writer and
Occupation
actor in Rome
Came to Rome as slave and soon won
freedom by dint of wit; performed
sketches and imitations around Italy;
Career invited to appear at Julius Caesar’s games
in 46 bc, where he challenged other
mime writers to an improv competition
and was judged victor.
Credited with various moral maxims,
among them, “A rolling stone gathers no
Legacy moss” and “The error repeated is a fault”;
referred to or quoted by Seneca the
Younger, Petronius, and St. Jerome.
Name Joseph Grimaldi
Lifespan 1778–1837
Clown and pantomimist
Occupation
in London
Debuted as dancer at age two; created
new type of clown by combining
characters of rogue and simpleton;
Career played two parts in wildly successful
Harlequin and Mother Goose; joked later
in career, “I make you laugh at night but
am Grim-all-day.”
Initiated pantomime-clown style of
painting face white and reddening
cheeks; persona of “Joey” became a
Legacy
synonym for clown; his memoir was
written by Charles Dickens and
published in 1838.
Charles Adrien Wettach
Name
aka Grock
Lifespan 1880–1959
Occupation Swiss clown and musician
Performed in cabaret with father, then
as a tumbler and musician in circus; took
name when partnered with clown Brick
Career
in 1903, performing in France, Africa, and
South America; best known for slapstick
blunders with musical instruments.
Starred in films, among them Grock
(1931) and Clear the Ring (1949);
Legacy inspired an annual competition for
young circus performers in Switzerland
called the Grock d’Or.
48  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
Name Richard Tarlton
Lifespan died 1588
Actor and jester
Occupation
at court of Elizabeth I
Specialized in song-and-dance acts;
founding member of Queen’s Men
acting company; could provoke
Career laughter just by peeking face around
curtain; eventually queen found
his jokes about Robert Dudley and
Walter Raleigh too risqué.
Possible inspiration for Shakespeare’s
Yorick in Hamlet; image of him as small
man in big breeches and a staff appeared
Legacy
outside English inns and pubs; authors
published books using his name, Tarlton’s
News out of Purgatory and Tarlton’s Jests.
Name Dan Rice
Lifespan 1823–1900
American circus owner
Occupation
and performer
Became showman as part owner of
“educated” pig; appeared as “The Yankee
Samson” at P. T. Barnum’s New York
Career museum; performed in chin whiskers,
top hat, and red-white-and-blue-striped
tights as “The King of American
Clowns” across U.S.
Thomas Nast is believed to have based his
portrait of Uncle Sam on Rice; it is also
claimed that Rice’s offer to let presidential
Legacy
candidate Zachary Taylor join his circus
bandwagon led to the phrase “jump on
the bandwagon.”
Name Edgar Bergen
Lifespan 1903–1978
American actor
Occupation
and ventriloquist
Toured for ten years with ventriloquist
dummy Charlie Mack; renamed dummy
Charlie McCarthy, giving it top hat and
Career
monocle, and became radio sensation as
straight man to McCarthy; their dialog
often seemed to overlap.
Bergen, McCarthy, and W. C. Fields
starred in You Can’t Cheat an Honest
Man (1939); McCarthy’s sexualized talk
Legacy
on NBC radio with Mae West got her
banned from NBC for ten years; Bergen’s
daughter, Candice, became famous actress.
1518: Rome
baldassare castiglione on the
ways of wit
“Of the many kinds of witticisms we laugh at,”
said Bernardo, “there are comparisons, such as
the one our Pistoia wrote to Serafino: ‘Send
back the big portmanteau that looks like you,’
for, if you remember, Serafino did very much re-
semble a portmanteau. And then there are some
who like to compare men and women to horses,
dogs, birds, and even chests, chairs, wagons, and
chandeliers; and the result is sometimes very fe-
licitous, though occasionally the joke falls flat. In
this regard one must pay attention to place, time,
and persons, and all the other circumstances we
have so often mentioned.”
Then Signor Gaspare Pallavicino added, “It
was an agreeable comparison that our Signor
Giovanni Gonzaga made between Alexander
the Great and his own son, Signor Alessandro.”
“I do not know that one,” replied Bernardo.
“Well,” said Signor Gaspare, “Giovanni was
playing at three dice and, as was usual for him,
had lost many ducats and was still losing, and
his son, Signor Alessandro, who though still a
child plays no less eagerly than his father, stood
watching him very attentively, and seemed very
downcast. Then the count of Pianella, who was
there with many other gentlemen, remarked,
‘Look, sir, how disconsolate Signor Alessandro
is because of your losing, and how he is fretting
for you to win so that he can have something
from the winnings. So let him out of his misery
and before you lose the rest of your money give
him at least a ducat so that he too can go and
play with his friends.’ Then Signor Giovanni
replied, ‘You are deceiving yourself, for Ales-
sandro is not thinking of anything so trifling.
On the contrary, just as we read that when
Alexander the Great heard, as a child, that his
father Philip had won a great battle and taken
a certain kingdom, he started to cry because, he
explained, he feared his father would conquer
so many countries that there would be none
left for him, so now my son, Alessandro, is sad
and tearful at seeing his father losing, because
he fears I may lose so much that there will be
nothing left for him to lose.’”
After everyone had laughed at this for a mo-
ment, Bernardo resumed, “We should also avoid
irreligious jokes, for these can turn an attempt at
wit into blasphemy, and then we find ourselves
growing more and more ingenious in the way
we blaspheme—and thereby a man seems to be
seeking glory from something for which he de-
serves not merely condemnation but also severe
punishment. This is an abominable thing, and
therefore those who wish to appear amusing by
Laugh if you are wise, girl, laugh.
 —Martial, c. 86
showing little reverence for the Almighty ought
to be driven out of good society. The same holds
for those whose speech is obscene and foul, who
show no respect for the presence of ladies, and
who are constantly searching for witticisms and
quips merely for the pleasure of making them
blush for shame. For example, earlier this year
in Ferrara, in the presence of many ladies at a
banquet, there happened to be a Florentine and
a Sienese who, as you know, are usually at odds
with each other. In order to taunt the Floren-
tine, the Sienese said, ‘We have married Siena
to the emperor, and we have given him Florence
as the dowry.’ And he said this because at the
time it was reported that the Sienese had given
a certain amount of money to the emperor, and
he had taken Siena under his protection. Then,
without hesitating, the Florentine retorted,
‘Siena will first be ridden’ (meaning this in the
French sense, though he used the Italian word),
‘then the dowry will be settled at leisure.’ As you
see, the joke was very clever, but as ladies were
present, it was also indecent and unseemly.”
Then Signor Gaspare Pallavicino re-
marked, “Women take pleasure in hearing
nothing else, and yet you want to deprive
them of it. And as for me, I have found myself
blushing for shame far more because of words
said by women than by men.”
49
 “I am not speaking of women of that sort,”
replied Bernardo, “but of virtuous women whom
every gentleman should honor and respect.”
Answered Gaspare, “You would need to
discover a very subtle way of recognizing them,
seeing that most times those who appear the
best are in fact the worst.”
Then Bernardo, with a laugh, said, “If it were
not for the presence of our Signor Magnifico,
who is universally recognized to be the protector
of women, I should undertake the task of refut-
ing you; but I do not want to usurp his place.”
And then Signora Emilia, laughing as
well, added, “Women have no need of a de-
fender against a critic of so little authority. So
No man ever distinguished himself who could
not bear to be laughed at.
 —Maria Edgeworth, 1809
leave Signor Gaspare to his perverse opinion,
which is caused more by the fact that he has
never found a woman to look at him than by
any frailty that exists in women themselves, and
continue with your discussion of pleasantries.”
Then Bernardo went on. “Indeed, madam, it
seems to me that I have now spoken of the many
possible sources of clever witticisms, all of which
are enhanced by being part of an entertaining
story. But there are many others I could men-
tion: as when, for example, by overstatement or
understatement, things are said that are miles
away from the truth. Of this kind was what Ma-
rio da Volterra said of a certain prelate: he was
so conscious of his great stature that when he
entered St. Peter’s he would stoop so as not to
knock his head on the beam of the door. And
our Magnifico here once said that his servant
Volpino was so lean and thin that one morning,
when he was blowing on his fire to make it go,
he was wafted up the chimney by the smoke;
but he had been fortunate enough to be forced
crosswise against one of the little openings and
so escape disappearing altogether. Then again,
Agostino Bevazzano told the story of the miser
who in desperation after he had refused to sell
50  | 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 bed-
room; 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 couldn’t make me laugh
if you tickled me.’ And in the same vein he re-
plied to another buffoon who, one morning, had
found him in bed late and reproached him for
sleeping so long in these words: ‘I’ve already
been to the new market and the old, and outside
the San Gallo Gate and around the walls for
exercise, and I’ve 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 you’ve 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 contrar-
ies 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 ex-
ample, it was said by Don Giovanni di Cardona
concerning a person who wanted to leave Rome,
‘In my opinion, he is making the wrong deci-
sion, because he’s such a rascal that if he stayed
in Rome, given time he’d become a cardinal.’ Al-
fonso 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 execu-
tion 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 im-
portance, for it is both grave and pungent and
 Young women amusing themselves with a satyr, by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, c. 1765.
can be used whether talking of amusing or se-
rious 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 philoso-
pher 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 mis-
adventure 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
answer was, since in Spain, as in many places
elsewhere, it is the custom that when a man is
on his way to the gallows, his life is spared if
a common whore asks to marry him. This was
also the kind of answer given by Raphael, the
painter, to two cardinals with whom he was
friendly and who, in his presence, in order to
get him to talk, found fault with a painting of
his which contained Peter and Paul, by com-
menting that the two figures were too red in
the face. Immediately, Raphael retorted, ‘My
lords, you should not be surprised, for I did
this very deliberately, as we may well believe
that St. Peter and St. Paul are as red in heav-
en as you see them here, for shame that the
Church should be governed by such as you.’ ”
From The Book of the Courtier. Castiglione, a
nobleman, knew whereof he spoke—a courtier himself,
he entered into the service of Francesco Gonzaga, the
marquis of Mantua, in 1499 and of Guidobaldo da
Montefeltro, the duke of Urbino, in 1504. Later, in
Rome, he served Pope Julius II and befriended the
painter Raphael. Castiglione’s book was translated
into Spanish in 1534, French in 1537, and English
in 1561. Francis Bacon and Thomas Cromwell were
among its early readers in the English language.
51
 419 bc: Athens
thrice-happy socrates

Strepsiades: I’ll 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 I’ve got to go. [He reaches the hut of the Thinkpot and stands wavering outside.]
Why am I shilly-shallying like this?
Why don’t I just knock on the door?
[He bangs on the door, shouting.]
Hey, boy! Boyakins!
First Pupil: [from inside] Go to blazes, whoever’s 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 home’s in the country,
but do tell me about the thought that’s got miscarried.
First Pupil: To tell anyone not a pupil is a sacrilege.
Gathering of one of Mumbai’s thirty-seven laughing clubs, 1996. Photograph by Steve McCurry.

52  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
Strepsiades: Oh don’t bother!
I’ve really come to the Thinkpot to be a pupil myself.
First Pupil: All right, I’ll tell you but you’ve got to realize
this is holy stuff—hush-hush.
Socrates has just been asking Chaerephon
on how many of its own feet a flea can jump.
You see, a flea just bit Chaerephon’s eyebrow
and then jumped onto Socrates’ pate.
Strepsiades: And Socrates is measuring the terrain?
First Pupil: Yes, he melted some wax,
took the flea, and dipped its feet in it,
so when the wax cooled
the flea had fancy Persian slippers on.
These he removed to measure the distance.
Strepsiades: Lord above, what subtlety!
First Pupil: Like to hear another brilliant idea of Socrates?
Strepsiades: Another? I can’t wait.
First Pupil: Chaerephon of Sphertus asked him
what his position on gnats was:
do they whine from their mouths or their bottoms?
Strepsiades: So? What did he say about the gnat?
First Pupil: The gnat’s inside is narrow, he affirmed,
so the air gets pressed through a restricted space rumpward,
and because of the force of the wind
the asshole’s opening to the narrow passage
lets out a tune.
Strepsiades: Anyone with such an intimate knowledge of a gnat’s inside
has to be an invincible defendant.
And we think Thales was a marvel!
[They walk to the entrance of the Thinkpot.]
Open up, open up, open the Thinkpot
and show me this Socrates at once;
I’m crazy to know more.
[First pupil opens the door; a number of intent students are revealed in various
contorted positions.]
Great Hercules, where did you dig up this menagerie?
And those over there—why are they staring at the ground?
First Pupil: They’re investigating the nether sphere.
Strepsiades: Oh, it’s bulbs they’re after!
Don’t give it a thought. [He turns to the other pupils.]
I know where there are lovely fat ones. [He turns back to the first pupil.]
And these here, what are they all doing doubled up?

53
 First Pupil: They’re trying to see what’s underneath hell.
Strepsiades: With bottoms gazing at the heavens?
First Pupil: Yes, independently studying the stars.
[He turns to the other pupils.]
Inside with you—he mustn’t find you here.
[Strepsiades and the pupils are hustled inside; lying around outside
the Thinkpot are piles of instruments and maps.]
Strepsiades: Good Lord! What on earth are those?
First Pupil: Well, this here is for astronomy.
Strepsiades: And what’s this thing used for?
First Pupil: For measuring land.
Strepsiades: You mean land for allotments?
First Pupil: No, just land in general.
Strepsiades: My word, how clever! And democratic, too!
First Pupil: And see, here is a map of the entire world—
look, there’s Athens.
Strepsiades: [gazing intently] Nonsense! I don’t believe it.
I can’t see any jury sitting.
First Pupil: Be that as it may…here lies Attica—
there’s no doubt about it.
Strepsiades: Then where are the people from my village—Cicynna?
First Pupil: Over there…and here, as you see, is Euboea—
in a great long stretch.
Strepsiades: Don’t I know it!
We and Pericles did the stretching…
Good heavens, who’s that man hanging in a basket?
First Pupil: Him.
Strepsiades: Who’s him?
First Pupil: Why, Socrates.
Strepsiades: Hi, Socrates! [turns to first pupil]
Go on, shout to him for me.
First Pupil: Shout yourself. I don’t have time.
[First pupil hurries back into the Thinkpot.]
Strepsiades: Oh Socrates! My own little Socrakitten!
Socrates: Ephemeral thing! Do you address me?
Strepsiades: Yes, and for a start, do tell me what you’re doing.

54  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
 A Singer and a Drinker (detail), in the style of Caravaggio, c. 1600.

Socrates: I tread the air and scrutinize the sun.

Strepsiades: Looking down on the gods from a basket?
Why not look up at them from the ground?
Socrates: Because to glean accurate knowledge of the heavens
I have to suspend thought and meld my cerebral vibrations
with the homogenous air.
If I’d been down here and looked up here
I wouldn’t have discovered a thing.
The earth, you see, is forced to attract
the moisture of thought.
Watercress does the same.
Strepsiades: You don’t say!
The mind draws moisture into watercress?
Oh Socrakitty, do come down to me at once
and teach me all I’ve come to learn.
Socrates: [descending] So what have you come for?
Strepsiades: A yearning to learn how to speak.
I’m being harassed and stripped and plundered
by the most vulturine creditors.
So teach me one of your two Arguments:
the one that lets you off a debt.
I’ll pay cash down—I swear by the gods—
whatever your fee.
Socrates: You’ll swear by the gods, will you?
Get this straight: the gods aren’t legal tender here.
Strepsiades: So what do you swear by:
minted iron, like in Byzantium?

55
 Socrates: Do you really want to know the real truth about the gods?
Strepsiades: Absolutely! If that’s possible.
Socrates: And to converse with the Clouds—our very own deities?
Strepsiades: Totally.
Socrates: Then seat yourself on this sacred couch.
Strepsiades: Right! I’m sitting.
Socrates: Now take in your hands this wreath.
Strepsiades: The wreath? Oh dear,
you’re 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 you’ll become as smooth as a salesman,
voluble as a rattle, insidious as pollen.
Now don’t move.
Strepsiades: [He sees Socrates taking a handful of flour from a bag.]
No, by Zeus, you won’t 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 lightning’s thunderous prodigies:
Arouse yourselves on high, appear
To the contemplator here.
Strepsiades: [hurriedly throwing a cloak over his head]
Not yet, not yet, until I’m 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
plays—he 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
abraham lincoln loses the girl
Dear Madam,
Without apologizing for being egotistical,
I shall make the history of so much of my life
as has elapsed since I saw you the subject of this
letter. And, by the way, I now discover that in
order to give a full and intelligible account of
the things I have done and suffered since I saw
you, I shall necessarily have to relate some that
happened before.
It was, then, in the autumn of 1836 that a
married lady of my acquaintance, and who was
a great friend of mine, being about to pay a visit
to her father and other relatives residing in Ken-
tucky, proposed to me that on her return, she
would bring a sister of hers with her, on condi-
tion that I would engage to become her brother-
in-law with all convenient dispatch. I, of course,
accepted the proposal, for you know I could not
have done otherwise had I really been averse to
it; but privately, between you and me, I was most
confoundedly well-pleased with the project. I
had seen the said sister some three years be-
fore, thought her intelligent and agreeable, and
saw no good objection to plodding life through
hand in hand with her. Time passed on, the
lady took her journey, and in due time returned,

Undercover
Pen and stage names

1. Adam Foulweather 9 A. François Rabelais [page 89]

2. Mark Twain [page 140] B. Brian Ó Nualláin

3. Tom Tomorrow C. Georges Remi

4. C. P. West D. Alexander Pope

5. Guy Fawkes E. François-Marie Arouet

6. Mrs. Silence Dogood F. Benjamin Franklin

7. Astrea G. Thomas Nashe

8. Flann O’Brien [page 120] H. Robert Benchley [page 101]

9. Alcofribas Nasier I. Henry Fielding

10. O. Henry J. P. G. Wodehouse

11. Martinus Scriblerus K. Dan Perkins

12. Isaac Bickerstaff L. Ambrose Bierce [page 162]

13. Conny Keyber M. Aphra Behn

14. Dod Grile N. Samuel Langhorne Clemens

15. Molière [page 27] O. Washington Irving

16. Diedrich Knickerbocker P. Jonathan Swift [page 38]

17. Hergé Q. William Sydney Porter

18. Voltaire [page 142] R. Jean-Baptise Poquelin

Answers:
A, 9; B, 8; C, 17; D, 11; E, 18; F, 6; G, 1; H, 5; I, 13; J, 4; K, 3; L, 14; M, 7; N, 2; O, 16; P, 12; Q, 10; R, 15

57
 “There was an old Derry Down Derry,” 1875 colored illustration from A Book of Nonsense, by Edward Lear.
sister in company, sure enough. This astonished
me a little, for it appeared to me that her coming
so readily showed that she was a trifle too willing,
but on reflection it occurred to me that she might
have been prevailed on by her married sister to
come, without anything concerning me ever hav-
ing been mentioned to her, and so I concluded
that if no other objection presented itself, I would
consent to waive this. All this occurred to me on
hearing of her arrival in the neighborhood—for,
be it remembered, I had not yet seen her, except
about three years previous, as above mentioned.
In a few days we had an interview, and although
I had seen her before, she did not look as my
imagination had pictured her. I knew she was
oversize, but she now appeared a fair match for
Falstaff. I knew she was called an “old maid,”
and I felt no doubt of the truth of at least half
of the appellation, but now, when I beheld her,
I could not for my life avoid thinking of my
mother; and this, not from withered features—
for her skin was too full of fat to permit of its
58  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
contracting into wrinkles—but from her want
of teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general,
and from a kind of notion that ran in my head
that nothing could have commenced at the size
of infancy and reached her present bulk in less
than thirty-five or forty years. And, in short, I
was not at all pleased with her. But what could I
do? I had told her sister that I would take her for
better or for worse, and I made a point of honor
and conscience in all things to stick to my word,
especially if others had been induced to act on it,
which in this case I had no doubt they had, for
I was now fairly convinced that no other man
on earth would have her, and hence the conclu-
sion that they were bent on holding me to my
bargain. “Well,” thought I, “I have said it, and, be
the consequences what they may, it shall not be
my fault if I fail to do it.” At once I determined
to consider her my wife, and this done, all my
powers of discovery were put to work in search
of perfections in her which might be fairly set
off against her defects. I tried to imagine her
handsome, which, but for her unfortunate cor-
pulency, 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 imagi-
nary, 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, unexpect-
edly, completely out of the “scrape,” and I now
want to know if you can guess how I got out of
it—out, clear, in every sense of the term—no
violation of word, honor, or conscience. I don’t
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 de-
layed 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 fur-
ther 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
peculiar circumstances of her case, but on my
renewal of the charge I found she repelled it
with greater firmness than before. I tried it
again and again, but with the same success, or
rather with the same want of success.
I finally was forced to give it up, at which I
very unexpectedly found myself mortified almost
beyond endurance. I was mortified, it seemed
to me, in a hundred different ways. My vanity
was deeply wounded by the reflection that I had
so long been too stupid to discover her inten-
tions, and at the same time never doubting that
I understood them perfectly—and also that she,
whom I had taught myself to believe nobody
else would have, had actually rejected me with
And it is well-known that beauty does
not look with a good grace on the timid
advances of humor.
 —W. Somerset Maugham, 1930
all my fancied greatness. And, to cap the whole,
I then for the first time began to suspect that I
was really a little in love with her. But let it all
go! I’ll try and outlive it. Others have been made
fools of by the girls, but this can never with truth
be said of me. I most emphatically, in this in-
stance, made a fool of myself. I have now come
to the conclusion never again to think of marry-
ing, and for this reason—I can never be satisfied
with anyone who would be blockhead enough
to have me.
When you receive this, write me a long
yarn about something to amuse me. Give my
respects to Mr. Browning.
From a letter to Mrs. O. H. Browning. Judged by
one Lincoln biographer to be “the most ludicrous” he
ever wrote, this letter, composed while Lincoln was
an Illinois state representative, was sent on April
Fool’s Day. However, the storyline hews closely to the
facts of his courtship with Mary Owens, who later
recollected, “I thought Mr. Lincoln was deficient in
those little links which make up the chain of woman’s
happiness—at least it was so in my case.” It is said
that when Mrs. Browning asked the president if she
could share the letter with a biographer, he denied
permission because it contained too much truth.
59
 1777: Mannheim
in the toilet
Dearest cozz buzz!
I have received reprieved your highly es-
teemed 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
you’ll 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 we’ll speak
freak sensubly with each other. Things I must
60  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
you tell a lot of, believe it you hardly can, but
hear tomorrow it already will you, be well in
the meantime. Oh my ass burns like fire! What
on earth is the meaning of this!—maybe muck
wants to come out? Yes, yes, muck, I know you,
see you, taste you—and—what’s this—is it
possible? Ye Gods!—Oh ear of mine, are you
deceiving me?
Now I must relate to you a sad story that
happened just this minute. As I’m in the middle
of my best writing, I hear a noise in the street.
I stop writing—get up, go to the window—
and—the noise is gone—I sit down again, start
writing once more—I have barely written ten
words when I hear the noise again—I rise—
but as I rise, I can still hear something but
very faint—it smells like something burning—
wherever I go it stinks, when I look out the
window, the smell goes away, when I turn my
head back to the room, the smell comes back—
finally my mama says to me: I bet you let one
go?—I don’t think so, Mama. Yes, yes, I’m quite
certain. I put it to the test, stick my finger in my
ass, then put it to my nose, and—ecce provatum
est! Mama was right!
Now farewell, I kiss you ten thousand
times and I remain as always your
Old young Sauschwanz
Wolfgang Amadé Rosenkranz.
From us two travelers a thousand
Regards to my uncle and aunt.
To every good friend I send
My greet feet; addio nitwit.
Love true true true until the grave,
If I live that long and do behave.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, from a letter to Maria
Anna Thekla Mozart. Between 1777 and 1781,
while in his twenties, Mozart wrote twelve letters to
this cousin—the early ones are often alliterative and
obscene—during which time he and his father were
seeking out a new post for him; he had been installed
at the Salzburg court since the age of thirteen. In
1785 Franz Joseph Haydn said to Mozart’s father,
“ Your son is the greatest composer known to me either
in person or by name.” The Magic Flute premiered
on September 30, 1791; less than three months later,
Mozart was dead at the age of thirty-five.
1939: New York City
james thurber summons
an archetype
“We’re going through!” The commander’s voice
was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-
dress uniform, with the heavily braided white
cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray
eye. “We can’t make it, sir. It’s spoiling for
a hurricane, if you ask me.” “I’m not asking
you, Lieutenant Berg,” said the commander.
“Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to
8,500! We’re going through!” The pounding
of the cylinders increased: tapocketa-pocketa-
pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The commander stared
at the ice forming on the pilot window. He
walked over and twisted a row of complicated
dials. “Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” he shouted.
“Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” repeated Lieuten-
ant Berg. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!” shouted
the commander. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!”
Friar Pedro Shoots El Maragato as His Horse Runs Off, by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, c. 1806.
The crew, bending to their various tasks in the
huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane,
looked at each other and grinned. “The old
man’ll get us through,” they said to one another.
“The old man ain’t afraid of hell!”…
“Not so fast! You’re driving too fast!” said
Mrs. Mitty. “What are you driving so fast for?”
“Hmm?” said Walter Mitty. He looked at
his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked
astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar,
like a strange woman who had yelled at him
in a crowd. “You were up to fifty-five,” she said.
“You know I don’t like to go more than forty.
You were up to fifty-five.” Walter Mitty drove
on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring of
the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty
years of Navy flying fading in the remote, in-
timate airways of his mind. “You’re tensed up
again,” said Mrs. Mitty. “It’s one of your days. I
wish you’d let Dr. Renshaw look you over.”
Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of
the building where his wife went to have her
61
 hair done. “Remember to get those overshoes
while I’m having my hair done,” she said.
“I don’t need overshoes,” said Mitty. She put
her mirror back into her bag. “We’ve been
all through that,” she said, getting out of the
car. “You’re not a young man any longer.” He
raced the engine a little. “Why don’t you wear
your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?” Wal-
ter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out
c. 1690: Sichuan
deadly joke
The schoolmaster Sun Jingxia once told this
story.
A certain fellow of the locality, let us call
him X, was killed by bandits during one of
their raids. His head flopped down on to his
chest. When the bandits had gone and the
family came to recover the corpse for burial,
they detected the faintest trace of breath-
ing, and on closer examination saw that the
man’s windpipe was not quite severed. A fin-
ger’s breadth remained. So they carried him
home, supporting the head carefully, and af-
ter a day and a night, he began to make a
moaning noise. They fed him minute quanti-
ties of food with a spoon and chopsticks, and
after six months he was fully recovered.
Ten years later, he was sitting talking with
two or three of his friends when one of them
cracked a hilarious joke and they all burst out
laughing. X was rocking backward and for-
ward in a fit of hysterical laughter, when sud-
denly the old sword wound burst open, and
his head fell to the ground in a pool of blood.
His friends examined him, and this time he
was well and truly dead.
His father decided to bring charges against
the man who had told the joke. But the jok-
er’s friends collected some money together
and succeeded in buying him off. The father
buried his son and dropped the charges.
Pu Songling, from Strange Tales from a
Chinese Studio. Having passed the first civil-
service examination at the age of eighteen in the
late 1650s, Pu failed to obtain a government post,
so he became a private tutor for a local family in
1679. By that time the self-titled “historian of
the strange” had collected the majority of the 431
tales that comprise his book. At odds with the
prevailing literary tastes of the day, the work was
not celebrated until some fifty years after his death.
62  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
the gloves. He put them on, but after she had
turned and gone into the building and he had
driven on to a red light, he took them off again.
“Pick it up, brother!” snapped a cop as the light
changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves
and lurched ahead. He drove around the streets
aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the
hospital on his way to the parking lot.
…“It’s the millionaire banker, Wellington
McMillan,” said the pretty nurse. “Yes?” said
Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. “Who
has the case?” “Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow,
but there are two specialists here, Dr. Remington
from New York and Mr. Pritchard-Mitford from
London. He flew over.” A door opened down a
long, cool corridor, and Dr. Renshaw came out.
He looked distraught and haggard. “Hello, Mit-
ty,” he said. “We’re having the devil’s own time
with McMillan, the millionaire banker and close
personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the
ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you’d take a look at
him.” “Glad to,” said Mitty.
In the operating room there were whis-
pered introductions: “Dr. Remington, Dr.
Mitty. Mr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty.” “I’ve
read your book on streptothricosis,” said Prit-
chard-Mitford, shaking hands. “A brilliant per-
formance, sir.” “Thank you,” said Walter Mitty.
“Didn’t know you were in the States, Mitty,”
grumbled Remington. “Coals to Newcastle,
bringing Mitford and me up here for a ter-
tiary.” “You are very kind,” said Mitty. A huge,
complicated machine, connected to the operat-
ing table, with many tubes and wires, began at
this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. “The
new anesthetizer is giving way!” shouted an in-
tern. “There is no one in the East who knows
how to fix it!” “Quiet, man!” said Mitty, in a low,
cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was
now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep.
He began fingering delicately a row of glisten-
ing dials. “Give me a fountain pen!” he snapped.
Someone handed him a fountain pen. He
pulled a faulty piston out of the machine and
inserted the pen in its place. “That will hold for
ten minutes, “ he said. “Get on with the op-
eration.” A nurse hurried over and whispered
to Renshaw, and Mitty saw the man turn pale.
“Coreopsis has set in,” said Renshaw nervously.
“If you would take over, Mitty?” Mitty looked
at him and at the craven figure of Benbow,
who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of
the two great specialists. “If you wish,” he said.
They slipped a white gown on him; he adjusted
a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed
him shining…
“Back it up, Mac! Look out for that Buick!”
Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes. “Wrong
lane, Mac,” said the parking-lot attendant,
looking at Mitty closely. “Gee. Yeah,” muttered
Mitty. He began cautiously to back out of the
lane marked exit only. “Leave her sit there,”
said the attendant. “I’ll put her away.” Mitty got
out of the car. “Hey, better leave the key.” “Oh,”
said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key.
The attendant vaulted into the car, backed it up
with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged.
They’re so damn cocky, thought Walter
Mitty, walking along Main Street; they think
they know everything. Once he had tried to take
his chains off, outside New Milford, and he had
got them wound around the axles. A man had
had to come out in a wrecking car and unwind
them, a young, grinning garage man. Since then
Mrs. Mitty always made him drive to a garage
to have the chains taken off. The next time, he
thought, I’ll wear my right arm in a sling; they
won’t grin at me then. I’ll have my right arm in
a sling and they’ll see I couldn’t possibly take the
chains off myself. He kicked at the slush on the
sidewalk. “Overshoes,” he said to himself, and he
began looking for a shoe store.
When he came out into the street again,
with the overshoes in a box under his arm,
Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other
thing was his wife had told him to get. She
had told him twice, before they set out from
their house for Waterbury. In a way he hated
these weekly trips to town—he was always get-
ting something wrong. Kleenex, he thought,
Squibb’s, razor blades? No. Toothpaste, tooth-
brush, bicarbonate, carborundum, initiative,
and referendum? He gave it up. But she would
remember it. “Where’s the what’s-its-name?”
she would ask. “Don’t tell me you forgot the
what’s-its-name.” A newsboy went by shouting
something about the Waterbury trial.
…“Perhaps this will refresh your memory.”
The district attorney suddenly thrust a heavy au-
tomatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand.
“Have you ever seen this before?” Walter Mitty
took the gun and examined it expertly. “This
is my Webley-Vickers 50.80,” he said calmly.
An excited buzz ran around the courtroom.
The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for
treasons, stratagems, and spoils, but his whole
life is already a treason and a stratagem.
 —Thomas Carlyle, 1833
The judge rapped for order. “You are a crack
shot with any sort of firearms, I believe?” said
the district attorney, insinuatingly. “Objection!”
shouted Mitty’s attorney. “We have shown that
the defendant could not have fired the shot. We
have shown that he wore his right arm in a sling
on the night of the fourteenth of July.” Walter
Mitty raised his hand briefly, and the bicker-
ing attorneys were stilled. “With any known
make of gun,” he said evenly, “I could have killed
Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with
my left hand.” Pandemonium broke loose in the
courtroom. A woman’s scream rose above the
bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-haired girl
was in Walter Mitty’s arms. The district attorney
struck at her savagely. Without rising from his
chair, Mitty let the man have it on the point of
the chin. “You miserable cur!”…
“Puppy biscuit,” said Walter Mitty. He
stopped walking, and the building of Water-
bury rose up out of the misty courtroom and
surrounded him again. A woman who was
passing laughed. “He said puppy biscuit,” she
said to her companion. “That man said puppy
biscuit to himself.” Walter Mitty hurried on.
He went into an A&P, not the first one he
came to but a smaller one farther up the street.
“I want some biscuit for small, young dogs,”
he said to the clerk. “Any special brand, sir?”
The greatest pistol shot in the world thought
63
 a moment. “It says ‘Puppies Bark for It’ on the
box,” said Walter Mitty.
His wife would be through at the hair-
dresser’s in fifteen minutes, Mitty saw in looking
at his watch, unless they had trouble drying it;
sometimes they had trouble drying it. She didn’t
like to get to the hotel first; she would want him
to be there waiting for her as usual. He found a
big leather chair in the lobby, facing a window,
and he put the overshoes and the puppy biscuit
on the floor beside it. He picked up an old copy
of Liberty and sank down into the chair. “Can
Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?”
Walter Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing
planes and of ruined streets.
There is nothing sillier than a silly laugh.
 —Catullus, c. 60 bc
…“The cannonading has got the wind up
in young Raleigh, sir,” said the sergeant. Cap-
tain Mitty looked up at him through tousled
hair. “Get him to bed,” he said wearily. “With
the others. I’ll fly alone.” “But you can’t, sir,”
said the sergeant anxiously. “It takes two men
to handle that bomber, and the Archies are
pounding hell out of the air. Von Richtman’s cir-
cus is between here and Saulier.” “Somebody’s
got to get that ammunition dump,” said Mitty.
“I’m going over. Spot of brandy?” He poured
a drink for the sergeant and one for himself.
War thundered and whined around the dugout
and battered at the door. There was a rending of
wood and splinters flew through the room. “A
bit of a near thing,” said Captain Mitty care-
lessly. “The box barrage is closing in,” said the
sergeant. “We only live once, Sergeant,” said
Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. “Or do we?”
He poured another brandy and tossed it off. “I
never see a man could hold his brandy like you,
sir,” said the sergeant. “Begging your pardon,
sir.” Captain Mitty stood up and strapped on
his huge Webley-Vickers automatic. “It’s forty
kilometers through hell, sir,” said the sergeant.
Mitty finished one last brandy. “After all,” he
said softly, “what isn’t?” The pounding of the
64  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
cannon increased; there was the rat-a-tat-
tatting 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 “Auprès
de Ma Blonde.” He turned and waved to the
sergeant. “Cheerio!” he said…
Something struck his shoulder. “I’ve 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
what’s-its-name? The puppy biscuit? What’s in
that box?” “Overshoes,” said Mitty. “Couldn’t
you have put them on in the store?” “I was
thinking,” said Walter Mitty. “Does it ever oc-
cur to you that I am sometimes thinking?” She
looked at him. “I’m going to take your temper-
ature 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 won’t be a minute.” She was more than a min-
ute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It began
to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up against
the wall of the drugstore, smoking…He put
his shoulders back and his heels together. “To
hell with the handkerchief,” said Walter Mitty
scornfully. He took one last drag on his ciga-
rette 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 thirty-
two 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 magazine’s
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 Times—critic Dwight Macdonald
judged it “the best humor to come out of the post–
World War I period”—and 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. I’m not joking!
You know, my heart palpitated with joy. It
must mean we’re building something, citizens.
They don’t just transport bricks for no reason
at all. They must be building a nice little house
somewhere. They’ve 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 popu-
lation doesn’t grow too quickly and they allow
everyone to have abortions, then two rooms. Or
might even be three. With a bathroom. What
a life we’ll lead then, eh, citizens! In one room
we’ll sleep, say, in another receive guests, and in
a third something else…Who knows? With all
that freedom, we’ll find something to be get-
ting on with.
But just now things are a bit difficult with
floor space. There’s not a lot of it about, on ac-
count of the housing crisis.
I was living in Moscow, comrades. I’ve
only just returned from there. I myself have
undergone this crisis.
So I arrived in Moscow, you see. I was walk-
ing around the streets with my stuff. And there
was nowhere. Not just nowhere to stay, but no-
where even to put my stuff. Can you imagine, two
weeks I was walking around the streets with my
stuff. I grew a beard and gradually lost my stuff.
So there I was, you see, walking around light,
without any stuff. Hunting for accommodation.
Finally, in one building, some man came
down the stairs, “For thirty rubles,” he said,
“I can fix you up in the bathroom. The apart-
ment,” he said, “is fit for royalty…three toilets…
a bath…You can live there, in the bathroom, to
your heart’s content,” he said. “There’s no win-
dows, I’ll grant you that, but there is a door. And
running water’s freely available. If you want,” he
said, “you can run yourself a bath full of water
and dive around all day long.”
I said, “Esteemed comrade, I’m not a fish,” I
said. “I don’t require diving facilities. I’d rather,”
I said, “live on dry land. Knock a bit off,” I said,
“for the damp.”
65
 He said, “I can’t, comrade. I’d love to, but
I can’t. It doesn’t depend on me alone. It’s a
communal apartment. And there’s been a fixed
price agreed for the bathroom.”
“What choice do I have then?” I said. “All
right. Extract,” I said, “thirty from me, then, and
let me get in there straightaway,” I said. “I’ve
been walking the pavement for three weeks,” I
said, “and I might get tired otherwise.”
All right then. They let me in. I began liv-
ing there.
Professed wits, though they are generally
courted for the amusement they afford, are
seldom respected for the qualities they possess.
 —Sydney Smith, 1850
And the bath really was fit for royalty. All
over the place, wherever you put your foot, there
was the marble bath, boiler, and taps. Mind you,
there was nowhere to sit. You could just about
sit on the side of the bath, but you kept falling
down, straight into the marble bath.
So I put down some planks as floorboards,
and went on living there.
After a month, though, I got married.
I met a young, kindhearted wife. You know.
Without a room of her own.
I thought she’d reject me on account of
the bath, and I’d never know conjugal bliss and
comfort, but not her, she didn’t reject me. Just
gave a little frown and answered, “So what,” she
said, “living in a bath doesn’t make you a bad
person. If it comes to it,” she said, “we can al-
ways put up a partition. Here for example,” she
said, “we could have my boudoir, and over there
we’d have the dining room…”
I said, “We could put up a partition, citi-
zen. The only thing is the tenants,” I said. “The
bastards won’t let us. That’s what they keep on
saying: no alterations.”
All right then. So we carried on living
there as before.
In less than a year, me and the wife had a
tiny baby.
We called him Volodya and carried on
66  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
with life. We could always give him a bath, and
carry on living.
You know, it was even working out pretty
well. The baby, you see, was getting a bath every
day and never once caught a cold.
The only inconvenient thing was in the eve-
nings the tenants of the communal apartment
kept on barging into the bathroom to take baths.
While this went on, the whole family had
to be moved out into the corridor.
So I asked the tenants, “Citizens,” I said,
“take your baths on a Saturday. Come on,” I
said, “you can’t have a bath every day. When are
we going to have a life?” I said. “You’ve got to
see it from our point of view.”
But the bastards, there were thirty-two
of them, all swearing. And they threatened to
smash my face in if I started making trouble.
Well, what can you do? You can’t do any-
thing. We carried on living there as before.
After a while my wife’s mum turned up in
our bath from the provinces. She settled in be-
hind the boiler.
“I’ve been dreaming for so long,” she said,
“of cradling my grandson in my arms. You
can’t,” she said, “deny me that entertainment.”
I said, “I’m not denying it. Go on, granny,”
I said, “cradle away. You can even,” I said, “fill
up the bath and dive in with your grandson.”
So I said to my wife, “Look, citizen, if
you’ve got any more relatives coming to stay
with you, then tell me now, and put me out
of my misery.” She said, “No, only my brother
for Christmas…”
I left Moscow without waiting for her
brother. I send my family money by post.
Mikhail Zoshchenko, “The Crisis.” Zoshchenko
volunteered to fight in World War I and was gassed
on the German front, causing him permanent
heart and liver damage. He then fought in the
Red Army during the Russian Revolution.
Zoshchenko published Sentimental Tales in 1929,
Youth Restored in 1933, and The Blue Book in
1935. Within months of publishing his story “The
Adventures of a Monkey” in 1946, Zoshchenko
was denounced by Soviet authorities as the “scum of
literature” and, along with poet Anna Akhmatova,
was expelled from the Soviet Writers’ Union.
1456: Paris
last testament
Item, to Master Ythier Merchant,
to whom I am deeply in debt,
and also to Master Jean de Horn,
I leave my shaft of trenchant steel
which is currently held in hock
against a bar tab of seven sous.
I hereby record my wish that
they be the ones who get the shaft.
Item, I leave to St. Amant
the white horse, along with the mule;
and to Blaru, my precious jewels
and the striped ass, bucking.
As for the Church decree that says
“…everyone of both sexes…”
The Zaparozhye Cossacks Writing a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan (detail), by Ilya Repin, c. 1880.
I leave it to priests to drive it home,
in spite of the Carmelites’ bull.
And to Master Robert Valley,
poor office clerk in parliament,
who can’t tell a hill from a valley,
I will, as principal bequest,
that he be given, free and clear,
my breeches, now down by the anklets,
for they’ll make a fitting coif
for his girl, Jeannie de Thousands.
Because he is a man of high station
he ought to be better endowed,
as the Holy Spirit often allows,
seeing as he’s wholly empty upstairs.
Therefore I have resolved, since he
has no more brains than a cupboard,
67
 Young man with painted face laughing during Holi festival, Kokata, India, 2007. Photograph by Prasanta Biswas.
that he should have The Art of Memory,
once it’s retrieved from Master Witless.
Item, to Perrenet Merchant,
known as the Bastard of the Bar:
because he is a good merchant,
I leave him three bundles of straw
to spread out on the ground
for doing the amorous business
at which he earns his living—
for that’s the only trade he knows.
Item, I leave and give outright
my gloves and my silken hood-cape
to my good friend Jack Hardon;
all the acorns from a willow grove
and every day a big fat goose
and a chicken in its greasy prime;
ten tuns of wine as white as chalk,
and two lawsuits, to keep him thin.
Item, I bequeath to the poorhouse
my bed frame strung with spiderwebs.
To those who flop under market stalls,
68  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
trembling there with faces clenched,
wasted, hairy, chilled deep through,
their trousers short, their smocks worn thin,
frozen, beaten, wracked with flu—
a fist in the eye for each.
Item, I bequeath to my barber
the snipped-off scraps of my hair,
freely and unconditionally;
to the cobbler, my old shoes,
and to the ragman my old clothes,
in whatever shape they’re in;
for less than they cost me new,
I charitably leave these to them.
François Villon, from “Bequests.” The record of the
poet’s life is incomplete: nothing is known of the years
between when Villon received a master of arts degree
from the University of Paris in 1452 and when he
killed a priest in 1455. Although pardoned for this
crime by Charles VII, Villon was on the lam later
in the year for a heist of the Collège de Navarre’s
savings. It was around this time that he composed his
bequests. In 1463 Villon petitioned for clemency while
awaiting death by hanging for another conviction,
and his sentence was commuted to banishment from
Paris. Nothing else is known of his life.
1952: Dublin
filling in the blanks
Vladimir: What do we do now?
Estragon: Wait.
Vladimir: Yes, but while waiting.
Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?
Vladimir: Hmm. It’d give us an erection.
Estragon: [highly excited] An erection!
Vladimir: With all that follows. Where it falls,
mandrakes grow. That’s why they shriek when
you pull them up. Did you not know that?
Estragon: Let’s hang ourselves immediately!
Vladimir: From a bough? [They go toward the
tree.] I wouldn’t trust it.
Estragon: We can always try.
Vladimir: Go ahead.
Estragon: After you.
Vladimir: No no, you first.
Estragon: Why me?
Vladimir: You’re lighter than I am.
Estragon: Just so!
Vladimir: I don’t understand.
Estragon: Use your intelligence, can’t you?
[Vladimir uses his intelligence.]
Vladimir: [finally] I remain in the dark.
Estragon: This is how it is. [He reflects.] The
bough…the bough…[angrily] Use your head,
can’t you?
Vladimir: You’re my only hope.
Estragon: [with effort] Gogo light—bough
not break—Gogo dead. Didi heavy—bough
break—Didi alone. Whereas—
Vladimir: I hadn’t thought of that.
Estragon: If it hangs you, it’ll hang anything.
Vladimir: But am I heavier than you?
Estragon: So you tell me. I don’t know. There’s
an even chance. Or nearly.
Vladimir: Well? What do we do?
Estragon: Don’t let’s do anything. It’s safer.
Vladimir: Let’s wait and see what he says.
Estragon: Who?
Vladimir: Godot.
Estragon: Good idea.
Vladimir: Let’s wait till we know exactly how
we stand.
Estragon: On the other hand it might be better
to strike the iron before it freezes.
Vladimir: I’m curious to hear what he has to
offer. Then we’ll take it or leave it.
Estragon: What exactly did we ask him for?
Vladimir: Were you not there?
Estragon: I can’t have been listening.
Vladimir: Oh…Nothing very definite.
Estragon: A kind of prayer.
Vladimir: Precisely.
Estragon: A vague supplication.
Vladimir: Exactly.
Estragon: And what did he reply?
Vladimir: That he’d see.
Estragon: That he couldn’t promise anything.
Vladimir: That he’d have to think it over.
Estragon: In the quiet of his home.
Vladimir: Consult his family.
Estragon: His friends.
Vladimir: His agents.
Estragon: His correspondents.
69
 Vladimir: His books.
Punked!
Hoaxes and stunts Estragon: His bank account.
The Trojan Horse, c. 1250 bc
Vladimir: Before taking a decision.
Pranksters: Greeks
During the Trojan War, Greeks pretend to sail away
and leave behind large wooden horse, which Trojans
Estragon: It’s the normal thing.
take into their city as an offering to Athena; there are
Greeks inside who emerge at night, open the gates for Vladimir: Is it not?
the rest of the Greek army, and end the ten-year siege.
Estragon: I think it is.
Death of John Partridge, 1708
Prankster: Isaac Bickerstaff ( Jonathan Swift) Vladimir: I think so too.
To ridicule almanac writer John Partridge, Swift
predicts death in almanac, confirming it on forecasted
day, March 29; Partridge publishes statement that
[silence]
he is alive on April Fool’s Day, but Swift replies
that surely no living man could have written the Estragon: [anxious] And we?
foolishness in Partridge’s last almanac.
Vladimir: I beg your pardon?
Perpetual Motion, 1813
Prankster: Charles Redheffer Estragon: I said, And we?
Redheffer claims invention of a machine that can
run indefinitely without further source of energy,
exhibiting it to the public for a price; engineer Robert Vladimir: I don’t understand.
Fulton reveals that it is powered by an old bearded
man in the attic with a hand crank. Estragon: Where do we come in?
Great Moon Hoax, 1835 Vladimir: Come in?
Prankster: the New York Sun
Several articles report that well-known astronomer Estragon: Take your time.
John Herschel has discovered winged man-bats on the
moon; the paper’s sales soar, and Herschel is plagued
with questions about moon-men for years. Vladimir: Come in? On our hands and knees.
Feejee Mermaid, 1842 Estragon: As bad as that?
Prankster: P. T. Barnum
Barnum runs newspaper advertisements with image of Vladimir: Your Worship wishes to assert his
a bare-chested mermaid at his museum; the mermaid
is later exposed as the torso of a monkey sewn onto prerogatives?
the tail of a fish.
Estragon: We’ve no rights anymore?
Cottingley Fairies, 1917
Pranksters: Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths [Laugh of Vladimir, stifled as before, less the smile.]
Cousins take photographs of themselves playing with
fairies, and Arthur Conan Doyle reprints images in Vladimir: You’d make me laugh if it wasn’t
an article, arguing that they are proof that fairies exist;
cousins confess in 1981 that they were faked using prohibited.
cardboard cutouts.

The War of the Worlds, 1938

Estragon: We’ve lost our rights?
Prankster: Orson Welles
Welles adapts H. G. Wells’ novel for radio as a series
Vladimir: [distinctly] We got rid of them.
of news bulletins; many listeners think that the story
of an alien invasion is real, especially in New Jersey, Samuel Beckett, from Waiting for Godot. Living
the site of supposed landing, where families hide in in Paris during World War II, Beckett worked as a
their basements. farmhand, wrote the novel Watt, and was a member
The Dickens–Dostoevsky Hoax, 2002 of the French Resistance—he was later awarded the
Prankster: A. D. Harvey Croix de Guerre for his service. He published Molloy
Harvey publishes article in scholarly journal that and Malone Dies in 1951 and received the Nobel
describes an 1862 meeting in London between Prize in Literature in 1969. A friend once said to
Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoevsky, which is him, “ You sit there saying nothing while the world
subsequently cited by scholars; in 2012 professor is going to pieces. What do you want? What do you
Eric Naiman reveals how Harvey, with a variety of want to do?” Beckett replied, “Walter, all I want to
pseudonyms, made it up and covered his tracks. do is sit on my ass and fart and think of Dante.”

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 “mod-
eration is best in all things.” I cannot agree with
him “in liquor.” There is a smoothness and oili-
ness 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 man’s
shoulders through Silver Street, up Parson’s
Lane, by the Chapels (which might have taught
me better), and then to be deposited like a dead
log at Gaffar Westwood’s, who it seems does not
Still from “Clown Torture: Dirty Joke,” sixty-minute loop, video installation by Bruce Nauman, 1987.
“insure” against intoxication. Not that the mode
of conveyance is objectionable. On the contrary,
it is more easy than a one-horse chaise. Ariel in
The Tempest says, “On a bat’s back do I fly,/after
sunset merrily.” Now, I take it that Ariel must
sometimes have stayed out late of nights. Indeed,
he pretends that “where the bee sucks, there lurks
he,” as much as to say that his suction is as inno-
cent as that little innocent (but damnably sting-
ing when he is provoked) winged creature. But I
take it that Ariel was fond of metheglin, of which
the bees are notorious brewers. But then you will
say, What a shocking sight to see a middle-aged
gentleman-and-a-half riding upon a gentleman’s
back up Parson’s Lane at midnight. Exactly the
time for that sort of conveyance, when nobody
can see him, nobody but heaven and his own
conscience; now, heaven makes fools, and don’t
expect much from her own creation; and as for
conscience, she and I have long since come to a
compromise. I have given up false modesty, and
she allows me to abate a little of the true. I like
to be liked, but I don’t care about being respect-
ed. I don’t respect myself. But, as I was saying, I
71
 Private Concert,The Wrong Note (detail), by Vittorio Reggianini, c. 1890.
thought he would have let me down just as we
got to Lieutenant Barker’s coal shed (or empo-
rium) but by a cunning jerk I eased myself and
righted my posture. I protest, I thought myself in
a palanquin, and never felt myself so grandly car-
ried. It was a slave under me. There was I, all but
my reason. And what is reason? And what is the
loss of it? And how often in a day do we do with-
out it, just as well? Reason is only counting, two
and two makes four. And if on my passage home,
I thought it made five, what matter? Two and
two will just make four, as it always did, before
I took the finishing glass that did my business.
My sister has begged me to write an apology to
Mrs. A and you for disgracing your party; now
it does seem to me that I rather honored your
party, for everyone that was not drunk (and one
or two of the ladies, I am sure, were not) must
have been set off greatly in the contrast to me. I
was the scapegoat. The soberer they seemed. By
the way, is magnesia good on these occasions? I
am no licentiate, but know enough of simples to
beg you to send me a draft after this model. But
still you will say (or the men and maids at your
house will say) that it is not a seemly sight for
an old gentleman to go home pickaback. Well,
maybe it is not. But I never studied grace. I take it
to be a mere superficial accomplishment. I regard
more the internal acquisitions. The great object
after supper is to get home, and whether that is
72  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
obtained in a horizontal posture or perpendicu-
lar (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 com-
pose a sensible rational apology, and what sig-
nifies 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 that’s sense
enough, I hope.
N.B. What is good for a desperate head-
ache? 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 Barker’s 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 don’t much
care if I never see a mountain in my life.” Twenty-
nine 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
david foster wallace at the fair
08/13/1150h. Since my Native Compan-
ion was lured here by me to the Illinois State
Fair for the day by the promise of free access
to sphincter-loosening high-velocity rides,
we make a quick descent into Happy Hollow,
where they’re all kept. Most of the rides aren’t
even twirling hellishly yet. Guys with ratchet
wrenches are still cranking away at the Ring
of Fire. The giant Gondola Ferris wheel is only
half assembled, and its seat-draped lower half
resembles a hideous molary grin. It’s over 100
degrees in the sun, easy.
The Happy Hollow Carnival area’s a kind
of rectangular basin that extends east-west
from near the main gate out to the steep path-
less hillside just below Livestock. The midway
is made of dirt and flanked by carnival-game
booths and ticket booths and rides. There’s a
merry-go-round and a couple of sane-paced
kids’ rides, but most of the rides down here
look like genuine Near-Death Experiences. On
this first morning the Hollow seems to be open
only technically, and the ticket booths are un-
manned, though heartbreaking little streams of
AC’d air are blowing out through money slots
in the booths’ glass. Attendance is sparse, and I
notice none of the ag-pros or farm people are
anywhere in sight down here. What there are
are carnies. A lot of them slouch and slump
in awnings’ shade. Every one of them seems
to chain-smoke. The Tilt-a-Whirl operator’s
got his boots up on his control panel reading
a motorcycle-and-naked-lady magazine while
two guys attach enormous rubber hoses to the
ride’s guts. We sidle over for a chat. The opera-
tor’s twenty-four and from Bee Branch, Arkan-
sas, and has an earring and a huge tattoo of a
motorcycle with naked lady on his triceps. He’s
way more interested in chatting with Native
Companion than with me. He’s been at this
gig five years, touring with this one here same
company here. Couldn’t rightly say if he liked it
or not, the gig: like as compared to what? Broke
in the trade on the Toss-a-Quarter-Onto-the-
Plates game and got, like, transferred over to
the Tilt-a-Whirl in ’91. He smokes Marlboro
100’s but wears a cap that says winston. He
wants to know if Native Companion’d like to
take a quick walk back across the Hollow and
see something way out of the usual range of
what she’s 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 barker’s testing his mike by
saying “testes” instead of “testing.” It smells like
machine grease and hair tonic down here, and
there’s already a spoiled, garbagey smell. My
media guide says 1993’s Happy Hollow is con-
tracted to “one of the largest owners of amuse-
ment 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 South—Tennessee, Arkansas, Okla-
homa. They are visibly unimpressed by the press
credentials clipped to my shirt. They tend to look
at Native Companion like she’s 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 don’t
bounce back out. The game’s barker can toss the
balls behind his back and get them to stay in, but
he’s right up next to the baskets. My shots carom
out from eight feet away—the straw baskets look
soft, but their bottoms make a suspicious steely
sound when the balls hit.
73
 It’s so hot that we move in quick, staggered
vectors between areas of shade. I decline to take
my shirt off because there’d be no way to display
my credentials. We zigzag gradually westward
across the Hollow. I am keen to hit the Junior
Beef Show, which starts at 1300h. Then there
are, of course, the Dessert Competition tents.
One of the fully assembled rides near the
Hollow’s west end is something called The
Zipper. It’s riderless but in furious motion, a
kind of Ferris wheel on amphetamines. Indi-
vidual caged cars are hinged to spin on their
Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at
the world. So if it is correct to say that humor
was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does
not mean that people were not in good spirits,
or anything of that sort, but something much
deeper and more important.
 —Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1948
own axes as they go around in a tight verti-
cal ellipse. The machine looks less like a zip-
per than the head of a chainsaw. Its off-white
paint is chipped, and it sounds like a shimmy-
ing V-12, and in general it’s something I’d run
a mile in tight shoes to avoid riding. But Na-
tive Companion starts clapping and hopping
around excitedly as we approach The Zipper.
(This is a person who bungee jumps, to give
you an idea.) And the operator at the controls
sees her, waves back, and shouts down to Git
on over and git some if she’s a mind to. He
claims they want to test The Zipper somehow.
He’s up on a kind of steel platform, elbowing
a colleague next to him in a way I don’t much
like. We have no tickets, I point out, and none
of the cash-for-ticket booths are manned. By
now we’re somehow at the base of the stairway
up to the platform and control panel. The op-
erator says without looking at me that the mat-
ter of tickets this early on opening day, “Ain’t
no sweat off my balls.” The operator’s colleague
conducts Native Companion up the waffled-
steel steps and straps her into a cage, upping
a thumb at the operator, who gives a sort of
74  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
rebel yell and pulls a lever. Native C’s cage be-
gins to ascend. Pathetic little fingers appear in
the cage’s 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 col-
league (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 un-
brushed teeth, with big scabs of rust. The op-
erator and colleague sit on a little steel bench
before a panel full of black-knobbed levers. Do
testicles themselves sweat? They’re supposed
to be very temperature sensitive. The colleague
spits Skoal into a can he holds and tells the op-
erator, “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 C’s cage, which is going
around and around on its hinges while a shape
inside tumbles like stuff in a dryer. My par-
ticular neurological makeup (extremely sensi-
tive: carsick, airsick, heightsick; my sister likes
to say I’m “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 C’s car at the top,
so she’s 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 gaz-
ing upward very intently, shading their eyes.
The operator’s stroking his mustache contem-
platively. The cage’s inversion has made Native
Companion’s dress fall up. They’re ogling her
nethers, obviously. As they laugh, the sound lit-
erally sounds like “tee hee hee hee.” A less sen-
sitive neurological specimen probably would
have stepped in at this point and stopped the
whole grotesque exercise. My own makeup
leans more toward disassociation when under
stress. A mother in shorts is trying to get a
stroller up the steps of the funhouse. A kid in a
Jurassic Park T-shirt is licking an enormous flat
lollipop with a hypnotic spiral on it. A sign at a
gas station we passed on the way here was hand-
lettered and said blu-block sunglasses—
like seen on tv. A Shell station off I-55 near
Elkhart sold cans of snuff out of a vending ma-
chine. Fifteen percent of the female fair-goers
here have their hair in curlers. Twenty-five
percent are clinically fat. Midwestern fat people
have no compunction about wearing shorts or
halter tops. Now the operator’s joggling the
choke lever so The Zipper stutters back and
forth, forward and backward, making NC’s top
car spin around and around on its hinges. His
colleague’s T-shirt has a stoned Ninja Turtle
on it, toking on a joint. There’s a distended
A-sharp scream from the whirling cage, as if
Native C’s getting slow-roasted. I summon sa-
liva to step in and really say something stern,
but at this point they start bringing her down.
The operator is deft at his panel; the car’s de-
scent is almost fluffy. His hands on the levers
are a kind of parody of tender care. The descent
takes forever—ominous silence from Native
Companion’s car. The two carnies are laughing
and slapping their knee. I clear my throat twice.
There’s a trundly sound as Native Companion’s
Teasing a Sleeping Girl, by Gaspare Traversi, c. 1760.
75
 car gets locked down at the platform. Jiggles
of movement in the cage, and the door’s latch
slowly turns. I expect whatever husk of a hu-
man being emerges from the car to be hunched
and sheet-white, dribbling fluids. Instead she
sort of bounds out:
“That was fucking great. Joo see that? Son
bitch spun that car sixteen times, joo see it?”
This woman is native Midwestern, from my
hometown in rural Illinois. My prom date a
dozen years ago. Now married, with three chil-
dren, she teaches water aerobics to the obese
and infirm. Her color is high. Her dress looks
like the world’s worst case of static cling. She’s
1932: New York City
nonfenfe
I ordered ham and eggs, as I always do at the
diner, and then, as I always do, looked around
for pamphlets. There was one handy. “Echoes
from Colonial Days,” it was called, “being a
little fouvenir iffued from time to time for the
benefit of the guefts of The Baltimore & Ohio
Railroad Company as a reminder of pleafant
moments fpent…” Involuntarily, my lips be-
gan to move. I reached for a pencil. But the
man across from me already had his pencil
out. He had written, “Oh, fay can you fee?”
I said, “Fing Fomething Fimple.”
“Filly, ifn’t it?” he said, and kept on writing.
I wrote, “Fing a Fong of Fixpence.”
“Oh, ftop the fongs,” he said. “Too eafy.”
He wrote, “The Courtfhip of Miles Ftan-
difh,” “I fee a fquirrel,” “I undereftimate
ftatefmanfhip,” “My fifter feems fuperfen-
fitive,” and seeing that I did not appreciate
the last one, which he evidently thought very
fine, he wrote, “Forry to fee you fo ftupid.”
I ate my lunch grouchily. How could I
help it if he was in practice and I was not?
He had probably taken this train before.
“Pafs the falt,” I said.
“Pleafe pafs the falt,” he triumphed.
I paid no attention. “Waiter!” I said. The
waiter did not budge.
“You muft fpeak the language,” said
the man opposite me. He called out, “Fay!
Fteward!”
The waiter jumped to attention. “Fir?” he
said.
“Pleafe fill the faltcellar.”
76  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
still got her chewing gum in, for God’s sake. She
turns to the carnies: “You sons bitches that was
fucking great. Assholes.” The colleague is half
draped over the operator; they’re roaring with
laughter. Native Companion has her hands on
her hips sternly, but she’s 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 Hollow’s western
side. Behind us the operator calls out, “They
don’t call me King of The Zipper for nuthin’,
“The faltfhaker fhall be replenifhed in-
ftantly,” replied the waiter, with a superior
gleam in his eyes.
I smiled and my companion unbent a little.
“Let’s try for hard ones,” he invited.
“Fure,” I said.
“Farcafm,” he said.
“Fubftance.”
“Fubfiftence,” he scored.
“Fcythe.”
“S’s 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 don’t 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.
sweet thang.” She snorts and calls back over her
shoulder, “Oh, you and whose fucking platoon?”
and there’s more laughter behind us.
I’m having a hard time keeping up on the
slope. “Did you hear that?” I ask her.
“Jesus, I thought I bought it for sure at
the end that was so great. Fucking cornhol-
ers. But’d you see that one spin up top at the
end, though?”
“Did you hear that Zipper King com-
ment?” I say. She has her hand around my
elbow and is helping me up the hillside’s
slick grass. “Did you sense something kind of
sexual-harassmentish going on through that
whole little sick exercise?”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Slug, it was fun.” (Ig-
nore the nickname.) “Son of a bitch spun that
car eighteen times.”
“They were looking up your dress. You
couldn’t see them, maybe. They hung you up-
side down at a great height and made your
dress fall up and ogled you. They shaded their
eyes and made comments to each other. I saw
the whole thing.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake.”
I slip a little bit and she catches my arm.
“So this doesn’t bother you? As a Midwest- Entertainer, ivory okimono, Japanese school,
erner, you’re unbothered? Or did you just not Meiji period, nineteenth century.
have an accurate sense of what was going on
back there?” “This is potentially key,” I’m saying. “This
“So if I noticed or I didn’t, why does it have may be just the sort of regional politico-sexual
to be my deal? What, because there’s assholes in contrast the swanky East Coast magazine is
the world I don’t get to ride on The Zipper? I keen for. The core value informing a kind of
don’t get to ever spin? Maybe I shouldn’t ever willed politico-sexual stoicism on your part is
go to the pool or ever get all girled up, just out your prototypically Midwestern appreciation
of fear of assholes?” Her color is still high. of fun—”
“So I’m curious, then, about what it would “Buy me some pork skins, you dipshit.”
have taken back there, say, to have gotten you
to lodge some sort of complaint with the fair’s From “Getting Away from Pretty Much Being
Away from It All.” Wallace wrote this essay about his
management.” time on assignment for Harper’s Magazine. “Why
“You’re so fucking innocent, Slug,” she exactly a swanky East Coast magazine is interested
says. (The nickname’s a long story; ignore it.) in the Illinois State Fair remains unclear to me,”
“Assholes are just assholes. What’s getting he wrote, then venturing that it was the desire for
some “pith-helmeted anthropological reporting on
hot and bothered going to do about it except something rural and heartlandish.” He published
keep me from getting to have fun?” She has the novel Infinite Jest in 1996 and the collection of
her hand on my elbow this whole time—the essays Consider the Lobster in 2005. He committed
suicide at the age of forty-six in 2008.
hillside’s a bitch.

77
 c. 1225: France
goodbye to all that

A short exemplum about Roger,

the suave, enfranchised master carver,
I now propose to undertake.
He had the skill one needs to make
statues and crucifixes; he,
no mere apprentice, artfully
carved sculptures in the finest fashion.
His wife, carried away by passion,
had taken a priest as her lover.
Her husband told her as a cover
he had to go to market, so
he’d bring a statuette in tow
to drop off for a tidy profit,
and she agreed promptly enough—it
elated her to see him leave,
and he was not slow to perceive
her joyful look, by which he knew
she had in mind to be untrue,
which was, for her, by now tradition.
Then he lifts up into position
a crucifix as a pretext
and steps out of the house, and next
goes into town and cools his heels
and waits around until he feels
that it’s time for their tête-à-tête.
Shaking from spite and all irate,
he hurries home. When he got back,
he looked in on them through a crack
and saw them sitting down to dine.
He called out, but it took some time
before someone let him inside.
The priest had no place he could hide.
He said, “Lord! What shall I do now?”
The lady said, “I’ll tell you how.
Go in the shop, take off your clothes,
and, standing still, assume a pose
among my husband’s holy carvings.”
Right willingly, or with misgivings,
the priest obeyed her then and there:
Without his clothes, completely bare,
among the images he stood
as if he’d been carved out of wood.
Seeing he isn’t in the room,
the good man is led to assume

78  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
he’s hidden with his sculpted figures.
Being intelligent, he figures
that first he’ll drink and have a bite
as if he thinks things are all right.
After his dinner, when he’d done,
he went and got a whetting stone
and started sharpening a knife.
The sturdy carver told his wife,
“Now, lady, light a candle quickly
and come into the workshop with me,
where I’ve some business to prepare.”
No word of protest did she dare,
but with her husband made her way
directly to his atelier,
holding a candle to give light.
The master carver soon caught sight
of the priest with his arms stretched out,
whom he could spot beyond a doubt,
seeing his hanging balls and cock.
“Lady,” he says, “I’ve made a shock-
ing image here by not omitting
those virile members. How unfitting!
I must have had too much to drink.
Some light! I’ll fix it in a wink.”
The terrified priest never stirred.
The husband, you can take my word,
cut off the prelate’s genitalia
and left him nothing, without failure,
to warrant further amputation.
The priest, feeling the laceration,
took to his heels and ran away.
The worthy man without delay
cried after him with piercing shrieks,
“Good people, catch my crucifix,
which is escaping down the street!”

An anonymous fabliau. This is one of around 160 extant

fabliaux, or short verse tales, which date from approximately
1175 to 1350 and were popularized by professional storytellers
in medieval France, who would either read them aloud or recite
them from memory. Most of the tales are coarse in tone and
subject matter: there is one about a mourner who has sexual
intercourse at a gravesite, another about a wife who is granted
her wish to be surrounded by penises. Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Reeve’s
Tale” is known to have been based on a fabliau.

79
 1981: New York City
freedman? lowenthal? fishman?
Two Jews had a plan to assassinate Hitler. They
learned that he drove by a certain corner at
noon each day, and they waited for him there
with their guns well-hidden.
At exactly noon they were ready to shoot,
but there was no sign of Hitler. Five minutes
later, nothing. Another five minutes went by,
but no sign of Hitler. By twelve-fifteen they
had started to give up hope.
“My goodness,” said one of the men. “I
hope nothing’s happened to him.”
Katz is sitting naked in his room, wearing only
a top hat, when Cohen walks in.
“Why are you sitting here naked?”
“It’s all right,” says, Katz. “Nobody comes
to visit.”
“But why the hat?”
“Well, maybe somebody will come.”
Two immigrants meet on the street.
“How’s by you?” asks one.
“Could be worse. And you?”
“Surviving. But I’ve been sick a lot this
year, and it’s costing me a fortune. In the past
five months, I’ve spent over three hundred dol-
lars on doctors and medicine.”
“Ach, back home on that kind of money
you could be sick for two years.”
Four friends are sitting in a restaurant in Mos-
cow. For a long time, nobody says a word. Fi-
nally, one man groans, “Oy.”
“Oy vey,” says a second man.
“Nu,” says the third.
At this, the fourth man gets up from his
chair and says, “Listen, if you fellows don’t stop
talking politics, I’m leaving!”
Two Jews are walking through an anti-Semitic
neighborhood one evening, when they no-
tice that they are being followed by a pair of
hoodlums.
80  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
“Sam,” says his friend, “we better get out of
here. There are two of them and we’re alone!”
A Jewish tailor walks by a tsarist police inspec-
tor in the street. The inspector is furious that
the Jew has neglected to doff his hat in the re-
quired manner.
“Jew!” he cries out. “What do you mean by
this insolence? Where are you from?”
“From Minsk,” replies the Jew meekly.
“And what about your hat?” the inspector
demands.
“Also from Minsk,” replies the Jew.
An Orthodox Jew converts to Catholicism and is
invited to preach the Sunday sermon. He stands
up proudly and begins: “Fellow goyim…”
A Hasid comes to see his rabbi: “Rabbi, I have
had a dream in which I am the leader of three
hundred Hasidim.”
The Rabbi replies, “Come back when three
hundred Hasidim have a dream that you are
their leader.”
Two members of a congregation are talking.
“Our cantor is magnificent,” says the first.
“No big deal,” says the second man. “If I
had his voice, I’d sing just as well.”
A shadchan [marriage broker] is trying to im-
press a young man with the wealth of the bride’s
family. The boy, however, is skeptical, and asks,
“Don’t you think they might have borrowed the
silverware in order to make a good impression?”
“Nonsense,” cries the shadchan. “Who
would lend any silverware to such thieves?”
Gittleman returned home from a business trip
to discover that his wife had been unfaithful
during his absence.
“Who was it?” he roared. “That bastard
Freedman?”
“No,” replied his wife. “It wasn’t
Freedman.”
“Was it Lowenthal, that creep?”
“No, it wasn’t him.”
 Two Clowns, by Walt Kuhn, 1940.
“I know—it must have been that idiot
Fishman.”
“No, it wasn’t Fishman either.”
Gittleman was furious. “Whatsa matter?”
he cried. “None of my friends good enough
for you?”
Rubenstein is slandered at great length by one
man.
“How do you know so much about him?”
asks the stranger.
“Rubenstein?” the man replies. “We’ve been
best friends for years!”
Two attractive young Jewish women in their
midtwenties were waiting at the bus stop, com-
paring their weekends.
“On Saturday I pretended I was a Gentile
nurse,” said the first.
“How did you do that?” asked her friend.
“I slept with a Jewish doctor.”
Dave was at death’s door, and the family was
gathered around him.
“Sarah, my wife, you’re here at the bedside?”
“Yes, Dave, of course I’m here.”
“And Bernie, my oldest son, are you here?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“And Rachel, my daughter, are you here?”
“Yes, Father, at the foot of the bed.”
“And Sam, my youngest, are you here too?”
“Right here, Pop.”
“Well, then,” said the merchant, “if all of
you are here, who’s minding the store?”
From The Big Book of Jewish Humor, edited
by William Novak and Moshe Waldoks. This work
contains traditional jokes as well as excerpts from
writers such as Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. In their
introduction Novak and Waldoks observe that Jewish
humor is “fascinated by the intricacies of the mind
and by logic, and the short if ellipitcal path separating
the rational from the absurd…For some of the jokes,
the appropriate response is not laughter but rather a
bitter nod and commiserating sigh of recognition.”
81
 1895: London
oscar wilde arranges an interview
Gwendolen: I am engaged to Mr. Worthing,
Mama.
Lady Bracknell: Pardon me, you are not engaged
to anyone. When you do become engaged to
someone, I, or your father, should his health
permit him, will inform you of the fact. An en-
gagement should come on a young girl as a sur-
prise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be.
It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed
to arrange for herself…And now I have a few
questions to put to you, Mr. Worthing. While
I am making these inquiries, you, Gwendolen,
will wait for me below in the carriage.
Gwendolen: [reproachfully] Mama!
Lady Bracknell: In the carriage, Gwendo-
len! [Gwendolen goes to the door. She and Jack
Worthing blow kisses to each other behind Lady
Bracknell’s back. Lady Bracknell looks vaguely
about as if she could not understand what the
noise was. Finally turns round.] Gwendolen,
the carriage!
Gwendolen: Yes, Mama. [goes out, looking back
at Jack]
Lady Bracknell: [sitting down] You can take a
seat, Mr. Worthing. [looks in her pocket for note-
book and pencil]
Jack: Thank you, Lady Bracknell, I prefer
standing.
Lady Bracknell: [pencil and notebook in hand] I
feel bound to tell you that you are not down on
my list of eligible young men, although I have
the same list as the dear duchess of Bolton has.
We work together, in fact. However, I am quite
ready to enter your name, should your answers
be what a really affectionate mother requires.
Do you smoke?
82  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
Jack: Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.
Lady Bracknell: I am glad to hear it. A man
should always have an occupation of some kind.
There are far too many idle men in London as
it is. How old are you?
Jack: Twenty-nine.
Lady Bracknell: A very good age to be married
at. I have always been of the opinion that a man
who desires to get married should know either
everything or nothing. Which do you know?
Jack: [after some hesitation] I know nothing,
Lady Bracknell.
Lady Bracknell: I am pleased to hear it. I do
not approve of anything that tampers with
natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate
exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.
The whole theory of modern education is
radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at
any rate, education produces no effect what-
soever. If it did, it would prove a serious dan-
ger to the upper classes and probably lead to
acts of violence in Grosvenor Square. What is
your income?
Jack: Between seven and eight thousand a year.
Lady Bracknell: [makes a note in her book] In
land, or in investments?
Jack: In investments, chiefly.
Lady Bracknell: That is satisfactory. What be-
tween the duties expected of one during one’s
lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after
one’s death, land has ceased to be either a profit
or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents
one from keeping it up. That’s all that can be
said about land.
Jack: I have a country house with some land,
of course, attached to it, about fifteen hundred
acres, I believe; but I don’t depend on that for
 Steve Martin, Beverly Hills, 1981, edition 5/40 (silver dye-bleach photograph), by Annie Leibovitz.

my real income. In fact, as far as I can make Lady Bracknell: Lady Bloxham? I don’t know her.
out, the poachers are the only people who make
anything out of it. Jack: Oh, she goes about very little. She is a lady
considerably advanced in years.
Lady Bracknell: A country house! How many
bedrooms? Well, that point can be cleared
Lady Bracknell: Ah, nowadays that is no guar-
up afterward. You have a townhouse, I hope?
antee of respectability of character. What num-
A girl with a simple, unspoiled nature, like
ber in Belgrave Square?
Gwendolen, could hardly be expected to reside
in the country.
Jack: 149.
Jack: Well, I own a house in Belgrave Square,
but it is let by the year to Lady Bloxham. Of Lady Bracknell: [shaking her head] The unfash-
course, I can get it back whenever I like, at six ionable side. I thought there was something.
months’ notice. However, that could easily be altered.

83
 Jack: Do you mean the fashion, or the side?
Lady Bracknell: [sternly] Both, if necessary, I
presume. What are your politics?
Jack: Well, I am afraid I really have none. I am
a Liberal Unionist.
Lady Bracknell: Oh, they count as Tories.
They dine with us. Or come in the evening,
at any rate. Now to minor matters. Are your
parents living?
Harlequin and Pierrot, by André Derain, 1924.
84  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
Jack: I have lost both my parents.
Lady Bracknell: Both?…That seems like care-
lessness. Who was your father? He was evi-
dently 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?
Jack: I am afraid I really don’t know. The fact
is, Lady Bracknell, I said I had lost my par-
ents. It would be nearer the truth to say that
my parents seem to have lost me…I don’t ac-
tually know who I am by birth. I was…Well,
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 gen-
tleman who had a first-class ticket for this sea-
side resort find you?
Jack: [gravely] In a handbag.
Lady Bracknell: A handbag?
Jack: [very seriously] Yes, Lady Bracknell. I was
in a handbag—a somewhat large, black leather
handbag, with handles to it—an ordinary hand-
bag, in fact.
Lady Bracknell: In what locality did this Mr.
James, or Thomas, Cardew come across this or-
dinary 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 bewil-
dered 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
what that unfortunate movement led to? As
for the particular locality in which the hand-
bag was found, a cloakroom at a railway station
might serve to conceal a social indiscretion—
has probably, indeed, been used for that purpose
before now—but it could hardly be regarded
as an assured basis for a recognized position in
good society.
Jack: May I ask you then what you would ad-
vise me to do? I need hardly say I would do
anything in the world to ensure Gwendolen’s
happiness.
Lady Bracknell: I would strongly advise you, Mr.
Worthing, to try and acquire some relations as
soon as possible, and to make a definite effort
to produce at any rate one parent, of either sex,
before the season is quite over.
Jack: Well, I don’t see how I could possibly
manage to do that. I can produce the handbag
at any moment. It is in my dressing room at
home. I really think that should satisfy you,
Lady Bracknell.
Lady Bracknell: Me, sir! What has it to do with
me? You can hardly imagine that I and Lord
Bracknell would dream of allowing our only
daughter—a girl brought up with the utmost
care—to marry into a cloakroom and form
an alliance with a parcel? Good morning, Mr.
Worthing! [Lady Bracknell sweeps out in majes-
tic indignation.]
From The Importance of Being Earnest. Wilde
welcomed the satirical portrait of himself in Gilbert
and Sullivan’s Patience—“There is only one thing
in the world worse than being talked about, and that
is not being talked about”—and the play’s producer
arranged an American lecture tour for him in 1882:
“Nothing, except my genius,” he is said to have
replied when asked if he had anything to declare at
customs. He published his only novel, The Picture of
Dorian Gray, in 1891. Convicted of charges of gross
indecency in 1895, Wilde was sentenced to two years
of servitude with hard labor.
85
86  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
Voices in Time
Observational
2005: New York City
kurt vonnegut finds the humor
As a kid I was the youngest member of my
family, and the youngest child in any family is
always a joke maker, because a joke is the only
way he can enter into an adult conversation.
My sister was five years older than I was, my
brother was nine years older than I was, and
my parents were both talkers. So at the dinner
table when I was very young, I was boring to all
those other people. They did not want to hear
about the dumb childish news of my days. They
wanted to talk about really important stuff that
happened in high school or maybe in college
or at work. So the only way I could get into
a conversation was to say something funny. I
think I must have done it accidentally at first,
just accidentally made a pun that stopped the
conversation, something of that sort. And then
I found out that a joke was a way to break into
an adult conversation.
I grew up at a time when comedy in this
country was superb—it was the Great Depres-
sion. There were large numbers of absolutely
top comedians on radio. And without intend-
ing to, I really studied them. I would listen to
comedy at least an hour a night all through my
The Hairdresser, by Marc Chagall, 1921.
youth, and I got very interested in what jokes
were and how they worked.
When I’m being funny, I try not to of-
fend. I don’t think much of what I’ve done has
been in really ghastly taste. I don’t think I have
embarrassed many people, or distressed them.
The only shocks I use are an occasional obscene
word. Some things aren’t funny. I can’t imagine
a humorous book or skit about Auschwitz, for
instance. And it’s not possible for me to make
a joke about the death of John F. Kennedy or
Martin Luther King Jr. Otherwise I can’t think
of any subject that I would steer away from,
that I could do nothing with. Total catastro-
phes are terribly amusing, as Voltaire [Ferney,
page 142] demonstrated. You know, the Lisbon
earthquake is funny.
I saw the destruction of Dresden. I saw
the city before and then came out of an air-raid
shelter and saw it afterward, and certainly one
response was laughter. God knows, that’s the
soul seeking some relief.
Any subject is subject to laughter, and I
suppose there was laughter of a very ghastly
kind by victims in Auschwitz.
87
 Happy Moments, by Pompeo Massani, c. 1890.
Humor is an almost physiological response
to fear. Freud [Vienna, page 148] said that hu-
mor is a response to frustration—one of several.
A dog, he said, when he can’t get out a gate, will
scratch and start digging and making meaning-
less gestures, perhaps growling or whatever, to
deal with frustration or surprise or fear.
And a great deal of laughter is induced by
fear. I was working on a funny television series
years ago. We were trying to put a show together
that, as a basic principle, mentioned death in ev-
ery episode—and this ingredient would make
any laughter deeper without the audience’s real-
izing how we were inducing belly laughs.
There is a superficial sort of laughter. Bob
Hope, for example, was not really a humorist.
He was a comedian with very thin stuff, never
mentioning anything troubling. I used to laugh
my head off at Laurel and Hardy. There is ter-
rible tragedy there somehow. These men are
too sweet to survive in this world and are in
terrible danger all the time. They could be so
easily killed.
Even the simplest jokes are based on tiny
twinges of fear, such as the question, “What is
the white stuff in bird poop?” The auditor, as
though called upon to recite in school, is mo-
mentarily afraid of saying something stupid.
88  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
When the auditor hears the answer, which is,
“That’s bird poop, too,” he or she dispels the
automatic fear with laughter. He or she has not
been tested after all.
“Why do firemen wear red suspenders?”
And “Why did they bury George Washington
on the side of a hill?” And on and on.
True enough, there are such things as
laughless jokes, what Freud called gallows hu-
mor. There are real-life situations so hopeless
that no relief is imaginable.
While we were being bombed in Dres-
den, sitting in a cellar with our arms over our
heads in case the ceiling fell, one soldier said
as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a
cold and rainy night, “I wonder what the poor
people are doing tonight.” Nobody laughed,
but we were still all glad he said it. At least we
were still alive! He proved it.
From A Man Without a Country. During the Battle
of the Bulge in 1944, Vonnegut was captured by
German troops—“We were in this gully about as deep
as a World War I trench. There was snow all around.
Somebody said we were probably in Luxembourg. We
were out of food,” he later recalled—and survived the
firebombing of Dresden while a prisoner of war. He
published his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952 and
his sixth, Slaughterhouse-Five, in 1969. Vonnegut
died at the age of eighty-four in 2007.
1532: Lyon
on the fundamentals
About the end of Gargantua’s fifth year, Grand-
gousier 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.
“How’d 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.”
“What’s that?” asked Grandgousier.
“I shall tell you in a moment,” said Gar-
gantua. “Once I wiped myself on a lady’s velvet
mask, and I found it good. For the softness of
the silk was most voluptuous to my fundament.
Another time on a lady’s 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. Anthony’s 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 page’s 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 mother’s 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,
mullein—which is red as your bum—lettuces,
and spinach leaves. Then with dog’s 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.
“Then I wiped myself on the sheets, the
coverlet, the curtains, with a cushion, with the
hangings, with a green cloth, with a tablecloth,
with a napkin, with a handkerchief, with an over-
all. And I found more pleasure in all those than
mangy dogs do when they are combed.”
“Yes,” said Grandgousier. “But which wiper
did you find the best?”
“I was coming to that,” said Gargantua. “You
shall soon hear the whole story. I wiped myself
with hay, with straw, with litter, with cow’s hair,
with wool, with paper. But, ‘Who his foul bum
with paper wipes /Will on his bollocks leave
some chips.’”
“What, my little rascal,” said Grandgous-
ier, “have you been at the pot, are you trying to
rhyme already?”
“Oh yes, my lord king,” replied Gargantua.
“I can rhyme that much and more, and when I
rhyme I often catch the rheum. Listen to what
our privy says to the shitters:
Shittard,
Squittard,
Crackard,
Turdous,
Thy bung
Has flung
Some dung
On us.
Filthard,
Cackard,
Stinkard,
May you burn with St. Anthony’s Fire
    If all
     Your foul
    Assholes
Are not well-wiped ere you retire.
“Would you like any more of this?”
“Yes, indeed,” replied Grandgousier.
“Well then,” said Gargantua:
Rondeau
Yesterday, shitting, I did know
The profit to my ass I owe;
Such was the smell that from it slunk.
89

c. 975: England
double entendre
I’m a strange creature, for I satisfy women,
a service to the neighbors! No one suffers
at my hands except for my slayer.
I grow very tall, erect in a bed,
I’m hairy underneath. From time to time
a beautiful girl, the brave daughter
of some churl dares to hold me,
grips my russet skin, robs me of my head,
and puts me in the pantry. At once that girl
with plaited hair who has confined me
remembers our meeting. Her eye moistens.
A riddle, from The Exeter Book. It is thought that
the riddle’s answer is either a penis or an onion.
There are ninety-five other riddles contained in
The Exeter Book, which was left to the Exeter
Cathedral by Bishop Leofric upon his death in 1072.
It is the largest surviving collection of Old English
poetry, containing the elegies “The Wanderer,” “The
Seafarer,” and “The Ruin.” On the first folio there
are various cuts and circular stains, suggesting that
the book may have also doubled as a cutting board
and a surface on which beers were set up.
That I was with it all bestunk.
Oh, had but then someone consented
To bring me her for whom I waited,
While shitting!
I would have closed her water pipe
In my rough way and bunged it up,
While she had with her fingers guarded
My jolly asshole all bemerded
With shitting.
“Now tell me I’m not clever! God’s bum, I
didn’t invent a line of it. I heard that fine lady
over there reciting it and I kept it in the bag of
my memory.”
“Let us return to our subject,” said
Grandgousier.
“What,” said Gargantua. “Shitting?”
“No,” answered Grandgousier. “Ass wiping.”
“But,” said Gargantua, “will you pay me a
puncheon of Breton wine if I catch you out on
the subject?”
“Yes, I will,” said Grandgousier.
“There’s no need to wipe your bottom unless
it’s mucky,” said Gargantua, “it can’t be mucky if
90  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
you haven’t shat; we have to shit, therefore, before
we wipe our asses.”
“Oh,” said Grandgousier, “what a good head
you’ve got, my little fellow! One day very soon
I’ll get you made a Doctor of Gay Learning, by
God, I will. For you have more sense than your
years. Now please go on with this ass wiping talk
of yours, and by my beard, instead of a puncheon,
you shall have six casks. I know something about
this good Breton wine, which doesn’t grow in
Brittany at all, but in the fine land of Veron.”
“After that,” said Gargantua, “I wiped my-
self with a kerchief, with a pillow, with a slip-
per, with a game bag, with a basket—but what
an unpleasant ass wiper that was!—then with a
hat. The best of all are the shaggy ones, for they
make a very good abstersion of the fecal matter.
Then I wiped myself with a hen, a cock, and a
chicken, with a calf ’s skin, a hare, a pigeon, and a
cormorant, with a lawyer’s bag, with a penitent’s
hood, with a coif, with an otter. But to conclude,
I say and maintain that there is no ass wiper like
a well-downed goose, if you hold her neck be-
tween your legs. You must take my word for it,
you really must. You get a miraculous sensation in
your asshole, both from the softness of the down
and from the temperate heat of the goose her-
self; and this is easily communicated to the bum,
gut, and the rest of the intestines, from which it
reaches the heart and the brain. Do not imag-
ine that the felicity of the heroes and demigods
in the Elysian Fields arises from their asphodel,
their ambrosia, or their nectar, as those ancients
say. It comes, in my opinion, from their wiping
their asses with the neck of a goose, and that is
the opinion of Master Duns Scotus, too.”
François Rabelais, from Gargantua and
Pantagruel. Rabelais joined the medical faculty at
the University of Montpellier in 1530 and two years
later published—under the anagrammatic pseudonym
Alcofribas Nasier—the first of his four books that
would be collected as Gargantua and Pantagruel. At
least two of the books were condemned for heresy by the
Sorbonne. The word “Rabelaisian” first appeared in
English in a preface to the works of novelist Laurence
Sterne: “He decently lived a becoming ornament of the
Church, till his Rabelaisian spirit…immersed him
into the gaieties and frivolities of the world.”
1959: Los Angeles
a far more valuable commodity
I am not sure how I got to be a comedian or a
comic. Perhaps I’m not a comic. It’s not worth
arguing about. At any rate, I have been making
a good living for many years masquerading as
one. As a lad, I don’t remember knocking anyone
over with my wit. I’m a pretty wary fellow, and
I have neither the desire nor the equipment to
analyze what makes one man funny to another
man. I have read many books by alleged experts
explaining the basis of humor and attempting to
describe what is funny and what isn’t. I doubt if
any comedian can honestly say why he is funny
and why his next-door neighbor is not.
I believe all comedians arrive by trial and error.
This was certainly true in the old days of vaude-
ville, and I’m sure it’s true today. The average team
would consist of a straight man and a comic. The
straight man would sing, dance, or possibly do
both. And the comedian would steal a few jokes
from other acts and find a few in the newspapers
and comic magazines. They would then proceed
to play small-time vaudeville theaters, burlesque
shows, nightclubs, and beer gardens. If the comic
was inventive, he would gradually discard the sto-
len 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 aren’t 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 don’t think people
really understand how essential we are to their
sanity. If it weren’t for the brief respite we give
the world with our foolishness, the world would
see mass suicide in numbers that compare fa-
vorably with the death rate of the lemmings.
I’m 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
 Stanczyk, by Jan Matejko, 1862.
evening laughing at Grock, the world’s funniest
clown. The doctor sums it up, “After you have
seen Grock, I am sure you will be much happier.”
The patient rises to his feet, looks sadly at the
doctor, turns and ambles toward the door. As he
starts to leave the doctor says, “By the way, what
is your name?” The man turns and regards the
analyst with sorrowful eyes. “I am Grock.”
When funnymen play a serious role it al-
ways gives me a lingering pain to see the critics
hysterically throw their hats in the air, dance
in the streets, and overwhelm the comic with
assorted kudos. Why this should evoke such
astonishment and enthusiasm in the eyes of the
critics has always baffled me. There is hardly a
comedian alive who isn’t capable of doing a first-
rate job in a dramatic role. But there are mighty
few dramatic actors who could essay a comic role
with any distinction. David Warfield, Ed Wynn,
Walter Houston, Red Buttons, Danny Kaye,
Danny Thomas, Jackie Gleason, Jack Benny,
Louis Mann, Charles Chaplin [Los Angeles, page
25], Buster Keaton, and Eddie Cantor are all
first-rate comedians who have played dramatic
roles, and they are almost unanimous in saying
92  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
that, compared to being funny, dramatic acting
is like a two-week vacation in the country.
To convince you that this isn’t just a no-
tion exclusively my own, here are the words of
S. N. Behrman, one of our better playwrights:
“Any playwright who has been up against the
agony of casting plays will tell you that the
actor who can play comedy is the fellow to
shoot for. The comic intuition gets to the heart
of a human situation with a precision and a
velocity unattainable in any other way. A great
comic actor will do it for you with an inflec-
tion of voice as adroit as the flick of the wrist
of a virtuoso fencer.”
Nevertheless, critics are always surprised.
Groucho Marx, from Groucho and Me. It is said
that the Marx brothers—in order of their births, Chico,
Harpo, Groucho, Gummo, and Zeppo—received
their stage names during a card game. In a twenty-
year period, Chico, Harpo, and Groucho appeared in
thirteen films, among them Animal Crackers, Duck
Soup, and A Night at the Opera. Groucho reportedly
resigned from the Friars Club with a note reading, “I
don’t want to belong to any club that would have me
as a member.” He hosted the television show You Bet
Your Life from 1950 to 1961.
c. 1000: Kyoto
points of interest
Things later regretted—An adopted child who
turns out to have an ugly face.
Things people despise—A crumbling earth
wall. People who have a reputation for being
exceptionally good-natured.
Infuriating things—Thinking of one or
two changes in the wording after you’ve sent a
message to someone, or written and sent off a
reply to someone’s message. Having hurriedly
sewn something, you’re rather pleased with
how nicely you’ve done it—but then when you
come to pull out the needle, you find that you
forgot to knot the thread when you began. It’s
also infuriating to discover you’ve sewn some-
thing inside out.
Things it’s frustrating and embarrassing to
witness—Someone 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 you’re visiting overnight being playful
and silly.
Deeply irritating things—Rain on the day
when you’re to go out for some special event or
a temple pilgrimage. Someone you don’t particu-
larly care for who jumps to ridiculous conclu-
sions and gets upset about nothing, and generally
behaves with irritating self-importance.
Miserable-looking things—A 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 things—A large
ship left beached by the tide. A great tree that’s
blown over in the wind and lies there on its side
with its roots in the air. An inconsequential lit-
tle man strutting about scolding a retainer.
Awkward and embarrassing things—Going
confidently out to greet a visitor on the assump-
tion that it’s for you, when he’s in fact called
to see a different person. It’s even worse when
he’s brought along a gift as well. You happen to
say something rude about someone, and a child
who overhears it repeats your words in front of
the person concerned.
People who are smug and cocky—Present-day
three year olds. The female head of some lowly
house. Fools—the cocky ones who presume to
instruct those who really do know.
Things that just keep passing by—A boat
with its sail up. People’s age. Spring. Summer.
Autumn. Winter.
Things that no one notices—The aging of
people’s mothers.
Jokes are grievances.
 —Marshall McLuhan, 1969
Infuriating things—A very ordinary person
who beams inanely as she prattles on and on. A
baby who cries when you’re trying to hear some-
thing. A dog that discovers a clandestine lover
as he comes creeping in, and barks. You’ve just
settled sleepily into bed when a mosquito an-
nounces itself with that thin little wail and starts
flying round your face. It’s horrible how you can
feel the soft wind of its tiny wings. Someone
who butts in when you’re talking and smugly
provides the ending herself. Indeed, anyone who
butts in, be they child or adult, is most infuriat-
ing. A man you’re in a relationship with speaks
admiringly of some woman who was once his
lover. In general, anyone other than the master
of a household who sneezes loudly is irritating.
Fleas are also infuriating things. They dance
about under your clothes so vigorously that you
almost expect them to raise your skirts with
their leaping. And I hate people who don’t close
a door that they’ve opened to go in or out.
Sei Shōnagon, from The Pillow Book. Serving
the Empress Sadako as a lady-in-waiting from
about 991 to 1000, Sei possessed a deep knowledge of
Japanese and Chinese poetry as well as a quick tongue
and a precise eye for court fashion. Among other
observations she makes in her influential Pillow
Book are “Things now useless that recall a glorious
past” (“A painter with poor eyesight”), “Things that are
far yet near” (“Relations between men and women”),
and “Things that look lovely but are horrible inside”
(“A heaped plate of food”).
93
 1896: London
sense and nonsense
1. Babies are illogical;
2. Nobody is despised who can manage a
crocodile;
3. Illogical persons are despised.
Answer: Babies cannot manage crocodiles.
1. There are no Jews in the kitchen;
2. No Gentiles say “shpoonj”;
3. My servants are all in the kitchen.
Answer: My servants never say “shpoonj.”
Mona Lisa, Age Twelve, by Fernando Botero, 1959.
94  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
1. No ducks waltz;
2. No officers ever decline to waltz;
3. All my poultry are ducks.
Answer: My poultry are not officers.
1. No one takes in the Times unless he is well-
educated;
2. No hedgehogs can read;
3. Those who cannot read are not well-educated.
Answer: No hedgehog takes in the Times.
1. All the MPs who belong to the House of
Commons have perfect self-command;
2. No MP who wears a coronet should ride in
a donkey race;
3. All the MPs who belong to the House of
Lords wear coronets.
Answer: No MP should ride in a donkey race
unless he has perfect self-command.
1. Nobody who really appreciates Beethoven
fails to keep silence while the “Moonlight So-
nata” is being played;
2. Guinea pigs are hopelessly ignorant of music;
3. No one who is hopelessly ignorant of music
ever keeps silence while the “Moonlight Sonata”
is being played.
Answer: Guinea pigs never really appreciate
Beethoven.
1. No interesting poems are unpopular among
people of real taste;
2. No modern poetry is free from affectation;
3. All your poems are on the subject of soap
bubbles;
4. No affected poetry is popular among people
of real taste;
5. No ancient poem is on the subject of soap
bubbles.
Answer: All your poems are uninteresting.
1. There is no box of mine in this room that I
dare open;
2. My writing desk is made of rosewood;
3. All my boxes are painted, except those in this
room;
4. There is no box of mine that I dare not open,
unless it is full of live scorpions;
5. All my rosewood boxes are unpainted.
Answer: My writing desk is full of live
scorpions.
1. All writers who understand human nature
are clever;
2. No one is a true poet unless he can stir the
hearts of men;
3. Shakespeare [Padua, page 194] wrote Hamlet;
4. Not but those who understand human na-
ture can stir the hearts of men;
5. None but a true poet could have written
Hamlet.
Answer: Shakespeare was clever.
1. Animals that do not kick are always
unexcitable;
2. Donkeys have no horns;
3. A buffalo can always toss one over a gate;
4. No animals that kick are easy to swallow;
5. No hornless animal can toss one over a gate;
6. All animals are excitable, except buffalo.
Answer: Donkeys are not easy to swallow.
1. Animals are always mortally offended if I fail
to notice them;
2. The only animals that belong to me are in
that field;
3. No animal can guess a conundrum unless it
has been properly trained in a board school;
4. None of the animals in that field are badgers;
5. When an animal is mortally offended, it
rushes about wildly and howls;
6. I never notice any animal unless it belongs
to me;
7. No animal that has been properly trained
in a board school ever rushes about wildly
and howls.
Answer: No badger can guess a conundrum.
1. The only animals in this house are cats;
2. Any animal is suitable for a pet if it loves to
gaze at the moon;
3. When I detest an animal, I avoid it;
4. No animals are carnivorous, unless they prowl
at night;
5. No cat fails to kill mice;
6. No animals ever take to me, except what are
in this house;
7. Kangaroos are not suitable for pets;
8. None but carnivores kill mice;
9. I detest an animal that does not take to me;
10. Animals that prowl at night always love to
gaze at the moon.
Answer: I always avoid a kangaroo.
Lewis Carroll, from Symbolic Logic: Part 1,
Elementary. Born Charles Dodgson in 1832,
Carroll became a lecturer in mathematics at Oxford
University in 1855, published his first book, on
geometry, in 1860, and told the story of a girl falling
down a rabbit hole to ten-year-old Alice Liddell at a
picnic in 1862. “Oh, Mr. Dodgson,” she said, “I wish
you would write out Alice’s adventures for me!” He
published Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in
1865 and Through the Looking-Glass in 1871.
Much of the second volume of his symbolic logic
already had been set in type when he died in 1898.
95
 c. 300: Greece
very old jokes
Two numbskulls, acting out of respect, alter-
nately escorted each other home after a dinner
party and never got to bed.
A man encountered a numbskull and said, “The
slave you sold me died.” “By the gods,” he said,
“he didn’t do anything like that when he was
with me.”
A person went to a numbskull doctor and said,
“Doctor, whenever I get up from sleeping, I’m
groggy for a half hour and only after that am I
all right.” The doctor: “Get up a half hour later.”
There were twin brothers, and one of them
died. When a numbskull encountered the
survivor, he asked, “Was it you who died, or
your brother?”
Wanting to train his donkey not to eat, a
numbskull stopped giving him any food.
When the donkey died of starvation, the man
said, “What a loss! Just when he had learned
not to eat, he died.”
A numbskull who was going on a trip was
asked by a friend to buy him two slaves, each
fifteen years old. “Certainly,” he said, “and if I
can’t find you two fifteen-year-olds, I’ll buy you
one thirty-year-old.”
Two patricidal numbskulls were angry that
their fathers were still alive. One said, “So,
shall we each strangle our own father?” “No,
no,” said the other, “we don’t want to be called
patricides. But if you want, you kill my father,
and I’ll kill yours.”
A numbskull encountered a friend of his and
said, “I heard that you had died.” He replied,
“Well, you can see that I’m alive.” To which the
numbskull said, “But the person who told me is
much more trustworthy than you are.”
96  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
A numbskull saw his family doctor coming and
kept himself out of sight. “I haven’t been sick
for a long time, and I feel ashamed.”
A numbskull who was having an argument with
his father said to him, “You good-for-nothing,
can’t you see what kind of loss you have caused
me? If you hadn’t been born, I would have been
my grandfather’s heir.”
While a numbskull was voyaging, a power-
ful storm raged, and his slaves were railing.
“Don’t cry,” he said. “I have set all of you free
in my will.”
When a numbskull heard from someone that
his beard was coming, he went away to the gate
to await it. Another fool, after inquiring and
learning about the situation, said, “People are
justified in calling us idiots. How do you know
that it’s not coming through the other gate?”
A numbskull was sleeping with his father. Dur-
ing the night he would stand up on bed and eat
some of the grapes that were hanging overhead.
His father hid a lamp under a pot and, when
the son stood up, suddenly showed the light. The
son started snoring as he stood upright, pretend-
ing to be asleep.
During the night a numbskull got into bed
with his grandmother. When his father beat
him on account of this, he said, “You’ve been
screwing my mother for a long time without
any trouble from me, and now you’re angry at
finding me with your mother just once?”
Hierocles and Philagrius, from The Laughter
Lover. Little is known about this book’s authors or the
pedigree of its 265 jokes, although references in some
date the work to the third or fourth century. About
jokes in ancient Greece, Athenaeus, the author of The
Sophists at Dinner, wrote that a group of Athenians
known as the Sixty gathered at the Heracleum in
the town of Diomea to exchange quips, “and their
reputation for amusing qualities was so great that
Philip the Macedonian heard of it and sent them a
talent to engage them to write out their witticisms
and send them to him.”
1995: New York City
comedy, the art form
George Plimpton: Here’s a simple question for
you. As opposed to spoken humor, what’s the
secret to actually writing it? Why can’t people
sit down and write funny stuff ?
Calvin Trillin: What is called “getting it onto
the page.” That’s a really good question, so good
it’s probably unanswerable. We all know funny
people who can’t get it down on the page—
even funny writers who can’t get it down on
the page. I suppose that there is the necessity
of some sort of structure in written humor that
you can get away without in spoken humor by
the use of timing and gesture. Everybody knows
people who are funny just by the way they talk.
Remember that comedian Jack Leonard—this
big, fat guy who appeared on the Johnny Carson
shows? He talked very fast. He would always say
something like, IjustwantyoutoknowJohnnyifyou
everneedafriendyouwon’tbeabletofindone. But if
you listened to him carefully, after a while you
realized a lot of things he said weren’t funny at
all. But he had a wonderful delivery. Or take
the joke about the telegram that Trotsky sent to
Stalin from exile in Mexico: I was wrong. You
were right. I should apologize. Somebody says
to Stalin, Trotsky’s given up. He’s asking for-
giveness. Stalin says, No, you don’t understand:
Trotsky’s Jewish. What he’s saying is, I was
wrong?? You were right?? I should apologize?!?
So that’s one thing. When you’re writing, you
are robbed of your delivery. People, particularly
comedians, always say it’s all in the timing. But
in written humor, the reader has to do his own

The Fun Police

When: Where By order of Outlawed Penalty

Insulting someone while in Fine of three drachmas to
c. 600 bc: Athenian constitution,
temples, courts, public offices, injured party and two
Athens as revised by Solon
or at games drachmas to the public
c. 450 bc: Twelve Tables, earliest Singing or composing a
Death
Rome Roman legislation slanderous or offensive song
Discussing, owning, or not
213 bc: Li Si, chancellor Execution for subversive
reporting possession of a
Qin to Shihuangdi writers; books burned
non-state-approved book
Calling a woman “harlot”
c. 650: Law code of the Fines, respectively of forty-five
without evidence; calling an
France Salian Franks and three shillings
adversary a “fox”
1189: Richard the Lionheart, Taunting, insulting, or accusing Fine of as many ounces of
Chinon king of England a fellow crusader of hating God silver as insults were issued

c. 1644:
Commonwealth Parliament Christmas celebrations Fines and imprisonment
England
Three or more persons dancing Fine and padlocking of
1926:
City’s law code in a bar or jazz club without offending business (law still
New York City
cabaret license on books)
Receiving foreign radio
1939: Joseph Goebbels, Several years of imprisonment
broadcasts, owning
Germany minister of propaganda with hard labor
non-state-issued radio receiver
c. 1976: Enver Hoxha, first secretary Popular dance forms, foreign
Labor camps
Albania of the Party of Labor radio stations, beards

c. 2003: President Saparmurat Ballet, opera, the circus, long Imprisonment, potential
Turkmenistan Niyazov hair worn by men torture

97
 timing—you have to build in the timing for the
reader, which is difficult.
Also, I find that written humor and spo-
ken humor are really so different. For instance,
I have been on a book tour with this recent
collection of newspaper columns and Shouts
and Murmurs pieces from The New Yorker. Oc-
casionally I gave readings in bookstores. It’s
amazing how few of the pieces wore well when
read aloud. A number of them, partly for purely
technical reasons—they have too many quotes
in them, or too many parenthetical phrases—
don’t read well. It is hard to read quotes, or par-
enthetical phrases.
Plimpton: When did you realize that you were
funny?
Trillin: At Sunday school when I was about
eleven. We came to the part in the Bible or
the Talmud, whichever it is, with the famous
phrase, “If I forget thee, oh Yerushalayem, may
my right hand lose its cunning and my tongue
cling to the roof of my mouth.” I stood up with
my right hand gradually becoming noticeably
weird and said, “If I forget thee, O Yerusha-
layem, may my right hand lose its cunning and
my tongue cleave to duh woof of my mout.”
Everybody laughed except the teacher, who
ejected me from the classroom and accused me
of self-hatred. A very weird epiphany. I guess I
already knew I wasn’t a solemn little boy—shy,
but not exactly solemn.
I actually think of being funny as an odd
turn of mind, like a mild disability, some weird
way of looking at the world that you can’t get
rid of. It’s odd: one of the questions that peo-
ple ask me constantly is, Is it hard having to
be funny all the time? The difficult thing for
me is being serious. It’s a genetic thing—being
funny—like being able to wiggle your ears. I
don’t have any trouble being funny, that’s my
turn of mind. Or at least attempting to be fun-
ny. Whether it really is funny is for the audi-
ence to judge. But I actually do think that some
people are and some people aren’t. We all know,
say, a lot of lawyers who aren’t funny and some
98  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
who are. A lot of dentists who aren’t funny. The
dentist who just took a fractured root out of my
tooth—we refer to him as the butcher of Fifty-
fourth Street—is a pleasant, friendly man, but
he’s not funny.
Plimpton: I would have thought most people
who find themselves very funny early on think
of themselves as potential standup comics or
actors.
Trillin: If I had been raised in a different house,
I might have done something like that. As it
was, I was raised to be a kind of champion, sent
out to make something of myself. My father,
who was technically an immigrant—he came
when he was an infant—wanted me to be an
American, preferably an American president.
He didn’t go to college. Before I was born he
wanted me to go specifically to Yale, which
he thought would help. It was easy for him
to think I could be president: he didn’t have
to worry about being president himself, be-
ing ineligible because he wasn’t born in the
United States.
Plimpton: Did he worry about your comic
streak?
Trillin: I think that he enjoyed it, but yes, he
did worry about it a little bit. It never seemed
to me a bad thing, or something that I was sup-
posed to suppress or anything like that. On the
other hand, if I’d had the ambition to become,
say, a standup comic, I don’t think I could have
gone to my father very comfortably and said,
This is what your dreams have come to.
Calvin Trillin, from an interview with The Paris
Review. After graduating from Yale University in
1957 and serving in the U.S. Army, Trillin became
a staff writer for The New Yorker in 1963. He
remarked elsewhere in this interview that at the
magazine’s office, “There were two or three Polish
cleaning women who came in late at night, and I was
always afraid that they would find my early drafts
and read them to each other, howling with laughter,
slapping their brooms against the desks like hockey
players do: Ha! He calls himself a writer!”
 Studies of heads, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1485.
1860: London
roots of laughter
Why do we smile when a child puts on a man’s
hat? What induces us to laugh on reading that
the corpulent Edward Gibbon was unable to
rise from his knees after making a tender decla-
ration? The usual reply to such questions is that
laughter results from a perception of incongru-
ity. 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 problem—how 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 oth-
ers. But this theory, whatever portion of truth
it may contain, is, in the first place, open to the
fatal objection—that there are various humili-
ations 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 one’s
dignity is implicated, as when we laugh at a
good pun. Moreover, like the other, it is merely a
generalization of certain conditions to laughter
and not an explanation of the odd movements
which occur under these conditions. Why, when
greatly delighted or impressed with certain un-
expected contrasts of ideas, should there be a
contraction of particular facial muscles and par-
ticular muscles of the chest and abdomen? Such
answer to this question as may be possible can
be rendered only by physiology.
That laughter is a display of muscular ex-
citement, and so illustrates the general law that
feeling, passing a certain pitch, habitually vents
itself in bodily action, scarcely needs pointing
out. It perhaps needs pointing out, however,
that strong feeling of almost any kind produces
this result. It is not a sense of the ludicrous only
which does it, nor are the various forms of joy-
ous emotion the sole additional causes. We have,
besides, the sardonic laughter and the hysterical
laughter, which result from mental distress; to
which must be added certain sensations, as tick-
ling, cold, and some kinds of acute pain.
99
 Strong feeling, mental or physical, being
then the general cause of laughter, we have to
note that the muscular actions constituting it are
distinguished from most others by this: that they
are purposeless. In general, bodily motions that
are prompted by feelings are directed to special
ends, as when we try to escape a danger or strug-
gle to secure a gratification. But the movements
of chest and limbs which we make when laugh-
ing have no object. And now remark that these
quasiconvulsive contractions of the muscles, hav-
ing no object but being results of an uncontrolled
discharge of energy, we may see whence arise their
special characters—how it happens that certain
Two similar faces, neither of which alone causes
laughter, cause laughter when they are together,
by their resemblance.
 —Blaise Pascal, c. 1657
classes of muscles are affected first, and then cer-
tain other classes. For an overflow of nerve force,
undirected by any motive, will manifestly take
first the most habitual routes and, if these do not
suffice, will next overflow into the less habitual
ones. Well, it is through the organs of speech that
feeling passes into movement with the greatest
frequency. The jaws, tongue, and lips are used not
only to express strong irritation or gratification,
but that very moderate flow of mental energy
which accompanies ordinary conversation finds
its chief vent through this channel. Hence it hap-
pens that certain muscles round the mouth, small
and easy to move, are the first to contract under
pleasurable emotion. The class of muscles which,
next after those of articulation, are most con-
stantly set in action (or extra action, we should
say) by feelings of all kinds, are those of respira-
tion. Under pleasurable or painful sensations we
breathe more rapidly: possibly as a consequence
of the increased demand for oxygenated blood.
The sensations that accompany exertion also
bring on hard breathing, which here more evi-
dently responds to the physiological needs. And
emotions, too, agreeable and disagreeable, both,
at first, excite respiration; though the last sub-
100  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
sequently depress it. That is to say, of the bodily
muscles, the respiratory are more constantly
implicated than any others in those various acts
which our feelings impel us to; and hence, when
there occurs an undirected discharge of nervous
energy into the muscular system, it happens that,
if the quantity is considerable, it convulses not
only certain of the articulatory and vocal muscles
but also those which expel air from the lungs.
Should the feeling to be expended be still
greater in amount—too great to find vent in
these classes of muscles—another class comes
into play. The upper limbs are set in motion.
Children frequently clap their hands in glee; by
some adults the hands are rubbed together, and
others, under still greater intensity of delight,
slap their knees and sway their bodies backward
and forward. Last of all, when the other chan-
nels for the escape of the surplus nerve force
have been filled to overflowing, a yet further and
less-used group of muscles is spasmodically af-
fected: the head is thrown back and the spine
bent inward—there is a slight degree of what
medical men call opisthotonos. Thus, then, with-
out contending that the phenomena of laugh-
ter in all their details are to be so accounted for,
we see that in their ensemble they conform to
these general principles—that feeling excites to
muscular action; that when the muscular action
is unguided by a purpose, the muscles first af-
fected are those which feeling most habitually
stimulates; and that as the feeling to be expended
increases in quantity, it excites an increasing num-
ber of muscles in a succession determined by the
relative frequency with which they respond to the
regulated dictates of feeling.
Herbert Spencer, from “The Physiology of Laughter.”
The philosopher and social theorist reflected on this
essay in his autobiography, “It was evolutionary as
being an explanation of laughter in terms of those
nervo-muscular actions…and especially as using for
a key the law that motion follows the line of least
resistance.” Seven years before publishing his thoughts
on laughter—six years before Charles Darwin’s On
the Origin of Species appeared—Spencer coined
the phrase “survival of the fittest” in an article
that speculated that birth rates would decline as
civilization developed and advanced.
1923: New York City
robert benchley brings the kids
In America there are two classes of travel—first
class, and with children. Traveling with children
corresponds roughly to traveling third class in
Bulgaria. They tell me there is nothing lower in
the world than third-class Bulgarian travel.
The actual physical discomfort of travel-
ing with the kiddies is not so great, although
you do emerge from it looking as if you had
just moved the piano upstairs singlehanded. It
is the mental wear and tear that tells, and for
a sensitive man there is only one thing worse,
and that is a church wedding in which he is
playing the leading comedy role.
There are several branches of the ordeal of
Going on Choo-Choo, and it is difficult to tell
Monkeys as Judges of Art, by Gabriel Cornelius von Max, 1889.
which is the roughest. Those who have taken
a very small baby on a train maintain that this
ranks as pleasure along with having a nerve
killed. On the other hand, those whose wee
companions are in the romping stage simply
laugh at the claims of the first group. Sometimes
you will find a man who has both an infant and
a romper with him. Such a citizen should receive
a salute of twenty-one guns every time he enters
the city and should be allowed to wear the insig-
nia of the Pater Dolorosa, giving him the right
to solicit alms on the cathedral steps.
There is much to be said for those who
maintain that rather should the race be allowed
to die out than that babies should be taken from
place to place along our national arteries of traf-
fic. On the other hand, there are moments when
babies are asleep. (Oh, yes, there are. There must
be.) But it is practically a straight run of ten or a
101

1688: France
character study
A fool is always troublesome; a man of sense
perceives when he pleases or is tiresome—he
goes away the very minute before it might
have been thought he stayed too long.
Mischievous wags are a kind of insect which
is in everybody’s way and plentiful in all coun-
tries. Real wit is rarely to be met with, and even
if it be innate in a man, it must be very diffi-
cult to maintain a reputation for it during any
length of time; for, commonly, he that makes us
laugh does not stand high in our estimation.
There are a great many obscene minds, yet
more railing and satirical, but very few fas-
tidious ones. A man must have good man-
ners, be very polite, and even have a great
deal of originality to be able to jest gracefully
and be felicitous in his remarks about trifles;
to jest in such a manner and to make some-
thing out of nothing is to create.
We meet with persons who, in their con-
versations, or in the little intercourse we have
with them, disgust us with their ridiculous
expressions, the novelty, and, if I may say
so, the impropriety of the phraseology they
use, as well as by linking together certain
words which never came together but in
their mouths and were never intended by
their creators to have the meaning they give
to them. In their conversation they neither
follow reason nor custom, but only their own
eccentricity; and their desire always to jest,
and perhaps to shine, gradually changes it
into a peculiar sort of dialect which at last
becomes natural to them. They accompany
this extraordinary language by affected ges-
ticulations and a conceited kind of pronun-
ciation. They are all highly delighted with
themselves and with their pleasant wit, of
which, indeed, they are not entirely destitute,
but we pity them for the little they have—
and, what is worse, we suffer through it.
Jean de La Bruyère, from The Characters, or
Manners of the Age. La Bruyère wrote in the
preface to this book, “The subject matter of this work
being borrowed from the public, I now give back
to it what it lent me; it is but right that having
finished the whole work throughout with the
utmost regard to truth I am capable of, and which
it deserves from me, I should make restitution of
it.” The cast of characters increased from 420 in the
1688 edition to 1,120 in the 1694 edition, which
appeared two years before La Bruyère died at the
age of fifty.
102  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
dozen hours for your child of four. You may have
a little trouble in getting the infant to doze off,
especially as the train newsboy waits crouching
in the vestibule until he sees signs of slumber on
the child’s face and then rushes in to yell, “Copy
of Life, out today!” right by its pink, shell-like
ear. But after it is asleep, your troubles are over
except for wondering how you can shift your os-
sifying arm to a new position without disturbing
its precious burden.
If the child is of an age which denies the
existence of sleep, however, preferring to run up
and down the aisle of the car rather than sit in
its chair (at least a baby can’t get out of its chair
unless it falls out and even then it can’t go far),
then every minute of the trip is full of fun. On
the whole, having traveled with children of all
the popular ages, I would be inclined to award
the hair shirt to the man who successfully com-
pletes the ride with a boy of, let us say, three.
In the first place, you start with the pro-
nounced ill-will of two-thirds of the rest of
the occupants of the car. You see them as they
come in, before the train starts, glancing at you
and yours with little or no attempt to conceal
the fact that they wish they had waited for the
four o’clock. Across from you is perhaps a large
man who, in his hometown, has a reputation
for eating little children. He wears a heavy gold
watch chain and wants to read through a lot
of reports on the trip. He is just about as glad
to be opposite a small boy as he would be if it
were a hurdy-gurdy.
In back of you is a lady in a black silk dress
who doesn’t like the porter. Ladies in black silk
dresses always seem to board the train with an
aversion to the porter. The fact that the por-
ter has to be in the same car with her makes
her fussy to start with, and when she discovers
that in front of her is a child of three who is
already eating (you simply have to give him a
lemon drop to keep him quiet at least until the
train starts) she decides that the best thing to
do is simply to ignore him and not give him the
slightest encouragement to become friendly.
The child therefore picks her out immediately
to be his buddy.

For a time after things get to going, all you
have to do is answer questions about the scen-
ery. This is only what you must expect when you
have children, and it happens no matter where
you are. You can always say that you don’t know
who lives in that house or what that cow is do-
ing. Sometimes you don’t even have to look up
when you say that you don’t know. This part is
comparatively easy.
It is when the migratory fit comes on that
you will be put to the test. Suddenly you look
and find the boy staggering down the aisle,
peering into the faces of people as he passes
them. “Here! Come back here, Roger!” you cry,
lurching after him and landing across the knees
of the young lady two seats down. Roger takes
this as a signal for a game and starts to run,
screaming with laughter. After four steps he
falls and starts to cry.
On being carried kicking back to his seat,
he is told that he mustn’t run down the aisle
again. This strikes even Roger as funny, because
it is such a flat thing to say. Of course he is go-
ing to run down the aisle, and he knows it as
well as you do. In the meantime, however, he is
perfectly willing to spend a little time with the
lady in the black silk dress.
“Having the Giggles,” France, 1905.
“Here, Roger,” you say, “don’t bother the
lady.”
“Hello, little boy,” the lady says, nervously,
and tries to go back to her book. The interview
is over as far as she is concerned. Roger, how-
ever, thinks that it would be just dandy to get
up in her lap. This has to be stopped, and Roger
has to be whispered to.
He then announces that it is about time
that he went to the washroom. You march down
the car, steering him by the shoulders and both
lurching together as the train takes the curves
and attracting wide attention to your very obvi-
ous excursion. Several kindly people smile know-
ingly at you as you pass and try to pat the boy on
the head, but their advances are repelled, it being
a rule of all children to look with disfavor on any
attentions from strangers. The only people they
want to play with are those who hate children.
On reaching the washroom you discover
that the porter had just locked it and taken the
key with him, simply to be nasty. This raises
quite a problem. You explain the situation as
well as possible, which turns out to be not well
enough. There is every indication of loud cry-
ing and perhaps worse. You call attention to
the Burrows Rustless Screen sign which you
103
 are just passing and stand in the passageway
by the drinking cups, feverishly trying to find
things in the landscape as it whirls by which
will serve to take the mind off the tragedy of
the moment. You become so engrossed in this
important task that it is some time before you
discover that you are completely blocking the
passageway and the progress of some fifteen
people who want to get off at Utica. There is
nothing for you to do but head the procession
and get off first.
Anyone who takes himself too seriously always
runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who
can consistently laugh at himself does not.
 —Václav Havel, 1986
Once out in the open, the pride and prop
of your old age decides that the thing to do
is pay the engineer a visit, and starts off up
the platform at a terrific rate. This amuses the
onlookers and gives you a little exercise after
being cramped up in that old car all the morn-
ing. The imminent danger of the train’s start-
ing without you only adds to the fun. At that,
there might be worse things than being left
in Utica. One of them is getting back on the
tram again to face the old gentleman with the
large watch chain.
The final phase of the ordeal, however, is
still in store for you when you make your way
(and Roger’s way) into the diner. Here the
plunging march down the aisle of the car is
multiplied by six (the diner is never any nearer
than six cars and usually is part of another
train). On the way, Roger sees a box of animal
crackers belonging to a little girl and com-
mandeers it. The little girl, putting up a fight,
is promptly pushed over, starting what prom-
ises to be a free-for-all fight between the two
families. Lurching along after the apologies
have been made, it is just a series of unwar-
ranted attacks by Roger on sleeping travelers
and equally unwarranted evasions by Roger of
the kindly advances of very nice people who
love children.
104  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
In the diner, it turns out that the nearest
thing they have suited to Roger’s customary
diet is veal cutlets, and you hardly think that his
mother would approve of those. Everything else
has peppers or sardines in it. A curry of lamb
across the way strikes the boy’s fancy, and he de-
mands some of that. On being told that he has
not the slightest chance in the world of getting it
but how would he like a little crackers and milk,
he becomes quite upset and threatens to throw a
fork at the Episcopal clergyman sitting opposite.
Pieces of toast are waved alluringly in front of
him, and he is asked to consider the advantages
of preserved figs and cream, but it is curry of lamb
or he gets off the train. He doesn’t act like this
at home. In fact, he is noted for his tractability.
There seems to be something about the train that
brings out all the worst that is in him, all the hid-
den traits that he has inherited from his mother’s
side of the family. There is nothing else to do but
say firmly, “Very well, then, Roger. We’ll go back
without any nice dinner,” and carry him protest-
ing from the diner, apologizing to the head stew-
ard for the scene and considering dropping him
overboard as you pass through each vestibule.
In fact, I had a cousin once who had to take
three of his little ones on an all-day trip from
Philadelphia to Boston. It was the hottest day of
the year, and my cousin had on a woolen suit. By
the time he reached Hartford, people in the car
noticed that he had only two children with him.
At Worcester he had only one. No one knew
what had become of the others, and no one asked.
It seemed better not to ask. He reached Boston
alone and never explained what had become of
the tiny tots. Anyone who has ever traveled with
tiny tots of his own, however, can guess.
“Kiddie-Kar Travel.” Along with Robert Sherwood,
Benchley resigned from Vanity Fair in 1920 to protest
the magazine’s firing of Dorothy Parker; the three
friends soon became members of the Algonquin Round
Table. Of the small office he at one time shared with
Parker, he remarked, “One cubic foot less of space, and
it would have constituted adultery.” Benchley served
as the drama critic for The New Yorker from 1929
to 1940. Having taken actor David Niven’s advice to
visit Venice, Benchley wired back on arrival, “Streets
full of water. Advise.”
 It’s All in the Delivery
One-liners from action films
James Bond electrocutes a villain.
“Shocking.
Positively shocking.”
 —Sean Connery, Goldfinger (1964)
Inspector Callahan interrupts a robbery,
tells criminal “We” won’t allow him to get
away, and is asked, “Who’s we?”
“Smith, and Wesson,
and me.”
—Clint Eastwood, Sudden Impact (1983)
After Eliot Ness tosses Frank Nitti
from a roof onto the top of a car, he is
asked where the villain went.
“He’s in the car.”
—Kevin Costner,
The Untouchables (1987)
The Terminator is about to destroy the T-1000.
“Hasta la vista, baby!”
—Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Captain Steven Hiller punches an alien
who has just crash-landed.
“Welcome to earth.”
—Will Smith, Independence Day (1996)
Black Dynamite realizes a man in doughnut
costume is a villain and shoots him.
“Doughnuts don’t wear
alligator shoes.”
—Michael Jai White, Black Dynamite (2009)
James Bond forces Dr. Kananga to swallow
a shark-gun bullet, causing him to expand
and explode.
“He always did have
an inflated opinion of
himself.”
 —Roger Moore, Live and Let Die (1973)
Major Alan Schaefer throws a knife
into an enemy’s chest, causing him
to hit a wall.
“Stick around.”
—Arnold Schwarzenegger, Predator (1987)
Roger Murtaugh shoots apartheid criminal
Arjen Rudd after Rudd holds up an ID card
and says, “Diplomatic immunity.”
“It’s just been revoked.”
 —Danny Glover, Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)
Hudson Hawk cuts a man’s head off.
“Looks like you won’t
be attending that hat
convention in July.”
—Bruce Willis, Hudson Hawk (1991)
Smith fatally stabs someone through the
mouth with a carrot.
“Eat your vegetables.”
 —Clive Owen, Shoot ’Em Up (2007)
Lee Christmas throws a knife into a villain
at the same time that Barney Ross shoots
him.
“Call that a tie.”
—Jason Statham, The Expendables (2010)
105
 Actor Wearing a Comic Mask, by Paul Klee, 1903.
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 princi-
pally depend, the manners being in men most
strongly marked by virtue and vice), it follows
that we can only represent men either as bet-
ter than they actually are, or worse, or exactly
as they are—just as, in painting, the pictures of
Polygnotus were above the common level of
nature, those of Pauson below it, those of Dio-
nysius, faithful likenesses.
Now it is evident that each of the imi-
tations 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 danc-
ing, with the music of the flute and of the
lyre, and also with the poetry which employs
words—or verse only, without melody or
rhythm. Thus, Homer has drawn men su-
perior 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 ac-
tions and the adventures of elevated characters:
while poets of a lighter turn represented those
of the vicious and contemptible. And these
composed, originally, satires, as the former did
hymns and encomiums.
Of the lighter kind, we have no poem an-
terior to the time of Homer, though there were
in all probability many of the sort, but from his
time we have some, such as his Margites and
others of the same species, in which the iam-
bic was introduced as the most proper meter.
And hence the name of iambic—because it was
the meter in which they used to iambize, i.e., to
satirize, each other.
And thus these old poets were divided into
two classes—those who used the heroic and
those who used the iambic verse.
And as in the serious kind Homer alone
may be said to deserve the name of poet—not
only on account of his other excellences but
also of the dramatic spirit of his imitations—
so was he likewise the first who suggested the
idea of comedy, by substituting ridicule for
invective and giving that ridicule a dramatic
cast. For his Margites bears the same analogy
to comedy as his Iliad and Odyssey to tragedy.
But when tragedy and comedy had once made
their appearance, succeeding poets, according
to the turn of their genius, attached them-
selves to the one or the other of these new
species: the lighter sort, instead of iambic, be-
came comic poets; the graver, tragic instead of
heroic—and that on account of the superior
dignity and higher estimation of these latter
forms of poetry.
Whether tragedy has now, with respect to
its constituent parts, received the utmost im-
provement of which it is capable, considered
both in itself and relatively to the theater, is a
question that belongs not to this place.
Both tragedy, then, and comedy, having orig-
inated in a rude and unpremeditated manner—
the first from the dithyrambic hymns, the other
from those phallic songs which, in many cities,
still remain in use—each advanced gradually to-
ward perfection by such successive improvements
as were most obvious.
Tragedy, after various changes, reposed at
length in the completion of its proper form.
Aeschylus first added a second actor; he also
abridged the chorus and made the dialog the
principal part of tragedy. Sophocles increased the
number of actors to three and added the decora-
tion of painted scenery. It was also late before
tragedy threw aside the short and simple fable
and ludicrous language of its satiric original, and
attained its proper magnitude and dignity.
Comedy, as was said before, is an imitation
of bad characters: bad not with respect to every
sort of vice but to the ridiculous only, as being
a species of turpitude or deformity, since it may
Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts
them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat
and potatoes—comedy is rather the dessert, a
bit like meringue.
 —Woody Allen, 1991
be defined to be—a fault or deformity of such
a sort as is neither painful nor destructive. A
ridiculous face, for example, is something ugly
and distorted, but not so as to cause pain.
The successive improvements of tragedy
and the respective authors of them have not es-
caped our knowledge, but those of comedy, from
the little attention that was paid to it in its ori-
gin, remain in obscurity. For it was not till late
that comedy was authorized by the magistrate
and carried on at the public expense: it was at
first a private and voluntary exhibition. Indeed,
from the time when it began to acquire some
degree of form, its poets have been recorded, but
who first introduced masks or prologues or aug-
mented the number of actors—these and other
particulars of the same kind are unknown.
Aristotle, from The Poetics. The second book of this
treatise, which dealt in more depth with comedy, has
been lost. Aristotle believed that Sophocles’ Oedipus
the King was among the finest Greek tragedies,
exemplifying his concepts of the tragic hero, reversal,
recognition, and catharsis. While The Poetics is
often considered the first and most influential work
of literary criticism in the world, the only version
available throughout the Middle Ages and early
Renaissance was a Latin translation of an Arabic
commentary on it by the Arab philosopher Averroës.
107
 1791: Steventon
briefly noted
The history of England from the reign of Henry
IV to the death of Charles I by a partial, preju-
diced, and ignorant historian. N.B. There will be
very few dates in this history.
Young Boy Wearing a Feathered Hat Laughing While Pointing at Something with His Right Hand (detail),
by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, c. 1670.
108  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
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 pre-
decessor, 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
certainly four sons, but it is not in my power to
inform the reader who was his wife. Be this as
it may, he did not live forever, but falling ill, his
son the prince of Wales came and took away
the crown, whereupon the king made a long
speech, for which I must refer the reader to
Shakespeare’s plays [Padua, page 194], and the
prince made a still longer. Things being thus
settled between them, the king died and was
succeeded by his son Henry who had previ-
ously beat Sir William Gascoigne.
Henry V
This prince, after he succeeded to the throne,
grew quite reformed and amiable, forsaking all
his dissipated companions, and never thrash-
ing Sir William again. During his reign Lord
Cobham was burned alive, but I forget what for.
His Majesty then turned his thoughts to France,
where he went and fought the famous Battle
of Agincourt. He afterward married the king’s
daughter Catherine, a very agreeable woman by
Shakespeare’s account. In spite of all this, howev-
er, he died, and was succeeded by his son Henry.
Henry VI
I cannot say much for this monarch’s sense. Nor
would I if I could, for he was a Lancastrian. I sup-
pose you know all about the wars between him
and the duke of York, who was of the right side;
if you do not, you had better read some other
history, for I shall not be very diffuse in this,
meaning by it only to vent my spleen against,
and show my hatred to, all those people whose
parties or principles do not suit with mine, and
not to give information. This king married Mar-
garet of Anjou, a woman whose distresses and
misfortunes were so great as almost to make me,
who hates her, pity her. It was in this reign that
Joan of Arc lived and made such a row among
the English. They should not have burned her—
but they did. There were several battles between
the Yorkists and Lancastrians, in which the
former (as they ought) usually conquered. At
length they were entirely overcome; the king
was murdered—the queen was sent home—and
Edward IV ascended the throne.
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 who—poor woman!—was afterward
confined in a convent by that monster of iniq-
uity and avarice Henry VII. One of Edward’s
mistresses was Jane Shore, who has had a play
written about her, but it is a tragedy and there-
fore 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 no-
body had him to draw his picture. He was mur-
dered by his uncle’s 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 be-
lieve true—and 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 get-
ting 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 Goldsmith’s
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
h. l. mencken on balder and dash
On the question of the logical content of Dr.
Harding’s harangue of last Friday, I do not
presume to have views. The matter has been
debated at great length by the editorial writ-
ers of the republic, all of them experts in logic;
moreover, I confess to being prejudiced. When
a man arises publicly to argue that the United
States entered the war because of a “concern
for preserved civilization,” I can only snicker in
a superior way and wonder why he isn’t holding
I am convinced that there can be no entire
regeneration of mankind until laughter is put
down! —Percy Bysshe Shelley, c. 1813
down the chair of history in some American
university. When he says that the United States
has “never sought territorial aggrandizement
through force,” the snicker arises to the virulence
of a chuckle, and I turn to the first volume of
Gen. Grant’s memoirs. And when, gaining mo-
mentum, he gravely informs the boobery that
“ours is a constitutional freedom where the pop-
ular will is supreme, and minorities are sacredly
protected,” then I abandon myself to a mirth
that transcends, perhaps, the seemly.
But when it comes to the style of a great
man’s discourse, I can speak with a great deal less
prejudice, and maybe with somewhat more com-
petence, for I have earned most of my livelihood
for twenty years past by translating the bad Eng-
lish of a multitude of authors into measurably
better English. Thus qualified professionally, I
rise to pay my small tribute to Dr. Harding. Set-
ting aside a college professor or two and half
a dozen dipsomaniacal newspaper reporters, he
takes the first place in my Valhalla of literati.
That is to say, he writes the worst English I have
even encountered. It reminds me of a string of
wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing
on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of
college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through
110  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of gran-
deur 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 in-
augural 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 stone-
heads 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 syl-
lables, and wholly unable to pursue a logical idea
for more than two centimeters.
Such imbeciles do not want ideas—that 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 can’t 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 furi-
ously 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 every-
thing 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 cer-
tainly and brilliantly effective. Read the inau-
gural 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 ex-
hume a sentence from the latter half of the
eminent orator’s discourse: “I would like gov-
ernment 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 idiotic—a
series of words without sense. You are quite
right; it is. But now imagine it intoned as it
were designed to be intoned. Imagine the
slow tempo of a public speech. Imagine the
stately unrolling of the first clause, the deli-
cate pause upon the word then—and then the
loud discharge of the phrase in understanding,
in mutuality of interest, in concern for the com-
mon good, each with its attendant glare and
roll of the eyes, each with a sublime heave,
each with its gesture of a blacksmith bring-
ing down his sledge upon an egg— imagine all
this, and then ask yourself where you have got.
You have got, in brief, to a point where you
don’t know what it is all about. You hear and
applaud the phrases, but their connection has
already escaped you. And so, when in viola-
tion of all sequence and logic, the final phrase,
our tasks will be solved, assaults you, you do not
notice its disharmony—all you notice is that,
if this or that, already forgotten, is done, “our
tasks will be solved.” Whereupon, glad of the
assurance and thrilled by the vast gestures that
drive it home, you give a cheer.
Crispin and Scapin, by Honoré Daumier, c. 1864.
111
 Allegory of comedy, justice, and truth, Pompeian-style fresco, by Giuseppe Borsato, c. 1837.
That is, if you are the sort of man who goes
to political meetings, which is to say, if you are
the sort of man that Dr. Harding is used to
talking to, which is to say, if you are a jackass.
The whole inaugural address reeked with
just such nonsense. The thing started off with
an error in English in its very first sentence—
the confusion of pronouns in the one-he com-
bination, so beloved of bad newspaper report-
ers. It bristled with words misused: civic for
civil, luring for alluring, womanhood for women,
referendum for reference, even task for prob-
lem. “The task is to be solved ”—what could be
worse? Yet I find it twice. “The expressed views
of world opinion”—what irritating tautology!
“The expressed conscience of progress”—what
on earth does it mean? “This is not selfishness,
it is sanctity”—what intelligible idea do you get
out of that? “I know that Congress and the ad-
ministration will favor every wise government
policy to aid the resumption and encourage
continued progress”—the resumption of what?
“Service is the supreme commitment of life”—
ach, du heiliger!
112  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
But is such bosh out of place in stump
speech? Obviously not. It is precisely and thor-
oughly in place of stump speech. A tight fabric
of ideas would weary and exasperate the audi-
ence; what it wants is a simple loud burble of
words, a procession of phrases that roar, a series
of whoops. This is what it got in the inaugural
address of the Hon. Warren Gamaliel Harding.
And this is what it will get for four long years—
unless God sends a miracle and the corruptible
puts on incorruption…Almost I long for the
sweeter song, the rubber stamps of more famil-
iar design, the gentler and more seemly bosh of
the late Woodrow.
“Gamalielese.” Running on a promise to “return to
normalcy,” Warren G. Harding won the presidential
election, the first in which women could vote, with
the greatest margin of victory in the popular vote up
to that time. Mencken began writing and editing for
the Sun papers in 1906, an association that lasted,
with some interruptions, for more than forty years,
while also publishing Notes on Democracy in
1926, Treatise on the Gods in 1930, and Treatise
on Right and Wrong in 1934. He died at the age
of seventy-five in 1956.
1974: Los Angeles
timing is everything
I was appearing on The Tonight Show, but be-
cause Johnny Carson hadn’t 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 sur-
prise note from the show’s booker, Bob Shayne:
“We had a meeting with Johnny yesterday, told
him you’d 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. It’s 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 it…I 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 be-
gan, “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 it’s a com-
edy routine.” And the bit was dead. Johnny, on
the other hand, was the comedian’s 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 relation-
ship 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 com-
edy. On one of my appearances, after he had
done a solid impression of Goofy the cartoon
dog, he leaned over to me during a commercial
and whispered prophetically, “You’ll use every-
thing you ever knew.” He was right; twenty
years later I did my teenage rope tricks in the
movie ¡Three Amigos!
Once Johnny joked in his monologue, “I
announced that I was going to write my autobi-
ography, and nineteen publishers went out and
copyrighted the title Cold and Aloof.” This was
the common perception of him. But Johnny was
For contemporary judgment does not recognize
that equally wondrous are the glasses that
observe the sun and those that look at the
movements of inconspicuous insects; for
contemporary judgment does not recognize that
much depth of soul is needed to light up the
picture drawn from contemptible life and elevate
it into a pearl of creation; for contemporary
judgment does not recognize that lofty ecstatic
laughter is worthy to stand beside the lofty lyrical
impulse, and that a whole abyss separates it from
the antics of a street-fair clown!
 —Nikolai Gogol, 1842
not aloof; he was polite. He did not presume
intimate relationships where there were none;
he took time, and with time grew trust. He pre-
served his dignity by maintaining the personal-
ity that was appropriate for him.
Johnny enjoyed the delights of split-second
timing, of watching a comedian squirm and then
rescue himself, of the surprises that can arise in
the seconds of desperation when the comedian
senses that his joke might fall to silence.
For my first show back, I chose to do a bit
I had developed years earlier at the Ice House.
I speed-talked a Vegas nightclub act in two
minutes. Appearing on the show was Sammy
Davis Jr., who, while still performing ener-
getically, had also become a historic showbiz
figure. I was whizzing along, singing a four-
second version of “Ebb Tide,” then saying at
lightning speed, “Frank Sinatra personal friend
of mine Sammy Davis Jr. personal friend of
113
 The Two Clowns, by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, c. 1600.
mine Steve Martin I’m a personal friend of
mine too and now a little dancin’!” I started a
wild flail, which I must say was pretty funny,
when a showbiz miracle occurred. The cam-
era cut away to a dimly lit Johnny, precisely
as he whirled up from his chair, doubling over
with laughter. Suddenly, subliminally, I was
endorsed. At the end of the act, Sammy came
over and hugged me. I felt like I hadn’t been
hugged since I was born.
This was my sixteenth appearance on
the show, and the first one I could really call
a smash. The next day, elated by my success, I
walked into an antique store on La Brea. The
woman behind the counter looked at me.
114  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
“Are you that boy who was on The Tonight
Show last night?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Yuck!” she blurted out.
Steve Martin, from Born Standing Up. While
attending UCLA in 1967, Martin was asked to
write for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour;
two years later he won an Emmy Award for his
work on the show. He later starred in The Jerk and
L.A. Story. Elsewhere in his 2007 memoir, Martin
observed, “Every entertainer has a night when
everything is clicking. These nights are accidental
and statistical: like lucky cards in poker, you can
count on them occurring over time. What was hard
was to be good, consistently good, night after night,
no matter what the abominable circumstances.”
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 delib-
erately 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 lacerat-
ing 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 li-
able to become superannuated.
As is usual with definitions and classifica-
tions, 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 Lamb’s [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 narra-
tives which, like Voltaire’s “Micromégas,” 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 with-
out 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
Molière [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 nev-
er flame out into a witticism—but it helps to give
brightness and transparency, it warns off from
flights and exaggerations which verge on the
ridiculous—in every genre of writing it preserves
a man from sinking into the genre ennui. And it
is eminently needed for this office in humorous
writing, for as humor has no limits imposed on
it by its material, no law but its own exuberance,
it is apt to become preposterous and wearisome
unless checked by wit, which is the enemy of all
monotony, of all lengthiness, of all exaggeration.
Perhaps the nearest approach nature has
given us to a complete analysis, in which wit
is as thoroughly exhausted of humor as pos-
sible, and humor as bare as possible of wit, is
in the typical Frenchman and the typical Ger-
man. Voltaire [Ferney, page 142], the intensest
Laughter is little more than an expression of
self-satisfied shrewdness.
 —Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, c. 1825
example of pure wit, fails in most of his fic-
tions from his lack of humor. “Micromégas” is
a perfect tale, because, as it deals chiefly with
philosophic ideas and does not touch the mar-
row of human feeling and life, the writer’s wit
and wisdom were all-sufficient for his purpose.
Not so with Candide. Here Voltaire had to give
pictures of life as well as to convey philosophic
truth and satire, and here we feel the want of
humor. The sense of the ludicrous is continu-
ally defeated by disgust, and the scenes, instead
of presenting us with an amusing or agree-
able picture, are only the frame for a witticism.
On the other hand, German humor generally
shows no sense of measure, no instinctive tact;
it is either floundering and clumsy as the antics
of a leviathan, or laborious and interminable
as a Lapland day, in which one loses all hope
that the stars and quiet will ever come. For this
reason Jean Paul, the greatest of German hu-
morists, is unendurable to many readers, and
frequently tiresome to all. Here, as elsewhere,
the German shows the absence of that delicate
perception, that sensibility to gradation, which
is the essence of tact and taste and the necessary
concomitant of wit. All his subtlety is reserved
for the region of metaphysics. He has the finest
115
 nose for empiricism in philosophical doctrine,
but the presence of more or less tobacco smoke
in the air he breathes is imperceptible to him.
To the typical German it is indifferent whether
his door lock will catch, whether his teacup is
more or less than an inch thick, whether or
not his book has every other leaf unstitched,
whether his neighbor’s conversation is more or
less of a shout, whether he pronounces b or p,
t or d, whether or not his adored one’s teeth
are few and far between. He has the same sort
of insensibility to gradations in time. A Ger-
man comedy is like a German sentence: you
see no reason in its structure why it should ever
come to an end, and you accept the conclusion
as an arrangement of Providence rather than
of the author. We have heard Germans use the
word Langeweile, the equivalent for ennui, and
we have secretly wondered what it can be that
produces ennui in a German. Not the longest of
long tragedies, for we have known him to pro-
nounce that “most captivating”; not the heaviest
of heavy books, for he delights in that “thor-
oughly”; not the slowest of journeys in a post-
chaise, for the slower the horses, the more cigars
he can smoke before he reaches his journey’s
end. German ennui must imply some kind of
extremely unknown quantity of stupefaction.
It is easy to see that this national deficiency
in nicety of perception must have its effect on
the national appreciation and exhibition of hu-
mor. You find in Germany ardent admirers of
Shakespeare who tell you that what they think
most admirable in him is his Wortspiel, his verbal
quibbles. And it is a remarkable fact that among
the five great races concerned in modern civili-
zation, the German race is the only one which,
up to the present century, had contributed
nothing classic to the common stock of Euro-
pean wit and humor. Italy was the birthplace of
pantomime and the immortal Pulcinello; Spain
had produced Miguel de Cervantes [page 170];
France had produced François Rabelais [Paris,
page 89] and Molière, and classic wits innumer-
able; England had yielded Shakespeare and a
host of humorists. But Germany had borne no
great comic dramatist, no great satirist, and she
116  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
has not yet repaired the omission; she had not
even produced any humorist of a high order.
Of course, we do not pretend to an exhaustive
acquaintance with German literature; we not
only admit—we are sure—that it includes much
comic writing of which we know nothing. We
simply state the fact that no German produc-
tion of that kind, before the present century,
ranked as European—a fact which does not,
indeed, determine the amount of the national
facetiousness, but which is quite decisive as to its
quality. Whatever may be the stock of fun which
Germany yields for home consumption, she has
provided little for the palate of other lands. All
honor to her for the still greater things she has
done for us! She has fought the hardest fight for
freedom of thought, has produced the grandest
inventions, has made magnificent contributions
to science, has given us some of the divinest po-
etry, and quite the divinest music, in the world.
We revere and treasure the products of the Ger-
man mind. To say that that mind is not fertile
in wit, is only like saying that excellent wheat
land is not rich pasture; to say that we do not
enjoy German facetiousness is no more than to
say that though the horse is the finest of quadru-
peds, we do not like him to lay his hoof playfully
on our shoulder. Still, as we have noticed that
the pointless puns and stupid jocularity of the
boy may ultimately be developed into the epi-
grammatic brilliancy and polished playfulness of
the man; as we believe that racy wit and chas-
tened delicate humor are inevitably the results
of invigorated and refined mental activity—we
can also believe that Germany will one day yield
a crop of wits and humorists.
George Eliot, from “German Wit: Heinrich Heine.”
Eliot saw hope for the country’s humor in Heine—
“true, this unique German wit is half a Hebrew,”
she noted, but his ancestors were raised on “wurst
and sauerkraut, so that he is as much a German as a
pheasant is an English bird.” Mary Ann Evans first
used George Eliot as her pseudonym when publishing
a section of Scenes of Clerical Life in 1857. The
inspiration for her “first story” came while she was
“lying in bed,” and her “thoughts merged themselves
into a dreamy doze,” an incident she fictionalized in
her novel The Mill on the Floss, published in 1860.
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
child’s 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 other’s 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 whatever’s best for you.”
“What’s 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.
“I’m happy when I’m pleasing you.”
“I just want to do what you want to do.”
“I want to do whatever’s best for you.”
“But you please me by letting me please
you,” she said.
“As the male partner, I think it’s my re-
sponsibility to please.”
“I’m not sure whether that’s a sensitive,
caring statement or a sexist remark.”
“Is it wrong for the man to be considerate
toward his partner?”
“I’m your partner when we play tennis,
which we ought to start doing again, by the
way. Otherwise, I’m your wife. Do you want
me to read to you?”
“First-rate.”
“I know you like me to read sexy stuff.”
“I thought you liked it too.”
“Isn’t it basically the person being read to
who derives the benefit and the satisfaction?”
117
 Caricature of Pope Innocent XI, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1676.
“I thought you liked to read erotic passages.”
“If it pleases you, then I like to do it.”
“But it has to please you too, Baba. Other-
wise how would I feel?”
“It pleases me that you enjoy my reading.”
“I get the feeling a burden is being shifted
back and forth. The burden of being the one
who is pleased.”
“I want to read, Jack. Honestly.”
“Are you totally and completely sure? Be-
cause if you’re not, we absolutely won’t.”
Someone turned on the TV set at the
end of the hall, and a woman’s voice said, “If
it breaks easily into pieces, it is called shale.
When wet, it smells like clay.”
We listened to the gently plummeting
stream of nighttime traffic. I said, “Pick your
century. Do you want to read about Etruscan
slave girls, Georgian rakes? I think we have
some literature on flagellation brothels. What
about the Middle Ages? We have incubi and
succubi. Nuns galore.”
“Whatever’s best for you.”
“I want you to choose. It’s sexier that way.”
“One person chooses, the other reads.
Don’t we want a balance, a sort of give and
take? Isn’t that what makes it sexy?”
“A tautness, a suspense. First-rate. I will
choose.”
“I will read,’’ she said. “But I don’t want
118  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
you to choose anything that has men inside
women, quote-quote, or men entering women.
‘I entered her.’ ‘He entered me.’ We’re not lob-
bies or elevators. ‘I wanted him inside me,’ as
if he could crawl completely in, sign the regis-
ter, sleep, eat, so forth. Can we agree on that? I
don’t care what these people do as long as they
don’t enter or get entered.”
“Agreed.”
“‘I entered her and began to thrust.’”
“I’m in total agreement,” I said.
“‘Enter me, enter me, yes, yes.’”
“Silly usage, absolutely.”
“‘Insert yourself, Rex. I want you inside me,
entering hard, entering deep, yes, now, oh.’”
I began to feel an erection stirring. How
stupid and out of context. Babette laughed at
her own lines. The TV said, “Until Florida sur-
geons attached an artificial flipper.”
Don DeLillo, from White Noise. DeLillo
published his first novel, Americana, in 1971,
followed by five more, among them Great Jones
Street and Players, before the end of that decade.
He remarked in the 1990s, “The novel’s not dead,
it’s not even seriously injured, but I do think we’re
working in the margins, working in the shadows of
the novel’s greatness and influence…Everything in
the culture argues against the novel, particularly the
novel that tries to be equal to the complexities and
excesses of the culture.” DeLillo’s most recent novel,
Point Omega, was published in 2010.
1748: Bath
low and unbecoming
Dear Boy,
I must from time to time remind you of
what I have often recommended to you, and
of what you cannot attend to too much—
sacrifice to the Graces. They prepare the way to
the heart, and the heart has such an influence
over the understanding that it is worthwhile
to engage it in our interest. Monsieur de La
Rochefoucauld, in his Maxims, says, that “the
heart almost always dupes the mind.” If he
had said often instead of almost always, I fear
he would have been nearer the truth. This be-
ing the case, aim at the heart. To engage the
affection of any particular person, you must,
over and above your general merit, have some
particular merit to that person—by services
done or offered, by expressions of regard and
esteem, by complaisance, attentions, etc. And
the graceful manner of doing all these things
opens the way to the heart and facilitates, or
rather insures, their effects. From your own ob-
servation, reflect what a disagreeable impres-
sion an awkward address, a slovenly figure, an
ungraceful manner of speaking, whether stut-
tering, muttering, monotony, or drawling; an
inattentive behavior, etc., make upon you, at
first sight, in a stranger, and how they prejudice
you against him, though, for ought you know,
he may have great intrinsic sense and merit.
And reflect, on the other hand, how much the
opposites of all these things prepossess you, at
first sight, in favor of those who enjoy them.
You wish to find all good qualities in them
and are in some degree disappointed if you do
not. A thousand little things, not separately to
be defined, conspire to form these graces, this
je ne sais quoi that always pleases.
A pretty person, genteel motions, a proper
degree of dress, a harmonious voice, some-
thing open and cheerful in the countenance,
but without laughing; a distinct and properly
varied manner of speaking: all these things
and many others are necessary ingredients in
the composition of the pleasing je ne sais quoi,
which everybody feels though nobody can de-
scribe. Observe carefully, then, what displeases
or pleases you in others, and be persuaded, that,
in general, the same things will please or dis-
please them in you. Having mentioned laugh-
ing, I must particularly warn you against it—I
could heartily wish that you may often be seen
to smile but never heard to laugh while you
live. Frequent and loud laughter is the charac-
teristic of folly and ill manners; it is the manner
in which the mob express their silly joy at silly
things, and they call it being merry. In my mind
there is nothing so illiberal and so ill-bred as
audible laughter. True wit, or sense, never yet
made anybody laugh—they are above it; they
please the mind and give a cheerfulness to the
countenance. But it is low buffoonery or silly
accidents that always excite laughter, and that is
what people of sense and breeding should show
themselves above. A man’s going to sit down, in
the supposition that he has a chair behind him,
and falling down upon his breech for want of
one, sets a whole company a laughing, when all
the wit in the world would not do it; a plain
proof, in my mind, how low and unbecoming a
thing laughter is. Not to mention the disagree-
able noise that it makes and the shocking dis-
tortion of the face that it occasions. Laughter is
easily restrained by a very little reflection, but as
it is generally connected with the idea of gaiety,
people do not enough attend to its absurdity. I
am neither of a melancholy nor a cynical dis-
position and am as willing, and as apt, to be
pleased as anybody, but I am sure that, since I
have had the full use of my reason, nobody has
ever heard me laugh.
Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth earl of Chesterfield,
from a letter to his son. Stanhope entered Parliament
in 1715, became ambassador to Holland in 1728,
and sired his illegitimate son in 1732. Starting
when the boy was five years old and ending within
four weeks of his son’s death at the age of thirty-six,
Stanhope wrote 448 letters to him, generally on
the topic of “the necessary arts of the world.” After
Stanhope’s death, Samuel Johnson complained that
the posthumously published letters taught “the morals
of a whore and the manners of a dancing master.”
119
 1940: Ireland
flann o’brien splits the atom
“Did you ever discover or hear tell of the atomic
theory?” the sergeant inquired.
“No,” I answered.
He leaned his mouth confidentially over to
my ear. “Would it surprise you to be told,” he
said darkly, “that the atomic theory is at work
in this parish?”
“It would indeed.”
“It is doing untold destruction,” he contin-
ued, “the half of the people are suffering from
it; it is worse than the smallpox.”
Comedy, like sodomy, is an unnatural act.
 —Marty Feldman, 1969
He walked on, looking worried and preoc-
cupied, as if what he was examining in his head
was unpleasant in a very intricate way.
“The atomic theory,” I sallied, “is a thing
that is not clear to me at all.”
“Michael Gilhaney,” said the sergeant,
“is an example of a man that is nearly ban-
jaxed from the principle of the atomic theory.
Would it astonish you to hear that he is nearly
half a bicycle?”
“It would surprise me unconditionally,”
I said.
“Michael Gilhaney,” said the sergeant,
“is nearly sixty years of age by plain computa-
tion and if he is itself, he has spent no less than
thirty-five years riding his bicycle over the rocky
roadsteads and up and down the hills and into
the deep ditches when the road goes astray in
the strain of the winter. He is always going to a
particular destination or other on his bicycle at
every hour of the day or coming back from there
at every other hour. If it wasn’t that his bicycle
was stolen every Monday he would be sure to
be more than halfway now.”
“Halfway to where?”
“Halfway to being a bicycle himself,” said
the sergeant.
120  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
“Your talk,” I said, “is surely the handi-
work 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 innumer-
able 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 at-
oms. Do you follow me intelligently?”
“Yes.”
“They are lively as twenty leprechauns do-
ing 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 can’t] and noli-me-tangere [don’t touch me].
“That remark is what may well be called
buncombe,” he said sharply, “because the nerve
strings and the sheep’s 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
 Golconda, by René Magritte, 1953.
had proved at all. If that happened, you would
have to go back over it till you got a place where
you could believe your own facts and figures
and then go on again from that particular place
till you had the whole thing properly believed
and not have bits of it half-believed or a doubt
in your head hurting you like when you lose the
stud of your shirt in bed.”
“Very true,” I said.
“Consecutively and consequentially,” he
continued, “you can safely infer that you are
made of atoms yourself and so is your fob pocket
and the tail of your shirt and the instrument you
use for taking the leavings out of the crook of
your hollow tooth. Do you happen to know what
takes place when you strike a bar of iron with a
good coal hammer or with a blunt instrument?”
“What?”
“When the wallop falls, the atoms are
bashed away down to the bottom of the bar and
compressed and crowded there like eggs under
a good clucker. After a while in the course of
time they swim around and get back at last to
where they were. But if you keep hitting the bar
long enough and hard enough they do not get a
chance to do this, and what happens then?”
“That is a hard question.”
“Ask a blacksmith for the true answer and
he will tell you that the bar will dissipate itself
away by degrees if you persevere with the hard
wallops. Some of the atoms of the bar will go
into the hammer, and the other half into the
table or the stone or the particular article that
is underneath the bottom of the bar.”
“That is well-known,” I agreed.
“The gross and net result of it is that peo-
ple who spend most of their natural lives riding
iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this
parish get their personalities mixed up with the
personalities of their bicycle as a result of the
interchanging of the atoms of each of them,
and you would be surprised at the number of
121

c. 1576: Aquitaine
not as wretched as we
are worthless
Democritus and Heraclitus were two philos-
ophers, of whom the first, finding the condi-
tion of man vain and ridiculous, never went
out in public but with a mocking and laugh-
ing 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 sting-
ing 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 de-
praved by nature.
Diogenes esteemed us so little that con-
tact 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 inca-
pable 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 wouldn’t know how to create a maggot
and he creates gods by the dozen.”
122  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
people in these parts who nearly are half people
and half bicycles.”
I let go a gasp of astonishment that made a
sound in the air like a bad puncture.
“And you would be flabbergasted at the
number of bicycles that are half human, almost
half man, half partaking of humanity.’
“Are you certain about the humanity of
the bicycle?” I inquired of him. “Is the atomic
theory as dangerous as you say?”
“It is between twice and three times as
dangerous as it might be,” he replied gloomily.
“Early in the morning I often think it is four
times, and what is more, if you lived here for a
few days and gave full play to your observation
and inspection, you would know how certain
the sureness of certainty is.”
“Gilhaney did not look like a bicycle,” I
said. “He had no back wheel on him, and I did
not think he had a front wheel either, although
I did not give much attention to his front.”
The sergeant looked at me with some com-
miseration. “You cannot expect him to grow
handlebars out of his neck, but I have seen him
do more indescribable things than that. Did
you ever notice the queer behavior of bicycles
in these parts?”
“I am not long in this district.”
“Then watch the bicycles if you think it is
pleasant to be surprised continuously,” he said.
“When a man lets things go so far that he is
half or more than half a bicycle, you will not
see so much because he spends a lot of his time
leaning with one elbow on walls or standing
propped by one foot at curbstones. Of course
there are other things connected with ladies
and ladies’ bicycles that I will mention to you
separately some time. But the man-charged
bicycle is a phenomenon of great charm and
intensity and a very dangerous article.”
At this point a man with long coattails
spread behind him approached quickly on a bi-
cycle, coasting benignly down the road past us
from the hill ahead. I watched him with the eye
of six eagles, trying to find out which was car-
rying the other and whether it was really a man
with a bicycle on his shoulders. I did not seem
 Old Woman Studying the Alphabet with a Laughing Girl, by Sofonisba Anguissola, c. 1555.
to see anything, however, that was memorable
or remarkable.
The sergeant was looking into his black
notebook.
“That was O’Feersa,” he said at last. “His
figure is only twenty-three percent.”
“He is twenty-three percent bicycle?”
“Yes.”
“Does that mean that his bicycle is also
twenty-three percent O’Feersa?”
“It does.”
“How much is Gilhaney?”
“Forty-eight.”
“Then O’Feersa is much lower.”
“That is due to the lucky fact that there are
three similar brothers in the house and that they
are too poor to have a separate bicycle apiece.
Some people never know how fortunate they are
when they are poorer than each other. Six years
ago one of the three O’Feersas won a prize of ten
pounds in John Bull. When I got the wind of this
tiding, I knew I would have to take steps unless
there was to be two new bicycles in the family.
Luckily I knew the postman very well. The post-
man! Great holy suffering indiarubber bowls of
brown stirabout!” The recollection of the post-
man seemed to give the sergeant a pretext for
unlimited amusement and cause for intricate
gesturing with his red hands.
“The postman?” I said.
“Seventy-one percent,” he said quietly.
“Great Scot!”
“A round of thirty-eight miles on the bi-
cycle every single day for forty years, hail, rain
or snowballs. There is very little hope of ever
getting his number down below fifty again.”
“You bribed him?”
“Certainly. With two of the little straps
you put around the hubs of bicycles to keep
them spick.”
“And what way do these people’s bicycles
behave?”
“These people’s bicycles?”
“I mean these bicycles’ people or whatever
123
 is the proper name for them—the ones that have
two wheels under them and a handlebars.”
“The behavior of a bicycle that has a high
content of humanity,” he said, “is very cunning
and entirely remarkable. You never see them
moving by themselves, but you meet them in the
least accountable places unexpectedly. Did you
never see a bicycle leaning against the dresser of
a warm kitchen when it is pouring outside?”
“I did.”
“Not very far away from the fire?”
“Yes.”
A jest breaks no bones.
 —Samuel Johnson, 1781
“Near enough to the family to hear the
conversation?”
“Yes.”
“Not a thousand miles from where they
keep the eatables?”
“I did not notice that. You do not mean to
say that these bicycles eat food?”
“They were never seen doing it—nobody
ever caught them with a mouthful of steak. All
I know is that the food disappears”
“What!”
“It is not the first time I have noticed
crumbs at the front wheels of some of these
gentlemen.”
“All this is a great blow to me,” I said.
“Nobody takes any notice,” replied the ser-
geant. “Mick thinks that Pat brought it in, and
Pat thinks that Mick was instrumental. Very
few of the people guess what is going on in this
parish. There are other things I would rather
not say too much about. A new lady teacher
was here one time with a new bicycle. She was
not very long here till Gilhaney went away into
the lonely country on her female bicycle. Can
you appreciate the immorality of that?”
“I can.”
“But worse happened. Whatever way Gil-
haney’s bicycle managed it, it left itself leaning
at a place where the young teacher would rush
out to go away somewhere on her bicycle in a
124  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
hurry. Her bicycle was gone, but here was Gil-
haney’s, leaning there conveniently and trying
to look very small and comfortable and attrac-
tive. 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 lady’s bicycle and vice versa con-
trarily, and it is quite clear that the lady in
the case had a high number—thirty-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 motiva-
tion. 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 mo-
tion 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 Ó
Nualláin in Ireland in 1911, the author published
his novels—among them At Swim-Two-Birds
and The Hard Life—using the pseudonym Flann
O’Brien 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.
O’Brien 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
the taste of boot polish
[Pyrgopolynices, a military man of handsome and
impressive appearance, is either just emerging from
his house or arriving at it from another part of the
town; during his opening words, he is relieved of
his heavier accoutrements by slaves or soldiers, who
take them away for cleaning. He is accompanied by
his satellite, Artotrogus.]
Pyrgopolynices: My shield, there—have it
burnished brighter than the bright splendor
of the sun on any summer’s day. Next time I
have occasion to use it in the press of battle,
it must flash defiance into the eyes of the op-
On the Borscht Belt
Henny Youngman
Say, a drunk was brought into court. The
judge says, “My good man, you’ve been
brought here for drinking.” He says,
“Alright judge, let’s get started.”
Sid Caesar
The guy who invented the first wheel was an
idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he
was a genius.
Milton Berle
I feel great; I really feel wonderful. I just got
back from a pleasure trip—I took my mother
to the airport.
Myron Cohen
Two bubbes in the Bronx were hanging
clothes to dry. One asks, “Have you
seen what’s going on in Poland?”
The other replies, “I live in the
back—I don’t see anything.”
Traditional
Guy’s hit by a car, and he’s lying in the
street. And a guy walks over and puts a
coat under his head, and he says, “You
comfortable?” And the man looks up
and says, “I make a living.”
Rodney Dangerfield
When I was a kid, my yo-yo, it never came back.
posing foe. My sword, too, I see, is pining for
attention; poor chap, he’s quite disheartened
and cast down, hanging idly at my side so
long; he’s simply itching to get at an enemy
and carve him into little pieces…Where’s
Artotrogus?
Artotrogus: Here, at his master’s heels, close to
his hero, his brave, his blessed, his royal, his
doughty warrior—whose valor Mars himself
could hardly challenge or outshine.
Pyrgopolynices: [reminiscing] Aye—what of the
man whose life I saved on the Curculionean
field, where the enemy was led by Bumbo-
machides Clytomestoridysarchides, a grandson
of Neptune?
Don Rickles
To actor Cliff Robinson: You’re a fantastic actor,
Cliff. You’ve told me that many, many times.
Totie Fields
I’m so tired of being everyone’s buddy. Just once to
read in a newspaper, Totie Fields raped in an alley.
Van Harris
My youngest son: he’s 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. That’s 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 Picasso’s private collection, depicting a female matador and a bull in the shape of a phallus.
Artotrogus: I remember it well. I remember his
golden armor, and how you scattered his legions
with a puff of breath, like a wind sweeping up
leaves or lifting the thatch from a roof.
Pyrgopolynices: [modestly] It was nothing much,
after all.
Artotrogus: Oh, to be sure, nothing to the many
more famous deeds you did—[aside] or never
did. [He comes down, leaving the captain attend-
ing to his men.] If anyone ever saw a bigger liar
or more conceited braggart than this one, he
can have me for keeps…The only thing to be
said for him is, his cook makes a marvelous
olive salad.
Pyrgopolynices: [missing him] Where have you
got to, Artotrogus?
Artotrogus: [obsequiously] Here I am, sir. I was
thinking about that elephant in India, and
how you broke his ulna with a single blow of
your fist.
Pyrgopolynices: His ulna, was it?
Artotrogus: His femur, I should have said.
126  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
Pyrgopolynices: It was only a light blow, too.
Artotrogus: By Jove, yes, if you had really hit
him, your arm would have smashed through
the animal’s hide, bones, and guts.
Pyrgopolynices: [modestly] I’d rather not talk
about it, really.
Artotrogus: Of course, sir; you don’t need to tell
me anything about your courageous deeds; I
already know them all. [aside] Oh dear, what
I have to suffer for my stomach’s sake. My ears
have to be stuffed lest my teeth should decay
from lack of use. I have to listen to all his tall
stories and confirm them.
Pyrgopolynices: [fishing for more flattery] Let me
see, didn’t I—?
Artotrogus: [promptly] Yes, that’s right, I re-
member—you did. By Jove, yes…
Pyrgopolynices: What are you referring to?
Artotrogus: That…whatever it was…
Pyrgopolynices: Have you got a—?
Artotrogus: Notebook? Yes, sir, and a pencil.
Pyrgopolynices: You are as good as a thought
reader, my dear man.
Artotrogus: Well, it’s my job, isn’t it, sir, to know
your mind? I’ve trained myself to anticipate
your wishes by instinct.
Pyrgopolynices: I wonder if you remember…
[He seems to be vaguely calculating.]
Artotrogus: How many? Yes, a hundred and
fifty in Cilicia, a hundred in Scytholatronia,
Sardians thirty, Macedonians sixty—killed,
that is—in one day alone.
Pyrgopolynices: How many does that make
altogether?
Artotrogus: Seven thousand.
Pyrgopolynices: Must be at least that. You’re an
excellent accountant.
Artotrogus: [showing his blank tablets, with a
grin] And I haven’t any of it written down. All
done from memory.
Pyrgopolynices: A prodigious memory, by Jove.
Artotrogus: Nourished by a prodigious appetite.
Pyrgopolynices: Go on as you are doing, my
man, and you will never go hungry. I give you
the freedom of my table.
Artotrogus: And what about Cappadocia, sir,
when you slaughtered five hundred at one fell
swoop—or would have done if your sword
hadn’t got blunted first?
Pyrgopolynices: They were only poor footslog-
gers; I decided to spare their lives.
Artotrogus: Need I say, sir—since the whole
world knows it—that the valor and triumphs
of Pyrgopolynices are without equal on this
earth, and so is his handsome appearance? The
women are all at your feet, and no wonder; they
can’t resist your good looks; like those girls who
were trying to get my attention yesterday.
Pyrgopolynices: What did they say to you?
Artotrogus: Oh, they pestered me with ques-
tions: “Is he Achilles?” “No, his brother,” I said.
And the other girl said, “I should think so, he’s
so good-looking and so charming—and hasn’t
he got lovely hair? I envy the girls who go to
bed with him.”
Pyrgopolynices: Did they really say that?
Artotrogus: They did—and they begged me to
bring you past their house today, as if you were
a traveling show!
Pyrgopolynices: It really is a bore to be so good-
looking.
Artotrogus: I’m sure it is. These women are a
perfect pest, always begging and wheedling
and imploring for a chance to see you. They
keep asking me to arrange an introduction; I
simply can’t get on with my proper work.
Pyrgopolynices: Well, I suppose it’s time we went
to the forum, to pay those recruits I enlisted yes-
terday. King Seleucus was most insistent that I
should round up and sign on some troopers for
him, and I mean to oblige him this very day.
Artotrogus: Let’s go, then.
Plautus, from The Swaggering Soldier. Born
in Umbria around 254 bc, during the first Punic
War, the playwright took the name Titus Maccius
Plautus—maccus means clown, plautus means
flatfoot—when he gained Roman citizenship. He
is thought to have come to Rome at an early age,
finding work as a stagehand and actor, before he
began combining Greek plays with native Italian
farces to create a new kind of drama for the Roman
stage. Plautus is believed to have written over one
hundred plays, of which only twenty are extant.
127
 1996: Washington, DC
making distinctions
We got a lot of racism going on in the world
right now. Who’s more racist, black people or
white people?
Black people. You know why, because we
hate black people too. Everything white people
don’t like about black people, black people re-
ally don’t like about black people. There’s some
shit going on with black people right now. It’s
like the Civil War going on with black people,
and there’s two sides. There’s black people, and
Ceramic portrait head vessel with stirrup spout,
Moche Civilization, Peru, c. 400.
there’s niggas. And niggas have got to go. Every
time black people want to have a good time,
ignorant-ass niggas fuck it up. Can’t do shit
without some ignorant ass niggas fuckin’ it up.
Can’t do shit. Can’t keep a disco open more
than three weeks. Grand opening? Grand closin’.
Can’t go to a movie the first week it comes
out—why? ’Cause niggas are shootin’ at the
128  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
screen. What kind of ignorant shit is that?
“Hey, this is a good movie! This so good I gotta
bust a cap in here!”
I love black people, but I hate niggas. Oh
I hate niggas. Boy I wish they let me join the
Ku Klux Klan. Shit, I’d do a drive-by from here
to Brooklyn. Tired of niggas. You can’t have shit
when you’re around niggas. You can’t have no
big-screen TV. You can have it, but you better
move it in at three in the morning, paint it white,
hope niggas think it’s a bassinet. Can’t have shit
in your house. Why? ’Cause niggas will break
into your house. Niggas who live next door to
you will break into your house, come over the
next day, and go, “I heard you got robbed.”
Fuck man, tired of this shit. You know what
the worst thing about niggas, the worst thing
about niggas? Niggas love to not know. Noth-
ing make a nigga happier than not knowin’ the
answer to your question. Just ask a nigga a ques-
tion, any nigga. “Hey nigga, what’s the capital of
Zaire?” “I don’t know that shit—keepin’ it real!”
Niggas love to keep it real. Real dumb. Niggas
hate knowledge. Niggas breakin’ into your house?
You wanna save money? Put it in your books.
Now they got some shit—they’re trying to
get rid of welfare. Every time you see welfare,
they always show black people. Black people
don’t give a fuck about welfare. Niggas shakin’
in their boots. “Boy they gonna take our shit.”
A black man, he got two jobs, go to work every
day, hates a nigga on welfare, like, “Nigga, get a
job. I got two—you can’t get one?” Shit, a black
woman who’s got two kids, goin’ to work every
day, bustin’ her ass—hates a bitch with nine kids
gettin’ all that welfare, like “Bitch, stop fuckin’.
Stop. Fuckin’. Stop it. Put the dick down. Put
it down. Get a job. Yes, you can get a job. Get a
job holdin’ dicks.”
Tired of this shit. Tired, tired, tired. It
ain’t all black people on welfare. White people
on welfare, too. But we can’t give a fuck about
them. We just gotta do our own thing. We can’t
be like, Oh, they fucked up—we can be fucked
up. That’s ignorant. First of all, white people,
they make it look like—there ain’t even that
many black people in the country. Black people
are 10 percent of the population. Black people
in New York, DC, LA, Chicago, Atlanta—like,
ten places. Ain’t no black people in Minnesota.
Only black people in Minnesota is Prince and
Kirby Puckett. Shit, the whole rest of the coun-
try, the other forty states, is filled up with broke-
ass white people. Broke-ass, living in a trailer
home, eating mayonnaise sandwiches, fuckin’
their sister, listening to John Cougar Mellen-
camp records. And they need your help.
And I see some black people lookin’ at me:
“Man. Why you gotta say that? It ain’t us, it’s the
media. It ain’t us, it’s the media. The media has
distorted our image to make us look bad. Why
must you come down on us like that—it ain’t us.”
Please cut the fuckin’ shit, okay? When I go to
the money machine tonight, I ain’t lookin’ over
my back for the media. I’m lookin for niggas.
Ted Koppel ain’t never took shit from me. You
think I got three guns in my house ’cause the
media outside? Oh shit, Mike Wallace, run!
Tired of this shit. Tired, tired, tired. I don’t
know. I need to go back to school, that’s what
I need to do. Well, let me stop. I need to go to
school. You know what’s wild if you’re black?
You get more respect comin’ out of jail than
you do out of school. You come out of jail, you
the fuckin’ man. “Fresh out, nigga?” You come
out of school, nobody gives a fuck. “Hey, I got
out of school—I got my masters.” “So what—
bitch. Punk-ass bitch. Don’t come around with
all that readin’ and shit, don’t come around with
all that countin’ shit. I can count too. One, two,
three, four, five—for what? I’m countin’ these
rocks, biatch!”
I dropped out of school. Dropped out.
Sorry. Got myself a GED. You know what
GED stands for? Good-Enough Diploma.
You know a GED’s bullshit—“Let me get this
straight. I can make up four years in six hours?”
And you know as soon as you get your GED,
someone’s always got the nerve to go, “Now
you go to college!” Slow down. I think it’s obvi-
ous high school was busting my ass. You can’t
go to college with no GED. Only college you
can go to with a GED is community college.
You know why they call it community college?
’Cause anybody in the community can go—
crackhead, prostitute, drug dealer—come on in!
Community college is like a disco with books—
“Here’s ten dollars, let me get my learn on.”
So I was in community college. I’m in there,
I figure, let me take some shit I know. So I took
a black-history class. I gotta know this, because
I’m black, right? I get a B just for showing up,
right? Wrong. Failed it. Ain’t that some sad
shit? A black man failing black history—that’s
sad. ’Cause you know fat people don’t fail cook-
ing. Failed black history. Why? Because I didn’t
know shit about Africa. ’Cause you know, you
go to white schools, you learn Europe up the
ass. Never learn shit about Africa; I still don’t
know shit about it. Only thing I know about
Africa—it’s far. Africa is far, far away. Africa is
like a thirty-five-hour flight. So you know that
boat ride was real long. The boat ride so long,
there’s still slaves on their way here. I didn’t know
nothin’ in school—only thing I knew was Mar-
tin Luther King. That’s all they ever teach you
in school about black people—Martin Luther
King. That was my answer to everything. Martin
Luther King. “What’s the capital of Zaire?” Mar-
tin Luther King. “Could you tell us the name of
the woman who would not leave her seat on the
bus?” Oooh, that’s hard. Are you sure it was a
woman? Oh, I got it. Martina Luther King.
You know what’s so sad? Martin Luther
King stood for nonviolence. Now what’s Martin
Luther King? A street. And I don’t give a fuck
where you are in America, if you’re on Martin
Luther King Boulevard, there’s some violence
goin’ down. It ain’t the safest place to be. You
can’t call nobody—tell ’em you’re lost on MLK.
“I’m lost, I’m on Martin Luther King.” “Run!
Run! Run! The media’s there!”
Chris Rock, from Bring the Pain. This routine
made Rock a national standup comedy star, earning
him praise as well as criticism, and the HBO special
in which it first appeared won two Emmy Awards.
In a 2009 interview with 60 Minutes, Rock
remarked, “By the way, I’ve never done that joke
again, ever, and I probably never will. ’Cause some
people that were racist thought they had license to
say nigger. So, I’m done with that routine.” His fifth
HBO special, Kill the Messenger, aired in 2008.
129
 Interior with Merry Company, by Willem Pietersz Buytewech, c. 1623.
1927: New York City
dorothy parker attends an
uptown party
The woman with the pink-velvet poppies
twined round the assisted gold of her hair tra-
versed the crowded room at an interesting gait
combining a skip with a sidle, and clutched the
lean arm of her host.
“Now I got you!” she said. “Now you can’t
get away!”
“Why, hello,” said her host. “Well. How
are you?”
“Oh, I’m finely,” she said. “Just simply finely.
Listen. I want you to do me the most terrible
favor. Will you? Will you please? Pretty please?”
“What is it?” said her host.
“Listen,” she said. “I want to meet Walter
Williams. Honestly, I’m just simply crazy about
that man. Oh, when he sings! When he sings
those spirituals! Well, I said to Burton, ‘It’s a
good thing for you Walter Williams is colored,’
130  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
I said, ‘or you’d have lots of reason to be jealous.’
I’d really love to meet him. I’d like to tell him
I’ve heard him sing. Will you be an angel and
introduce me to him?”
“Why, certainly,” said her host. “I thought
you’d met him. The party’s for him. Where is
he, anyway?”
“He’s over there by the bookcase,” she said.
“Let’s wait till those people get through talking
to him. Well, I think you’re simply marvelous,
giving this perfectly marvelous party for him,
and having him meet all these white people
and all. Isn’t he terribly grateful?”
“I hope not,” said her host.
“I think it’s really terribly nice,” she said. “I
do. I don’t see why on earth it isn’t perfectly all
right to meet colored people. I haven’t any feeling
at all about it—not one single bit. Burton—oh,
he’s just the other way. Well, you know, he comes
from Virginia, and you know how they are.”
“Did he come tonight?” said her host.
“No, he couldn’t,” she said. “I’m a regular
grass widow tonight. I told him when I left,
‘There’s no telling what I’ll do,’ I said. He was just
so tired out, he couldn’t move. Isn’t it a shame?”
“Ah,” said her host.
“Wait till I tell him I met Walter Wil-
liams!” she said. “He’ll just about die. Oh, we
have more arguments about colored people. I
talk to him like I don’t know what, I get so ex-
cited. ‘Oh, don’t be so silly,’ I say. But I must
say for Burton, he’s heaps broader-minded
than lots of these Southerners. He’s really aw-
fully fond of colored people. Well, he says him-
self, he wouldn’t have white servants. And you
know, he had this old colored nurse, this regu-
lar old nigger mammy, and he just simply loves
her. Why, every time he goes home, he goes out
in the kitchen to see her. He does, really, to this
day. All he says is, he says he hasn’t got a word
to say against colored people as long as they
keep their place. He’s always doing things for
them—giving them clothes and I don’t know
what all. The only thing he says, he says he
wouldn’t sit down at the table with one for a
million dollars. ‘Oh,’ I say to him, ‘you make me
sick, talking like that.’ I’m just terrible to him.
Aren’t I terrible?”
“Oh, no, no, no,” said her host. “No, no.”
“I am,” she said. “I know I am. Poor Burton!
Now, me, I don’t feel that way at all. I haven’t
the slightest feeling about colored people. Why,
I’m just crazy about some of them. They’re just
like children—just as easygoing, and always
singing and laughing and everything. Aren’t
they the happiest things you ever saw in your
life? Honestly, it makes me laugh just to hear
them. Oh, I like them. I really do. Well, now,
listen, I have this colored laundress, I’ve had her
for years, and I’m devoted to her. She’s a real
character. And I want to tell you, I think of her
as my friend. That’s the way I think of her. As I
say to Burton, ‘Well, for heaven’s sakes, we’re all
human beings!’ Aren’t we?”
“Yes,” said her host. “Yes, indeed.”
“Now this Walter Williams,” she said. “I
think a man like that’s a real artist. I do. I think
he deserves an awful lot of credit. Goodness, I’m
so crazy about music or anything, I don’t care
what color he is. I honestly think if a person’s
1947: Washington, DC
new hires
I have appointed a Secretary of Semantics—
a most important post. He is to furnish me
forty- to fifty-dollar words. Tell me how to
say yes and no in the same sentence without a
contradiction. He is to tell me the combina-
tion of words that will put me against infla-
tion in San Francisco and for it in New York.
He is to show me how to keep silent—and
say everything. You can very well see how he
can save me an immense amount of worry.
Then I have appointed a Secretary of Re-
action. I want him to abolish flying machines
and tell me how to restore ox carts, oar boats,
and sailing ships. What a load he can take off
my mind if he will put the atom back togeth-
er so it cannot be broken up. What a worry
that will abolish for both me and Vyshinsky.
I have appointed a Secretary for Colum-
nists. His duties are to listen to all radio
commentators, read all columnists in the
newspapers from ivory tower to lowest gos-
sip, coordinate them, and give me the result
so I can run the United States and the world
as it should be. I have several able men in
reserve besides the present holder of the job,
because I think in a week or two, the pres-
ent Secretary for Columnists will need the
services of a psychiatrist and will in all prob-
ability end up in St. Elizabeth’s.
Harry S. Truman, three notes. Truman assumed
the presidency upon Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s
death in April 1945. In roughly the span of his
first year in office—in which time he dropped
atomic bombs on Japan and subsequently helped to
conclude World War II—Truman’s approval rating
dropped from 87 to 32 percent. He defeated Thomas
Dewey in the election of 1948. On Truman’s desk
he had two signs—one was a quote from Mark
Twain, always do right. this will gratify some
people and astonish the rest and the other was
the buck stops here.
an artist, nobody ought to have any feeling at
all about meeting them. That’s absolutely what
I say to Burton. Don’t you think I’m right?”
“Yes,” said her host. “Oh, yes.”
“That’s the way I feel,” she said. “I just
can’t understand people being narrow-minded.
Why, I absolutely think it’s a privilege to meet
a man like Walter Williams. Yes, I do. I haven’t
any feeling at all. Well, my goodness, the good
131
 Lord made him, just the same as He did any of
us. Didn’t He?”
“Surely,” said her host. “Yes, indeed.”
“That’s what I say,” she said. “Oh, I get so
furious when people are narrow-minded about
colored people. It’s just all I can do not to say
something. Of course, I do admit when you get
a bad colored man, they’re simply terrible. But
as I say to Burton, there are some bad white
people, too, in this world. Aren’t there?”
“I guess there are,” said her host.
A joke is at most a temporary rebellion against
virtue, and its aim is not to degrade the human
being but to remind him that he is already
degraded. —George Orwell, 1945
“Why, I’d really be glad to have a man
like Walter Williams come to my house and
sing for us, some time,” she said. “Of course,
I couldn’t ask him on account of Burton, but
I wouldn’t have any feeling about it at all. Oh,
can’t he sing! Isn’t it marvelous, the way they all
have music in them? It just seems to be right
in them. Come on, let’s us go on over and talk
to him. Listen, what shall I do when I’m intro-
duced? Ought I to shake hands? Or what?”
“Why, do whatever you want,” said her
host.
“I guess maybe I’d better,” she said. “I
wouldn’t for the world have him think I had
any feeling. I think I’d better shake hands, just
the way I would with anybody else. That’s just
exactly what I’ll do.”
They reached the tall young Negro, stand-
ing by the bookcase. The host performed intro-
ductions; the Negro bowed.
“How do you do?” he said.
The woman with the pink-velvet poppies
extended her hand at the length of her arm and
held it so for all the world to see, until the Ne-
gro took it, shook it, and gave it back to her.
“Oh, how do you do, Mr. Williams,” she
said. “Well, how do you do. I’ve just been say-
ing, I’ve enjoyed your singing so awfully much.
I’ve been to your concerts, and we have you on
132  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
the phonograph and everything. Oh, I just en-
joy it!”
She spoke with great distinctness, moving
her lips meticulously, as if in parlance with the
deaf.
“I’m so glad,” he said.
“I’m just simply crazy about that ‘Water
Boy’ thing you sing,” she said. “Honestly, I can’t
get it out of my head. I have my husband nearly
crazy, the way I go around humming it all the
time. Oh, he looks just as black as the ace of—
well. Tell me, where on earth do you ever get
all those songs of yours? How do you ever get
hold of them?”
“Why,” he said, “there are so many
different—”
“I should think you’d love singing them,”
she said. “It must be more fun. All those dar-
ling old spirituals—oh, I just love them! Well,
what are you doing, now? Are you still keeping
up your singing? Why don’t you have another
concert some time?”
“I’m having one the sixteenth of this
month,” he said.
“Well, I’ll be there,” she said. “I’ll be there, if
I possibly can. You can count on me. Goodness,
here comes a whole raft of people to talk to you.
You’re just a regular guest of honor! Oh, who’s
that girl in white? I’ve seen her someplace.”
“That’s Katherine Burke,” said her host.
“Good heavens,” she said, “is that Kath-
erine Burke? Why, she looks entirely different
off the stage. I thought she was much better-
looking. I had no idea she was so terribly dark.
Why, she looks almost like—oh, I think she’s a
wonderful actress! Don’t you think she’s a won-
derful actress, Mr. Williams? Oh, I think she’s
marvelous. Don’t you?”
“Yes, I do,” he said.
“Oh, I do, too,” she said. “Just wonderful.
Well, goodness, we must give someone else a
chance to talk to the guest of honor. Now, don’t
forget, Mr. Williams, I’m going to be at that
concert if I possibly can. I’ll be there applaud-
ing like everything. And if I can’t come, I’m
going to tell everybody I know to go anyway.
Don’t you forget!”
 Titania Awakes, Surrounded by Attendant Fairies, Clinging Rapturously to Bottom, Still Wearing the Ass’s Head (detail),
“I won’t,” he said. “Thank you so much.”
The host took her arm and piloted her into
the next room.
“Oh, my dear,” she said. “I nearly died!
Honestly, I give you my word, I nearly passed
away. Did you hear that terrible break I made?
I was just going to say Katherine Burke looked
almost like a nigger. I just caught myself in
time. Oh, do you think he noticed?”
“I don’t believe so,” said her host.
“Well, thank goodness,” she said, “be-
cause I wouldn’t have embarrassed him for
anything. Why, he’s awfully nice. Just as nice
as he can be. Nice manners, and everything.
You know, so many colored people, you give
them an inch, and they walk all over you. But
he doesn’t try any of that. Well, he’s got more
sense, I suppose. He’s really nice. Don’t you
think so?”
by Henry Fuseli, c. 1793.
“Yes,” said her host.
“I liked him,” she said. “I haven’t any feel-
ing at all because he’s a colored man. I felt just
as natural as I would with anybody. Talked to
him just as naturally, and everything. But hon-
estly, I could hardly keep a straight face. I kept
thinking of Burton. Oh, wait till I tell Burton I
called him ‘Mister’!”
“Arrangement in Black and White.” Parker based this
story on the treatment she saw singer Paul Robeson
receive at a party. She succeeded P. G. Wodehouse as
Vanity Fair’s drama critic in 1918 but was fired two
years later for her writing’s caustic tone; around that
time Parker became the only female founding member
of the Algonquin Round Table. She began writing for
The New Yorker in the late 1920s. “A ‘smart cracker’
they called me,” Parker recalled in 1956, “and that
makes me sick and unhappy. There’s a hell of a distance
between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it;
wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.”
133
134  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
Voices in Time
confrontational
2000: New York City
arthur miller’s line to walk on
Sol Burry made a living inventing jokes that
he sold to the few remaining vaudevillians and
the radio stars like Jack Benny, Phil Silvers, and
Henny Youngman. He of course hated Milton
Berle, who stole jokes without paying and was
fatuous besides.
He would hold court in the Whelan’s
drugstore on the corner of Broadway and
Forty-seventh, if I recall, or it could have been
Forty-fifth—I’m no longer sure after more than
sixty-two years. Young actors and ambitious, un-
produced playwrights would look for Burry in
Whelan’s and sit around one of the four white,
marble-topped tables they had there, trying to
find favor with this odd man who somehow
knew more about plays, directing, and acting
than anybody. He would occasionally deign to
read a script and opinionate on it, negatively for
the most part but usually offering small rays of
hope. “You got three great lines here,” he would
“The Magic Ring,” by Maxfield Parrish, illustration from Dream Days, by Kenneth Grahame, 1902.
say as he rifled with black fingernails through
120 or so pages in search of the gems, “—here
you are! In these lines you got truth; the rest
is mostly language. Language is dangerous with
a New York audience, which only cracks can
waken from their undetected death.”
Like so many in the business in those im-
poverished times, Burry regarded radio as a
necessary but fairly contemptible way of mak-
ing a living, perhaps half a step beneath movie
acting, which was low enough. It was the the-
ater that had true prestige, a very different qual-
ity than mere Hollywood celebrity, with which
people had begun to confuse it.
Burlesque, Burry’s heartland, had gone
nearly dead by the 1930s’ end, but it still car-
ried on in one or two theaters in Manhattan,
and maybe one in Brooklyn, plus a scattering
across the country. Having worked his mate-
rial into many burlesque skits, Burry retained
135
 a far higher respect for the art of the burlesque
comic than he did for the radio people. “Radio,”
he would say, “is fencing in front of a mirror.
The stage actor is going against the audience
that can stab him in the belly.”
I am no longer sure of this, but I think the
last time I ever saw Burry was on the brilliantly
sunny day when we were standing together on
a sidewalk in front of a drugstore. Burry was
talking with three or four dressed-up, youngish
comedians who had bought material from him
in the past. They all had sharply pressed trousers,
brightly shined shoes, starched shirts, glinting
wristwatches, slicked hair, or an ultraclean hat.
The two great branches of ridicule in writing
are comedy and burlesque. The first ridicules
persons by drawing them in their proper
characters, the other by drawing them quite
unlike themselves.
 —Joseph Addison, 1711
In fact, they were all looking for work and were
hanging out at this drugstore, which had, along
one wall, a line of five phone booths, any one
of which might momentarily ring with an of-
fer of a job from one of their agents holed up
in some airless, filthy-windowed cubicle above
Times Square. A weekend gig in the Catskills
maybe, or a club in Brooklyn, or, God forbid, in
Newark or even beyond, where, in their minds,
there were ravenous lions and tigers and most
certainly a majority of Gentiles in the audiences,
which came to the same thing. It was not yet a
time when Gentiles had heard, for example, of
the bagel, or lox, or cream cheese, or pastrami, or,
for that matter, anything that made life worth
living, and every one of these jokesters had de-
fensively Americanized his Jewish name. Hit-
ler’s hateful speeches, still hard to attribute to
a head of state, were growing louder, and the
anti-Semitic gang mentality had respectable
voices on American radio and in the Church.
If one wanted to be monumentally depressed,
it was not hard to find supporting evidence.
Indeed, Father Charles Coughlin’s followers
136  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
in the Christian Front would soon have to be
disarmed on Roosevelt’s orders by FBI raids,
and the new French liner Normandie, probably
the most beautiful ship afloat, would be set
afire and sunk by Nazi saboteurs, or so it was
universally believed until later proved untrue.
At the time, lying on her side for months in
her West Side Manhattan berth, her bottom
indecently exposed, she made hatred very real
to passersby.
Whatever the world’s slide into savagery,
this posse of comedians was screamingly ready
and eager to perform. Even as they stood
there palavering, their shoe soles were tapping
restlessly on the pavement, fists clamping and
unclamping with unreleased energy, carefully
wiped fingers hiking up the knots of their ties
and shooting their shirt cuffs and smoothing
the deftly combed hair at their temples. They
were charged young men tossing some side-
walk chat back and forth: somebody’s big night
with a girl up in Albany, a chance word with
Benny in a Radio City corridor, Roosevelt’s
recent blast at the Republicans, little Mayor
LaGuardia getting tangled up in a fire hose
when he insisted, as he often did, on direct-
ing muttering firemen at a big downtown fire,
wearing a wobbling helmet too big for him
and a gigantic black raincoat that reached to
the ground.
And now suddenly, as though dropping out
of the sky, came this very tall, robust, blondish
fellow wearing a bean-green plaid suit with large
rose checks, a yellowish shirt with a tie of or-
ange hue, and a look of deep self-appreciation.
He stood there with both beringed hands folded
over his stomach, as satisfied as a rabbi who has
just done a double wedding; it seemed from the
pleasure in his fair face that for some reason he
was, in effect, awaiting applause. I would soon
realize that this was Henny Youngman, who
was hovering, as he would for the rest of his long
life, at the very edge of real stardom of the Jack
Benny–Red Skelton kind. In any case, unlike
several of the others present, he was always, or at
least frequently, working and—so I recall—had
already coined his logo line, “Take my wife…”
 New as I was to this milieu, and innocent of
its customs, it took some minutes to realize that
what might be called a situation of some tension
had arisen with Youngman’s precipitous entry.
The same sun was shining on all of them, but
Youngman, with his fair hair and face, seemed
golden now, glistening. It was not only the sun
but his having been working on a national net-
work rather than in a club or on a stage, and if he
had not yet passed through the Republic’s inner
golden door of public love and acceptance he did
seem lately to be thrusting a leg across the magi-
cal threshold at least up to the knee.
All I knew, however, was that on his ar-
rival, the others, half a generation younger, went
swiftly into a weird mode of evasiveness toward
the new arrival. One kept up an exaggeratedly
motionless, wide-eyed staring at the pavement;
others launched into fingernail inspections of
one finger at a time along with studied skyward
scans, all the while exchanging brief glances
Scene from The Possessed Girl, by Menander, mosaic in Villa of Cicero, Pompeii, by Dioskourides of Samos, c. 100 bc.
among them that bordered on bottled-up
laughter. Why? It was beyond me. And now I
noticed that Burry was, so to speak, stirring in
his depths.
I knew him well enough now to sense
when some terrible remark was making its way
up from far below. Talk in the group continued,
but the offerings were oddly absentminded
now and dry, unseriously proffered remarks
chewed on vacantly like three-day-old pastries.
And the more arid their inventions the more
unveiled was the expectancy in those glances
directed toward Burry, who, after all, had been
their common mind, their wit and rule, the
imaginative source from which all of them,
from time to time, had sipped.
This was when I remembered another such
conclave of some months earlier when Burry
had parted from a group with some notable
remark, now forgotten—what he described to
me later as “a line to walk on.” One had to have
137
 a line to walk on; you couldn’t simply wave to
a group and say “See ya” or “Take care.” Given
a cohesive clique, the unspoken code allowed
that they might all disband and melt away if
they did so together, but a man departing alone
from a still extant group had to be propelled by
a line of at least some distinction or risk hav-
ing done a flat exit. In this case, Youngman had
somehow, without a word spoken, set himself
up for a challenge by the whole irregularly
employed cohort as he stood there in his ex-
c. 1985: United States
swatting flies
I had a lot of trouble early on, being one of
the first women comedians. If there was a
group of three or more guys, I was pretty sure
I was gonna get heckled by them. It was just
par for the course. And I had a lot of trouble
with that. Another comedian, a male, gave
me a really good idea for when I got heckled.
He said, “With guys like that, you have to go
for the jugular.” So when guys would heckle
me, my inevitable response would always be
“So, guys, where are the girls tonight?” And it
would turn the whole discussion around, be-
cause it was like, “Oh, you’re guys who have
no dates.” So that would spin it around, and
then, “Oh, I guess they’re parking the car,
huh?” And that would shut them right up,
because I went to the part of their ego that
they didn’t want to be magnified at that point,
which was, “Oh, you’re guys here alone, with
no dates. Okay, so that’s why you’re picking
on the female comedians.” What I came to
see is that when you perform, the audience
is very fair. The heckler gets as much room
as you do, which I’m surprised about, but
they want to see that gladiator kind of at-
mosphere. They enjoy that. So I had to learn
to let the heckler have his day—and then
squash him.
Carol Leifer, from an interview in We Killed:
The Rise of Women in American Comedy.
Leifer started performing standup comedy in the late
1970s along with Paul Reiser, David Letterman,
and Jerry Seinfeld. She wrote for Saturday Night
Live and Seinfeld and published When You Lie
About Your Age, The Terrorists Win in 2009.
That same year, Leifer said, “I recently became vegan
because I felt that as a Jewish lesbian, I wasn’t part
of a small enough minority.”
138  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
pensive, wild suit as green as grass and idiotic
tie, his beringed fingers, and the teeming self-
satisfaction of his upholstered-back-arching
manner of standing there with that untrou-
bled smile on his face.
Like sun bursting through fog, the moment
had come. Burry, who happened to be standing
next to Youngman, reached over and just barely
touched the sleeve of the green plaid suit and
asked, “Is this real, Henny?” The crowd held its
breath. Burry had delivered his line to walk on,
and it was unanswerable, implying several insults
at once: that garish as it was, the suit might eas-
ily be a clownish stage costume Youngman had
decided to wear in the street, possibly in order to
get civilians to ask him if he was in show busi-
ness; even worse, that the taste the suit revealed
was similar to that in Youngman’s humor; and
finally that it was time for the gathering to break
up, to flee under the sheer menace of this green
plaid, which was on par with Milton Berle’s act
and no longer tolerable to behold.
Youngman’s mouth began to open like a
grouper nibbling coral, but nothing came out.
A universal sigh seemed to emanate from the
company, and the tension was gone; they had
prevailed. And before anyone could stop him or
top him, Burry was laboring his hunched way
down the street. The group disintegrated into
their phone booths but not without politely
offering farewells to Youngman, who, as was
customary at such moments, affected to have
noticed no put-down, no ripple in the smooth
flow of a successful afternoon.
I was not finished with Youngman, though
it took six decades for us to meet again, if only
figuratively. An interviewer had asked, among
other questions, if I watched television, and
I said I didn’t very much, because it was so
rarely funny. It needed comedians, I thought.
And who in my opinion was funny? the inter-
viewer asked. Without thinking, I said, “Henny
Youngman.” The man was greatly surprised.
“Why Henny Youngman?”
As it happened I had been on an airline
flight only the day before and had listened
through earphones to a comedy tape, and there

was Youngman saying, “My wife and I had an ar-
gument. She wanted a new fur coat, and I want-
ed to buy a car. So we compromised. We bought
the coat and hung it in the garage.” I thought of
Burry then—some sixty years after our sidewalk
conclave—and 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 Vari-
ety, 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. I’ve never known when Burry
The Triumph of Ridicule, by Basset, 1773.
died; once married I stopped hanging out at
Whelan’s and hardly saw him anymore. But I
do regret never having dared to tell him that I
thought Youngman, God help us, was funny.
From “A Line to Walk On.” Elsewhere in this essay,
Miller recalled how Burry read his early play The
Golden Years, about Montezuma and Hernán
Cortés, and warned, “No play with Indians ever
got anywhere…Them Spaniards; they gotta come on
with the helmets; you get six of them sitting down for
a meet, what do you do with the helmets?” The play
was never staged, although a television adaptation
of it appeared in 1992 after Miller cut “some purple
passages.” The author of Death of a Salesman and
The Crucible died at the age of eighty-nine in 2005.
139
 Towards the Corner, by Juan Muñoz, 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 ex-
plode it in the “Star Course”—Boston, 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
lecture’s 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
and made all the necessary corrections and
revisings.
This system gathered the whole tribe to-
gether in the city early in October, and we had
a lazy and sociable time there for several weeks.
We lived at Young’s hotel; we spent the days in
Redpath’s bureau smoking and talking shop; and
early in the evenings we scattered out among
the towns and made them indicate the good and
poor things in the new lectures. The country au-
dience is the difficult audience; a passage which
it will approve with a ripple will bring a crash
in the city. A fair success in the country means
a triumph in the city. And so, when we finally
stepped onto the great stage at Music Hall, we
already had the verdict in our pocket.
But sometimes lecturers who were new to
the business did not know the value of “trying it
on a dog,” and these were apt to come to Music
Hall with an untried product. There was one case
of this kind which made some of us very anxious
when we saw the advertisement. De Cordova—
humorist—he was the man we were troubled
about. I think he had another name, but I have
forgotten what it was. He had been printing
some dismally humorous things in the maga-
zines; they had met with a deal of favor and given
him a pretty wide name; and now he suddenly
came poaching upon our preserve, and took us
by surprise. Several of us felt pretty unwell—too
unwell to lecture. We got outlying engagements
postponed and remained in town. We took front
seats in one of the great galleries and waited. The
house was full. When De Cordova came on, he
was received with what we regarded as a quite
overdone and almost indecent volume of wel-
come. I think we were not jealous, nor even envi-
ous, but it made us sick anyway. When I found
he was going to read a humorous story—from a
manuscript—I felt better, and hopeful, but still
anxious. He had a Dickens-like arrangement
onstage of a tall gallows-frame adorned with
upholsteries, and he stood behind it under its
overhead row of hidden lights. The whole thing
had a quite stylish look and was rather impres-
sive. The audience was so sure that he was going
to be funny that they took a dozen of his first
utterances on trust and laughed cordially—so
cordially, indeed, that it was very hard for us to
bear, and we felt very much disheartened. Still I
tried to believe he would fail, for I saw that he
didn’t know how to read. Presently the laugh-
ter began to relax; then it began to shrink in
area; next to lose spontaneity; and next to show
gaps between—the gaps widened; they widened
more; more yet; still more. It was getting to be
almost all gaps and silences, with that untrained
and unlively voice droning through them. Then
the house sat dead and emotionless for a whole
ten minutes. We drew a deep sigh; it ought to
have been a sigh of pity for a defeated fellow but
it was not—for we were mean and selfish, like all
the human race, and it was a sigh of satisfaction
to see our unoffending brother fail.
He was laboring, now, and distressed; he
constantly mopped his face with his handker-
chief, and his voice and his manner became a
humble appeal for compassion, for help, for
charity, and it was a pathetic thing to see. But
the house remained cold and still, and gazed at
him curiously and wonderingly.
There was a great clock on the wall, high
up; presently the general gaze forsook the
reader and fixed itself upon the clock face. We
knew by dismal experience what that meant;
Laughter is the strong elastic fish, caught in
the Styx, springing and flapping about until
it dies. Laughter is the sudden handshake of
mystic violence and the Antichrist. Laughter is
the mind sneezing.
 —Wyndham Lewis, 1917
we knew what was going to happen, but it was
plain that the reader had not been warned, and
was ignorant. It was approaching nine, now—
half the house watching the clock, the reader
laboring on. At five minutes to nine, twelve
hundred people rose, with one impulse, and
swept like a wave down the aisles toward the
doors! The reader was like a person stricken
with a paralysis; he stood choking and gasping
for a few moments, gazing in a white horror at
that retreat, then he turned drearily away and
wandered from the stage with the groping and
uncertain step of one who walks in his sleep.
The management were to blame. They
should have told him that the last suburban cars
left at nine, and that half the house would rise
and go then, no matter who might be speaking
from the platform. I think De Cordova did not
appear again in public.
Mark Twain, from volume one of his Autobiography.
After giving his first organized lecture in 1866,
Twain continued the lucrative practice of reading,
speaking, and performing for audiences for thirty
years while also publishing, among other works,
Roughing It and The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn. In 1895 he published the essay “How to Tell a
Story,” in which he proffered, “The humorous story is
told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact
that he even dimly suspects that there is anything
funny about it.”
141
 1764: Ferney
a history of revisions
All councils are undoubtedly infallible—for
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 as-
sembled in 325 of the common era, after Con-
stantine 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 un-
worthy of sensible people.” The thing was to de-
termine 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 consub-
stantial 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 consubstan-
142  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
tial with the Father, God of God, light of light,
begotten and not made; we also believe in the
Holy Ghost.” The Holy Ghost, it must be ad-
mitted, was treated pretty offhandedly.
It is reported in the supplement of the
Council of Nicaea that the fathers, being very
perplexed to know which were the cryphal or
apocryphal books of the Old and New Testa-
ments, put them all pell-mell on an altar, and the
books to be rejected fell to the ground. It is a pity
that this elegant procedure has not survived.
After the first Council of Nicaea, composed
of 317 infallible bishops, another was held at
Rimini, and this time the number of infallibles
was four hundred, not counting a big detach-
ment of about two hundred at Seleucia. These six
hundred bishops, after four months of quarrels,
unanimously deprived Jesus of his consubstan-
tiality. It has since been restored to him, except
among the Socinians—so everything is fine.
One of the great councils was that of Ephe-
sus in 431. Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople,
great persecutor of heretics, was himself con-
demned as a heretic for maintaining that in truth
Jesus was really God, but that his mother was not
absolutely the mother of God but the mother of
Jesus. It was St. Cyril who had Nestorius con-
demned, but then the partisans of Nestorius had
St. Cyril deposed in the same council: which
much embarrassed the Holy Ghost.
Note very carefully here, dear reader, that
the Gospel has never said a word about the
consubstantiality of the Word, nor about the
honor Mary had to be the mother of God, nor
about the other disputes which have caused in-
fallible councils to be assembled.
Eutyches was a monk who had much abused
Nestorius, whose heresy did not fall short of al-
leging that Jesus was two persons, which is ap-
palling. The better to contradict his adversary, the
monk asserted that Jesus had only one nature.
A certain Flavian, bishop of Constantinople,
maintained against him that it was absolutely
necessary for Jesus to have had two natures. A
numerous council was assembled at Ephesus in
449. This one was conducted with the quarter-
staff, like the little Council of Cirta in 355 and a
 The French and Italian Comic Actors of the Past Sixty Years and More, attributed to Verrio, 1670.
certain conference at Carthage. Flavian’s nature
became black and blue, and two natures were as-
signed to Jesus. At the Council of Chalcedon, in
451, Jesus was reduced to one nature.
I pass over councils held on account of
minute details, and come to the sixth general
council, of Constantinople, assembled to deter-
mine precisely whether Jesus, having only one
nature, had two wills. It will be realized how
important this is in order to please God.
This council was called by Constantine the
bearded, just as all the others had been by the
preceding emperors. The legates of the bishop
of Rome sat on the left, the patriarchs of Con-
stantinople and Antioch on the right. I do not
know whether the Roman toadies claim the
left to be the place of honor. Be this as it may,
Jesus obtained two wills from this affair.
The first great council called by a pope was
the first Lateran, in 1139. About a thousand
bishops were there, but almost nothing was ac-
complished in it, except that those who said that
the church was too rich were anathemized.
In 1245 took place the general council of
Lyons, then an imperial city, during which Pope
Innocent IV excommunicated Emperor Fred-
erick II, and in consequence deposed him, and
forbade him fire and water. It was in this council
that the cardinals were given red hats to remind
them that they must bathe in the blood of the
emperor’s supporters. This council brought about
the destruction of the house of Swabia and led
to thirty years of anarchy in Italy and Germany.
In 1414 was held the great Council of
Constance, which contented itself with depos-
ing Pope John XXIII, convicted of a thousand
crimes, and in which John Huss and Jerome of
Prague were burned for being obstinate, since
obstinacy is a much greater crime than murder,
rape, simony, and sodomy.
The great Council of Basel in 1431 was not
recognized in Rome because it deposed Pope
Eugene IV, who did not consent to be deposed.
Finally we have the great Council of Trent,
which does not have authority in France in
matters of discipline. However, its dogma is
unquestionable, since the Holy Ghost came
every week from Rome to Trent in the courier’s
trunk, according to Fra Paolo Sarpi, but Fra
Paolo Sarpi smelled a little of heresy.
Voltaire, from A Philosophical Dictionary. The
philosopher and satirist spent two years in England in
the 1720s, becoming fluent in English and befriending
Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. In 1759 Voltaire
published Candide, his sendup of philosophical
optimism, and relocated to Ferney, close to France’s
border with Switzerland, where he assembled his
dictionary. It is said that when the poet Jean-Baptiste
Rousseau sent his recently completed “Ode to Posterity”
to Voltaire for his reaction, Voltaire responded, “I do not
think this poem will reach its destination.”
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 God’s 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 em-
brace 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
from everybody else in this affair, and what is
it about me that has pleased you?” “Didn’t I tell
you not to talk too much?” she said. “Be quiet
and come with me.” She then turned back and
my brother followed her, hoping to see what
she had described. They entered a spacious
house with many servants, and after she had
taken him from the bottom to the top of it, he
saw that it was an elegant mansion. When the
members of the household saw him, they asked,
“Who has brought you here?” “Don’t talk to
him,” said the old woman, “and don’t worry
him. He is a craftsman and we need him.”
She then took him to a beautifully decorated
room, as lovely as any eye had ever seen. When
they entered, the women there got up, welcomed
him, and made him sit beside them. Immediately
he heard a great commotion, and in came maids,
in the middle of whom was a girl like the moon
on the night it comes to the full. My brother
turned to look at her and then got up and made
his obeisance. She welcomed him, telling him to
sit down, and after he had done this, she went

Body Talk
First uses according to the Oxford English Dictionary
• 1560:
Clicket gate
• c. 1300: Buttocks • 1398: Semen
• 1568:
Fucking
• c. 1300: Pintle • 1390: Nature • 1480: Semence

• 1290: Seed • 1440: Fist • 1552:

To break
• 1250: Fart wind
• 1325: Cunt • 1405: Let flee
• 1480: Melling
1200

1300

1400

1500

• 1541:
• 1450: Kind Virile member
• c. 1300: Swiving
• 1475: Rump • c. 1555:
Prick
• c. 1350: Pillicock • 1483: Copulation
• 1297: Fundament • 1549:
• 1400: Carnal knowing Let a scape

• 1553:
Tool
• 1544:
Legend: Fart Penis Vagina Sexual Intercourse Buttocks Occupying

144  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
 up to him and said, “May God honor you, is all
well with you?” “Very well indeed,” replied my
brother. Then she ordered food to be brought,
and a delicious meal was produced for him. She
sat and joined him in eating it, but all the while
she could not stop laughing, although whenever
he looked at her, she turned away to her maids as
though she was laughing at them.
She made a show of affection for him and
joked with him while he, donkey that he is, un-
derstood nothing. He was so far under the influ-
ence of desire that he thought that the girl was
in love with him and that she would allow him
his wish. After they had finished eating, wine
was produced, and then ten maids like moons
came with stringed lutes in their hands and they
started to sing with great emotion. Overcome by
delight, my brother took a glass from the girl’s
hand and drained it before standing up. The
girl then drank a glass. “Good health,” said my
brother, and he made her another obeisance. She
then gave him a second glass to drink, but when
he did this, she slapped him on the nape of his
• 1653: Crack
• 1674: Egg fry
• 1578: Penis
• 1772: Shagging
• 1594: Foist
• 1708: Frigging
• 1623: Crepitate • 1794: Bottom
1600
1700
• 1602: Mawkin
• 1618: Cock • 1682: Vagina
• 1675: Bumfiddle
• 1594: Crupper
• 1753: Sexual Intercourse
• 1640: Manhood
• 1756: Moon
• 1635: Nature’s treasury
• 1627: (To play at) Hot cockles
neck. At that my brother left the room as fast as
he could, but the old woman followed him and
started winking at him, as if to tell him to go
back. So back he went, and when the girl told
him to sit down, he sat without a word. She then
slapped him again on the nape of his neck, and
not content with that, she ordered all her maids
to slap him. All the while he was saying to the
old woman, “I have never seen anything finer
than this,” while the old woman was exclaiming
to her mistress that that was enough.
But the maids went on slapping him un-
til he was almost unconscious. When he had
to get up to answer the call of nature, the old
woman caught up with him and said, “A little
endurance and you will get what you want.”
“How long do I have to endure,” he asked, “now
that I have been slapped almost unconscious?”
“When she gets drunk,” the old woman told
him, “you will get what you want.” So my
brother went back and sat down in his place.
All the maids stood up and their mistress told
them to perfume my brother and to sprinkle
• 1890: Spunk
• 1851: Rear end • 1914: Jelly roll
• 1897: Roar
• 1967: Scum
• 1955: Kootch
• 1891: Dick
• 1927: Poontang
• 1927: Beaver
1800
1900
2014
• 1930: Nookie
• 1823: Ultimatum
• 1896: Mattress jig
• 1879: John Thomas
• 1935: Bim
• 1930: Ass
• 1904: Snatch
• 1785: Cock alley
• 1899: Jism
145
 rosewater over his face. When they had done
this, the girl said, “May God bring you honor.
You have entered my house and endured the
condition I imposed. Whoever disobeys me, I
expel, but whoever endures reaches his goal.” “I
am your slave, lady,” said my brother, “and you
hold me in the palm of your hand.” “Know,” she
replied, “that God has made me passionately
fond of amusement, and those who indulge me
in this get what they seek.”
On her orders, the maids sang with loud
voices until all present were filled with delight.
She then said to one of them, “Take your mas-
ter, do what needs to be done to him, and then
bring him back immediately.” The maid took
my brother, little knowing what was going to be
Laughter is an affection arising from the
sudden transformation of a strained expectation
into nothing.
 —Immanuel Kant, 1790
done to him. He was joined by the old woman,
who said, “Be patient—you will not have to
wait long.” His face cleared, and he went with
the maid heeding the words of the old woman
telling him that patience would bring him his
desire. He then asked, “What is the maid going
to do?” “No harm will come to you,” said the old
woman, “may I be your ransom. She is going to
dye your eyebrows and pluck out your mustache.”
“Dye on the eyebrows can be washed away,” said
my brother, “but plucking out a mustache is a
painful business.” “Take care not to disobey her,”
said the old lady, “for her heart is fixed on you.”
So my brother patiently allowed his eyebrows
to be dyed and his mustache plucked. The maid
went to her mistress and told her of this, but her
mistress said, “There is one thing more. You have
to shave his chin so as to leave him beardless.”
The maid returned to tell my brother of
her mistress’ order, and he, the fool, objected,
“But won’t this make me a public disgrace?”
The old woman explained, “She only wants
to do that to you so that you may be smooth
and beardless, with nothing on your face that
146  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
might prick her, for she has fallen most deeply
in love with you. So be patient, for you will get
what you want.” Patiently my brother submit-
ted to the maid and let his beard be shaved. The
girl then had him brought out, with his dyed
eyebrows, his shorn mustache, his shaven chin,
and his red face. At first, the lady recoiled from
him in alarm, but then she laughed until she
fell over. “My master,” she said, “you have won
me by your good nature.” Then she urged him
to get up and dance, which he did, and there
was not a cushion in the room that she did not
throw at him, while the maids began to pelt
him with oranges, lemons, and citrons, until he
fell fainting from the blows, the cuffs that he
had suffered on the back of his neck, and the
things that had been thrown at him.
“Now,” said the old woman, “you have
achieved your goal. There will be no more
blows, and there is only one thing left. It is a
habit of my mistress that, when she is drunk,
she will not let anyone have her until she has
stripped off her clothes, including her harem
trousers, and is entirely naked. Then she will
tell you to remove your own clothes and to
start running, while she runs in front of you
as though she was trying to escape from you.
You must follow her from place to place until
you have an erection, and she will then let you
take her.” She told him to strip, and he got up
in a daze and took off all his clothes until he
was naked.
“Get up now,” the lady told my brother, “and
when you start running, I’ll run too.” She, too,
stripped and said, “If you want me, then come
and get me.” Off she ran, with my brother follow-
ing. She started to go into one room after anoth-
er, before dashing off somewhere else, with my
brother behind her, overcome by lust, his penis
rampant, like a madman. In she went to a dark-
ened room, but when my brother ran in after her,
he trod on a thin board that gave way beneath
him, and before he knew what was happening, he
was in the middle of a lane in the market of the
leather sellers, who were calling their wares and
buying and selling. When they saw him in that
state, naked, with an erection, a shaven chin,
 John with Drawing of a Clown, by Francesco Caroto, c. 1520.
dyed eyebrows, and reddened cheeks, they cried
out against him, slapped him with their hands,
and started to beat him in his nakedness with
leather straps, until he fainted. Then they sat
him on a donkey and took him to the wali.
When the wali asked about him, they said, “He
fell down in this state from Shams al-Din’s
house.” The wali sentenced him to a hundred
lashes and banished him from Baghdad, but I
went out after him and brought him back in
secret. I have given him an allowance for his
food, but were it not for my sense of honor, I
could not put up with a man like him.
From The Thousand and One Nights. One of the
earliest mentions in Arabic of some of this collection’s
stories dates from a tenth-century work referring to a
grouping of legends from India, Greece, and Iran called
A Thousand Tales. In the early 1700s, French scholar
Antoine Galland worked from a fifteenth-century
Syrian version of the tales to produce the first Western
translation of Nights, supplementing it with oral and
written stories from other sources, such as those about
the seven voyages of a sailor named Sindbad.
147
 1905: Vienna
sigmund freud psychoanalyzes
the joke
It is easy to give an overview of the tendencies
present in jokes. Where a joke is not an end in
itself, i.e.‚ innocuous, it puts itself at the service
of two tendencies only, which can themselves
be merged into a single viewpoint; it is either a
hostile joke (used for aggression, satire, defense)
or it is an obscene joke (used to strip someone
naked). Again, we should note from the start
that the technical variety of the joke—whether
it is a verbal or an intellectual joke—bears no
relation to these two tendencies.
Laughter almost ever cometh of things most
disproportioned to ourselves and nature.
Laughter hath only a scornful tickling.
 —Philip Sidney, 1582
But it will take us longer to lay out the way
in which jokes serve these tendencies. In this in-
vestigation I would like to begin not with hostile
jokes but with obscene jokes. It is true, the latter
have been deemed worthy of study far less often,
as if a revulsion from their subject matter had
carried over to the object. However, let us not
be thrown off course by this, for straightaway we
are about to come upon a borderline kind of joke
which promises to throw light on more than one
dark point.
We know what is understood by bawdry:
deliberately emphasizing sexual facts and re-
lations by talking about them. However, this
definition is no more conclusive than any other.
A lecture on the anatomy of the sexual organs
or on the physiology of reproduction, despite
this definition, need not have a single point
of contact in common with bawdry. It is also
characteristic of bawdy talk that it is directed
at a particular person by whom the speaker is
sexually aroused and is meant to make them
aware of this arousal by listening to the bawdry
and so becoming sexually aroused themselves.
148  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
Instead of being aroused, the person might also
be made to feel shame or embarrassment, which
only implies a reaction against their arousal
and, in this roundabout way, an admission of
it. Bawdy talk, then, is in origin directed at
women and is to be regarded as the equivalent
of an attempt at seduction. So if a man in male
company enjoys telling or listening to bawdy
stories, the original situation—which cannot
be realized on account of social impediments—
is also imagined as well. Anyone who laughs at
the bawdy talk they have heard is laughing like
a spectator at an act of sexual aggression.
The sexual subject matter that forms the
content of bawdry includes more than what
is specific to either sex; over and above this, it
includes what the two sexes have in common
to which the feeling of shame extends, that is,
excremental subject matter in all its range. But
this is the range that sexual subject matter has in
childhood; in the imagination at this stage there
exists a latrine, as it were, where what is sexual
and what is excremental are distinguished badly
or not at all. Everywhere in the field of thinking
investigated by the psychology of neuroses, the
sexual still includes the excremental and is un-
derstood in the old, infantile, sense.
Bawdry is like an act of unclothing the
person of the different sex at whom it is di-
rected. By voicing the obscene words it forces
the person attacked to imagine the particular
part of the body or the act involved and shows
them that the aggressor himself is imagining it.
There is no doubt that the pleasure in gazing
on what is sexual revealed in its nakedness is
the original motive of bawdy talk.
In men a high degree of this urge persists
as a component of the libido and serves to in-
troduce the sex act. If this urge asserts itself
on the first approach to the woman, it has to
make use of speech for two reasons. First, to
lay claim to the woman, and second, because by
summoning up the idea the words spoken may
kindle the corresponding state of arousal in the
woman herself and waken her inclination to
passive exhibitionism. These words of solicita-
tion do not go as far as bawdry, but can pass
over into it. For in a situation where the woman
soon becomes willing, the obscene speech is
short-lived—it promptly gives way to a sexual
action. It is different if the woman’s willingness
cannot be counted on, and a defensive reaction
on her part makes its appearance instead. Then
the sexually arousing speech becomes—in the
form of bawdry—an end in itself; as the sexual
aggression is checked in its advance toward the
act, it lingers on the evocation of arousal and de-
rives pleasure from signs of it in the woman. In
doing so, the aggression probably also changes
character, in the same way as every movement
in the libido does when it meets an obstacle; it
becomes plainly hostile, cruel—that is, it calls
on the sadistic components of the sexual drive
for help against the obstacle.
The woman’s intransigence, then, is the
most immediate prerequisite for bawdry to de-
velop, though one which merely seems to imply
postponement, offering the prospect that fur-
ther efforts might not be in vain. The ideal case
of this kind of resistance on the woman’s part
occurs if another man, a third party, is present at
the same time, for then any immediate acquies-
cence from the woman is as good as out of the
question. This third party soon becomes very
important for the development of the bawdry,
but above all, we should not disregard the pres-
ence of the woman. Among country people or
in lower-class taverns, one can observe that it is
only when the barmaid or the landlady comes
on the scene that the bawdry gets going; the
opposite occurs only when we reach a higher
social level, and the presence of a female per-
son puts an end to the bawdry; the men save
this kind of conversation—which originally
presupposed the presence of a woman made
ashamed—until they are “among themselves.”
And so, gradually, instead of the woman, it is
the spectator or, in this case, the listener, who
becomes the target audience for the bawdry,
and this transformation already makes the
bawdry approach the character of a joke.
Banjo player on a street, c. 1920.
149
 Only when we rise into more cultivated so-
ciety do we find the addition of the formal re-
quirements 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 imagina-
tion 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 satisfac-
tion of a drive possible (be it lustful or hostile)
in the face of an obstacle in its way; it circum-
vents this obstacle and in doing so draws plea-
sure from a source that the obstacle had made
inaccessible. The obstacle in the way is actually
nothing other than woman’s 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 influ-
ence continues to have the effect of making the
men abashed. One may observe how men of a
higher social level are prompted by the pres-
ence of girls of a lower class to let their bawdy
jokes revert to simple bawdy talk.
The power that makes it difficult or impos-
sible for women, and to a lesser extent men, too,
to enjoy undisguised obscenity we call repression,
and we recognize in it the same psychical pro-
cess which in cases of serious psychological ill-
ness 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 fac-
tors in what are called the psychoneuroses. We
150  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
grant that higher culture and education have a
great influence on the development of repres-
sion, and we assume that under these conditions
a change in psychical organization comes about,
which could also be contributed by an inherited
disposition—with the result that what was once
felt to be agreeable now appears unacceptable
and is rejected with all the force of the psyche.
Through our culture’s work of repression, pri-
mary possibilities of enjoyment, now spurned by
the censorship within us, are lost. But all renun-
ciation is very difficult for the human psyche,
and so we find that tendentious jokes provide a
means of reversing the process of renunciation
and of regaining what was lost. When we laugh
at an indecent joke that is subtle, we are laugh-
ing at the same thing that causes the bumpkin
to laugh in a coarse obscenity; in both cases the
pleasure is drawn from the same source, but we
would not be capable of laughing at the coarse
obscenity—we would be ashamed, or it would
appear disgusting to us—we can only laugh
when the joke has come to our help.
The tendentious joke has other sources
of pleasure at its disposal than the innocuous
kind, where all the pleasure is somehow linked
to technique. We can also emphasize afresh
that in tendentious jokes we are not capable
of distinguishing by our feeling which share
of our pleasure has its source in technique, and
which in tendency. So we do not in the strict sense
know what we are laughing at. In the case of all
obscene jokes, we are subject to gross illusions
of judgment as to how “good” the joke is, inso-
far as this depends on formal requirements; the
technique of these jokes is often pretty feeble,
the laughter they provoke tremendous.
From The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious.
Shortly before he published his first major work, The
Interpretation of Dreams, Freud sent a copy of it
to his friend Wilhelm Fleiss, who suggested that the
recounted dreams were too humorous. Freud replied,
“All dreamers are equally intolerably witty, and they
are so because they are under pressure; the straight path
is barred to them…The apparent wit of all unconscious
processes is intimately linked to the theory of the witty
and the comic.” Six years later Freud published his
work on humor, relating “joke work” to “dream work.”
 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. Vita Sackville-West on Max Beerbohm
Harry Truman on Adlai Stevenson A shallow, affected, self-conscious
No better than a regular sissy. fribble—so there.

W. B. Yeats on Wilfred Owen

Unworthy of the poets’ corner
of a country newspaper. Pauline Kael on Anthony Quinn
Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman Needs a personality transplant.
Every word she writes is a lie,
including and and the.

Alfred Kazin on William Faulkner

Curiously dull, furiously commonplace, Thomas Carlyle on Ralph Waldo Emerson
and often meaningless. Henry James on Thomas Carlyle
The same old sausage, fizzing and A hoary-headed and toothless baboon.
sputtering in its own grease.

William Faulkner on Henry James

Ralph Waldo Emerson on Algernon Charles Swinburne
One of nicest old ladies I ever met.
A leper and a mere sodomite.

David Niven on Jayne Mansfield

Miss United Dairies herself. Algernon Charles Swinburne on Lord Byron Lord Byron on William Cowper
The most affected of sensualists and the most That maniacal Calvinist and coddled poet.
pretentious of profligates.

Joan Mitchell on Helen Frankenthaler Winston Churchill on Charles de Gaulle

That tampon painter.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Edward Gibbon
Gibbon’s style is detestable; but is not the
worst thing about him.
Edward Gibbon on Samuel Johnson Like a female llama surprised in her bath.
Greedy of every pretense to hate
and persecute those who dissent
from his creed.
Thomas Babington Macaulay on Socrates
The more I read about him, the less I wonder
that they poisoned him.

Samuel Johnson on Oliver Goldsmith

Cecil Beaton on Evelyn Waugh
He goes on without knowing how he is to get off.
Died of snobbery.
Margaret Kendal on Sarah Bernhardt
A great actress, from the waist down.

Cyril Connolly on George Orwell

He could not blow his nose without
moralizing on the state of the
handkerchief industry. Ava Gardner on Clark Gable
George Orwell on W. H. Auden The kind of guy who, if you say, “Hiya, Clark,
The kind of person who is always how are yah?” is stuck for an answer.
somewhere else when the trigger
Igor Stravinsky on Benjamin Britten is pulled.
Not a composer. A kleptomaniac.

Dwight Macdonald on Doris Day

Zelda Fitzgerald on Ernest Hemingway As wholesome as a bowl of cornflakes
A pansy with hair on his chest. and at least as sexy.

Clifton Fadiman on Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein on Ezra Pound Ezra Pound on G. K. Chesterton
A past master in making nothing happen A village explainer, excellent if you were Like a vile scum on a pond.
very slowly. a village, but if you were not, not.

151
 2002: Somers, NY
i shall not compare thee

You are the bread and the knife,

The crystal goblet and the wine…
  —Jacques Crickillon
You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.
However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.
It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general’s head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.
I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.
I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman’s teacup.
But don’t worry, I’m not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine.

Billy Collins, “Litany.” Collins is the author of numerous books of

poetry, among them The Art of Drowning, Picnic, Lightning, and
Ballistics. The U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003, he once said in
an interview, “One of the differences between being a novelist and a
poet is that the novelist kind of moves into your house. I mean, it takes
three days or three weeks to read a novel. I think of the novelist as a
houseguest. The poet is more someone who just appears. You know, a
door opens, and there’s the poet.”

152  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
1963: Los Angeles
lenny bruce loses the crowd
“Are you a sick comic?”
“Why do they call you a sick comic?”
“Do you mind being called a sick comic?”
It is impossible to label me. I develop,
on the average, four minutes of new material
a night, constantly growing and changing my
point of view; I am heinously guilty of the par-
adoxes I assail in our society.
Portrait of the Artist with the Features of a Mocker (detail), by Joseph Ducreux, c. 1793.
The reason for the label sick comic is the
lack of creativity among journalists and critics.
There is a comedy actor from England with a
definite Chaplinesque quality. “Mr. Guinness,
do you mind being called a Chaplinesque com-
ic?” There is a comedian by the name of Pe-
ter Sellers who has a definite Guinnessesque
quality. “Mr. Sellers, why do they say you have a
Guinnessesque quality?”
The motivation of the interviewer is not
to get a terse, accurate answer, but rather to
write an interesting, slanted article within the
153
 boundaries of the editorial outlook of his par-
ticular 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 co-
median who just got up there and showed every-
body a good time and didn’t preach, didn’t 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 1940s—the honey-
moon 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 woman’s
head straining out the other end, hysterically
The Storyteller, by Eugenio Zampighi, c. 1900.
154  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
screaming, “George!”—whatever happened to
all this wholesomeness?
What happened to the healthy comedian
who at least had good taste?…Ask the come-
dians who used to do the harelip jokes, or the
moron jokes—“The moron who went to the
orphans’ picnic,” etc.—the healthy comedians
who told good-natured jokes that found Pat and
Abie and Rastus outside of St. Peter’s gate all
listening to those angels harping in stereotype.
Whatever happened to Joe E. Lewis? His
contribution to comedy consisted of returning
Bacchus to his godlike pose with an implicit
social message: “If you’re going to be a swinger
and fun to be with, always have a glass of booze
in your hand; even if you don’t become part
swinger, you’re sure to end up with part liver.”
Whatever happened to Henny Youngman?
He involved himself with a nightly psychodrama
named Sally, or sometimes Laura. She possessed
features not sexually but economically stimulat-
ing. Mr. Youngman’s Uglivac crossfiled and clas-
sified diabolic deformities definitively. “Her nose
was so big that every time she sneezed…” “She
was so bowlegged that every time…” “One leg
was shorter than the other…” And Mr. Young-
man’s mutant reaped financial harvest for him.
Other comedians followed suit with Cockeyed
Jennies, et al., until the Ugly Girl routines be-
came classics. I assume this fondness for atrophy
gave the nightclub patron a sense of well-being.
And whatever happened to Jerry Lewis?
His neorealistic impression of the Japanese
male captured all the subtleties of the Japanese
physiognomy. The bucktoothed malocclusion
was caricatured to surrealistic proportions un-
til the teeth matched the blades that extended
from Ben-Hur’s chariot. Highlighting the ab-
sence of the iris with Coke-bottle-thick lenses,
this satire has added to the fanatical devotion
which Japanese students have for the United
States. Just ask Eisenhower.
Whatever happened to Milton Berle? He
brought transvestitism to championship bowl-
ing and upset a hardcore culture of dykes that
control the field. From Charlie’s Aunt and Some
Like it Hot and Milton Berle, the pervert has
been taken out of Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia
Sexualis and made into a sometimes-fun fag.
Berle never lost his sense of duty to the public,
though. Although he gave homosexuals a peek
out of the damp cellar of unfavorable public
opinion, he didn’t go all the way; he left a stigma
of menace on his fag—“I sweah I’w kiw you.”
I was labeled a “sicknik” by Time maga-
zine, whose editorial policy still finds humor
in a person’s physical shortcomings: “Shelly
Berman has a face like a hastily sculptured
hamburger.” The healthy comic would never
offend…unless you happen to be fat, bald,
skinny, deaf, or blind. The proxy vote from
purgatory has not yet been counted.
Let’s say I’m working at the Crescendo on
the coast. There’ll be Arlene Dahl with some
New Wave writer from Algiers, and on the
whole it’s a cooking kind of audience. But I’ll
finish a show, and some guy will come up to me
and say, “I—I’m a club owner, and I’d like you
to work for me. It’s a beautiful club. You ever
work in Milwaukee? Lots of people like you
there, and you’ll really do great. You’ll kill ’em.
You’ll have a lot of fun. Do you bowl?”
The only thing is, I know that in those clubs
between Los Angeles and New York the people
in the audience are a little older than me. The
most I can say to people over fifty or fifty-five
is, “Thank you, I’ve had enough to eat.”
I get to Milwaukee, and the first thing
that frightens me to death is that they’ve got
a six-thirty dinner show…six-thirty in the
Some things are privileged from jest—namely,
religion, matters of state, great persons, all
men’s present business of importance, and any
case that deserves pity.
 —Francis Bacon, 1597
afternoon and people go to a nightclub! It’s
not even dark out yet. I don’t wanna go in the
house—it’s not dark yet, man. If the dinner
show is held up, it’s only because the Jell-O’s
not hard.
The people look familiar, but I’ve never been
to Milwaukee before. Then I realize—these are
the Grayline Sightseeing Bus Tours before they
leave—this is where they live. They’re like forty-
year-old chicks with prom gowns on.
They don’t laugh, they don’t heckle, they just
stare at me in disbelief. And there are walkouts,
walkouts, every night, walkouts. The owner says
to me, “Well, I never saw you do that religious
bit…and those words you use!” The chef is con-
fused—the desserts aren’t moving.
I go to the men’s room, and I see kids in
there. Kids four years old, six years old. These
kids are in awe of this men’s room. It’s the first
time they’ve ever been in a place their mother
isn’t allowed in. Not even for a minute. Not
even to get something is she allowed in there.
And the kids stay in there for hours.
“Come out of there!”
“No. Uh-uh.”
“I’m going to come in and get you.”
“No, you’re not allowed in here, ’cause every-
body’s doing, making wet in here.”
155
 In between shows I’m a walker, and I’m
getting nudgy and nervous. The owner decides
to cushion me with his introduction: “Ladies
and gentlemen, the star of our show, Lenny
Bruce, who, incidentally, is an ex-GI and, uh,
a hell of a good performer, folks, and a great
kidder, know what I mean? It’s all a bunch of
silliness up here, and he doesn’t mean what he
says. He kids about the pope and about the
Jewish religion, too, and the colored people and
the white people—it’s all a silly, make-believe
world. And he’s a hell of a nice guy, folks. He
was at the Veterans’ Hospital today doing a
There are two things at which I cannot choose
but laugh: a woman reading Sanskrit and a
man singing a song.
 —King Shūdraka, c. 450
show for the boys. And here he is—his mom’s
out here tonight, too, she hasn’t seen him in a
couple of years—she lives here in town…Now,
a joke is a joke, right, folks? What the hell. I
wish that you’d try to cooperate. And whoever
has been sticking ice picks in the tires outside,
he’s not funny. Now Lenny may kid about nar-
cotics, homosexuality, and things like that…”
And he gets walkouts.
I get off the floor, and a waitress says to
me, “Listen, there’s a couple, they want to meet
you.” It’s a nice couple, about fifty years old. The
guy asks me, “You from New York?”
“Yes.”
“I recognized that accent.” And he’s look-
ing at me, with a sort of searching hope in his
eyes, and then he says, “Are you Jewish?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing in a place like this?”
“I’m passing.”
He says, “Listen, I know you show people
eat all that crap on the road…” (Of course.
What did you eat tonight? Crap on the road.)
And they invite me to have a nice dinner at
their house the next day. He writes out the ad-
dress, you know, with the ballpoint pen on the
wet cocktail napkin.
156  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
That night I go to my hotel—I’m stay-
ing 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 shoes—and I read a little, write a
little. I finally get to sleep about seven o’clock
in the morning.
The phone rings at nine o’clock.
“Hello, hello, hello, this is the Sheckners—
the people from last night. We didn’t wake you
up, did we?”
“No, I always get up at nine in the morn-
ing. I like to get up about ten hours before work
so I can brush my teeth and get some coffee.
It’s good you got me up. I probably would have
overslept otherwise.”
“Listen, why we called you—we want to
find out what you want to eat.”
“Oh, anything. I’m not a fussy eater, really.”
I went over there that night, and I do eat any-
thing—anything but what they had. Liver. And
Brussels sprouts. That’s really a double threat.
And the conversation was on the level of,
“Is it true about Liberace?”
That’s all I have to hear, then I really start
to lay it on them: “Oh, yeah, they’re all queer
out there in Hollywood. All of them. Rin Tin
Tin’s 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, that’s a very lovely closet,
that’s 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. “That’s Morty;
he lost a lot of weight.”
The trouble is, in these towns—Milwaukee;
Lima, Ohio—there’s nothing else to do, except
look at stars. In the daytime, you go to the park
to see the cannon, and you’ve had it.
One other thing—you can hang out at
the Socony Gas Station between shows and
get gravel in your shoes. Those night atten-
dants really swing.
 Buster Keaton, film still from The Cameraman, directed by Edward Sedgwick, 1928.
“Lemme see the grease rack go up again,”
I say. “Can I try it?”
“No, you’ll break it.”
“Can I try on your black-leather bow tie?”
“No. Hey, Lenny, you wanna see a clean
toilet? You been in a lot of service stations,
right? Did you ever see one this immaculate?”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Now don’t lie to me.”
“Would I lie to you about something like
that?”
“I thought you’d like it, because I know
you’ve seen everything in your travels—”
“It’s gorgeous. In fact, if anyone ever says
to me, ‘Where is there a clean toilet, I’ve been
searching forever,’ I’ll say, ‘Take 101 into 17 up
through 50,’ and I’ll just send ’em right here.”
“You could eat off the floor, right Lenny?”
“You certainly could.”
“Want a sandwich?”
“No thanks.”
Then I start fooling around with his con-
dom-vending machine.
“You sell many of these here?”
“I don’t know.”
“You fill up the thing here?”
“No, a guy comes around.”
“You wear condoms ever?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you wear them all the time?”
“No.”
“Do you have one on now?”
“No.”
“Well, what do you do if you have to tell
some chick, ‘I’m going to put a condom on
now’—it’s going to kill everything.”
I ask the gas-station attendant if I can put
one on.
“Are you crazy or something?”
“No, I figure it’s something to do. We’ll
both put condoms on. We’ll take a picture.”
“Now, get the hell out of here, you nut, you.”
I can’t help it, though. Condoms are so
dumb. They’re sold for the prevention of love.
As far as chicks are concerned, these small
towns are dead. The cab drivers ask you where
157
 to get laid. It’s really a hang-up. Every chick I
meet, the first thing they hit me with is, “Look,
I don’t know what kind of a girl you think I
am, but I know you show people, you’ve got all
those broads down in the dressing room, and
they’re all ready for you, and I’m not gonna…”
“That’s a lie, there’s nobody down there!”
“Never mind, I know you get all you want.”
“I don’t!”
That’s what everybody thinks, but there’s
nobody in the dressing room. That’s why Frank
Sinatra never gets any. It’s hip not to ball him.
1974: London
toning it down
Dear Mike,
The censor’s representative, Tony Kerpel,
came along to Friday’s screening at Twicken-
ham, and he gave us his opinion of the film’s
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 in-
crease the audience. (AA is 14 and over, and
A is 5–14.)
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 Je-
sus Christ out, and lose “Oh, fuck off,” but to
retain “fart in your general direction,” “casta-
nets 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
group’s 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.
158  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
“Listen, now, they all ball him, I’m not gonna
ball him.” And the poor schmuck really sings
“Only the Lonely.”
It’s a real hang-up, being divorced when
you’re on the road. Suppose it’s three o’clock
in the morning: I’ve just done the last show, I
meet a girl, and I like her, and suppose I have a
record I’d like her to hear, or I just want to talk
to her—there’s no lust, no carnal image there—
but because where I live is a dirty word, I can’t
say to her, “Would you come to my hotel?”
And every healthy comedian has given
motel such a dirty connotation that I couldn’t
ask my grandmother to go to a motel, say I
wanted to give her a Gutenberg Bible at three
in the morning.
The next day at two in the afternoon,
when the Kiwanis Club meets there, then hotel
is clean. But at three o’clock in the morning,
Jim…Christ, where the hell can you live that’s
clean? You can’t say hotel to a chick, so you try
to think, what won’t offend? What is a clean
word to society? What is a clean word that
won’t offend any chick?
Trailer. That’s it, trailer.
“Will you come to my trailer?”
“All right, there’s nothing dirty about trail-
ers. Trailers are hunting and fishing and Salem
cigarettes. Yes, of course, I’ll come to your trail-
er. Where is it?”
“Inside my hotel room.”
Why can’t you just say, “I want to be with
you and hug and kiss you.” No, it’s “Come up
while I change my shirt.” Or coffee. “Let’s have
a cup of coffee.”
In fifty years, coffee will be another dirty
word.
From How to Talk Dirty and Influence People.
Born Leonard Alfred Schneider in 1925, Bruce was
dishonorably discharged from the Navy in 1946 after
falsely claiming to possess homosexual urges. “A lot of
people say to me, ‘Why did you kill Christ?’” he once
said. “I dunno…It was one of those parties, got out of
hand.” After he was arrested on charges of obscenity
in 1964, Allen Ginsberg formed the Emergency
Committee Against the Harassment of Lenny Bruce.
The comedian was sentenced to four months in jail; he
died two years later from a morphine overdose.
c. 105: Rome
more in anger than in sorrow

When a flabby eunuch marries, when well-born girls go crazy

For pig-sticking upcountry, bare-breasted and spear in fist;
When the barber who rasped away at my youthful beard has risen
To challenge good society with his millions; when Crispinus—
That Delta-bred house slave, silt-washed down by the Nile—
Now hitches his shoulders under Tyrian purple, airs
A thin gold ring in summer on his sweaty finger
(“My dear, I couldn’t bear to wear my heavier jewels”),
Why then, it is harder not to be writing satires; for who
Could endure this monstrous city, however callous at heart,
And swallow his wrath? Look: here comes a brand-new litter,
Crammed with its corpulent owner, some chiseling advocate.
Who’s next? An informer. He turned in his noble patron,
And soon he’ll have gnawed away that favorite bone of his,
The aristocracy. Lesser informers dread him, grease
His palm with ample bribes, while the wives of trembling actors
A Caricature Group, by John Hamilton Mortimer, c. 1766.

159
 Grease him the other way. Today we are elbowed aside
By men who earn legacies in bed, who rise to the top
Via that quickest, most popular route—the satisfied desires
Of some rich old matron. Each lover will get his cut,
A twelfth share in the estate, or eleven-twelfths, depending
On the size of his—services rendered. I suppose he deserves
Some recompense for all that sweat and exertion: he looks
As pale as the man who steps barefoot on a snake—or is waiting
His turn to declaim, at Lyons, in Caligula’s competitions.
Need I tell you how anger burns in my heart when I see
The bystanders jostled back by a mob of bravos
Whose master has first debauched his ward, and later
Defrauded the boy as well? The courts condemned him,
But the verdict was a farce. Who cares for reputation
If he keeps his cash? A provincial governor, exiled
For extortion, boozes and feasts all day, basks cheerfully
In the wrathful eye of the gods; it’s still his province,
After winning the case against him, that feels the pinch.
Are not such themes well worthy of Horace’s pen? Should I
Not attack them, too? Must I stick to the usual round
Of Hercules’ labors, what Diomede did, the bellowing
Of that thingummy in the labyrinth, or the tale of the flying
carpenter, and how his son went splash in the sea?
Will these suffice in an age when each pimp of a husband
Takes gifts from his own wife’s lover—if she is barred in law
From inheriting legacies—and, while they paw each other,
Tactfully stares at the ceiling, or snores, wide awake, in his wine?
Will these suffice, when the young blade who has squandered
His family fortune on racing stables still reckons to get
Command of a cohort? Just watch him lash his horses
Down the Flaminian Way like Achilles’ charioteer,
Reins bunched in one hand, showing off to his mistress
Who stands beside him, wrapped in his riding cloak!
Don’t you want to cram whole notebooks with scribbled invective
When you stand at the corner and see some forger carried past
On the necks of six porters, lounging back like Maecenas
In his open litter? A counterfeit seal, a will, a mere scrap
Of paper—these were enough to convert him to wealth and honor.
Do you see that distinguished lady? She has the perfect dose
For her husband—old wine with a dash of parching toad’s blood.
Locusta’s a child to her; she trains her untutored neighbors
To ignore all unkind rumors, to stalk through angry crowds
With their black and bloated husbands before them on the hearse.
If you want to be someone today you must nerve yourself
For deeds that could earn you an island exile, or years in jail.

160  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
 The Journalists, by Hannah Höch, 1925.

Honesty’s praised, but honest men freeze. Wealth springs from crime:
Landscape gardens, palaces, furniture, antique silver—
Those cups embossed with prancing goats—all, all are tainted.
Who can sleep easy today? If your greedy daughter-in-law
Is not being seduced for cash, it’ll be your bride: mere schoolboys
Are adulterers now. Though talent be wanting, yet
Indignation will drive me to verse, such as I—or any scribbler—
May still command. All human endeavors, men’s 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 Domitian’s
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
the reply churlish

That sovereign of insufferables Oscar Wilde

[London, page 82] has ensued with his opulence
of twaddle and his penury of sense. He has
mounted his hind legs and blown crass vapidi-
ties through the bowel of his neck, to the capital
edification of circumjacent fools and foolesses,
fooling with their foolers. He has tossed off the
top of his head and uttered himself in copious
overflows of ghastly bosh. The ineffable dunce
has nothing to say and says it—says it with a
liberal embellishment of bad delivery, embroi-
dering it with reasonless vulgarities of attitude,
gesture, and attire. There never was an impos-
tor so hateful, a blockhead so stupid, a crank so
variously and offensively daft. Therefore is the
she-fool enamored of the feel of his tongue in
her ear to tickle her understanding.
The limpid and spiritless vacuity of this The dwarf Yaksa, from the Pitalkhora Caves,
intellectual jellyfish is in ludicrous contrast Maharashtra, India, c. 100 bc.
with the rude but robust mental activities that
he came to quicken and inspire. Not only has fly with eagles. He dares to set his tongue to the
he no thought, but no thinker. His lecture is honored name of John Keats. He is the leader,
mere verbal ditchwater—meaningless, trite, quoth’a, of a renaissance in art, this man who
and without coherence. It lacks even the nas- cannot draw—of a revival of letters, this man
tiness that exalts and refines his verse. More- who cannot write! This little and looniest of a
over, it is obviously his own; he had not even brotherhood of simpletons, whom the wicked
the energy and independence to steal it. And wits of London, haling him dazed from his ob-
so, with a knowledge that would equip an idiot scurity, have crowned and crucified as King of
to dispute with a cast-iron dog, and eloquence the Cranks, has accepted the distinction in stu-
to qualify him for the duties of a caller on a pid good faith, and our foolish people take him
hog ranch, and an imagination adequate to the at his word. Mr. Wilde is pinnacled upon a daz-
conception of a tomcat, when fired by contem- zling eminence, but the earth still trembles to
plation of a fiddle string, this consummate and the dull thunder of the kicks that set him up.
starlike youth, missing everything his heaven-
appointed functions and offices, wanders about Ambrose Bierce, from his Prattle column in The
Wasp. Bierce published his denunciation four days
posing as a statute of himself and, like the sun-
after Wilde delivered a lecture at Platt’s Hall in San
smitten image of Memnon, emitting meaning- Francisco as part of his American speaking tour on
less murmurs in the blaze of women’s eyes. He aestheticism. A prolific newspaperman for decades,
makes me tired. Bierce began to publish “Devil’s Dictionary” entries
in 1881 and contradicted the editorial policy of his
And this gawky gowk has the divine ef- employer William Randolph Hearst by condemning
frontery to link his name with those of Algernon the Spanish-American War in 1898. He disappeared
Charles Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and in 1913: he is thought to have been traveling to
Mexico to lend a hand in Pancho Villa’s revolution.
William Morris—this dunghill he-hen would

162  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
c. 1650: Paris
sticks and stones

Cyrano: If anyone has any observations

To make about the center of my face,
Please note that if he’s of sufficient breeding
I make my mark with steel and not with leather,
And further up the torso, and in front.

De Guiche: [who has come down from the stage with

his entourage of marquises]
This has gone on too long.

Valvert: Indeed. He’s tiresome.

De Guiche: Won’t anybody rid us of him?

Valvert:    No one?
Just watch, my lord, how I shall deal with him.
[He walks toward Cyrano, who watches him calmly,
and draws himself up before him in a self-important
attitude.]
Your nose, sir, is…er, well, it’s…very big.

Cyrano: Very.

Valvert:    Ha, ha!

Cyrano:   Is that all?

Valvert:    What?

Cyrano:   No.
No, it’s not all. You’re lacking in invention,
Young man. You could have said so many things.
You could have been aggressive, for example:
“Good heavens, man, if I’d a nose like that
I’d have it amputated right away!”
Solicitous: “But sir, how do you drink?
Doesn’t it trail in your glass?” Or else descriptive:
“It’s a rock, it’s a peak, it’s a cape…No, not a cape,
It’s a peninsula!” Inquisitive:
“Do tell me, what is that long container?
Do you keep pens in it, or scissors?” Twee:
“How darling of you to have built a perch
For little birds to rest their tiny claws.”

163
 Facetious: “When you smoke, do they call ‘Fire’?”
Do people think some chimney is alight?’
Worried: “Now do be careful, when you walk,
That you don’t overbalance on your face.”
Motherly: “We must make a little parasol
To shade it from the sun.” Perhaps pedantic:
“Only the creature, sir, which Aristophanes [Athens, page 52]
Calls Hippocampelephantocamelos
Could carry such a weight of flesh and bone
Below its forehead.” Friendly, masculine:
“I say, old chap, is that the latest fashion?
It certainly would do to hang your hat on!”
Grandiloquent: “Oh dread protuberance,
Say what rash wind would dare to make you sneeze?”
Dramatic: “Make the Red Sea one nosebleed.”
Fanciful: “Is it a conch shell? Are you a Triton?”
Naive: “Is it a monument? When does it open?”
Or deferential: “Please accept my compliments:
A nose like that’s a claim on our respect.”
Rustic: “Call that a nose, bor? Thass a marrer,
A winnin’ one an’ all.” Or military:
“Enemy closing, cannon aim and fire!”
Practical: “You could put it up for sale,
And advertise it as a monster bargain.”
Tragical: “Oh, that this too, too solid nose
Would melt, thaw, and dissolve itself into a dewdrop!”
These are the things, sir, that you could have said
Had you a modicum of wit or letters,
But wit—good Lord—you don’t know what it is,
And letters, well…just four can sum you up
F-O-O-L. But…
Even if you had had the inspiration
To entertain this noble audience
With such ingenious fancies, you would never
Have managed to articulate a quarter
Of half of the beginning of the first one,
For while I sometimes choose to mock myself,
I don’t accept such pleasantries from others.

Edmond Rostand, from Cyrano de Bergerac. The play premiered

in Paris on December 28, 1897, with the great French actor Constant
Coquelin in the title role; the audience insisted upon multiple curtain
calls, and it was an immediate success for its twenty-eight-year-old
playwright. Coquelin and Sarah Bernhardt toured the United States
performing the play in 1900, the same year the two actors appeared in
another work by Rostand, L’Aiglon, a tragedy in six acts revolving
around Napoleon Bonaparte’s son, the duke of Reichstadt, who died of
tuberculosis before he could assume power.

164  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
c. 1180 bc: Lemnos
a bad day for adultery

A rippling prelude—
now the bard struck up an irresistible song:
The Love of Ares and Aphrodite Crowned with Flowers—
how the two had first made love in Hephaestus’ mansion,
all in secret. Ares had showered her with gifts
and showered Hephaestus’ marriage bed with shame
but a messenger ran to tell the god of fire—
Helios, lord of the sun, who’d spied the couple
lost in each other’s arms and making love.
Hephaestus, hearing the heart-wounding story,
bustled toward his forge, brooding on his revenge—
planted the huge anvil on its block and beat out chains,
not to be slipped or broken, all to pin the lovers on the spot.
This snare the fire god forged, ablaze with his rage at War,
then limped to the room where the bed of love stood firm
and round the posts he poured the chains in a sweeping net
with streams of others flowing down from the roof beam,
gossamer-fine as spiderwebs no man could see,

One Good Turn Deserves Another, by Edmé Gustave Brun, 1878.

165
 not even a blissful god—
the smith had forged a masterwork of guile.
Once he’d spun that cunning trap around his bed
he feigned a trip to the well-built town of Lemnos,
dearest to him by far of all the towns on earth.
But the god of battle kept no blind man’s watch.
As soon as he saw the master craftsman leave
he plied his golden reins and arrived at once
and entered the famous god of fire’s mansion,
chafing with lust for Aphrodite crowned with flowers.
She’d just returned from her father’s palace, mighty Zeus,
and now she sat in her rooms as Ares strode right in
and grasped her hand with a warm, seductive urging:
“Quick, my darling, come, let’s go to bed
and lose ourselves in love! Your husband’s away—
by now he must be off in the wilds of Lemnos,
consorting with his raucous Sintian friends.”
So he pressed, and her heart raced with joy to sleep with War,
and off they went to bed and down they lay—
and down around them came those cunning chains
of the crafty god of fire, showering down now
till the couple could not move a limb or lift a finger—
then they knew at last: there was no way out, not now.
But now the glorious crippled smith was drawing near;
he’d turned around, miles short of the Lemnos coast,
for the sun god kept his watch and told Hephaestus all,
so back he rushed to his house, his heart consumed with anguish.
Halting there at the gates, seized with savage rage
he howled a terrible cry, imploring all the gods,
“Father Zeus, look here—
the rest of you happy gods who live forever—
here is a sight to make you laugh, revolt you too!
Just because I am crippled, Zeus’ daughter Aphrodite
will always spurn me and love that devastating Ares,
just because of his striking looks and racer’s legs
while I am a weakling, lame from birth, and who’s to blame?
Both my parents—who else? If only they’d never bred me!
Just look at the two lovers…crawled inside my bed,
locked in each other’s arms—the sight makes me burn!
But I doubt they’ll want to lie that way much longer,
not a moment more—mad as they are for each other.
No, they’ll soon tire of bedding down together,
but then my cunning chains will bind them fast
till our father pays my bride gifts back in full
all I handed him for that shameless bitch, his daughter,
irresistible beauty—all unbridled too!”
So Hephaestus wailed as the gods came crowding up to his bronze-floored house.
Poseidon, god of the earthquake, came, and Hermes came,

166  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
 “The Soviet of Turkmenistan,” 1972. Photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson.

the running god of luck, and the archer, lord Apollo,

while modesty kept each goddess to her mansion.
The immortals, givers of all good things, stood at the gates,
and uncontrollable laughter burst from the happy gods
when they saw the god of fire’s subtle, cunning work.
One would glance at his neighbor, laughing out,
“A bad day for adultery! Slow outstrips the swift.”
“Look how limping Hephaestus conquers War,
the quickest of all the gods who rule Olympus!”
“The cripple wins by craft.”
“The adulterer, he will pay the price!”
So the gods would banter
among themselves, but lord Apollo goaded Hermes on:
“Tell me, Quicksilver, giver of all good things—
even with those unwieldy shackles wrapped around you,
how would you like to bed the golden Aphrodite?”
“Oh, Apollo, if only!” the giant killer cried.
“Archer, bind me down with triple those endless chains!
Let all you gods look on, and all you goddesses, too—
how I’d love to bed that golden Aphrodite!”

Homer, from The Odyssey. Hephaestus, the god of fire, was born
lame to Hera and Zeus, and, when he sided with his mother during
a fight between his parents, Zeus cast him off Mt. Olympus. He fell
for nine days and nights, landing on the volcanic island of Lemnos,
where the Greeks maintained a cult dedicated to him. In Homer’s
other epic, The Iliad, when brooding Achilles finally decides to
fight again—to avenge the death of his friend Patroclus—it is
Hephaestus who forges for him his magnificent shield.

167
 March of the Clowns, by Albert Bloch, 1941.
c. 1937: Leningrad
tall tales
Blue Notebook #10
There was a redheaded man who had no eyes or
ears. He didn’t have hair either, so he was called a
redhead arbitrarily. He couldn’t talk, because he
had no mouth. He didn’t have a nose either. He
didn’t even have arms or legs. He had no stom-
ach, he had no back, no spine, and he didn’t have
any insides at all. There was nothing! So we don’t
even know who we’re talking about.
We’d 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 who’d 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
tumbled from her window, and a fourth, and a
fifth. When the sixth old woman tumbled out
of her window, I got sick of watching them and
walked over to the Maltsev Market where, they
say, a blind man had been given a knit shawl.
The Meeting
Now, one day, a man went to work, and on the
way he met another man, who, having bought
a loaf of Polish bread, was heading back home
where he came from. And that’s it, more or less.
Lynch Law
Petrov gets on his horse and, addressing the
crowd, delivers a speech about what would hap-
pen if, in place of the public garden, they’d build
an American skyscraper. The crowd listens and, it
seems, agrees. Petrov writes something down in
his notebook. A man of medium height emerges
from the crowd and asks Petrov what he wrote
down in his notebook. Petrov replies that it con-
cerns himself alone. The man of medium height
presses him. Words are exchanged, and discord
begins. The crowd takes the side of the man of
medium height, and Petrov, saving his life, drives
his horse on and disappears around the bend.
The crowd panics and, having no other victim,
grabs the man of medium height and tears off
his head. The torn-off head rolls down the street
and gets stuck in the hatch of a sewer drain. The
crowd, having satisfied its passions, disperses.
Sonnet
A peculiar thing happened to me: I suddenly
forgot what comes first—seven or eight? I set
off to ask my neighbors what their thoughts
were on the matter.
How great was their surprise—and mine,
too—when they suddenly realized that they
also could not recall the counting order. One,
two, three, four, five, and six, they remember,
but what comes next they’ve forgotten.
We all went down to the commercial store
called Gastronom on the corner of Znamenskaya
and Basseynaya streets and asked the cashier
there about our incomprehension. Smiling a sad
smile, the cashier extracted a small hammer from
her mouth and twitched her nose slightly. She
said, “In my opinion seven comes after eight, but
only when eight comes after seven.”
We thanked the cashier and in utter joy
ran out of the store. But after we had pondered
deeply the cashier’s words, grief came over us
again, for it seemed that not a word of hers
made any sense to us.
What was there to do? We went to the
Summer Garden and began counting the trees
there. But when we reached the number six we
stopped counting and began to argue: some
thought seven was next in the order, others—
eight. We would have argued very long, but
luckily just then somebody’s child toppled off
a park bench and broke his jaw. This distracted
us from the argument.
After that everyone went home.
What They Sell in Stores Nowadays
Koratygin came to see Tikakeyev but did not
find him at home.
Meanwhile, Tikakeyev was at the store
buying sugar, meat, and cucumbers. Koratygin
milled around in Tikakeyev’s doorway and was
about ready to write him a note when he saw
Tikakeyev himself, carrying a plastic satchel in
his hands. Koratygin saw Tikakeyev and yelled,
“And I’ve been waiting here for a whole hour!”
“That’s not true,” said Tikakeyev, “I’ve only
been out twenty-five minutes.”
“Well, that I don’t know,” said Koratygin, “but
I’ve been here an hour, that much I do know.”
When humor can be made to alternate with
melancholy, one has a success, but when the
same things are funny and melancholic at the
same time, it’s just wonderful.
 —François Truffaut, 1980
“Don’t lie,” said Tikakeyev. “It’s shameful.”
“My good sir,” said Koratygin, “you should
use some discretion in choosing your words.”
“I think…” started Tikakeyev, but Koraty-
gin interrupted:
“If you think…” he said, but then Tikakeyev
interrupted Koratygin, saying:
“You’re one to talk!”
These words so enraged Koratygin that he
pinched one nostril with his finger and blew
his other nostril at Tikakeyev.
Then Tikakeyev snatched the biggest cu-
cumber from his satchel and hit Koratygin over
the head.
Koratygin clasped his hands to his head,
fell over and died.
What big cucumbers they sell in stores
nowadays!
Daniil Kharms, from Incidents. Kharms was the
founder of the avant-garde art group OBERIU.
His absurdist play Elizabeth Bam—in which
the titular character is accused of murder by her
alleged victim—was part of the group’s first public
performance in 1928. Kharms was arrested three
years later and charged with anti-Soviet activities
for his illogical children’s stories; he confessed that in
his works he “consciously renounced contemporary
reality.” He was arrested again in 1941 and died in
a psychiatric ward during the Siege of Leningrad.
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 be-
gin 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.”
Benoît de Tyskiewicz in Tyrolean costume, c. 1890. Self-portrait.
170  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
“What giants?” said Sancho Panza.
“Those you see over there,” replied his
master, “with the long arms; sometimes they
are almost two leagues long.”
“Look, your grace,” Sancho responded,
“those things that appear over there aren’t gi-
ants but windmills, and what looks like their
arms are the sails that are turned by the wind
and make the grindstone move.”
“It seems clear to me,” replied Don Qui­xote,
“that thou art not well-versed in the matter of
adventures: these are giants; and if thou art afraid,
move aside and start to pray while I enter with
them in fierce and unequal combat.”
And having said this, he spurred his horse,
Rocinante, paying no attention to the shouts of
his squire, Sancho, who warned him that, be-
yond 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 him-
self with all his heart to his lady Dulcinea,
asking that she come to his aid at this criti-
cal moment, and well-protected by his shield,
with his lance in its socket, he charged at
Rocinante’s 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. “Didn’t 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
wouldn’t know that?”
“Be quiet, Sancho my friend,” replied Don
Quixote. “Matters of war, more than any oth-
ers, are subject to continual change; moreover,
I think, and therefore it is true, that the same
Frestón 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.”
“God’s 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 ad-
venture, they continued on the road to Puerto
Lápice, 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 Pérez 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 pres-
ents 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.”
“It’s in God’s hands,” said Sancho. “I be-
lieve everything your grace says, but sit a little
straighter, it looks like you’re 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 com-
plain about any wound, even if their innards are
spilling out because of it.”
“If that’s true, I have nothing to say,” San-
cho responded, “but God knows I’d be happy
if your grace complained when something hurt
you. As for me, I can say that I’ll 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 squire’s simplemindedness, and so he de-
clared that he could certainly complain how-
ever and whenever he wanted, with or without
cause, for as yet he had not read anything to
171
 the contrary in the order of chivalry. Sancho
said that it was time to eat. His master replied
that he felt no need of food at the moment,
but that Sancho could eat whenever he wished.
With this permission, Sancho made himself as
comfortable as he could on his donkey, and af-
ter taking out of the saddlebags what he had
put into them, he rode behind his master at a
leisurely pace, eating and, from time to time,
tilting back his wineskin with so much gusto
that the most self-indulgent tavern keeper in
Malaga might have envied him. And as he rode
along in that manner, taking frequent drinks,
c. 1958: Washington, DC
courtesy call
U.S. President Merkin Muffley: Hello? Hello,
Dmitry? Listen, I can’t hear too well, do you
suppose you could turn the music down just a
little? Oh, that’s much better. Yes. Fine, I can
hear you now, Dmitry. Clear and plain and
coming through fine. I’m coming through
fine too, eh? Good, then. Well, then, as you
say, we’re both coming through fine. Good.
Well it’s good that you’re fine and I’m fine. I
agree with you. It’s great to be fine. [laughs]
Now then, Dmitry. You know how we’ve
always talked about the possibility of some-
thing going wrong with the bomb. The bomb,
Dmitry. The hydrogen bomb. Well, now, what
happened is, one of our base commanders, he
had a sort of, well he went a little funny in the
head. You know. Just a little…funny. And, uh,
he went and did a silly thing. [listens] Well, I’ll
tell you what he did, he ordered his planes…
to attack your country. [listens] Well let me
finish, Dmitry. Let me finish, Dmitry. [listens]
Well, listen, how do you think I feel about it!
Can you imagine how I feel about it, Dmitry?
Why do you think I’m calling you? Just to say
hello? [listens] Of course I like to speak to you.
Of course I like to say hello. Not now, but any
time, Dmitry. I’m just calling up to tell you
something terrible has happened. [listens] It’s
a friendly call. Of course it’s a friendly call.
Listen, if it wasn’t friendly…You probably
wouldn’t have even got it. They will not reach
their targets for at least another hour. [listens]
I am…I am positive, Dmitry. Listen, I’ve been
all over this with your ambassador. It is not a
trick. [listens] Well I’ll tell you. We’d like to
172  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
he did not think about any promises his mas-
ter had made to him, and he did not consider
it work but sheer pleasure to go around seek-
ing 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
give your air staff a complete rundown on the
targets, the flight plans, and the defensive sys-
tems of the planes. [listens] Yes! I mean, if we’re
unable to recall the planes, then I’d say that,
uh, well, we’re just going to have to help you
destroy them, Dmitry. [listens] I know they’re
our boys. [listens] All right, well, listen…now
who should we call? [listens] Who should we
call, Dmitry? [listens] The people…? Sorry,
you faded away there. [listens] The People’s
Central Air Defense Headquarters. Where
is that, Dmitry? [listens] In Omsk. Right. Yes.
[listens] Oh, you’ll call them first, will you? [lis-
tens] Uh-huh. Listen, do you happen to have
the phone number on you, Dmitry? [listens]
What? I see, just ask for Omsk Information.
I’m sorry too, Dmitry. I’m very sorry. [listens]
All right! You’re sorrier than I am! But I am
sorry as well. I am as sorry as you are, Dmitry.
Don’t say that you are more sorry than I am,
because I am capable of being just as sorry as
you are. So we’re both sorry, all right?
Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, and Peter
George, from Dr. Strangelove or: How I
Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Peter Sellers played three roles: President Muffley,
Grp. Capt. Lionel Mandrake, and Dr. Strangelove.
The 1964 film grew out of Kubrick’s interest in the
issue of nuclear-war deterrence: “Gradually I became
aware of the almost wholly paradoxical nature of
deterrence or, as it has been described, the Delicate
Balance of Terror. If you are weak, you may invite a
first strike. If you are becoming too strong, you may
provoke a preemptive strike.”
many sleepless nights in groves and mead-
ows, turning all their thoughts to memories
of their ladies. Sancho Panza did not do the
same—since 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 Lápice,
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.”
“There’s no doubt, Señor,” replied Sancho,
“that your grace will be strictly obeyed in this;
besides, as far as I’m concerned, I’m a peace-
ful man and an enemy of getting involved in
quarrels or disputes. It’s certainly true that
when it comes to defending my person I won’t
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 that’s just what I’ll do,” replied San-
cho, “and I’ll keep that precept as faithfully as I
keep the sabbath on Sunday.”
As they were speaking, there appeared on
the road two Benedictine friars mounted on
two dromedaries, for the two mules they rode
on were surely no smaller than that. They wore
their traveling masks and carried sunshades. Be-
hind them came a carriage, accompanied by four
or five men on horseback, and two muledrivers
on foot. In the carriage, as was learned later, was
a Basque lady going to Seville, where her hus-
band was preparing to sail for the Indies to take
I like to make people laugh every ten pages.
 —Haruki Murakami, 2004
up a very honorable post. The friars were not
traveling with her, although their route was the
same, but as soon as Don Quixote saw them, he
said to his squire, “Either I am deceived, or this
will be the most famous adventure ever seen,
because those black shapes you see there must
be, and no doubt are, enchanters who have cap-
tured some princesses in that carriage, and I
needs must do everything in my power to right
this wrong.”
“This will be worse than the windmills,”
said Sancho. “Look, Señor, those are friars of
St. Benedict, and the carriage must belong to
some travelers. Look carefully, I tell you, look
carefully at what you do, in case the devil is
deceiving you.”
“I have already told you, Sancho,” replied
Don Quixote, “that you know very little about
the subject of adventures; what I say is true—
and now you will see that it is so.”
And having said this, he rode forward
and stopped in the middle of the road that
the friars were traveling, and when they were
close enough so that he thought they could
hear what he said, he called to them in a loud
voice, “You wicked and monstrous creatures,
instantly unhand the noble princesses you
hold captive in that carriage, or else prepare
to receive a swift death as just punishment for
your evil deeds.”
The friars pulled on the reins, taken aback
as much by Don Quixote’s appearance as by his
173
 words, and they responded, “Señor, we are nei-
ther 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, fast-
er 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 legiti-
mately 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 Dynasty–era tomb, China, c. 125.
174  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
thing about spoils or battles, and seeing that
Don Quixote had moved away and was talking
to the occupants of the carriage, they attacked
Sancho and knocked him down, and leaving no
hair in his beard unscathed, they kicked him
breathless and senseless and left him lying on
the ground. The friar, frightened and terrified
and with no color in his face, did not wait an-
other moment but got back on his mule, and
when he was mounted, he rode off after his
companion, who was waiting for him a good
distance away, wondering what the outcome of
the attack would be; they did not wish to wait
to learn how matters would turn out but con-
tinued on their way, crossing themselves more
than if they had the devil at their backs.
Miguel de Cervantes, from Don Quixote. As a
soldier aboard the Marquesa in 1571, Cervantes
fought against the Turkish fleet at the Battle of
Lepanto, where he received two gunshot wounds to
the chest and a third to his hand, crippling it—“a
wound which, although it appears ugly, he holds
for lovely,” he wrote, using the third person, in the
prologue to his Exemplary Stories, published in
1613. The first volume of Don Quixote appeared in
1605, the second in 1615, and a year later Cervantes
died at the age of sixty-eight.
1993: Belfast
martin mcdonagh saves the nipple
[A desolate warehouse or some such. James, a bare-
chested, 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 Padraic’s chest are strapped
two empty holsters, and there are two handguns on
a table stage left. James is crying.]
Padraic: James? [pause] James?
James: [sobbing] Wha’?
Padraic: Do you know what’s next on the
agenda?
James: I don’t. And I don’t want to know.
Padraic: I know well you don’t, you big feck.
Look at the state of you, off bawling like some
fool of a girl.
James: Is a fella not supposed to bawl so, you
take his fecking toenails off him?
Padraic: [pause] Don’t be saying “feck” to me,
James…
James: I’m sorry, Padraic…
Padraic: Or you’ll make me want to give you
some serious bother, and not just be tinkering
with you.
James: Is toenails off just tinkering with me,
so?
Padraic: It is.
James: Oh, it’s just fecking tinkering with me
toenails off is…
Padraic: [pause] The next item on the agenda is
which nipple of yours do you want to be saying
goodbye to. The right or the left?
James: No, now. Come on, now!
Padraic: Be picking, I’m saying! Whichever’s
your favorite nipple—I won’t be touching that
fella at all—I’ll be concentrating on the other.
I’ll be giving him a nice sliceen and then prob-
ably be feeding him to ya, but if you don’t pick
and pick quick, it’ll be both of the boys you’ll be
waving goodbye to, and waving goodbye to two
tits when there’s no need but to wave goodbye
to one makes no sense at all as far as I can see.
In my eyes, like. In fact it’s the mark of a mad-
man. So be picking your nipple and we’ll get
the ball rolling, for I have better things to do
with me time than to be hanging around ware-
houses cutting your nipples off, James Hanley.
James: [crying] But I’ve done nothing at all to
deserve nipples off, Padraic!
Padraic: Oh, let’s not be getting into the whys
and wherefores, James. You do push your filthy
drugs on the schoolchildren of Ireland, and if
you concentrated exclusive on the Protestants
I’d say all well and good, but you don’t, you take
all comers.
James: Marijuana to the students at the Tech I
sell, and at fair rates!
Padraic: Keeping our youngsters in a drugged-
up and idle haze, when it’s out on the streets
pegging bottles at coppers they should be.
James: Sure, everybody smokes marijuana
nowadays.
Padraic: I don’t!
James: Well, maybe you should! It might calm
you down!
Padraic: Be picking your nipple, I’m saying!
James: The right one! The right one!
175
 [Padraic takes James’s right tit in his hand so that the
nipple points out, and is just about to slice it off.]
Padraic: Grit your teeth, James. This may hurt.
James: [screaming] No!…
[…when the cellphone in Padraic’s back pocket
rings loudly…]
Padraic: Will you hang on there a minute,
James? [Padraic answers the phone, idling away
from James, who is left shaking and whimpering
behind him…Speaking into phone.] Hello? Dad,
ya bastard, how are you? [to James] It’s me dad.
[pause] I’m grand indeed, Dad, grand. How is
all on Inishmore? Good-oh, good-oh. I’m at
work at the moment, Dad, was it important
now? I’m torturing one of them fellas pushes
drugs on wee kids, but I can’t say too much over
the phone, like…
James: [crying] Marijuana, Padraic.
Padraic: They are terrible men, and it’s like
they don’t even know they are, when they
know well. They think they’re doing the world
a favor, now. [pause] I haven’t been up to much
else, really. I put bombs in a couple of chip
shops, but they didn’t go off. [pause] Because
chip shops aren’t as well-guarded as army
barracks. Do I need your advice on planting
bombs? [pause] I was pissed off, anyways. The
fella who makes our bombs, he’s fecking use-
less. I think he does drink. Either they go off
before you’re ready, or they don’t go off at all.
One thing about the IRA anyways, as much
as I hate the bastards, you’ve got to hand it to
them, they know how to make a decent bomb.
[pause] Sure, why would the IRA be selling us
any of their bombs? They need them them-
selves, sure. Those bastards’d charge the earth
anyways. I’ll tell ya, I’m getting pissed off with
the whole thing. I’ve been thinking of forming
a splinter group. [pause] I know we’re already
a splinter group, but there’s no law says you
can’t splinter from a splinter group. A splin-
176  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
ter group is the best kind of group to splinter
from anyways. It shows you know your own
mind, [whispering] but there’s someone in the
room, Dad, I can’t be talking about splinter
groups. [to James, politely] I’ll be with you in
a minute now, James. [James shudders slightly.]
What was it you were ringing about anyways,
Dad? [Pause. Padraic’s face suddenly becomes very
serious, eyes filling with tears.] Eh? What about
Wee Thomas? [pause] Poorly? How poorly,
have you brought him to the doctor? [pause]
How long has he been off his food, and why
didn’t you tell me when it first started? [pause]
He’s not too bad? Either he’s poorly or he’s
not too bad now, Dad, he’s either one or the
fecking other—there’s a major difference, now,
between not too bad and fecking poorly—he
cannot be the fecking two at fecking once, now
[crying heavily], and you wouldn’t be fecking
calling me at all if he was not too bad, now!
What have you done to Wee Thomas now,
you fecking bastard? Put Wee Thomas on the
phone. He’s sleeping? Well, put a blanket on
him and be stroking and stroking him and get
a second opinion from the doctor and don’t
be talking loud near him and I’ll be home the
first fecking boat in the fecking morning. Ar,
you fecker, ya! [Padraic smashes the phone to
pieces on the table, shoots the pieces a few times,
then sits there crying quietly.]
James: Is anything the matter, Padraic?
Padraic: Me cat’s poorly, James. Me best friend
in the world, he is.
James: What’s wrong with him?
Padraic: I don’t know, now. He’s off his food, like.
James: Sure, that’s nothing to go crying over,
being off his food. He probably has ringworm.
Padraic: Ringworm? Is that serious, now?
James: Sure, ringworm isn’t serious at all. Just
get him some ringworm pellets from the
chemist and feed them to him wrapped up
in a bit of cheese. They don’t like the taste of
ringworm pellets, cats, so if you hide them in a
bit of cheese, he’ll eat them unbeknownst and
never know the differ, and he’ll be as right as
rain in a day or two, or at the outside three. Just
don’t exceed the stated dose. Y’know, read the
instructions, like.
Padraic: How do you know so much about
ringworm?
James: Sure, don’t I have a cat of me own I love
with all my heart, had ringworm a month back?
Padraic: Do ya? I didn’t know drug pushers had
cats.
James: Sure, drug pushers are the same as any-
body underneath.
Padraic: What’s his name?
James: Eh?
Padraic: What’s his name?
James: Em, Dominic. [pause] And I promise
not to sell drugs to children anymore, Padraic.
On Dominic’s life I promise. And that’s a big
promise, because Dominic means more to me
than anything.
Padraic: [pause] Are you gipping me now,
James?
James: I’m not gipping you. This is a serious
subject.
[Padraic approaches James with the razor and slices
through the ropes that bind him. James falls to the
floor in a heap, then half picks himself up, testing
out his weight on his bloody foot. Padraic holsters
his guns.]
Padraic: How are them toes?
James: They’re perfect, Padraic.
Stock Characters
New and old manifestations of commedia dell’arte personas
Capitano
Blustering and boastful and cowardly
Pyrgopolynices (The Swaggering Soldier, Plautus, c. 205 bc)
Wizard (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum, 1900)
“Brave” Sir Robin (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975)
Innamorati
Lovers striving against obstacles to unite
Daphnis/Chloe (Daphnis and Chloe, Longus, c. 200)
Elizabeth/Mr. Darcy (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, 1813)
Buttercup/Wesley (The Princess Bride, William Goldman, 1973)
Dottore
Pedant prone to jumbling facts and general pretension
Polonius (Hamlet, William Shakespeare, c. 1600)
Moe (The Three Stooges, c. 1930)
Paul (Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen, 2011)
Pantalone
Older man, often foolish, miserly, or lecherous
Zeus (Metamorphoses, Ovid, 8)
Humbert Humbert (Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955)
Roger Sterling (Mad Men, Matt Weiner, c. 2010)
Arlecchino
Jester often costumed in variously colored diamonds
Trinculo (The Tempest, William Shakespeare, c. 1611)
Hubert Hawkins (The Court Jester, Norman Panama and
Melvin Frank, 1956)
Harley Quinn (Batman: The Animated Series, c. 1992)
Colombina
Cheeky and skillful female servant
Dorine (Tartuffe, Molière, 1664)
Miss Moneypenny (Casino Royale, Ian Fleming, 1953)
Babette (Beauty and the Beast, Disney, 1991)
Pedrolino
Simpleminded, awkward, lovesick loyal servant
Papageno (The Magic Flute, Emanuel Schikaneder, 1791)
Canio (Pagliacci, Ruggero Leoncavallo, 1892)
Xander Harris (Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
Joss Whedon, c. 2000)
Brighella
Opportunistic and lovable rogue
Vicomte de Valmont (The Dangerous Liasons,
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 1782)
Rhett Butler (Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 1936)
Omar Little (The Wire, David Simon, c. 2005)
Pulcinella
Duplicitous, vindictive, disobedient, and often deformed
Falstaff (Henry IV, William Shakespeare, c. 1596)
Punch (Punch and Judy, c. 1650)
Soup Nazi (Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, 1995)
177
 “It Was Abadie Who Made the Sacre-Coeur, but God Made This!” color lithograph, by Adolphe Léon Willette, c. 1895.
Padraic: You admit you deserved the toes at
least?
James: Oh I did. The toes and an arm, really.
Padraic: Do you have money to get the bus to
the hospital?
James: I don’t.
[Padraic gives the confused James some change.]
Padraic: Because you want to get them toes
looked at. The last thing you want now is sep-
tic toes.
James: Oh d’you know, that’s the last thing I’d
want.
178  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
Padraic: I’m off to Galway to see me cat. [exits]
James: [calling out] And I hope by the time you
get home he’s laughing and smiling and as fit as
a fiddle, Padraic! [Pause. Outer door banging shut.
Crying.] I hope that he’s dead already and buried
in shite, you stupid mental fecking bastard, ya!
From The Lieutenant of Inishmore. McDonagh
was born in London in 1970, dropped out of school
at the age of sixteen, performed clerical duties at the
department of trade, and began writing in the early
1990s. He composed two trilogies of plays primarily
set in County Galway, Ireland, where he spent
time as a boy, which include The Beauty Queen
of Leenane and The Lieutenant of Inishmore.
McDonagh wrote and directed the films In Bruges
and Seven Psychopaths.
c. 360 bc: Athens
hold the ridicule
Athenian Stranger: When men take to damn-
ing and cursing each other and to calling
one another rude names in the shrill tones
of women, these mere words, empty though
they are, soon lead to real hatreds and quar-
rels of the most serious kind. In gratifying his
ugly emotion, anger, and in thus disgracefully
stoking the fires of his fury, the speaker drives
back into primitive savagery a side of his char-
acter that was once civilized by education—
and such a splenetic life makes him no better
than a wild beast; bitter indeed, he finds, are
the pleasures of anger. Besides, on such oc-
casions all men are usually quick to resort to
ridicule of their opponents, and no one who
has indulged that habit has ever acquired the
slightest sense of responsibility or remained
faithful to many of his principles. That is why
no one must ever breathe a word of ridicule
in a temple or at a public sacrifice or at the
games or in the marketplace or in court or in
any public gathering, and the relevant official
must always punish such offenses.
The view we are putting forward now is
that when a man is embroiled in a slanging
match he is incapable of carrying on the dis-
pute without trying to make funny remarks,
and when such conduct is motivated by an-
ger we censure it. Well then, what does this
imply? That we are prepared to tolerate a
comedian’s eagerness to raise a laugh against
people, provided that when he sets about ridi-
culing our citizens in his comedies, he is not
inspired by anger? Or shall we divide comedy
into two kinds, according to whether it is good-
natured or not? Then we could allow the play-
ful comedian to joke about something, without
anger, but forbid, as we’ve indicated, anyone
whatsoever to do so if he is in deadly earnest
and shows animosity. We must certainly in-
sist on this stipulation about anger, but we
still have to lay down by law who ought to re-
ceive permission for ridicule and who not. No
composer of comedies—or of songs or iambic
verse—must ever be allowed to ridicule either
by description or by impersonation any citizen
whatsoever, with or without rancor. Anyone
who disobeys this rule must be ejected from
the country that same day by the presidents
of the games.
If the latter fail to take this action, they
must be fined three hundred drachmas, to be
dedicated to the god in whose honor the festi-
val is being held.
Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans
what manhood is to Spaniards, and we will
go to great lengths to prove it. Experiments
with laboratory rats have shown that if one
psychologist in the room laughs at something
a rat does, all of the other psychologists in the
room will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be
left holding the joke.
 —Garrison Keillor, 1989
Those who have earlier been licensed to
compose verse against each other should be al-
lowed to poke fun at people, not in savage ear-
nest, but in a playful spirit and without rancor.
The distinction between the two kinds must be
left to the minister with overall responsibility
for the education of the young; an author may
put before the public anything the minister ap-
proves of, but if it is censored, the author must
not perform it to anyone personally nor be
found to have trained someone else to do so,
whether a free man or a slave.
If he does, he must get the reputation of
being a scoundrel and an enemy of the laws.
Plato, from The Laws. This is the longest of Plato’s
dialogs and is presumed to have been among his
last. Set on the island of Crete, The Laws has three
characters: the Athenian Stranger, the Spartan
Megillus, and the Cretan Kleinias. Their discussion
revolves around the composition of laws proper to
govern a city. Plato was born into a distinguished
family—his father’s lineage claimed Poseidon as an
ancestor, his mother’s, the lawgiver Solon. In the 380s
he founded the Academy in Athens, where Aristotle
was a pupil and later a teacher.
179
 c. 1030: Constantinople
impossible relics

Many say—I know not if this be true,

but I do believe it—that 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 Christ’s ascetics are Hydras
and His martyrs wild dogs—the 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 city’s graveyard

180  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
 and gather some bones for free?
Do you feel you are not getting your money’s worth
when you scoop up from the tombs bones that cost nothing?
Go ahead and buy them then, go ahead!
You will empty your pockets much faster
than the bone merchants can empty those tombs.

Christopher of Mytilene, from “To Father Andreas, Gatherer of

Bones.” Christopher served in the Byzantine imperial administration as a
secretary and a supreme judge of Paphlagonia and Armeniakon. In addition
to his more caustic poems—in his epigram “To a Poet,” he wrote, “How
much better if an ox were to sit on your tongue/than for your poems to plod
like oxen over fields”—he composed four calendars in verse for the Church,
some of which remain in use in Greek Orthodox services, and epigrams on
everyday life in Constantinople. Christopher died around 1050.

Wall Street Bubbles—Always the Same, by Joseph Keppler Jr., 1901.

Caricature of J. P. Morgan as a bull blowing bubbles representing inflated values.

181
 1842: Russia
nikolai gogol marks up
the merchandise
Chichikov, taking a cup of tea in his hand and
pouring some liqueur into it, held forth to the
mistress of the house thus: “You’ve got a nice little
estate here, dearie. How many souls are there?”
“Nigh onto eighty souls, my dear,” the
mistress said, “but the trouble is the weather’s
been bad, and there was such a poor harvest last
year, God help us.”
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is
when you fall into an open sewer and die.
 —Mel Brooks, 1961
“Still, the muzhiks have a hearty look;
the cottages are sturdy. But allow me to know
your last name. I’m so absentminded…arrived
in the night…”
“Korobochka, widow of a collegiate
secretary.”
“I humbly thank you. And your first name
and patronymic?”
“Nastasya Petrovna.”
“Nastasya Petrovna? A nice name, Nas-
tasya Petrovna. My aunt, my mother’s sister, is
Nastasya Petrovna.”
“And what’s your name?” the lady land-
owner asked. “I expect you’re a tax assessor?”
“No, dearie,” Chichikov replied, smiling,
“don’t expect I’m a tax assessor, I’m just going
around on my own little business.”
“Ah, so you’re a buyer! Really, my dear,
what a pity I sold my honey to the merchants
so cheaply, and here you would surely have
bought it from me.”
“No, your honey I wouldn’t have bought.”
“Something else, then? Hemp maybe? But I
haven’t got much hemp either: only half a bale.”
“No, dearie, mine are a different kind of
goods: tell me, have any of your peasants died?”
“Oh, dearie, eighteen men!” the old woman
said, sighing. “Died, and all such fine folk, all
182  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
good workers. Some were born after that, it’s
true, but what’s the use of them: all such runts;
and the tax assessor comes—pay taxes on each
soul, he says. Folk are dead, and you pay on them
like the living. Last week my blacksmith burned
up on me, such a skillful one, and he knew lock-
smithing, too.”
“So you had a fire, dearie?”
“God spared us such a calamity—a fire
would have been all that much worse—he got
burned up on his own, my dear. It somehow
caught fire inside him; he drank too much, just
this little blue flame came out of him, and he
smoldered, smoldered, and turned black as coal,
and he was such a very skillful blacksmith! And
now I can’t even go out for a drive: there’s no
one to shoe the horses.”
“It’s all as God wills, dearie!” said Chichikov,
sighing, “there’s no saying anything against the
wisdom of God…Why not let me have them,
Nastasya Petrovna?”
“Whom, dearie?”
“But, all that have died.”
“But how can I let you have them?”
“But, just like that. Or maybe sell them. I’ll
give you money for them.”
“But how? I really don’t quite see. You’re not
going to dig them out of the ground, are you?”
Chichikov saw that the old woman had
overshot the mark and that it was necessary to
explain what it was all about. In a few words he
made clear to her that the transfer or purchase
would only be on paper, and the souls would be
registered as if they were living.
“But what do you need them for?” the old
woman said, goggling her eyes at him.
“That’s my business.”
“But they really are dead.”
“But who ever said they were alive? That’s
why it’s a loss for you, because they’re dead: you
pay for them, but now I’ll rid you of the trouble
and the payments. Understand? And not only
rid you of them, but give you fifteen rubles to
boot. Well, is it clear now?”
“I really don’t know,” the mistress said
with deliberation. “I never yet sold any dead
ones.”
 “I should think not! It would be quite a
wonder if you’d sold them to anyone. Or do you
think they really are good for anything?”
“No, I don’t think so. What good could
they be, they’re no good at all. The only thing
that troubles me is that they’re already dead.”
“Well, the woman seems a bit thickheaded,”
Chichikov thought to himself.
“Listen, dearie, you just give it some good
thought: here you are being ruined, paying taxes
for them as if they were alive…”
“Oh, my dear, don’t even mention it!” the
lady landowner picked up. “Just two weeks ago
I paid more than one hundred and fifty rubles.
And had to grease the assessor’s palm at that.”
“Well, you see, dearie. And now consider
only this, that you won’t have to grease the asses-
sor’s palm any longer, because now I will pay for
them—I, and not you; I will take all the obliga-
tions upon myself. I’ll 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 ru-
bles each, to our priest, the year before last, and
he was ever so grateful—they turned out to be
such good workers; they weave napkins.”
Laughter, by Charles Le Brun, c. 1645.
183
 Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, comedy duo, c. 1930.
“Well, this is nothing to do with the living—
God be with them. I’m asking for dead ones.”
“Really, I’m afraid this first time, I may some-
how suffer a loss. Maybe you’re deceiving me, my
dear, and they’re…somehow worth more.”
“Listen, dearie…eh, what a one! How
much could they be worth? Consider: it’s dust.
Do you understand? It’s just dust. Take any last
worthless thing, even some simple rag, for in-
stance, still a rag has its value: it can at least
be sold to a paper mill—but for this there’s no
need at all. No, you tell me yourself, what is it
needed for?”
“That’s true enough. It’s not needed for
anything at all, but there’s just this one thing
stops me—that they’re already dead.”
“Bah, what a blockhead!” Chichikov said
to himself, beginning to lose patience now. “Go,
try getting along with her! I’m all in a sweat, the
damned hag!” Here he took his handkerchief
184  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
from his pocket and began mopping the sweat
which in fact stood out on his brow. However,
Chichikov need not have been angry: a man
can be greatly respectable, even statesmanlike,
and in reality turn out to be a perfect Korobo-
chka. Once he gets a thing stuck in his head,
there’s no overcoming him; present him with as
many arguments as you like, all clear as day—
everything bounces off him, like a rubber ball
bouncing off a wall. Having mopped his sweat,
Chichikov decided to see whether she could be
guided onto the path from another side.
“Either you don’t wish to understand my
words, dearie,” he said, “or you’re saying it on
purpose, just to say something…I’m offering
you money: fifteen rubles in banknotes. Do you
understand that? It’s money. You won’t find it
lying in the street. Confess now, how much did
you sell your honey for?”
“Thirty kopeks a pound.”
 “That’s a bit of a sin on your soul, dearie.
You didn’t sell it for thirty kopeks.”
“By God, I did too.”
“Well, you see? Still, that was honey. You
collected it for maybe a year, with care, with
effort, with trouble; you had to go smoke the
bees, feed them in the cellar all winter, but the
thing with the dead souls is not of this world.
Here you made no effort on your side; it was
God’s will that they depart this life, to the det-
riment of your household. There you get twelve
roubles for your labor, your effort, and here
you take them for nothing, for free, and not
twelve but fifteen, and not in silver but all in
blue bank­notes.” After such strong assurances,
Chichikov had scarcely any doubt that the old
woman would finally give in.
“Really,” the lady landowner replied, “I’m
so inexperienced, what with being a widow
and all! I’d better take a little time; maybe mer-
chants will come by, I’ll check on the prices.”
“For shame, for shame, dearie! Simply for
shame! Think what you are saying! Who is go-
ing to buy them? What use could they possibly
be to anyone?”
“Maybe they’d somehow come in handy
around the house on occasion…” the old wom-
an objected and, not finishing what she was
saying, opened her mouth and looked at him
almost in fear, wishing to know what he would
say to that.
“Dead people around the house! Eh, that’s
going a bit far! Maybe just to frighten sparrows
in your kitchen garden at night or something?”
“Saints preserve us! What horrors you
come out with!” the old woman said, crossing
herself.
“Where else would you like to stick them?
No, anyhow, the bones and graves—all that
stays with you, the transfer is only on paper. So,
what do you say? How about it? Answer me at
least.”
The old woman again fell to thinking.
“What are you thinking about, Nastasya
Petrovna?”
“Really, I still can’t settle on what to do; I’d
better sell you the hemp.”
“What’s all this hemp? For pity’s sake, I
ask you about something totally different, and
you shove your hemp at me! Hemp’s hemp—
the next time I come, I’ll take the hemp as well.
So, how about it, Nastasya Petrovna?”
“By God, it’s such queer goods, quite
unprecedented!”
Here Chichikov went completely beyond
the bounds of all patience, banged his chair on
the floor in aggravation, and wished the devil
on her.
Of the devil the lady landowner was ex-
traordinarily frightened.
He who laugheth too much, hath the nature of a
fool; he that laugheth not at all, hath the nature
of an old cat.
 —Thomas Fuller, 1732
“Oh, don’t remind me of that one, God
help him!” she cried out, turning all pale. “Just
two days ago I spent the whole night dreaming
about the cursed one. I had a notion to tell my
fortune with cards that night after prayers, and
God sent him on me as a punishment. Such a
nasty one; horns longer than a bull’s.”
“I’m amazed you don’t dream of them by
the dozen. It was only Christian loving kind-
ness that moved me: I saw a poor widow wast-
ing away, suffering want…No, go perish and
drop dead, you and all your estate!”
“Ah, what oaths you’re hanging on me!”
the old woman said, looking at him in fear.
“But there’s no way to talk with you! Really,
you’re like some—not to use a bad word—some
cur lying in the manger: he doesn’t eat himself,
and won’t let others eat. I thought I might buy up
various farm products from you, because I also do
government contracting…” Here he was fibbing,
though by the way and with no further reflection,
but with unexpected success. The government
contracting produced a strong effect on Nastasya
Petrovna, at least she uttered now, in an almost
pleading voice, “But why all this hot anger? If I’d
known before that you were such an angry one, I
wouldn’t have contradicted you at all.”
185

2007: Liphook
emerging markets
Dear Secretary of State,
My friend, who is farming at the moment,
recently received a check for three thousand
pounds from the Rural Payments Agency for
not rearing pigs. I would now like to join the
“not rearing pigs” business.
In your opinion, what is the best kind of
farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the
best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be
sure I approach this endeavor in keeping
with all government policies, as dictated by
the EU under the Common Agricultural
Policy. I would prefer not to rear bacon
pigs, but if this is not the type you want not
reared, I will just as gladly not rear porkers.
Are there any advantages in not rearing rare
breeds such as Saddlebacks or Gloucester
Old Spots, or are there too many people al-
ready not rearing them?
My friend is very satisfied with this busi-
ness. He has been rearing pigs for forty years
or so, and the best he has ever made on them
was £1,422 in 1968. That is—until this year,
when he received a check for not rearing any.
If I got three thousand pounds for not
rearing fifty pigs, will I get six thousand
pounds for not rearing a hundred? I plan to
operate on a small scale at first, holding my-
self down to about four thousand pigs not
reared, which will mean about £240,000 for
the first year. As I become more expert in
not rearing pigs, I plan to be more ambitious,
perhaps increasing to, say, forty thousand
pigs not reared in my second year, for which
I should expect about £2.4 million from your
department. Incidentally, I wonder if I would
be eligible to receive tradable carbon credits
for all these pigs not producing harmful and
polluting methane gases?
I am also considering the “not milking
cows” business, so please send any information
you have on that, too. Can this be done on an
e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which
I seem to have several thousand hectares)?
Nigel Johnson-Hill, from a letter. This document
circulated on the Internet and was published with
the consent of its author in The Big Bang by John
Julius Norwich. It bears striking resemblance to a
letter quoted in a British parliamentary discussion in
1935: an American had written in to the New York
Commercial and Financial Chronicle to inquire
“your opinion of the best kind of farm not to raise hogs
on, the best strain of hogs not to raise and how best to
keep an inventory of hogs you are not raising.”
186  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
“What’s there to be angry about! The
whole affair isn’t worth a tinker’s damn—as if
I’d get angry over it!”
“Well, as you please, I’m prepared to let you
have them for fifteen in banknotes! Only, mind
you, my dear, about those contracts: if you happen
to buy up rye flour, or buckwheat flour, or grain,
or butchered cattle, please don’t leave me out.”
“No, dearie, I won’t leave you out,” he said,
all the while wiping off the sweat that was
streaming down his face. He inquired whether
she had some attorney or acquaintance in town
whom she could authorize to draw up the deed
and do all that was necessary.
“Of course, our priest, Father Kiril, has a son
who serves in the treasury,” said Korobochka.
Chichikov asked her to write a warrant for
him and, to save her needless trouble, even vol-
unteered to write it himself.
“It would be nice,” Korobochka meanwhile
thought to herself, “if he’d start buying my flour
and meat for the government. I must coax him;
there’s still some batter left from yesterday, I’ll
go and tell Fetinya to make some pancakes; it
would also be nice to do up a short-crust pie
with eggs—my cook does them so well, and it
takes no time at all.” The mistress went to carry
out her thought concerning the doing up of a
pie, and probably to expand it with other pro-
ductions of domestic bakery and cookery; and
Chichikov went to the drawing room to get
the necessary papers from his chest. He rested
briefly, for he felt he was all in a sweat, as if in a
river: everything he had on, from his shirt down
to his stockings, everything was wet. “She really
wore me out, the damned hag!” he said.
From Dead Souls. After the success of his story
collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, Gogol
obtained a history professorship at the University of
St. Petersburg, where Ivan Turgenev was one of his
students. The younger man later noted that he and his
classmates were convinced their master knew nothing
of history. Gogol published Dead Souls in 1842,
envisioning it as the first part of a modern Divine
Comedy. Convinced by a priest that he would be
damned for his writing, he burned the second part of it
on February 24, 1852. Within ten days, he was dead
at the age of forty-two.
1948: Chicago
some reservations
“Look here at these headlines, man, where
Congress is busy passing laws. While they’re
making all these laws, it looks like to me they
ought to make one setting up a few game pre-
serves 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 protect-
ing wildlife, preserving fish and game, and set-
ting aside big tracts of land where nobody can
fish, shoot, hunt, nor harm a single living crea-
ture 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 protec-
tion. 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.
them. If they do, they get in jail. It also showed
some big national park with government air-
planes dropping food down to the deers when
they got snowed under and had nothing to
eat. The government protects and takes care of
buffaloes and deers—which is more than the
government does for me or my kinfolks down
South. Last month they lynched a man in
Georgia, and just today I see where the Klan
has whipped a Negro within a inch of his life
in Alabama. And right up North here in New
York, a actor is suing a apartment house that
won’t even let a Negro go up on the elevator to
see his producer. That is what I mean by game
preserves for Negroes—Congress ought to set
aside some place where we can go and nobody
can jump on us and beat us, neither lynch us
nor Jim Crow us every day. Colored folks rate
as much protection as a buffalo, or a deer.”
“You have a point there,” I said.
“This here movie showed great big beauti-
ful lakes with signs up all around: no fishing—
state game preserve. But it did not show a
single place with a sign up: no lynching. It also
187
 Feast in an Inn (detail), by Jan Havicksz Steen, 1674.
showed flocks of wild ducks settling down in a
nice green meadow behind a government sign
that said: no hunting. It were nice and peaceful
for them fish and ducks. There ought to be some
place where it is nice and peaceful for me, too,
even if I am not a fish or a duck.
“They showed one scene with two great
big old longhorn elks locking horns on a game
preserve somewhere out in Wyoming, fighting
like mad. Nobody bothered them elks or tried
to stop them from fighting. But just let me get
in a little old fistfight here in this bar—they
will lock me up, and the desk sergeant will say,
‘What are you colored boys doing, disturbing
the peace?’ Then they will give me thirty days
and fine me twice as much as they would a
white man for doing the same thing. There
ought to be some place where I can fight in
peace and not get fined them high fines.”
“You disgust me,” I said. “I thought you
were talking about a place where you could be
quiet and compose your mind. Instead, you are
talking about fighting.”
“I would like a place where I could do
both,” said Simple. “If the government can set
aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without be-
ing bothered, or a fish to be a fish without get-
ting hooked, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without
being shot down, there ought to be some place
in this American country where a Negro can
be a Negro without being Jim Crowed. There
ought to be a law. The next time I see my con-
gressman, I am going to tell him to introduce a
188  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
bill for game preserves for Negroes.”
“The Southerners would filibuster it to
death,” I said.
“If we are such a problem to them South-
erners,” said Simple, “I should think they would
want some place to preserve us out of their
sight. But then, of course, you have to take into
consideration that if the Negroes was taken out
of the South—who would they lynch? What
would they do for sport? A game preserve is for
to keep people from bothering anything that
is living.
“When that movie finished, it were sun-
set in Virginia and it showed a little deer and
its mama lying down to sleep. Didn’t nobody
say, ‘Get up, deer, you can’t sleep here,’ like they
would to me if I was to go to the White Sul-
phur Springs Hotel.”
“The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air
have nests, but the Son of a man hath not where
to lay his head.’’
“That is why I want game preserves for
Negroes,” said Simple.
Langston Hughes, “There Ought to Be a Law.”
After publishing his essay “The Negro Artist and
the Racial Mountain” and The Weary Blues and
Other Poems in 1926, serving as a correspondent
for the Baltimore Afro-American in Spain in
1937, and writing the screenplay for Way Down
South in 1939, Hughes published his first dialog
featuring his “Simple Minded Friend” in the
Chicago Defender in February 1943. He went
on to publish multiple books of Simple stories as
well as one play.
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 pri-
vate 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 worthi-
est 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 mantle—take it, and tell my
men to bring me another—but I vow to you
that you will pay me this!”
A few days later, the marshal came to
Brusquet’s 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
to the locksmith, and all averred the prank a
merry one.
Soon after, the marshal was waiting again
upon the king, having left his fine-blooded
horse—worth five hundred crowns and with
a rich, silver-broidered housing—in charge
of a lackey at the Louvre gate. Brusquet ap-
peared forthwith and sent the simple lackey
on a wild-goose chase, took the charger to his
posting stable, cut off his mane and half of one
ear, and sent him, in the wretched harness of
his hirelings, on the post to Longjumeau. On
his return, the postilion at Brusquet’s bidding,
Being a funny person does an awful lot of
things to you. You feel that you mustn’t get
serious with people. They don’t expect it from
you, and they don’t want to see it. You’re not
entitled to be serious, you’re a clown, and they
only want you to make them laugh.
 —Fanny Bryce, 1951
rode him to the marshal’s palace and ad-
dressed Strozzi in this tenor: “My lord, my
master sends you his obeisance, and this, your
horse. He is very fit for the posting service,
according to the trial I have made. My master
bids me say that he will be pleased to buy your
horse for fifty crowns.” The marshal made no
answer but the lordly one: “Go, take him to
your master, and bid him keep the nag until
he founders.”
It was not long before the marshal sent a
command to Brusquet for twenty post horses;
some he rode until they dropped, and some he
gave to certain poor foot soldiers, and two he
sold to a miller to carry flour. Brusquet’s men,
recognizing their steeds under the shameful
burden of flour sacks, had them seized by jus-
tice, but the lawsuit cost their master more
than the price of the horses.
Brusquet soon found such games too
costly for his purse. He invited the marshal
to a treaty of peace and celebrated the sign-
ing by a banquet, to which a dozen gallants
of the court were bidden. He promised them
189

Budai Heshang, by Liu Zhen, 1486. The Zen monk is
sometimes referred to as the Laughing Buddha.
that he would find the matter for a feast in his
own house. For the first service, some thirty
pasties were brought in, hot and savory, and
well sauced with spice and cinnamon and even
musk. Brusquet then excused himself a mo-
ment while his guests, opening their pasties,
found inside them old bits of bridles, girths,
cinch straps, cruppers, breastplates, headstalls,
studs, pommels, and cantles. It’s said that some
of those eager trenchermen had the tidbits in
their mouths before they found out the cheat,
and then the spitting and cursing would have
made you sick with laughter.
Next the marshal, apparently without ran-
cor, in his turn summoned Brusquet to dine.
But first he had his men steal a pretty little
donkey that was the pet of Brusquet’s stable,
and this ass he had skinned and prepared
190  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
in cold pies and with hot sauces and in the
manner of venison. Brusquet ate of all three,
and heartily, for they were indeed delicate, and
when he could swallow no more avowed that he
had never better dined. “Would you like to see
what you’ve eaten?” inquired the marshal—and
behold the head of Brusquet’s ass, garnished
like a boar’s head. Brusquet disgorged till he
was near to expiring.
Strozzi also found Brusquet’s wife a good
stick with which to belabor his witty enemy.
Brusquet went to Italy in 1555 in the train of
the Cardinal de Lorraine, who was on a mis-
sion to the pope. During his absence, Strozzi
so managed matters that a post rider came
to Paris with news of the death of Brusquet,
bringing besides his master’s testament, duly
signed and witnessed. This document prayed
the king to endow his widow with the con-
tinuance of his charge, but only on condition
that she would straightaway marry the courier
who brought the news. The king was pleased
to find good this continuance and condition,
supported as it was by the honorable marshal.
Madame Brusquet was apprised of the king’s
pleasure, and duly performed the obsequies
of her spouse, published her grief for a fit-
ting period, and wedded the courier, who had
a good sum of crowns awarded him in the
wedding contract. The happy marriage had
lasted a month when Brusquet returned, and
whether his wife was more surprised at his
resurrection or he at the horns planted on his
brow is a nice question. All the town buzzed
with the tale of his neat cuckolding, but he,
recognizing the humors of Strozzi, laughed
out of the wrong side of his mouth, as you
may well imagine.
Morris Bishop, from A Gallery of Eccentrics.
While working as a doctor in the 1530s, Brusquet
demonstrated such a propensity for killing, rather than
curing, his patients that an order went out for his
execution. He was a court jester for three kings: Henry
II—who saved him from the gallows—Francis II, and
Charles IX. Bishop published his book about twelve
eccentrics in 1928; he also published two volumes of
comic verse, Paramount Poems and Spilt Milk.
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, fri-
volities, 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 au-
thors 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 someone’s expense.
These miserable mongers of foul talk and
these vulgar performers of practical jokes exhibit
their absurd antics and retail their obscene anec-
dotes for the express purpose of exciting laughter,
which they expect and look for as a gratification
and reward for their ingenuity, dexterity, or wit.
This being the case, we may safely conclude
that if follies, vulgarities, and absurdities were
never laughed at, but were listened to in silence
and treated with the contempt which they really
deserve, they would soon cease to be practiced.
Who would transform themselves into
monkeys, or magpies, or buffoons (as thousands
are in the habit of doing), if their unmeaning ab-
surdities were visited with silence and contempt?
Who would continue to indulge in gibes and
mocks and ribaldry, or shameless conversation,
if they were received with a frown or a rebuke?

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191
 Teacher Asleep (detail), by André Henri Dargelas, c. 1860.
All these abominations and annoyances are
continued—and actually expand and increase—
precisely because they are incessantly laughed at.
Not only are absurdities and follies and
mischiefs supported and perpetuated by being
rewarded with a vulgar laugh, but very many
vices and actual crimes are regarded by the vol-
atile and unreflecting as capital jokes, and are
greeted with a hearty burst of laughter.
Thomas Carlyle says that England contains
twenty million people, mostly fools. We cannot
help fully endorsing Carlyle’s estimate.
Chapter XX
Let us repeat the fact (which should be continu-
ally borne in mind by all those who maintain
that laughter is consistent with propriety and
decorum)—namely, that habitual laughers are
silly, giddy, frivolous, superficial persons—that is
to say, they are, in one expressive word—fools.
A second fact requires to be remembered—
namely, that sensible and intelligent persons
whose lives are occupied in the important du-
ties of improving their minds, in being useful,
and in doing good, and whose leisure hours
are spent in rational, cheerful, and humanizing
enjoyments—such persons (male or female) are
rarely tempted to laugh; and many very excellent
192  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
men and women never laugh under any possible
circumstances. On the other hand, the worst of
characters—the depraved, the dissipated, the
criminal—are generally much addicted to up-
roarious mirth and laughter.
Moreover, all the innumerable words and
actions which induce or compel people to laugh
are invariably tainted with some degree of folly,
vice, or crime—all of which, it must be at once
acknowledged, are decidedly objectionable and
should, therefore, as soon as possible be ut-
terly swept away. An evident and most impor-
tant corollary may be deduced from the latter
proposition—namely, that the more these vices
can be avoided and got rid of, the better it will
be for the happiness of mankind. We may very
safely conclude that the universal predominance
of these qualities would be the total annihilation
of laughter.
George Vasey, from The Philosophy of Laughter
and Smiling. Elsewhere in this work, Vasey classified
laughter according to five types: “1. The giggling laugh,
excited by romping fun and nonsense; 2. The hearty
laugh, instigated by practical jokes or extremely absurd
antics; 3. The full-faced laugh of the weaker sex; 4. The
boisterous laugh of the stronger sex; 5. The ne plus
ultra laugh, which may be variously denominated as
the obstreperous laugh—the vociferous laugh—the
stentorian laugh—or the horse laugh.”
1978: New York City
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 en-
vied 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 In-
stitute of Dysmenorrhea. Doctors would re-
search little about heart attacks, from which
men were hormonally protected, but every-
thing 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 Ali’s Rope-
a-Dope Pads, John Wayne Maxi Pads, and Joe
Namath Jock Shields—“For Those Light Bach-
elor Days.”
Generals, right-wing politicians, and re-
ligious fundamentalists would cite menstrua-
tion (“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 plan-
et 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 is-
sue”) or self-inflict a major wound every month
(“You must give blood for the revolution”).
Street guys would invent slang (“He’s
a three-pad man”) and “give fives” on the
corner with some exchange like, “Man, you
lookin’ good!”
“Yeah man, I’m on the rag!”
TV shows would treat the subject openly.
(Happy Days: Richie and Potsie try to convince
Fonzie that he is still “The Fonz,” though he
has missed two periods in a row. Hill Street
Blues: The whole precinct hits the same cycle.)
So would newspapers. (“Summer Shark Scare
Threatens Menstruating Men.” “Judge Cites
Monthlies in Pardoning Rapist.”)
Men would convince women that sex was
more pleasurable at “that time of the month.”
Lesbians would be said to fear blood and there-
fore life itself, though all they needed was a
good menstruating man.
Medical schools would limit women’s en-
try (“They might faint at the sight of blood”).
Of course, intellectuals would offer the
most moral and logical arguments. Without
that biological gift for measuring the cycles
of the moon and planets, how could a woman
master any discipline that demanded a sense
of time, space, mathematics—or the ability to
measure anything at all? In philosophy and re-
ligion, how could women compensate for being
disconnected from the rhythm of the universe?
Or for their lack of symbolic death and resur-
rection every month?
Menopause would be celebrated as a posi-
tive event, the symbol that men had accumu-
lated enough years of cyclical wisdom to need
no more.
Liberal males in every field would try to be
kind. The fact that “these people” have no gift
for measuring life, the liberals would explain,
should be punishment enough.
Gloria Steinem, from “If Men Could Menstruate.”
Steinem, whose grandmother had been the president
of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association, traveled
in 1956 on a fellowship to India, an experience
that inspired her first book, The Thousand
Indias. Her exposé of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy
Club, published in 1963, earned her notoriety and
acclaim, and in the 1970s she emerged as a leader of
the women’s liberation movement, helping to found
the Coalition of Labor Union Women and Women
Against Pornography.
193
 c. 1592: Padua
wordplay

Petruchio: Good morrow, Kate, for that’s 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, what’s 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, i’faith 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.

194  | 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 I’ll try. [She strikes him]
Petruchio: I swear I’ll 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 crest—a 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.

Petruchio: A combless cock, so Kate will be my hen.

Katherine: No cock of mine. You crow too like a craven.
Petruchio: Nay, come, Kate, come. You must not look so sour.
Katherine: It is my fashion when I see a crab.
Petruchio: Why, here’s no crab, and therefore look not sour.
Katherine: There is, there is.
Petruchio: Then show it me.
Katherine: Had I a glass I would.
Petruchio: What, you mean my face?
Katherine: Well aimed, of such a young one.
Petruchio: Now, by St. George, I am too young for you.
Katherine: Yet you are withered.
Petruchio:    ’Tis with cares.
Katherine:   I care not.
Petruchio: Nay, hear you, Kate. In sooth, you scape not so.
Katherine: I chafe you if I tarry. Let me go.
Petruchio: No, not a whit. I find you passing gentle.
’Twas told me you were rough, and coy, and sullen,
And now I find report a very liar,
For thou art pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous,

196  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
But slow in speech, yet sweet as springtime flowers.
Thou canst not frown. Thou canst not look askance,
Nor bite the lip, as angry wenches will,
Nor hast thou pleasure to be cross in talk,
But thou with mildness entertain’st thy wooers,
With gentle conference, soft, and affable.
Why does the world report that Kate doth limp?
O slanderous world! Kate like the hazel twig
Is straight and slender, and as brown in hue
As hazelnuts, and sweeter than the kernels.
O let me see thee walk. Thou dost not halt.
Katherine: Go, fool, and whom thou keep’st command.
Petruchio: Did ever Dian so become a grove
As Kate this chamber with her princely gait?
O, be thou Dian, and let her be Kate,
And then let Kate be chaste and Dian sportful.
Katherine: Where did you study all this goodly speech?
Petruchio: It is extempore, from my mother wit.
Katherine: A witty mother, witless else her son.
Petruchio: Am I not wise?
Katherine:     Yes, keep you warm.
Petruchio: Marry, so I mean, sweet Katherine, in thy bed.
And therefore setting all this chat aside,
Thus in plain terms: your father hath consented
That you shall be my wife, your dowry ’greed on,
And will you, nill you, I will marry you.
Now, Kate, I am a husband for your turn,
For by this light, whereby I see thy beauty—
Thy beauty that doth make me like thee well—
Thou must be married to no man but me,
For I am he am born to tame you, Kate,
And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate
Conformable as other household Kates.
Here comes your father. Never make denial.
I must and will have Katherine to my wife.

William Shakespeare, from The Taming of the Shrew. Most

of the five-act comedy, including this scene, is part of a play within
a play, staged by a lord as a joke at the expense of a drunken tinker.
In the final scene, Katherine delivers the longest speech in the play,
in which she declares, “I am ashamed that women are so simple/
To offer war where they should kneel for peace,/Or seek for rule,
supremacy, and sway,/When they are bound to serve, love, and
obey.” Petruchio responds, “Why, there’s a wench!—Come on, and
kiss me Kate.”

197
198  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
Further Remarks

Once Upon a Time

in the West
By Ben Tarnoff

O n November 18, 1865, the New York Sat-

urday 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 journal-
ist, and soon went viral, reprinted in papers from
San Francisco to Memphis. The story’s author
was Mark Twain, the pseudonym of a twenty-
nine-year-old writer born Samuel Clemens. At
the time, Twain was living in California, enjoy-
ing provincial renown as a Western humorist.
The success of “Jim Smiley” made him national-
ly famous. “No reputation was ever more rapidly
won,” observed the New York Tribune.
Twain’s stature quickly grew. Within a de-
cade, he would publish his bestselling book The
Innocents Abroad, perform to sold-out audiences
at home and overseas, and build a mansion in
Hartford, Connecticut, staffed with servants and
outfitted with indulgences like a telephone, a bil-
liard table, and a battery-powered burglar alarm.
By the time of his death in 1910, he had become
a legend—“the Lincoln of our literature,” in the
words of Twain’s friend the author and critic
William Dean Howells—and in the century
since, he has been hailed by Ernest Hemingway,
William Faulkner, and Norman Mailer as the
father of modern American fiction.
“Jim Smiley,” subsequently retitled “The
Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,”
lifted Twain to fame and laid the foundation for
his later triumphs, but it isn’t especially funny
anymore. What once made bankers in New York
and boatmen in Baton Rouge laugh out loud
would now at best elicit a halfhearted chuckle
from a generous reader. It’s hard to say exactly

Ben Tarnoff is the author of A Counterfeiter’s 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 Lapham’s 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
 why. Humor eludes elaborate theorizing, but it
usually relies on context: on shared assumptions
about the permissible and the taboo, the familiar
and the strange. Some humor stays funny be-
cause its underlying truths remain in force—the
flirty banter in The Taming of the Shrew [Padua,
page 194], for instance, or the dick jokes in
Tristram Shandy. A large part of the pleasure in
laughing at old material is realizing how little
has changed. Other humor, by contrast, loses its
power as its context fades.
“Jim Smiley” drew upon a context that has
changed beyond recognition: the American West.
More than just a place, the West was an idea; it
spawned national legends, bestselling authors,
and a menagerie of pop-culture entertainments,
from the nineteenth-century “horse operas” per-
formed on Broadway to the dime novels featur-
ing frontier outlaws. What made “Jim Smiley”
such a hit was Twain’s upending of the conven-
Fountain, by Marcel Duchamp, 1964 replica of the 1917 original.
200  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
tions of this world, with a picture of the West at
once recognizable and not.
T he precise boundaries of the West were
constantly changing, but the term always
referred to the place where white men ran up
against an alien continent. This collision de-
stroyed native populations. It also created new
myths and metaphors and slang, and the mak-
ings of a national identity. In 1750, the inhabit-
ants of colonial America numbered little more
than a million, and the West was the wilderness
beyond the Allegheny Mountains. By 1850, the
United States was home to twenty-three mil-
lion people, and the West stretched all the way
to the Pacific Ocean. The hunters and home-
steaders who ventured into Ohio and Oregon
didn’t simply transform the wilderness. They
were themselves transformed by an unfamiliar,
unforgiving landscape.
 To survive, they had to adapt. For hordes
of westward-bound whites from the colonial
era onward, this was a delicate task. Eastern
elites viewed the West with suspicion and
scorn, a lawless backwater of heathen Indians
and howling wilderness. Settlers ran the risk
of losing their manners. In his Letters from an
American Farmer, published in 1782, J. Hector
St. John de Crèvecoeur described frontiersmen
as “a mongrel breed, half civilized, half savage,”
and the prejudice remained firm into the nine-
teenth century.
No one struck a better balance between
Western savagery and Eastern civility than
America’s first frontier icon, Daniel Boone. The
real Boone was a Revolutionary War veteran and
an early settler of Kentucky. The mythic Boone
was nothing less than a superhero. He slaughtered
Indians, protected settlers, feasted on buffalo, and
blazed trails through the backcountry. Remark-
ably, he remained a gentleman. Between bouts of
wrestling bears and outlaws, Boone always found
time to be polite to women. The architects of his
legend were careful to lend him an air of gentility
for his presentation to respectable readers.
If the West lent itself to myth making, to the
transposition of fact and fiction, it also proved
fertile ground for humor. Western comedy grew
out of an omnipresent feature of frontier life: its
hardness. As Daniel Boone knew, there was no
shortage of ways for a man to die in the West.
He could die slowly from starvation or exposure,
or suddenly, from an encounter with a Shawnee
brave or a bear or a bobcat. He could also tangle
with his fellow frontiersmen, often the greatest
threat of all. The backwoods were full of brutal
men. They picked fights with each other on the
slimmest pretexts, solely for the pleasure of hurt-
ing and humiliating their opponents.
These macho rituals generated their own
special language. A Tennessee trapper or a Mis-
sissippi boatman might thump his chest and
claim that he was a snapping turtle, or that he
was endowed with a bear’s claws and the Devil’s
tail. The boasts were meant to make the man as
fearsome as the landscape he inhabited. They
were also self-consciously silly, exaggerated to the
point of absurdity. They converted the cruelty of
frontier life into a source of cathartic laughter. In
a society of strangers, Westerners could gather
around the campfire and enjoy a fleeting sense
of community as they spun the unfunny facts of
their surroundings into surreal comic fictions.
These “tall tales” became the basis for America’s
first folk art: a set of oral traditions known as
frontier humor. The yarns often featured a gris-
tly frontiersman, engaging in fantastical feats of
violence and speaking strange, gorgeous slang.
It is easy to distinguish between the joking
that reflects good breeding and that which is
coarse—the one, if aired at an apposite moment
of mental relaxation, is becoming in the most
serious of men, whereas the other is unworthy
of any free person, if the content is indecent or
the expression obscene.
 —Cicero, 44 bc
Mark Twain loved frontier humor, the
impish wit and yeasty vernacular, its fondness
for the gargantuan and the grotesque. He also
understood its deeper value: not merely as en-
tertainment but as a survival tactic. Twain once
defined humor as the “kindly veil” that makes
life endurable. “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,” he said, and
he spoke from experience. In his early thirties,
he put a gun to his head and almost pulled the
trigger; in his seventies, he was still wondering
whether he’d made the right choice.
The dark comedy of the frontier fit his tem-
perament and his talent. Tall talk showed him
how to make language more expressive, by em-
bracing a vernacular that reflected the regional
varieties of American speech and gave words a
more imaginative relationship to the things they
described. One famous frontier humorist put
it this way: you could ladle out “words at ran-
dum, like a calf kickin’ at yaller-jackids,” or you
could roll “em out tu the pint, like a feller a-layin
bricks—every one fits.” The point was to avoid
201
 being a mere bricklayer of language, to break
free from the patterns prescribed by tradition
and congealed by cliché and to find more origi-
nal ways to build sentences. What distinguished
Twain was his willingness to do so, and by so
doing to turn frontier humor into literature.
It wasn’t easy. The notion that literature
could emerge from the frontier’s barbaric yawp
encountered violent resistance from America’s
literary establishment. It didn’t help that tall tales
abounded in vulgarity, drunkenness, and deprav-
ity, not to mention perversions of proper English
that would make a schoolteacher gasp. Proving
the literary power of the frontier would be a cen-
tral part of Twain’s legacy, and a pie in the face of
There comes a time when suddenly you realize
that laughter is something you remember and
that you were the one laughing.
 —Marlene Dietrich, 1962
the New England dons who had dominated the
country’s high culture for much of the nineteenth
century. He wasn’t immune to wanting their ap-
proval, but he came from a very different tradi-
tion. His ear hadn’t been trained at Harvard or
Yale; it was tuned to the myriad voices of slaves
and scoundrels, boatmen and gamblers.
T wain’s escape into literature began with a
bar fight. He had a friend named Steve
Gillis, a squarely built Southerner who loved a
good scrap. One night in November 1864, Gillis
was walking by a saloon on Howard Street in San
Francisco when he saw a scuffle inside. He de-
cided to lend a hand—and ended up smashing a
pitcher across the bartender’s head, nearly killing
him. Gillis was arrested, posted bail with Twain’s
help, and then fled before facing charges. Twain
lacked the money to pay the forfeited bond, and
so he followed suit. Gillis went to Virginia City,
Nevada, and Twain to Jackass Hill, a mining
camp about a hundred miles from San Francisco
where Gillis’ brother Jim owned a cabin.
The change of scenery was abrupt. In San
Francisco, Twain had enjoyed oysters, cham-
202  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
pagne, and the company of young and ambi-
tious writers like Bret Harte. At Jackass Hill,
the food was simpler, the society less sophisti-
cated. 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 boom-
towns 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 frog—bet
stranger $50—stranger had no frog, & C
got him one—in the meantime stranger
filled C’s frog full of shot & he couldn’t
jump—the stranger’s frog won.
What struck Twain was the narrator’s seri-
ousness: the man spun the ludicrous yarn as if it
were “the gravest sort of history,” a series of “aus-
tere facts” that his listeners received as solemnly
as if the story were delivered from a pulpit. No-
body in the tavern seemed “aware that a first-
rate story had been told in a first-rate way, and
that it was brimful of a quality whose presence
they never suspected—humor,” 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, America’s 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 wasn’t done.
 Girls in kimonos laughing and playing outside a house near a stream, Japan.
He wrote a long letter to his brother and his
sister-in-law that helped to explain why:
I never had but two powerful ambitions in
my life. One was to be a pilot, & the other
a preacher of the gospel. I accomplished the
one & failed in the other, because I could
not supply myself with the necessary stock
in trade—i.e., religion. I have given it up
forever. I never had a “call” in that direction,
anyhow, & my aspirations were the very ec-
stasy of presumption. But I have had a “call”
to literature, of a low order—i.e., humor-
ous. It is nothing to be proud of, but it is my
strongest suit, & if I were to listen to that
maxim of stern duty which says that to do
right you must multiply the one or the two
or the three talents which the Almighty en-
trusts to your keeping, I would long ago have
ceased to meddle with things for which I was
by nature unfitted & turned my attention to
seriously scribbling to excite the laughter of
God’s creatures. Poor, pitiful business!
The confession offers a glimpse of the cri-
sis behind the jumping frog. Twain could make
people laugh, but he felt ashamed of the fact,
since humor was a lowbrow pursuit. He didn’t
want to be a clown for the rest of his life, yap-
ping and hollering for people’s amusement. Yet
he also recognized that humor was what he did
best: his “strongest suit,” a talent, a calling, be-
stowed by the Almighty. He couldn’t abandon it,
despite his misgivings about its crudeness.
In this ambivalence he differed from Arte-
mus Ward, who had fewer scruples about his vo-
cation. Twain and Ward had met during Ward’s
trip to the far West in 1863. They hit it off imme-
diately: drinking, trawling dance halls, and rib-
bing each other relentlessly. Ward was only a year
older but much further along in his career. His
given name was Charles Farrar Browne, and like
Twain he had started out as a typesetter before
cranking out the comic sketches that made him
famous. He also worked as a standup comedian,
delivering non sequiturs and puns in a mock-
serious vernacular that had his audience rolling
in the aisles. His admirers included Abraham
Lincoln [Springfield, IL, page 57], who read one
of Ward’s pieces aloud to his cabinet before pre-
senting the first draft of the Emancipation Proc-
lamation. Secretary of State William H. Seward
thought it was hilarious; Secretary of War Edwin
M. Stanton and Treasury Secretary Salmon P.
Chase did not. “Gentlemen, why don’t you laugh?”
Stanton later recalled Lincoln saying. “With the
fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if
I did not laugh I should die, and you need this
medicine as much as I do.” Like Twain, Lincoln
took humor’s medicinal properties seriously.
203
 Ward’s success set him apart, but he ize the telling of funny stories. They did little
wasn’t alone. He belonged to a generation of to elevate humor into art. Their comedy largely
humorists who emerged around the time of relied on misspelled words and malapropisms,
the Civil War. They wrote under a variety of illuminated by the occasional witticism. While
pseudonyms—Petroleum V. Nasby, Josh Bill- there was plenty of quaint American slang
ings, Orpheus C. Kerr—and helped popular- on offer in their work, these writers didn’t try
The Buffoon Sebastian de Morra, by Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, c. 1646.

204  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
to develop the deeper potential of vernacular
language into anything approximating “good
square American literatoor,” as Ward called it.
That task fell to Twain. His anxiety about
humor’s lowness worked to his advantage, push-
ing him to improve on the more buffoonish antics
of predecessors like Ward and find a more liter-
ary key for his work. Since he couldn’t renounce
humor, he enriched it. To do so he drew on the
particular strain of frontier storytelling that he
had encountered in his youth: Southwestern
humor, named for a loosely defined region that
included Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Missis-
sippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Missouri.
Starting in the 1830s, a handful of news­
papermen began documenting life in the South-
western hinterlands—mostly members of the
educated Whig elite who caricatured their sub-
jects as dumb yokels. The central Southwestern
device was the “frame”: a genteel narrator placed
between the reader and the barbarous backwoods
society. The gentleman was always in control, a
guide pointing out specimens of frontier human-
ity like he might animals in a zoo.
Although originally published in the re-
gion’s own papers, Southwestern humor soon
moved north. Characters like Simon Suggs
and Sut Lovingood started appearing in East-
ern magazines, raising hell and spouting dialect
for an urban audience. Readers in New York
City and Boston learned about frontier rituals
like the camp meeting, the coon hunt, and the
horse race; they became acquainted with the
confidence man and the Indian killer.
Despite their coarseness, these lowlifes pos-
sessed a certain charm, inhabiting a realm be-
yond law, morality, or logic—a place where the
usual rules didn’t apply. Their days weren’t orga-
nized around the miseries of wage labor, as they
were for the urban masses of the industrializing
East. The backwoodsman lived in a “borderland
of fable,” as the historian Bernard DeVoto later
called it, where the beets grew as big as cedar
stumps and the grasshoppers were so thick they
could be barbecued as steaks. This phantasmago-
ria reflected the terrifying powers of a newfound
land, filtered through the fevered mind of the
frontiersman. The strange language of the fron-
tier 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 liter-
ary 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 Mis-
souri childhood. But by the time Twain finally
finished “Jim Smiley,” Ward’s 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 people—that 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 fortu-
itous: the publisher passed the item along to
the editor of the Saturday Press, who wasted
little time in printing it.
T he premise is simple. The narrator enters
a tavern looking for a reverend named
Leonidas W. Smiley. Simon Wheeler, a drowsy
patron, says that he once knew a Jim Smiley, and
proceeds to box the bewildered stranger into a
corner and unspool a bizarre, meandering yarn.
This Smiley had a bit of a gambling problem,
says Wheeler. He even trained a frog to jump on
command, for the purpose of betting on him. He
took such pride in his pet that when a stranger
came to town, Smiley challenged him to a frog-
jumping contest. The stranger accepted, but first
he would need a frog of his own. While Smi-
ley went to procure one for him, the stranger
grabbed Smiley’s frog, pried its mouth open,
and filled it with quail shot. When the moment
came, Smiley’s frog couldn’t move—“planted as
solid as a anvil”—while the other frog “hopped
205
 off lively.” The stranger collected his winnings
and took off, leaving Smiley stunned.
The narrator isn’t sure how to react to
this story. Wheeler never smiles, despite the
ridiculousness of the incident he relates. He
drifts “serenely” through his “queer yarn” in the
same quiet, “gently flowing key”—and prob-
ably would have kept drifting on indefinitely
if someone at the other side of the bar hadn’t
called him away, giving the narrator a chance
to escape. He makes for the door, only to be
buttonholed by Wheeler at the last minute.
Jests and scoffs do lessen majesty and greatness
and should be far from great personages and
men of wisdom.
 —Henry Peacham, 1622
Wheeler wants to spin another yarn, this time
about Smiley’s “yaller one-eyed cow.” The nar-
rator stomps out, yelling, “O, curse Smiley and
his afflicted cow!”
Americans found the tale uproariously fun-
ny. For decades, readers had laughed at South-
western sketches that presented the frontiersman
as a clown. Now they were treated to the oppo-
site: the joke isn’t on the illiterate Westerner who
can’t talk straight, but is instead on the genteel
narrator, who gets lured in and barraged with a
series of absurdities that leaves him flummoxed
and frustrated, no closer to meeting his sought-
after clergyman. When he first meets Wheeler,
he sees “winning gentleness and simplicity” in
his face—whereas a savvier onlooker would dis-
cern a con man about to take a city slicker for a
ride. Wheeler is by far the smarter of the two,
despite his lack of education. He speaks in vivid
images: a dog’s jaw sticks out like “the fo’castle of
a steamboat,” his teeth “shine savage like the fur-
naces.” He creates lovely word music from synco-
pated verbal rhythms, as when he describes how
Smiley’s frog “hysted up his shoulders—so—like
a Frenchman, but it wasn’t no use—he couldn’t
budge…”
Wheeler embodies the “mongrel breed”
despised by Crèvecoeur, yet he breaks out of
206  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
the cage of Eastern condescension and shows
his uncanny skill as a storyteller. By contrast,
the narrator’s language is flat, secondhand,
soggy with the sentimental clichés of Eastern
respectability. In the face-off between East
and West, the West wins—not with violence,
which is how a similar encounter ends in an
earlier Twain sketch, “The Dandy Frightening
the Squatter”—but with a confidence trick, an-
other favorite frontier pastime.
Twain had taken a popular genre and
turned it inside out. His inversion of the South-
western form drew loud laughter from a country
deeply familiar with the conventions of frontier
humor. But “Jim Smiley” represented more than
just a clever sendup of the Southwestern school.
It also marked a transition for Twain: the mo-
ment when he discovered the literary power of
the frontier. If it’s harder to see the humor in
the story today, that’s partly because Twain had
ambitions beyond being funny. The piece’s devil-
ish irony, lyrical slang, and rambling flow aren’t
purely for comic effect; they are the building
blocks of a distinctive narrative style, one that
would shape later masterpieces like Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn.
Twain had set out to tell a tall tale and
ended up with a work of art. He used the veil
of humor to smuggle in a serious point about
the purpose of American literature, challenging
the entrenched belief in Eastern superiority and
Western barbarism. In “Jim Smiley,” the frontier
isn’t an inferior stage of civilization awaiting the
enlightening influence of the Atlantic Coast,
but a densely detailed universe demanding to
be understood on its own terms. In the coming
decades, Twain would explore this universe in
greater detail—in Roughing It, his chronicle of
Nevada and California; in Life on the Mississippi,
his account of his piloting days; and, above all, in
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, grounded in
his boyhood memories of Hannibal, Missouri.
The jumping frog opened the vein of literary
creation that would sustain his best work, and
helped him build a legacy far beyond any of his
fellow humorists. Twain had wanted to do more
than just make people laugh. He succeeded.
 Dangerous Wit

Target
1673: London
Assailant 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 King Charles II

Target
1728: London
Assailant
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.
Alexander Pope
Lewis Theobald

Target
1933: Moscow
Assailant
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
Joseph Stalin

Target
1940: Hollywood
Assailant 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 Hitler’s “death list,” branded a
“pseudo-Jew” in German anti-Semitic book.
Charlie
Chaplin
Adolf Hitler

Target
2011: Beijing
Assailant
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.
Ai Weiwei
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 men’s own that pleaseth
them or by the apprehension of some deformed
thing in another, by comparison whereof they
suddenly applaud themselves. And it is inci-
dent most to them that are conscious of the
fewest abilities in themselves who are forced to
keep themselves in their own favor by observ-
ing the imperfections of other men. And there-
fore 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 princi-
pally 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 re-
venge by reconciliation. But in all cases, both
laughter and weeping are sudden motions, cus-
tom taking them both away. For no man laughs
at old jests or weeps for an old calamity.
208  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
viktor frankl
Man’s Search for Meaning, 1946
It is well known that humor, more than any-
thing else in the human makeup, can afford an
aloofness and an ability to rise above any situa-
tion, 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 concentra-
tion camp, although suffering is omnipresent. To
draw an analogy: a man’s 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 com-
panions. 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 cross-
ing 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 oth-
er’s 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 per-
sons who have been attractive is to forget that
they are so no longer.
Most young people think they are being nat-
ural 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
You’ve really got to hand it to short people.
Because they often can’t reach it.
Never judge a man until you’ve walked a mile
in his shoes. Unless they’re Crocs, then fuck
that guy.
Children give terrible gifts because they’re poor.
The Jews run Hollywood! Which is probably
why it’s a fun place to work with a lot of great
restaurants.
Probably the worst thing you can do to a per-
son is leave them a voicemail.
Ask any guy: if you don’t know all the sex tips
from the latest Cosmo, we are not interested.
“It just feels so good to have a clean
apartment!”—Someone who’s never killed a
bear with a sword.
He’d come off as way less pretentious if he went
by Daniel “Dave” Lewis.
Made my wife a “surprise” appointment for
lap-band surgery. April Fool’s! She left me a
few weeks ago.
Sometimes I put dog poop in the toilet at
work so the guys don’t 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
it—but, 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 ac-
tions 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 scandal-
ous submissions. It is likewise highly improper
to throw out any invectives that numbers of peo-
ple 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 ex-
pense of virtue.
210  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
joan rivers
Interview with The Hollywood Reporter, 2013
I’ve learned: When you get older, who cares? I
don’t mince words, I don’t hold back. What are
you gonna do to me? Fire me? It’s been done.
Threaten to commit suicide? Done. Take away
my show? Done! Not invite to me to the Vanity
Fair party? I’ve never been invited! If I ever saw
the invitation, I’d use it as toilet paper. My gar-
dener Jose is invited—he asks me to bring him
his sombrero to clean it for him.
I’ve learned to have absolutely no regrets
about any jokes I’ve 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 lesbian—and I
stand by it: he’s the daughter Cher wishes she’d
had. You can tune me out, you can click me
off, it’s okay. I am not going to bow to politi-
cal correctness. But you do have to learn, if you
want to be a satirist, you can’t be part of the
party. Meaning, you can’t go horseback riding
with Jackie O in Central Park if you’re going to
make a joke about her that night.
 st. john chrysostom
On the Statutes, 387
Let us then discern the snares and walk far off
from them! Let us discern the precipices and not
even approach them! This will be the foundation
of our greatest safety, not only to avoid things
sinful, but those things which, being accounted
indifferent, are yet apt to make us stumble against
sin. For example, to laugh, to speak jocosely, does
not seem an acknowledged sin, but it leads to ac-
knowledged sin. Thus laughter often gives birth
to foul discourse, and foul discourse to actions
still more foul. Often from words and laughter
proceeds railing and insult; and from railing
and insult, blows and wounds; and from blows
and wounds, slaughter and murder. If, then,
you would take good counsel for yourself, avoid
not merely foul words and foul deeds, or blows,
wounds, and murders, but unseasonable laughter
itself—and the very language of raillery—since
these things have proved the root of subsequent
evils. Therefore St. Paul said, “Let no foolish
talking nor jesting proceed out of thy mouth.”
For although this seems to be a small thing in
itself, it becomes, however, the cause of much
mischief to us. Again, to live in luxury does not
seem to be a manifest and admitted crime, but
then it brings forth in us great evils—drunken-
ness, insolence, avarice, and rapine. If you would
avoid luxurious living, you should remove the
foundation of extortion, and rapine, drunken-
ness, and a thousand other evils, cutting away
the root of iniquity from its extremity. Hence St.
Paul said that “she who lives in pleasure is dead
while she lives.” Again to go to the theaters does
not seem, to most men, to be an admitted crime,
but it introduces into our life an infinite host of
miseries. For spending time in the theaters pro-
duces fornication, intemperance, and every kind
of impurity.
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 infi-
nites 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 specta-
tor, 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 inferi-
ority 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 be-
gin 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 diaboli-
cally; and finally that if, in these selfsame ultra-
civilized 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
Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, he remarked,
“What a good thing it isn’t 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 can’t make her think.”
Austrian-born philosopher Ludwig
Wittgenstein observed in 1947, “A typical
American film, naive and silly, can—for all its
silliness and even by means of it—be 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
it’s 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.”
Niccolò 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
its actors and scenery be brought to Rome in
1520. In the prologue to Clizia, a play inspired
by Plautus [Rome, page 125], Machiavelli
wrote, “Comedies were invented to be of use
and of delight to their audiences.”
In 1662 diarist Samuel Pepys saw two plays
by William Shakespeare [Padua, page 194]
performed in London. Of Romeo and Juliet he
wrote, “It is a play of itself the worst that ever I
heard in my life, and the worst acted that ever
I saw these people do.” A Midsummer Night’s
Dream he described simply as “the most insipid,
ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life.”
As editor of the New York Tribune, Horace
Greeley once received a letter requesting an
autograph of the late Edgar Allan Poe that
Greeley might possess from his correspondence.
Greeley replied, “I happen to have in my
possession but one autograph of the late
distinguished American poet Edgar A. Poe. It
consists of an IOU, with my name on the back
of it. It cost me just $51.50, and you can have it
for half-price.”
Shortly before Ezra Pound was indicted for
treason for his anti-American broadcasts
on Benito Mussolini’s Radio Rome, Ernest
Hemingway wrote to poet Archibald
MacLeish, “If Ezra has any sense he should
shoot himself. Personally I think he should
have shot himself somewhere along after the
twelfth canto, although maybe earlier.”
In Moscow in 1921, a group of actors formed
the Blue Blouses, a theater company that acted
out scenarios from the news. Their success
inspired the creation of many similar amateur
troupes. One joke that emerged from the
movement went: Bim and Bom were the most
popular clowns in revolutionary Moscow. Bim
came out with a picture of Lenin and one of
Trotsky. “I’ve got two beautiful portraits,” he
announced, “I’m going to take them home with
me!” Bom asked, “What will you do with them
when you get home?” “Oh, I’ll hang Lenin and
put Trotsky against the wall.”
When a former leader of the Tijuana cartel was
shot in the back of the head by a man dressed
in a clown costume, five hundred clowns from
around Latin America joined together at the
International Clown Meeting in Mexico City
and staged a fifteen-minute laughathon “to
demonstrate their opposition to the generalized
violence that prevails in our country.”
Having read a manuscript by Marcel Proust, an
editor at the publishing house Ollendorff wrote
to its author, “I may perhaps be dead from the
neck up, but rack my brains as I may, I can’t see
why a chap should need thirty pages to describe
how he turns over in bed before going to sleep.”
When asked about Sigmund Freud [Vienna,
page 148] in an interview, William Faulkner
replied, “Everybody talked about Freud when I
lived in New Orleans, but I have never read him.
Neither did Shakespeare. I doubt if Melville did
either, and I’m sure Moby Dick didn’t.”
Milton Berle was reputed to have one of
the biggest penises in show business. In the
bathroom of the Friar’s Club in New York City,
another comedian asked Berle to compare sizes
with him. Berle reportedly replied, “Okay, but
I’m only gonna take out enough to win.”
In May 1969 the crew of Apollo 10 became
the second mission to orbit the moon.
Transcripts attest to a malfunctioning waste-
disposal system: “Give me a napkin quick.
There’s a turd floating through the air.” The
three astronauts could not determine the
provenance of the turd: “I didn’t do it. It ain’t
one of mine.” “I don’t think it’s one of mine.”
“Mine was a little more sticky than that.
Throw that away.” “God Almighty.”
The world’s oldest known joke was written in
Sumerian sometime between 2300 and
1900 bc: “Something which never occurred
since time immemorial; a young woman did
not fart in her husband’s lap.”
In his Anthology of Black Humor, published
in 1939, André Breton speculated, “Given
the specific requirements of the modern
sensibility, it is increasingly doubtful that
any poetic, artistic, or scientific work, any
philosophical or social system that does
not contain this kind of humor will not
leave a great deal to be desired, will not be
condemned more or less rapidly to perish.”
One of Elvis Presley’s favorite movies was
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which he is
said to have watched around forty-five times
in his private movie theater at Graceland.
During the last years of his life, Presley
was also known to spend late nights at his
mansion acting out Python routines with one
his cousins.
Muphry’s law was formulated by John
Bangsund in The Society of Editors Newsletter
in 1992: “(a) if you write anything criticizing
editing or proofreading, there will be a fault
of some kind in what you have written; (b)
if an author thanks you in a book for your
editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes
in the book; (c) the stronger the sentiment
expressed in (a) and (b), the greater the fault;
(d) any book devoted to editing or style will be
internally inconsistent.”
A feature of ancient Roman funeral processions,
the archimime was a particular jester or fool
hired to walk behind the body, dressed as the
deceased, silently imitating his or her walk and
acting out events from the dead person’s life as
the parade went toward the tomb.
When asked if he had read a recent play by
Maurice Maeterlinck, Leo Tolstoy replied,
“Why should I? Have I committed a crime?”
213
 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

M ildred Harris was only nineteen years

old when she sued for divorce, although
she may have been even younger. Her career in
movies had begun sometime between the ages of
nine and twelve, depending on who was asking.
Either way, she was far younger than her husband,
who, at thirty-one, was the most famous man in
the world—and was leading a double life.
Harris first met Charlie Chaplin at a party
at Samuel Goldwyn’s beach house in the fall
of 1917. He offered her a ride home, resulting
in a yearlong affair, a pregnancy, and a hurried
wedding. Their child survived only three days,
its sad little death a cipher for their unflourish-
ing marriage. In the courtroom, Harris told the
judge of the unhappiness she had experienced
as the wife of the funniest man alive. Chap-
lin neglected and mistreated her, she said. He
brooded and was rarely home, abandoning her
to go off with his friends for up to six weeks
at a time, or leaving her alone at night as he
spent hours stalking the streets in search of
ideas. When he was around, he criticized her
constantly, correcting her manners, censoring

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
Lapham’s Quarterly appeared in the Summer 2012 issue, Magic Shows.

214  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
her dress, and refusing her money, despite his
commanding a salary of $670,000 a year. Her
friends were unwelcome at their house, and if
she ever went out alone, he hired detectives to
follow her. Among the few people she was al-
lowed to see were her ever-present mother and
the men Chaplin would bring home for dinner.
“But such men!” Harris lamented. “Old, grave,
and intellectual men! They were fifty years old
or more. They talked of things I could not pos-
sibly understand. I was seventeen. What could
I know of philosophy, or of Voltaire [Ferney,
page 142] or Rousseau or Kant?”
Chaplin had hoped to cultivate the mind
of his young wife, which he found “cluttered
with pink-ribboned foolishness.” According to
Harris, this meant he read long, boring books
out loud and rehearsed the tragic roles he har-
bored secret ambitions to play. Mildred once
mistook something he said for a joke and be-
gan to laugh, but soon realized her error as he
flew into a fury and called her names. When
they divorced in 1920, on grounds of mental
cruelty, she received $200,000. “It has been said
that a comedian is only funny in public,” she
complained to the Washington Times. “I believe
it. In fact, I know it. Charlie Chaplin, who has
made millions laugh, only caused me tears.”
Chaplin did little to deny it. He appeared to
suffer bouts of melancholy when he first became
famous, and when the journalist and poet Ben-
jamin De Casseres came to speak to him around
the time of his divorce, the actor’s condition had
escalated to full-blown despair. “There are days
when contact with any human being makes me
physically ill,” Chaplin told him. “I am oppressed
at such times and in such periods by what
was known among the Romantics as world-
weariness. I feel then a total stranger to life.”
Was this proof that the Chaplin projected
on the screen was exactly that, an insubstantial
phantom concealing the true identity of the
man? “He has clowned, cavorted, and somer-
saulted in every city, town, and mining camp
in the civilized and uncivilized world,” wrote
De Casseres, “but there is no man I have ever
met who, intellectually and emotionally, comes
nearer to the Hamlet type of being than Charles
Spencer Chaplin, planetary clown, whose stage
personality is better known than any other hu-
man being who has thus far been born on this
star and who has more completely hidden his
real personality than any other world figure.”
Chaplin, beloved of millions and known around
the world, was walled off, Midas-like, from the
very gift that others revered in him. De Casseres’
conclusion was emphatic: “I have never met an
unhappier or a shyer human being than this
Charles Spencer Chaplin.”
I s it a condition of comic genius to be perpet-
ually wrestling with demons? From Canio,
the iconic, stiletto-wielding clown of Ruggero
Leoncavallo’s 1892 opera, Pagliacci, to modern
greats like Richard Pryor, Andy Kaufman, and
John Belushi, it would seem so. Even in Chap-
lin’s day, the depressed and often violent clown
A joke’s a very serious thing.
 —Charles Churchill, 1763
was a well-established trope, both offstage and
on. Hollywood Pagliacci types included Frank
Tinney, the blackface vaudevillian accused of
brutally assaulting his mistress; Roscoe “Fatty”
Arbuckle, whose brilliant career was undone by
the untimely death of Virginia Rappe, a bit-part
actress who suffered a fatal trauma in his ho-
tel room; and the suave French comedian Max
Linder, brought in by Essanay Films to replace
Chaplin after the tramp had departed the studio
but who failed to replicate his predecessor’s suc-
cess. Suffering from a severe depression that was
deepened by service in the Great War, Linder
claimed he could practically feel the ability to be
funny seeping out from him. In February 1924,
he and his young wife, Ninette, a wealthy heir-
ess, made a suicide pact at a hotel in Vienna but
failed to consume a sufficient dose of sleeping
powders. The following autumn in Paris they
were better prepared. Both drank large drafts
of barbiturates before injecting morphine into
their veins and slitting their wrists. Chaplin
215
 dedicated a film to his replacement, declaring
himself Linder’s disciple.
That comedy is a mansion built on tragic
foundations was a theory given credence by
Sigmund Freud [Vienna, page 148]. “A jest be-
trays something serious,” he wrote in Jokes and
Their Relation to the Unconscious, which argued
that humor was a means of circumnavigating
taboo and repackaging unpalatable thoughts
into digestible form. At the heart of Freud’s
argument is a reluctance to accept comedy on
its own terms as comedy, viewing it rather as a
proxy for something kept hidden. For Freud,
Chaplin was “a particularly simple and trans-
parent case” of someone who used humor to
explore the darker states of mind. Writing to
his friend Max Schiller, Freud commented how
Chaplin always seemed to play the same part:
The weak, poor, helpless, clumsy young
man for whom things turn out right in the
end. Do you think he has to forget his own
Two Fools of Carnival, engraving by Hendrik Hondius, after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1642.
216  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
ego for this role? On the contrary, he only
acts himself as he was in his bleak youth.
He cannot escape from those impressions,
and even today he is compensating himself
for the deprivations and discouragement of
that period.
It’s a familiar idea: comedy as compensa-
tion, a means of bolstering that wounded, sec-
ond self. But how much of this is a psychological
fact, and how much an expectation on the part
of the public that comedians are made this way?
Certainly, the concept of duality has been inher-
ent in comedy for centuries. From Dionysus and
his servant Xanthias in Aristophanes’ The Frogs
to Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, Molière’s
plays of feigned identity, and the first double acts
of nineteenth-century music halls, the theme of
doubling is ever present. That comedians, rath-
er than comedies, should be seen as divided is
merely a projection of this theme onto the per-
formers themselves.
 The first doubled comedians were the first
professional comedians, the comic actors who
plied their trade as professional theaters emerged
during the late sixteenth century. It was these
men for whom the word comedian was coined,
a designation that sought to describe the nature
of their labor by placing them within a strict ge-
neric context. Prior to this moment, it was not
possible to define comedy so neatly, nor could it
be so closely associated with particular individu-
als. Rather, it existed as part of the much wider
category of “fooling,” a diverse and multi-faceted
portmanteau of spectacles that might include
jugglers, acrobats, and simpletons as much as it
did jesters and wits. Medieval fooling could also
incorporate a mystical dimension, imagining
the fool as both scapegoat and scourge, a quasi-
apocalyptic Everyman who stood to remind us
of the principle listed by St. Paul in his first letter
to the Corinthians: “The wisdom of this world is
foolishness before God.”
Where the medieval fool was a type as
opposed to an individual, the early modern
men who followed were professionals con-
tracted to appear in performances bounded
by the generic expectations of comedy. Of
these comedians, Robert Armin, a member of
Shakespeare’s company, was particularly suc-
cessful at crafting a sense of himself beyond
his roles. Armin was a writer as well as a per-
former, publishing books of his routines and
descriptions of notable fools that suggest an
almost academic interest on his part in the lin-
eage of his profession. It was also Armin who
was instrumental in transforming the clown
of the Shakespearean stage from the jigging
buffoon of the earlier plays into the drier and
more verbal wit of As You Like It, King Lear,
and Twelfth Night. His performance as the
detached and moody Feste in Twelfth Night
provided a particularly revealing portrait of
the professional comedian, for while Feste’s
name suggests festivity and song, the charac-
ter himself makes it plain that he is the em-
bodied spirit of nothing, merely a performer
for hire, singing for his supper but keeping his
distance when no one is willing to pay.
The sense of one life lived center stage
and another lived behind the curtain became
more entrenched during the Restoration, with
the avalanche of cheap theatrical biographies
encouraged by the expansion of theatrical
culture. Such biographies trafficked in the
emerging concept of celebrity, a currency dis-
tinct from the ancient concept of fame, which
was founded on notions of honor, heroism,
saintliness, and imperial majesty. Whereas
fame dealt in notable deeds, celebrity sprang
He who’s gay all day can’t keep house.
 —The Instruction of Ptahhotep, c. 1900 bc
from a kind of augmented personhood—the
belief that those who were subject to the gaze
of many must be inherently interesting. On-
stage, a performer might be mesmerizing, but
this was merely an intimation of the rich per-
sonality that must lie beneath.
Of the various comedians who became ce-
lebrities of the stage, none were more famous
than the pantomime clown Joseph Grimaldi.
Grimaldi, the son of an Italian ballet master
and an English dancer at Drury Lane, rose to
prominence in the first decade of the nine-
teenth century as the star of Regency panto-
mime, the seasonal extravaganzas that blended
children’s fairy tales with special effects and
fast-paced, slapstick harlequinades to create
performances so compelling that they were
seen by an eighth of the London population
each year. Grimaldi had been raised in the the-
ater and began his first performances almost
before he could talk, yet it was his appearance
in Thomas Dibdin and Charles Farley’s Harle-
quin and Mother Goose; or, the Golden Egg at the
age of twenty-eight that truly propelled him to
fame. The show, which debuted at the Theatre
Royal, Covent Garden on December 29, 1806,
was standard pantomime fare which, thanks
to Grimaldi’s clowning, became an unprec-
edented success, running for 119 nights and
generating over £20,000 in profits, saving the
theater from financial ruin.
217
 Grimaldi was truly gifted as a physical
comedian—he had a mobile face and an ag-
ile body on which were inflicted endless comic
punishments—and he was resourceful when it
came to constructing stage business. Yet Grimal-
di’s most enduring contribution to the history of
comedy was his innovation in the area of stage
makeup. Prior to his time, the appearance of stage
clowns—as rustic servants in stained smocks
with a circle of rouge on each cheek—had re-
mained largely unchanged since the Elizabethan
era. Grimaldi completely reinvented the look by
transforming the clown from doltish menial to
overgrown child, replacing the old costume with
a colorful, stylized version of the ruff and short
Learn weeping, and thou shalt laugh gaining.
 —George Herbert, 1640
trousers worn by students at Regency boarding
schools, and expanding the makeup so that it en-
compassed every inch of exposed skin. He was
the first to use white foundation that covered not
only the face but the hands, neck, and even the
ears, lips, and insides of the nostrils. To this he
added a wide red mouth, arched eyebrows, and
a large chevron on each cheek. The whole was
topped off with a loud wig, and the new creation
dubbed simply “Joey.” Whiteface clowns have
been known by that name ever since.
The vivid makeup was also essential if
Grimaldi was to be seen from the back of the
theaters that had grown from smallish audi-
toriums to vast dominions of entertainment,
some able to accommodate over four thousand
people for three or four hours a night. Yet the
total absorption of the performer in the make-
up also served to suggest a much stricter di-
vision between the man and his creation. As
such, Grimaldi and his clown came to be seen
as distinct entities, even enemies, engaged in a
battling but reciprocal relationship.
Rumors began to circulate about Grimaldi’s
private life almost as soon as he became a celeb-
rity, rumors that not only dogged him for the rest
of his career but would also shape the way come-
218  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
dians have been conceived of ever since. News-
papers 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, fre-
quently misattributed, even to this day. The story
involves Grimaldi’s 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 diver-
sions of “relaxation and amusement”:
“But where shall I find what you require?”
said the patient.
“In genial companionship,” was the re-
ply; “perhaps sometimes at the theater—go
and see Grimaldi.”
“Alas!” replied the patient. “That is of
no avail to me; I am Grimaldi.”
Grimaldi’s moment coincided with devel-
oping 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 conduct-
ing 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 visita-
tion, 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
divided were the two identitities that one of
her fellow maids took advantage of her altered
consciousness to arrange her rape, an incident
to which the girl was entirely oblivious until
she returned to that state several days later.
A similar case was reported the following
year, concerning Mary Reynolds, an émigré from
Birmingham, England, who had settled in Oil
Creek, Pennsylvania. Reynolds’ condition began
as a series of occasional fits, until in 1811 she
suffered an extreme convulsion that left her deaf
and blind for several weeks. It seemed that she
had made a full recovery, but soon after, she lost
all recollection of her surroundings, so that her
family became strangers, and she could not read,
write, or perform even the most basic domestic
tasks. After five weeks like this, she woke up one
day completely restored and with all her memo-
ries intact. Three weeks later, she was changed
again. And so she lived her life, transitioning
from one state to the other for varying lengths of
time. As with Maria, the serving girl from Ab-
erdeen, as time passed, each personality began to
grow and develop on its own timeline. What-
ever she learned or experienced in her secondary
state stayed with her, and when she returned to
it, she would pick up where she had left off, with
all her memories from that state preserved. Her
new personality was markedly different from the
first, far more witty, talkative, and imaginative.
She wrote poetry and cultivated a whole new set
of friends, having decided that she didn’t much
like the ones from her original state. It was de-
cided that Mary was suffering from “a twofold
consciousness, or, more definitely, with two distinct
consciousnesses.”
Phrenology, the pseudoscience which held
that personality traits could be read from the
contours of the skull, was thought to be capable
of explaining this phenomenon. In the dissect-
ing room, phrenologists such as Johann Spurz­
heim, the protégé of the field’s founder, Franz
Joseph Gall, had noted that, just as the body is a
mirror image of itself, with two arms, two legs,
two eyes, and so on, so the double hemispheres
of the brain replicated this pattern. During
his popular lecture tours around England in
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 François
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 Gay’s The Beggar’s 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 syndrome—which can cause
heart attacks when triggered by exertion or
adrenaline—watching 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 Angeles–area doughnut shop,
having laughed at Ronald Eugene Murray II
when some of the pastrami in Murray’s sandwich
fell to the floor.
219
 1814 and 1825, Spurzheim expounded on this
theory. “In giving the histories of cerebral inju-
ries,” wrote Spurzheim,
the duplicity of the nervous system has
very generally been forgotten…Tiedeman
relates the case of one Moser, who was in-
sane on one side, and observed his insanity
with the other. Dr. Gall attended a min-
ister similarly afflicted; for three years he
heard himself reproached and abused on
his left side; with his right he commonly
appreciated the madness of his left side.
Sometimes however, when feverish and
unwell, he did not judge properly. Long
after getting rid of this singular disorder,
anger, or a greater indulgence in wine than
usual, induced a tendency to relapse.
Spurzheim’s insights are clearly reflected
in the great interest writers of Romantic lit-
erature would come to take in the theme of
the double, in novels such as Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein (1818), Charles Maturin’s Mel-
moth the Wanderer (1820), and James Hogg’s
Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified
Sinner (1824), all featuring characters who are
plagued by an odious other. The apotheosis
was reached in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, whose
unfortunate protagonist came to understand
that his mind was constituted of “polar twins”
in constant struggle, neither of whom could
lay claim to absolute sovereignty over the
other. “I saw that, of the two natures that con-
tended in the field of my consciousness,” says
Jekyll in his testimony, “even if I could rightly
be said to be either, it was only because I was
radically both.”
The example most pertinent to the history
of comedy, however, is the degree to which the
theme of doubling permeates one of Charles
Dickens’ earliest works, The Memoirs of Joseph
Grimaldi (1838). Dickens was reluctant to take
the commission to transform Grimaldi’s naive
brick of handwritten text into a readable book,
but eventually having agreed to it, he finished it
220  | L A P H A M ’ S QUA RT E R LY
in a matter of weeks. Such haste and lack of care
is evident throughout the text: one struggles to
find innate literary merit, aside from a marked
insistence on portraying the clown’s life in stark
contrasts of black and white. Dickens’ Grimaldi
lives in a finely tuned world in which every tri-
umph, personal or professional, is balanced by
commensurate pain. “It is singular enough that
throughout the whole of Grimaldi’s existence,”
writes Dickens, “which was a checkered one
enough, there always seemed some odd connec-
tion between his good and bad fortune; no plea-
sure appeared to come to him unaccompanied by
some accident or mischance.”
The pattern was repeated throughout
Grimaldi’s life: the moment his first wife, Ma-
ria, accepted his proposal of marriage, Grimaldi
was instantly flattened by a “heavy platform on
which ten men were standing,” resulting in a bro-
ken arm. He found £599 on a street near Tower
Hill, only to have exactly the same amount em-
bezzled from him by a confidence artist. He at-
tained his hard-won ambition of being chosen
over an archrival to become principal clown at
both Sadler’s Wells and Drury Lane theaters
just as Maria died in childbirth, placing Grimal-
di in the position of having to go onstage even
in the depths of mourning, setting “the audience
in a roar; and chalking over the seams which
mental agony had worn in his face, was hailed
with boisterous applause in the merry Christ-
mas pantomime!” And so it continued over
the years, until at last his exertions became too
much and he was forced into early retirement,
in which “the light and life of a brilliant theater
were exchanged in an instant for the gloom and
sadness of a dull sickroom.” Thanks to Dickens’
impeccable feel for narrative structure, instead of
a faithful biography, we are given an elegy for a
comedian who has sacrificed his health and his
happiness for laughter. Thus Grimaldi becomes
the first fully realized example of the clown with
a double life.
C haplin made a brief appearance as a
Grimaldi-style clown in one of his final
films, Limelight (1952), the last movie he made

in America before sending himself into exile.
Chaplin played Calvero, an aging alcoholic co-
median who nurses a beautiful ballerina back
to health after she has tried to commit suicide.
The Grimaldian shade is the perfect comple-
ment to a film that has an entirely funereal feel
to it, with its meditation on the passage of time,
the waning of celebrity, and the diminution of
comic potency. “What a sad business, being
funny,” says the ballerina as Calvero recounts
the events of his life.
Is this true, or had Chaplin fallen for his
own mythology? Does a talent for comedy
necessitate a tragic life? Are comedy and hap-
piness truly incompatible? Common sense
says no—there are countless comedians who
have lived normal, well-adjusted lives without
succumbing to depression, insanity, or sui-
Harpo Marx, c. 1930.
cide. So why is it so hard to think of one? It
would seem that Chaplin, like the many who
followed in Grimaldi’s wake, found it hard
to resist the powerful narrative that set ex-
pectations for his happiness. The comedian’s
split personality reveals what we ultimately
believe comedy to be. Whereas in the Middle
Ages fooling was seen as an expression of the
cosmic absurdity of being alive, the modern
world views it as a symptom of personal dis-
tress. In Grimaldi’s day, misery was the grit
in the oyster that grew the pearl and gave
substance to the otherwise trivial world of
pantomime. Suffering ennobles, and when
comedians suffer, we are more willing to see
their work as flowing from the same font as
the profoundest art. We want our comedians
to be tortured; only then can we really laugh.
221
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People only laugh at what’s funny or what they don’t
understand. Take your choice. 
 —Anton Chekhov, 1886

Portrait of a Laughing Violinist, by Gerrit van Honthorst, 1624.

 L a p H a m ’ s Q ua r t e r ly
Among The Contributors
Volume VII, Number 1 winter 2014
Miguel de Cervantes • George eliot

Aristophanes
Nikolai Gogol • Joseph Heller

Dorothy Parker
Jane Austen • lenny bruce

Groucho Marx
Charlie Chaplin • Jonathan Swift

oscar wilde comedy

Chris Rock • Juvenal

Ben Tarnoff • Andrew McConnell Stott comedy
Volume VII, Number 1
winter 2014