Man Martin's Blog, page 219

Telling Jokes in Literature

The funny thing is we tell jokes all the time, but in stories, people almost never tell jokes.  However, if you're reading a story in which someone does tell a joke, it's not really a joke.
I believe this may be an iron-clad rule of writing such as if a gun appears in the first act, it must be fired by the third.
In The Second Coming, there are at least a couple of characters who tell jokes.  For Percy, who is very interested in the uses of language, the jokes are not interesting for their content, but for the way they're told and what they reveal about the relationship between the teller and the audience.  When you think of it, a joke is a very peculiar speech act.  Here is a genre of conversation in which one person will tell a story, with plenty of markers along the way to identify it as a joke, and others will listen without interruption, so that they will laugh at the end.  In Percy's novel, jokes seem flat-out acts of aggression - covert aggression, socialized and normalized to seem like cheerful conversation, but in the joke the teller achieves dominance and has the power not only to hold center stage but inflict racist or otherwise objectionable notions on the audience, expecting to receive a tribute of laughter at the end.
In one of Gore Vidal's novels, I forget which, I think 1876, there is a joke that I recall well enough to record here.  (Being in the Joke Biz myself, I have a good memory for this sort of thing.)  "Q: How does the devil ice skate?  A: How in Hell can he?"  The novel's narrator, a convenient spokesperson for Vidal, observes the purpose of the joke is to allow well-bred gentlemen to get away with saying "hell" in front of the ladies.  The joke does get a general laugh from its shocked and amused listeners.
In Patrick O'Brian's books, there are frequent execrable puns.  One of these - "the lesser of two weevils" - made it to the big screen in Master and Commander, but OBrian handles the seaman's love of labored puns much more deftly than the movie.  They're discussing the works shifts, called watches, aboard ship, and wondering why the shortest of these is called a "dog watch."  "Because it's cur-tailed," Maturin explains, and after a certain pause while the sailors decode this pun, there is general laughter.  The payoff, though, comes when Aubrey repeats the same joke at a dinner featuring some high-ranking navy brass.  O'Brian exquisitely captures Aubrey's tension at rendering the joke correctly - which he manages to do - and a lovely portrait of manners and mores and human nature is given.  You can't be funny if you're trying to be, and yet trying to be funny is funny.
There are a couple of jokes in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta (Yes, I know Gilbert and Sullivan is LOADED with jokes, but the characters never know they're making them.  A misunderstanding between "orphan" and "often" is just confusing to the characters, only the audience groans at the pun.)  I can't remember the name of the piece, but it involved a professional jester, who, of course, never makes a joke that's the least bit funny to the characters or the audience.
In my own stories - and you were wondering when I'd get around to them - jokes serve thematic and foreshadowing purposes.  Earl's father in Endless Corvette asks a riddle that foreshadows his own grisly death at the end, and in Paradise Dogs, Adam tells a joke - he tells it twice, once in the beginning and once towards the end - that reveals his own modus operandi in life.
Trying to think of a way to close this blog, it occurs to me to try composing a meta-joke.
Here it is.

So there's an airplane with a German, a Mexican, and a Catholic.  And the German says, "Did you hear the story about these three people who die and go to heaven?  At the pearly gates, Peter says, 'Before I let you in, I got to tell you this story about Moses, Jesus, and Muhammed playing golf.  Well, they're on the 18th green, when Moses says, 'Did you hear the one about...?"

Well, you get the idea.

What Should Writers Read

I just started re-reading Percy's The Second Coming, which is the impetus for this post.
It's so fantastically good I'm berating myself for wasting time reading whatever I'd been reading before.  Lord, it's about the meaning (or lack thereof) of life, language, love, money, mental illness versus so-called mental health, and all this in the first thirty pages.  Why would anyone read anything else?
It occurred to me that this is all writers should read, not Walker Percy, neccessarily, although that's not a bad place to start, but that we should read nothing but the BEST THERE IS and if we find ourselves reading something that's like, "well, this is okay, it's good enough," we should put it down at once and pick up some Hemingway or Faulkner.  This sounds like you'd have a limited reading list, but think of what you could gain by simply reading Othello over and over and over again for the rest of your life.
On the other hand - and this only came to me as I was sitting down to write this blog - maybe writers should just read everything and even pay particular attention to the cast-off and throw-away writing that everyone else ignores.  Think what Eliot and Joyce did with advertising copy and the sort of prose found in flashy trashy women's magazines.  As an experiment, I got a tube of toothpaste from the bathroom and found this little haiku-like poem:
With More Whitening Power + More FlavorCrestwith an extraADVANTAGEFLOURIDE ANTICAVITY TOOTHPASTEIsn't it obvious reading Percy that he paid close attention to such random pronouncements - even disecting the messages we send each other on tee-shirts and bumper stickers?I started this blog thinking to exhort writers to read only the best there is, and find myself back at square one, advising them to read all there is; neglect nothing, ignore nothing.  But regularly, as a staple of diet, you should read the sort of thing that makes you gasp and think, "I should never settle for writing anything less than this, this shows me what writing can be."  Salinger says to write "with all your lights on," but it's just as important to read the same way.Meanwhile, go out and read some Percy.Right after you've finished re-reading this blog.

Wrapping Up the Pink Gator Tour

This afternoon I have a reading and signing at the West Coast Branch of the Pensacola Library.  Thence I drive to Mississippi - along the way I may stop by Fairhope to see my buddy, Sonny Brewer - may angels forever sing his name - tomorrow I have a reading and signing in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  Then home.
Those last two words are my favorite.  It's been a good tour, and people have been wonderfully generous.  It's been fun.  But those two words: then home.  Try them on your tongue, see how solid and light they feel.  Then home.  Then home.  Then home.

What I Learned from Pogo

[image error] A generation who never read Walt Kelly's comic strip Pogo has grown up and had kids of their own.  I'm sure the cognoscentia among them have at least heard of the strip, but you can't be sure.  How really wierd that such a cartoon was ever in the papers.  It was political, of course, or often was, but not overtly like Doonesbury; it was a strip about talking animals for heavens' sake.  The politics wasn't about issues so much as about characters, which makes for the funniest humor anyway.
It looked like it ought to be a children's strip, but for the longest time I gave it a wide berth on the funny pages.  I'd read Mary Worth before I read Pogo.  In the Sunday comics - amid the bright Easter Eggs of Peanuts and Andy Capp, Pogo was a world of somber greens and muddy browns.  Albert might be a talking, cigar-smoking alligator, but the stump he sat on looked like a real stump, and the swamp he lived in looked like a real swamp.  As an aspiring cartoonist, however, I began dutifully reading it, but without the least shred of amusement.  The heavy dialect made the conversations nearly opaque to me, and while the Sunday strips were sometimes interesting, the daily strips seemed like bland snippets of conversations, that barely generated a punchline.
Then I came across a book called Pogo in Pandemonium.  It was a story where Pogo is transported to a distant land for the Olympics.  It was wonderful!  I read and reread it until the cover came off.  Naturally, after that, I began reading the comics more carefully.  I bought several more books over the years and I began recognizing strips I'd seen in the daily papers.  Then it began to sink in what Kelly was doing.  I had thought that the comic strips and the books were two separate things, that he whipped off a comic strip every morning and then spent the rest of the day working on his next book - but no.  Each strip was a part of a continuing and incredibly elaborate story.  I know there are plenty of strips that do this - they're called continuity strips in the trade - but with Pogo, the junctures were seamless.  If Churchy and Howland were crossing a bridge on Monday, Tuesday would show them leaving the same bridge behind them, as they continued their conversation.  Check this out - there is no other strip that I know of that doesn't have jumps and skips, repetitions and gaps - but the characters in Pogo lived in a smooth-flowing time of their own, unconscious it was cut into bits for the benefit of a daily paper.
[image error] Of course, Kelly - and the artists that worked with him - were first-rate caricaturists: who can forget Spiro Agnew as a hyenna?  A hyenna that thinks he's a bear?  And Kelly's humor, once I came to appreciate it, was the funniest work in the paper.  He could soar heights of pseudo-logical whimsey in the daily strips and get down and roll in slapstick in the Sundays.
But the thing he taught me was that a narrative is made out of little moments.  Sections as small as one panel in a four-panel strip - each marvelous in its own way for its wit and beauty - could join to the next, and the next, and the next, to tell a story that would unfold over a whole year, ending with Porky's annual New Year's Breakfast with Pogo.
"You got a spoon for these, son?  Eating scrambled eggs with a fork takes a college education."
I miss you, Kelly.

Are You a Magritte or a Gauguin?

This blog is inspired by Jamie Iredell's telling my wife that maybe I would come by and see his new baby as soon as I "was finished being a rockstar" and also by watching the new Woody Allen movie involving one of my favorite artists, Salvador Dali.
[image error] Magritte belongs to the same school of often jokey surrealism as Dali.  His paintings are simple, sometimes cartoonish - they look more like illustrations than canvasses, and are frequently used as cover art for collections of Kafka and Psychology Today magazines.  Some people look down on Magritte because he appeals to certain pseudo-intellectuals (his prints can be found thumb-tacked to the wall in many a dorm room) but I don't care.  I just love him.  You see a Magritte painting and you never forget it.
Magritte worked in an advertising agency with his brother, coming home at night to paint in a carefully sectioned-off space in his Belgian home.  He was meticulous, and never made a mess, so Mrs. Magritte never complained about him.  When the Germans invaded, he stayed in Brussels.  The Germans made things pretty hot for a lot of experimental artists; there's no evidence they took any particular notice of Magritte.
For that matter, no one took much notice of Magritte until the 1960's when he finally came into his own as a popular artist.  He died in 1967. He was 69.
That's one kind of artist.  Bourgeois, doesn't make waves with the power structure, keeps his day job, careful to not to let cerulean blue get on the linoleum.  Working steadily, carefully, and - if he's really, really lucky - getting recognized sometime before his death.
On the other end, we have Gauguin.  (A character in Roth's "Goodbye Columbus" calls him "Mr. Go-Again," and that's how I always think of him.)  Of course, he famously went to Tahiti - actually he went twice - where he had numerous liaisons with the native girls - and I do mean girls - fathered a mess of kids, and painted.  But even before then, you could spot him as a misfit.  He tried the middle-class route - marriage, job as a stockbroker, the whole nine yards - for eleven years before the whole thing fell apart.  He was friends with Van Gogh, a fellow-painter and depressive.  Gauguin went to Martinique to paint and worked on the Panama Canal for a couple of weeks before getting himself fired.
[image error] Gauguin's paintings look more like paintings than Magritte's.  The brushwork is more painterly, the colors are broad and savage, and the compositions aren't orderly and centered.  They look like the product of crazed inspiration after a night of palm wine rather than an afternoon of careful thought with a good pipe and a cup of tea.  While in Tahiti the second time he was charged with taking the native's side against the French during an uprising and was sentenced to prison.  Before he could serve, however, he died of a morphine overdose.  Lucky him.  He was 54 years old.
Soon after Gauguin's death, his work became very desirable, and now on rare occasions you can find one for sale at all, his painting goes for tens of millions.
That's the other kind of artist - bohemian, thumbing his nose at convention, a bad employee, bad marriage prospect, a trouble-maker from the get-go.  If he works hard and is truly, truly lucky, he may be recognized sometime after his death.
So which are you, chuckles?
The dangerous route of flying in the face of convention, authority, and responsibility - or the arduous route of accepting the heavy mantle of all those things and still attempting to make art?  No matter what, serious recognition is a long-shot; Gauguin and Magritte both got lucky.  Most of us begin in obscurity and end there too.  If we're sober and careful we may outlive our beatnik brethren by a decade, but in the end, we're all dead.  Both paths are hard, it's a matter of choosing which form of difficulty you prefer.
Being a rockstar ain't in it.

The Final Solution: STOOPID Contest #6

We Have a Wiener! Sylvia Skrmetta of Saucier, Mississippi correctly guessed the answer as "Motown" (Moe Town)" Sylvia wins an autographed copy of Paradise Dogs ("Required reading," says The New York Post .)

Fall is approaching, and school is back in session soon, meaning yours truly must get back to the day job, so The STOOPID Contest is going on hiatus.  Check this space frequently for updates.

STOOPID Contest #6

By the way, check out my interview on WSPT-TV, Studio 10 in St Petersburg, Florida: http://www.studio10.tv/day/thursday/segment.aspx/199076/Paradise_Dogs


Can you identify the famous record label represented by this picture? Send your answer along with your name and address to manmartin@manmartin.net One lucky winner from the correct answers will be chosen to get a free autographed copy of Paradise Dogs delivered in person to your home, hovel, or mansion by a PAID REPRESENTATIVE OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT!


Last Week's Puzzle
"I, J. Henry Farnsworth III, being of sound mind and body, in bequeating my estate of $100 million, have decided to..."


We Have a Wiener! Shelley Youngren of Los Angeles correctly guessed the answer as "Leave it to Beaver." Shelley says the pen is mightier than the sword, especially a pen with a flamethrower.  Shelley wins an autographed copy of Paradise Dogs ("Required reading," says The New York Post .)

Okra, Squash, and Hummingbirds

Okra and squash are coming in now.  I neglected the okra perforce while I was in Florida.  This is a risky thing to do.  If you've never grown okra, it really is a delightful plant.  It produces yellow blooms with lavender centers that turn into pods overnight.  The pods have to be cut from the plant, and in season they really need to be harvested every day; otherwise you end up with what we have - six-inch pods as woody as cypress branches.
The yellow squash, which unlike okra waits patiently until it's picked, is really pretty.  In my absence couple of tomatoes seem to have over-ripened and actually exploded on the vine.  But I believe I may have more tomatoes by this afternoon.
And the hummingbird has returned to the little red feeder outside my kitchen window.  He has drunk his sugarwater nearly dry, and I need to add more, but he was there this morning, hanging in the air, his blurring wings making him look like a floating bowtie, dipping his syringe beak into the tray for a sip, a sip, another sip.
Lord, I love this time of year, and I hate to miss even a day of it, but Tuesday I drive down to Florabama to do a series of readings and signings - Page and Palette Books in Fairhope, Alabama, the West Branch of the Pensacola Library, and then Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  I will refill the feeder for the hummingbird before I go, and cut the okra at least once more.  I will kiss my wife and pet my dog.  I will miss them all .

Buying Cars

After a GREAT time in Tampa - thanks so much to Inkwood Books and my own dear, sweet sister Helen - I return to Atlanta to take up the onerous burden of two car purchases.
After the first leg of the Pink Gator tour, our Mountaineer decided to throw its transmission.  Then, during the Georgia leg, the Taurus, perhaps feeling jealous of the attention the Mountaineer was getting, decided to do the same.  It is a long story, but repairs on these two machines have yielded naught but a certain diminishment in the Martin bank account.  Hence, we are cutting our losses and getting new vehicles.
To be fair, the Taurus and Mountaineer have both put in good service - each had logged in over 140,000 miles; Nancy and I tend to hold onto cars once we get them.  Bear in mind, that the distance to the moon is only 250,000 miles.  This means if we'd driven the Taurus straight up from the surface of the earth until it gave out completely, then switched over to the Mountaineer, we'd have reached the moon, and come back about 40,000 miles toward the earth again before the Mountaineer likewise conked out.  Of course, this is only a hypothetical example and not possible with actual cars.  The Taurus didn't even have four-wheel drive.
As much as I despise buying cars, the truth is Nancy and I are pretty good at it.  Nancy's attitude is that leather seats, anti-lock breaks, sunroofs, powertrain warranties, excellent gas mileage and consumer ratings, low mileage, and a good car-fax report are things any reasonable customer is entitled to.  That a dealer actually expects money strikes her as an affront to human decency and possibly a mortal sin.  I adopt the "gaw-lee" "aw shucks" pose.  Be it said, this is not entirely a pose.  I'll make an offer shamefaced, knowing full-well it's too low, but stammer in my hayseed way it's the best I can do.  The salesman smiles condescendingly and shakes his head more in pity than resentment, and I slump in my chair.
"Aw shucks, I am so sorry -" and I really am sorry "- I hate to waste your time.  I apologize."  And I get up to leave so the salesman can get back to an actual viable customer.  At this point the salesman stays me with a gesture.  Wait a minute.  Let him talk to his manager.  He comes back a short time later with a better figure, but still not the one I'd named.  I am so grateful for his efforts on my behalf. 
"Gaw-lee," I murmur at his generosity.  I have just fallen off the turnip truck and had no idea city folks were so helpful.  But I still can't do it.  I'm nearly crying now at how hard he's worked for my unworthy self.  I'll leave right now and get out of his hair.  But no.  Wait one more time.  He comes back with another offer.  This might go on any number of exchanges.  Each time I'm sincerely ready to leave, and on many occaisions, I have left.  I never get quite the price I was aiming for, and after I sign the contract there's always a few extra surprises.  It turns out there's a delivery fee or something.  Delivery fee?  Hell, I'm just walking across the parking lot to get it.
One of our most successful car-buying experiences was when Nancy was pregnant with Catherine, our oldest daughter.  We had already sent the salesman back several times, and he'd plyed us with cokes to keep us in our seats, finally I said sadly, "I'm sorry, I am so sorry.  We just can't do it.  We have to be careful with our money."  At this moment I lay my hand on Nancy's pregnant belly.  He went back to his manager, and came back with the price we wanted.  I feel mingled pride and shame about that - touching her belly really was over the top, but it worked like a charm.  Then when we told him we had a trade-in after all - during the negotions we'd claimed we were keeping our other car - his face fell like a soufle in an earthquake.  I believe he later left the car business.  Last I heard he'd gotten a high-powered rifle and was shooting at motorists from an overpass.
The other best negotiation was with my daughter Spencer.  Spencer not only feels cars should be free, but can't see any reason why customers aren't paid a little something for the effort of taking one.  We'd found an Acura that really was a good deal, and spent the better part of an afternoon trying to make it a better one.  Finally, the salesperson said he'd done all he could do.  We got up to leave.  He didn't stop us.  We drove down the road a piece, and Spencer asked if she'd made the right decision.  I may have briefly lost control of the steering at this point.  Spencer's asking my advice is akin to spotting Big Foot sharing a latte with the Loch Ness Monster at Starbucks.  We pulled over and discussed the deal.  It seemed to me we weren't likely to find anything better.  We agreed to go back and make one more offer.
We drove back and gave the salesman our final price.  He smiled and shook his head.  No dice.  "Gaw-lee," I said.  I may have thrown in an "aw shucks" for good measure.  We were so sorry to have wasted so much of his time, and then to come back and waste even more was inexcusable.  Please accept our apologies.  We left - oh, well, there were other places to look - but just as we were backing out of the lot, the salesman came running out and waved us down.  He met our price.
Well, almost.  We did have to pay a delivery fee or something.
Still.  Damn.
Spencer won't be with me today, which is maybe just as well.  My nerves can't take the sort of brinksmanship she plays.  Maybe we'll just stuff a pillow under Nancy's blouse.
"Shucks, Mr. Salesman.  We got to be careful with our money."

Onward to Orlando

The Pink Gator Tour takes me today to Orlando for a book signing at Barnes and Noble and then to Tampa for a reading and signing at Inkwood Books on the 7th.  The morning of the 7th I've got an interview on WTSP-TV "Studio 10" in St Pete sometime after 9:40.
Then it's back to Atlanta and reality and car repairs and bills and stuff before one last leg of the Gator Tour down to Florabama and Mississippi.
The Summer has flown.