A Load of Nonsense
I love nonsense when it is done well, so have been enjoying Frank Key’s By Aerostat to Hooting Yard.
Key is one of those authors underappreciated by the general public but loved by those who have managed to find his work – including the listeners of Resonance FM who are treated to weekly visits to his strange world and amazing prose. Those who have been fortunate enough to discover Viv Stanshall’s Rawlinson’s End saga on radio, disc, book or film are in the same boat, as are those who remember The Goons and Beachcomber with great affection.
Actors will often say comedy is harder than tragedy as you need an amazing sense of timing – lots of great comics have had successful acting careers but not many actors succeed in comedy. I would say nonsense is even harder. It can’t just be a load of rubbish – there has to be a connection to the real world at a precisely oblique angle and the world inside the nonsense has to make sense on its own terms.
The 60s were a great time for nonsense – possibly spurred by the sense those who grew up in the war had of how little sense the real world actually made. As well as the Goons we had comic strips like Flook, the absurdist dramatists like N F Simpson (whose writings have recently re-appeared in print) and John Antrobus, TV shows like Do Not Adjust Your Set and Michael Bentine’s Potty Time, and the outpourings of Spike Milligan across most media. There wasn’t quite so much nonsense in the US – perhaps because they take themselves more seriously – apart from the wonderful Firesign Theatre, but perhaps that is also because the English have always been well disposed towards eccentrics. The French have always embraced the absurd from Jarry through to Vian and beyond.
Having also just read Neurotribes – about the history of understanding and treatment of Autism – I wonder whether there is a link between neurodivergence and nonsense, as there is between those on the spectrum and science fiction and invention. As someone who displays many of the attributes of neurodivergence I have always resonated with John Cooper Clarke’s lines: “speaking as an outsider, what do you think of the human race?” The best nonsense is hardly more absurd than much behaviour in the “real” world.
I have sometimes attempted to write nonsense – not least in my stories of the London Institute of ‘Pataphysics – and I can attest that it is hard. Part of it is just about being silly, but to succeed (if indeed I have) you also need to have a world that is consistent and only a few steps away from the real one. The people in it have to be identifiably real, although exaggerated, and there has to be internal logic. The best nonsense writers walk that tightrope with an expertise that is breathtaking.
