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Meta
I was about to bust in here and talk about Sam Lipsyte’s new book, but I guess this is a link about Sam Lipsyte!
I was about to bust in here and talk about Sam Lipsyte’s new book, but I guess this is a link about Sam Lipsyte!
Yes and no. George Saunders is trying to make people laugh, for example. Tao Lin is trying to make people laugh. I’m sure there are plenty more examples. It seems like the writers least comfortable with calling their work “literary fiction” are the ones most likely to be not afraid to make people laugh. One can’t revisit this little gem too many times: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=449302
Yes and no. George Saunders is trying to make people laugh, for example. Tao Lin is trying to make people laugh. I’m sure there are plenty more examples. It seems like the writers least comfortable with calling their work “literary fiction” are the ones most likely to be not afraid to make people laugh. One can’t revisit this little gem too many times: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=449302
I wouldn’t say afraid as fast as I would say unable. Like they say: Comedy is hard, man.
I wouldn’t say afraid as fast as I would say unable. Like they say: Comedy is hard, man.
This whole discussion reeks of “I’m doing something no one else is, therefore it’s better [interesting, newsworthy, etc]”. It’s self-serving. It’s a softball question to someone like Lipsyte.
This whole discussion reeks of “I’m doing something no one else is, therefore it’s better [interesting, newsworthy, etc]”. It’s self-serving. It’s a softball question to someone like Lipsyte.
Is isn’t really self-serving if someone else is asking the question, but I agree softball for Lipsyte.
Is isn’t really self-serving if someone else is asking the question, but I agree softball for Lipsyte.
Maybe this is just my hope, since if my writing has any slight merit it is probably for humor, but I kind of feel like humorous fiction is making a resurgence. The people this author mentions (Lipsyte, Saunders, Shteyngart) alongside people like Lethem, Unferth, Rebecca Curtis, etc… I feel like I see a lot of humorous authors in the mainstream or big literary magazines these days.
Maybe this is just my hope, since if my writing has any slight merit it is probably for humor, but I kind of feel like humorous fiction is making a resurgence. The people this author mentions (Lipsyte, Saunders, Shteyngart) alongside people like Lethem, Unferth, Rebecca Curtis, etc… I feel like I see a lot of humorous authors in the mainstream or big literary magazines these days.
“If you scared, say you scared.”
“If you scared, say you scared.”
It’s isn’t afraid. It just doesn’t know how.
yep. i’d rather read a serious story than one that fails at being funny. same for poetry.
It’s isn’t afraid. It just doesn’t know how.
yep. i’d rather read a serious story than one that fails at being funny. same for poetry.
Questions like that are so manipulative because they reflect the interviewer’s assumptions. And no, literary fiction is afraid of humor. Most writers aren’t as funny as they think they are. I am hilarious.
Questions like that are so manipulative because they reflect the interviewer’s assumptions. And no, literary fiction is afraid of humor. Most writers aren’t as funny as they think they are. I am hilarious.
Ok, well, the conversation about it ends up being self-serving for anyone who’s asked the question, so it’s in their best interest to try to be “provocative.”
This reminds me of Kundera’s addition/subtraction thing. Literary writers abound, and so one way to try to distinguish oneself is to “add” the labels “funny” and “different” and even “rebellious”, wherein different-ness and rebelliousness are established by placing oneself in opposition to the “serious” literary writers who are “afraid” of comedy.
It’s all marketing, and it’s all necessary. Obviously. And it ends up affecting consumers (readers) as well – most of us who haunt this site like to believe that we’re more erudite or daring than the average reader, and admiring/championing funny literary writing in the face of so much serious literature is an excellent example. We too add this to our personalities, like Kundera’s man who proudly claims he loves cold showers.
Which is not to say Lipsyte isn’t good. I like him quite a bit. But the labels and sorting and whatnot – and the discussion – turn me off a little.
Ok, well, the conversation about it ends up being self-serving for anyone who’s asked the question, so it’s in their best interest to try to be “provocative.”
This reminds me of Kundera’s addition/subtraction thing. Literary writers abound, and so one way to try to distinguish oneself is to “add” the labels “funny” and “different” and even “rebellious”, wherein different-ness and rebelliousness are established by placing oneself in opposition to the “serious” literary writers who are “afraid” of comedy.
It’s all marketing, and it’s all necessary. Obviously. And it ends up affecting consumers (readers) as well – most of us who haunt this site like to believe that we’re more erudite or daring than the average reader, and admiring/championing funny literary writing in the face of so much serious literature is an excellent example. We too add this to our personalities, like Kundera’s man who proudly claims he loves cold showers.
Which is not to say Lipsyte isn’t good. I like him quite a bit. But the labels and sorting and whatnot – and the discussion – turn me off a little.
T-Mo?
T-Mo?
It is the safer bet. Speaking for myself only though, the vast majority of my favorite writers are ones who knew how to be funny. Those that aren’t were masters of being brutally dark or bizarre (O’Connor, McCarthy, Kafka, etc.). What I really want is the people who can combine those two things.
It is the safer bet. Speaking for myself only though, the vast majority of my favorite writers are ones who knew how to be funny. Those that aren’t were masters of being brutally dark or bizarre (O’Connor, McCarthy, Kafka, etc.). What I really want is the people who can combine those two things.
Literary fiction that’s afraid to make people laugh surely isn’t so hot. Good writing tends NOT to be humorless. Tolstoy is funny. Kafka is funny. On and on. Humorless fiction tends not to be so good because it’s missing a crucial element of life.
Literary fiction that’s afraid to make people laugh surely isn’t so hot. Good writing tends NOT to be humorless. Tolstoy is funny. Kafka is funny. On and on. Humorless fiction tends not to be so good because it’s missing a crucial element of life.
I’m not sure who actually does the chorus. Someone in Goodie Mob probably.
I’m not sure who actually does the chorus. Someone in Goodie Mob probably.
Oh – I see – a clickable question. Mr. Lipsyte says the same thing: “They . . . weave together darkness and humor in a way that was not only compelling and heightened, but also probably faithful to our experience of the world.”
Oh – I see – a clickable question. Mr. Lipsyte says the same thing: “They . . . weave together darkness and humor in a way that was not only compelling and heightened, but also probably faithful to our experience of the world.”
Beckett is high-larious, by the by, esp. in Watt
Beckett is high-larious, by the by, esp. in Watt
your Holier Than Thou Who Are Holier Than Thou shtick is a bit of a turnoff too, Tom
your Holier Than Thou Who Are Holier Than Thou shtick is a bit of a turnoff too, Tom
Literary fiction is terrified, period.
Literary fiction is terrified, period.
Fair enough, though I don’t remember excluding myself from one group or another. I will readily admit that I do this, all the time.
Just trying to pull the lid off of some complicated market positioning.
Fair enough, though I don’t remember excluding myself from one group or another. I will readily admit that I do this, all the time.
Just trying to pull the lid off of some complicated market positioning.
Not Cee-Lo, that’s for sure. Big Gipp? There’s one more who’s name I never remember.
Not Cee-Lo, that’s for sure. Big Gipp? There’s one more who’s name I never remember.
Khujo
Khujo
Thomas Copper’s stories make me laugh out loud.
Mark Richard, who hasn’t written anything since he left for Hollywood to write for, I think, “Party of Five,” was fucking hilarious and sad at the same time. Mark, if you’re reading this, PLEASE write another book.
*Cooper
Thomas Copper’s stories make me laugh out loud.
Mark Richard, who hasn’t written anything since he left for Hollywood to write for, I think, “Party of Five,” was fucking hilarious and sad at the same time. Mark, if you’re reading this, PLEASE write another book.
*Cooper
Jonathan Lethem is not funny. And this is the answer to your question. If Lethem is considered a comic writer then literary fiction, as a souce of humor, is fucked.
Jonathan Lethem is not funny. And this is the answer to your question. If Lethem is considered a comic writer then literary fiction, as a souce of humor, is fucked.
A lot of it is trying too hard. Ryan Boudinot’s “Misconception” is supposed to be funny, but really isn’t (judging from the first 40 pages or so).
Two books are on my desk here. One is by DeLillo and one is by Ashbery. Both are funny, and neither try too hard.
A lot of it is trying too hard. Ryan Boudinot’s “Misconception” is supposed to be funny, but really isn’t (judging from the first 40 pages or so).
Two books are on my desk here. One is by DeLillo and one is by Ashbery. Both are funny, and neither try too hard.
Lipsyte’s getting tired as the shibboleth of the online set.
Lipsyte’s getting tired as the shibboleth of the online set.
“Laughing with Kafka”
http://www.badgerinternet.com/~bobkat/kafka.html
“Laughing with Kafka”
http://www.badgerinternet.com/~bobkat/kafka.html
Hi — — –—!
Just wanted to say that I misread your post as “the shitbreath of the online set.” “Shitbreath” seems funnier than “shibboleth.” Just sayin’, as they say.
Love, Lee
Hi — — –—!
Just wanted to say that I misread your post as “the shitbreath of the online set.” “Shitbreath” seems funnier than “shibboleth.” Just sayin’, as they say.
Love, Lee
This reminds me of that Allen Ginsberg quote: “. . . Thoreau [said], Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. Well there are millions of poems of quiet desperation and they are all published in The New Yorker.”
This reminds me of that Allen Ginsberg quote: “. . . Thoreau [said], Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. Well there are millions of poems of quiet desperation and they are all published in The New Yorker.”
I haven’t read him, so I can’t comment, but just wondering, are we on the same page when we say funny? Because there’s plenty of stuff out there that is “clever” or “witty.” There’s less stuff that makes me, anyway, laugh out loud. Like, when I first read The Catcher in the Rye as a little guy, I laughed my ass off. And I just read Watt, and like the part where he goes on and on about all the members of this big family and they all have these horrendous physical ailments and decrepitudes, and they are so amazingly fucked, that made me laugh my ass off.
I haven’t read him, so I can’t comment, but just wondering, are we on the same page when we say funny? Because there’s plenty of stuff out there that is “clever” or “witty.” There’s less stuff that makes me, anyway, laugh out loud. Like, when I first read The Catcher in the Rye as a little guy, I laughed my ass off. And I just read Watt, and like the part where he goes on and on about all the members of this big family and they all have these horrendous physical ailments and decrepitudes, and they are so amazingly fucked, that made me laugh my ass off.
hell naw
hell naw
Sounds kinda anti-semitic, no name guy. Way to bring the hate, bro.
Sounds kinda anti-semitic, no name guy. Way to bring the hate, bro.
Thomas Cooper’s make me laugh too. His “Ghost Bike” in SmokeLong makes me feel sad about my own writing, which is exhilarating.
Oh shit, yes, Mark Richard was hilarious. I should go re-read Fishboy.
Thomas Cooper’s make me laugh too. His “Ghost Bike” in SmokeLong makes me feel sad about my own writing, which is exhilarating.
Oh shit, yes, Mark Richard was hilarious. I should go re-read Fishboy.
Shitbreath is a funny name.
Shitbreath is a funny name.
I think a lot of people who write literary fiction probably have an inability to make people laugh, so they don’t bother trying, which is a wise decision.
I think a lot of people who write literary fiction probably have an inability to make people laugh, so they don’t bother trying, which is a wise decision.
Kafka certainly has some funny moments, but I wouldn’t call him a comic writer. Then again, maybe the two funniest bits in fiction are in McCarthy’s Child of God, so what do I know?
Kafka certainly has some funny moments, but I wouldn’t call him a comic writer. Then again, maybe the two funniest bits in fiction are in McCarthy’s Child of God, so what do I know?
actually, at this point, i feel like saying “literary fiction” is akin to saying “adult contemporary,” to speak in fm radio terms.
actually, at this point, i feel like saying “literary fiction” is akin to saying “adult contemporary,” to speak in fm radio terms.
Hey that’s a really good point.
Hey that’s a really good point.
it’s like saying “the latest Bruce Springsteen record, which Rolling Stone inexplicably gave 5 stars”
it’s like saying “the latest Bruce Springsteen record, which Rolling Stone inexplicably gave 5 stars”
Humor is more of a subjective concept, subject to more slings and arrows. If you’re making people laugh, odds are you’re making fun or making light of something, and people get uptight about that. You can’t win with everyone.
You don’t hear people complain that a book “wasn’t serious enough” or “didn’t make me cry enough.” People complain about humor because it’s safe, because there’s always someone else out there who was offended too, or didn’t laugh either. But complain about how Hawthorne or Morrison or Faulkner doesn’t really work for you on a dramatic level and you’re a heretic. There are fewer sacred cows in humor.
Humor is more of a subjective concept, subject to more slings and arrows. If you’re making people laugh, odds are you’re making fun or making light of something, and people get uptight about that. You can’t win with everyone.
You don’t hear people complain that a book “wasn’t serious enough” or “didn’t make me cry enough.” People complain about humor because it’s safe, because there’s always someone else out there who was offended too, or didn’t laugh either. But complain about how Hawthorne or Morrison or Faulkner doesn’t really work for you on a dramatic level and you’re a heretic. There are fewer sacred cows in humor.
i took a Morrison seminar in college and complained a lot about overwriting, that is, complained about her on a writing level. felt like i was being an ass, “typical reactionary white dude of privilege.” in retrospect, Song of Solomon and Beloved were pretty solid, Jazz was pretty bad, Paradise was really bad, and didn’t like the Bluest Eye (icky, overdone).
i took a Morrison seminar in college and complained a lot about overwriting, that is, complained about her on a writing level. felt like i was being an ass, “typical reactionary white dude of privilege.” in retrospect, Song of Solomon and Beloved were pretty solid, Jazz was pretty bad, Paradise was really bad, and didn’t like the Bluest Eye (icky, overdone).
“If you’re making people laugh, odds are you’re making fun or making light of something”
i don’t know if “making fun” of something or someone is quite right. seems a little harsh. perhaps “displaying flaws?” which can be done non-judgmentally, either toward humor or a darker zone of the human psyche (fear or anger perhaps?).
“If you’re making people laugh, odds are you’re making fun or making light of something”
i don’t know if “making fun” of something or someone is quite right. seems a little harsh. perhaps “displaying flaws?” which can be done non-judgmentally, either toward humor or a darker zone of the human psyche (fear or anger perhaps?).
i’d say some humor is definitely harsh, definitely making fun of something or someone. in fact, in my humble opinion, the funniest humor is quite harsh. maybe the funniest humor is that which harshly makes fun of everything and everyone, of our human condition, specifically and generally, especially if, by doing so, the humor redeems everything and everyone (ahhh, we can laugh at ourselves, the playing field has been reset, we are equal in our predicament). haha, i’m sounding pretentious as fuck. yall know what i mean, though, possibly
i’d say some humor is definitely harsh, definitely making fun of something or someone. in fact, in my humble opinion, the funniest humor is quite harsh. maybe the funniest humor is that which harshly makes fun of everything and everyone, of our human condition, specifically and generally, especially if, by doing so, the humor redeems everything and everyone (ahhh, we can laugh at ourselves, the playing field has been reset, we are equal in our predicament). haha, i’m sounding pretentious as fuck. yall know what i mean, though, possibly
on one level, great humor is mean. on another level, if the humorist has love and hope in his/her heart, he/she is trying to awaken, to spark us
“I began as a boy, as a human-being boy, a boy who fled to sea, a boy with a whistling lisp and the silken-tipped fingers of another class. A boy with put-away memories of bedclothes bound tight about the head, knocked by a hammering fist; the smell of cigar and shoe leather and the weighted burlap bag, thrown from a car into a sideroad swamp. A child born again there, slithering out of the sack, a new beginning into life, holding back water to breathe through sour mudded filth and green surface slime. Put-away memories of my gums pushed back and bloody gnawing slugroot; the ripped frog muscle spasms tickling my tongue as I ate the things almost whole, and then the all-night chorus of croaking reproach; the bitter-centered snake eggs I washed down with the stagnant sulphured water, a mushroom cap for a cup, all of it heaved back up, a slack-jawed torrent of spew splashing around my ankles, heaving up my own new creations of life in the mire, bits and pieces wiggling and squirming, convulsing, web-footed and scaled, tiny dead reptilian eyes like pretty black beads in pearl.
I remember sleeping for warmth in winter with wild dogs, the precious suckled bitch’s milk in exchange for one of my ears ripped with hair for the puppies to chew. I remember sleeping with snakes for summer cool, the puncture bites of small poisons that cleared my infected eyes and sharpened my hearing so that I could hear the sneezes of rats to catch as toys for this boy I began as, with still, through it all, the prissy wrist, the toe-pinched walk, a boy, who, had he any sisters, Big Miss Magine said, should have worn their handed-down dresses. This was me as that boy, a boy who fled to sea and turned to fish, this was me waiting the length of his short life in his cartonated box, waiting for the one big boat to come in to the place where hardly any boats came.
Some boat.
Any boat.
I waited for a boat big enough to brave itself through where the sea dunes and the sand waves folded over, no channel in and no channel out, a boy at the ready with his butter-turned knife to sign aboard to slice meats like fists from shells like plates.
That boy.
I had always been that boy in the cartonated box, waiting for the purple bus to pass through places I could not pronounce with my whistling lisp, places I can whisper to you now with the ease of escaping steam, dark continent-calling places, places misplaced, place names like none in this language we share. I waited for the purple bus to travel through these places edging the round cratered lake where something large from the sky struck long ago, places where the blacktop road sinks through soft-bottomed bogs and erupts flat and dry farther on, a serpentine plumbing of the earth’s thin surface, the purple bus leaning on the quicksand curves, slipped tires spinning, the exhaust pipes gurgling, the white-eyed driver mostly blind and dreaming them along the road he drove, steering the bus to where I always slept in wait.
And I always slept in my cartonated box listening in the early morning chill for the tottering of the bus into the rutted fishhouse lot, the sprung springs and ratching bad brakes, the dark faces and elbows of its passengers pressed against the windows as the women reached beneath their seats for old jars of cold fish stew cooked in stone-scoured pots, grease-streaked bags of fried pork or some night animal snared on a porch or caught in a closet. And I would always wait in my cartonated box with my thumbs tucked under my chin for Big Miss Magine and her ugly sister to unburden the bus’s breaking back, wait for Big Miss Magine to wade through the air to my box, wait for her to slip her lips like a big brown frog through the hole in my box through which I watched the moon at night. And I would watch, no matter the season’s turn, how the blowing slow of her big breath would blue into a settling spread of fog, her words, before she pressed her eye like a painted egg against the moon-cut hole looking in to me, her words, saying You is mine, Fishboy, you is all mine.
And then I could be the Fishboy, fetching in with the ones who had come on the purple bus from around the cratered lake, the lake an hour across and a minute deep, I could fetch in with these tar-colored people with the crude tattoos, the coiled mazes cut into the skin of their cheeks and foreheads with owl quills and bird beaks, these people with nothing in their houses but clothing, wooden stools, stone pots, and ghosts like me. The boy like me then would fetch in with them to haul over the piers the forty-weight baskets of fish and the bottom-dwelling shells shaped like plates and platters, dumping them all along the troughs that spilled onto the tables where the big black women sliced out fillets with thin-bladed knives, knives with just enough curve to work the flesh out of the fish with a plunge of steel and a flick of the wrist.
The shucking of the bottom-dwelling seashells was left to a red-rimmed drunkard, a soft-skulled child, and me, the human-being boy, Fishboy, Fishboy shucking the shellcut between his duties of filling baskets of fish, running in his tied-around-the-neck plastic-fronted apron, skidding barefoot across the gut-spilt floor. I watched the little flat-bottomed skiffs and shallow-draft schooners unload and pack out their cargoes with a wire basket strung from a boom, and I watched, wondering, would a big boat ever come, would a big boat ever come with room enough for me, and when one would come, it was always some frightened trawler storm-blown with a broken rudder or a bad compass, or some wrong-size schooner with old fish and illegal nets, a dangerous crew and a captain with a gun. And even then it would be me begging pardon, pleading for a chance to come aboard, to wade down into the waist-deep icy black bilge water in the hold, to dive into the filth to unstopper the draincocks and scrape away the rotten fishheads so the storage bins could dry. It would be me washing out the dark ‘tween decks with a rag on a stick, stacking in the boards for more of the fifteen tons of sparkling sharp ice I would shovel, bloody-knuckling the crystals pink, praying to any god Please let the captain see it’s me, please see, it’s me, the Fishboy! See! Look! Clean here, clean there, clean and right, fore and aft! See how I’ll work? Let them see how I’ll work until I choke on the frozen smoke… and then, but always then, I would hear the black women holler from inside the long dark sheds More fish! More fish! FishBOY! Then up the hold ladder while the hatches clattered down, I would try to tell them how much shellcut Fishboy could shuck, one hundred and seventy-seven bushels in six hours! my lisping tongue slicing the s’s, and then not the captain, not the mate, not a winchman, nor even a boiler devil but the lowliest seaman whose work I had saved him from doing and done as my own would come out of some soot-nested bunk or from around the corner of some hose shack, eyeglazed and trouser-stained, saying Get along there sissy britches, this is a union-scripted barge. I bet you got to squat to pee, little sweetness, get off now before I split you myself! and I would be lifted up from the deck by the side of his hard-swung boot and I would sail through the air over the rail hearing his rotten rodent-tooth laugh, Thanks for the help in the hold! and I would slap the cold wet concrete apron of the pack-out pier next to the brimming baskets of fish and shellcut, double-stacked for me to catch up, for me to carry straining and slipping across the cutting room floor, watching out the open side of the shed the union-scripted ship casting off, throwing off its lines, and I would turn not to look, hoping anyone seeing the wet on my face would think it was only the scales thrown there by the fishes’ flipping tails as I emptied the baskets into the troughs along the cutting tables deeper into the shed darkness until the last fish would slide beneath the upheld fillet knife of Big Miss Magine, pointing at me, saying in the low black breath whisper, almost in fog, You is mine, Fishboy, you is all mine.”
http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0898/richard/excerpt.html
on one level, great humor is mean. on another level, if the humorist has love and hope in his/her heart, he/she is trying to awaken, to spark us
“I began as a boy, as a human-being boy, a boy who fled to sea, a boy with a whistling lisp and the silken-tipped fingers of another class. A boy with put-away memories of bedclothes bound tight about the head, knocked by a hammering fist; the smell of cigar and shoe leather and the weighted burlap bag, thrown from a car into a sideroad swamp. A child born again there, slithering out of the sack, a new beginning into life, holding back water to breathe through sour mudded filth and green surface slime. Put-away memories of my gums pushed back and bloody gnawing slugroot; the ripped frog muscle spasms tickling my tongue as I ate the things almost whole, and then the all-night chorus of croaking reproach; the bitter-centered snake eggs I washed down with the stagnant sulphured water, a mushroom cap for a cup, all of it heaved back up, a slack-jawed torrent of spew splashing around my ankles, heaving up my own new creations of life in the mire, bits and pieces wiggling and squirming, convulsing, web-footed and scaled, tiny dead reptilian eyes like pretty black beads in pearl.
I remember sleeping for warmth in winter with wild dogs, the precious suckled bitch’s milk in exchange for one of my ears ripped with hair for the puppies to chew. I remember sleeping with snakes for summer cool, the puncture bites of small poisons that cleared my infected eyes and sharpened my hearing so that I could hear the sneezes of rats to catch as toys for this boy I began as, with still, through it all, the prissy wrist, the toe-pinched walk, a boy, who, had he any sisters, Big Miss Magine said, should have worn their handed-down dresses. This was me as that boy, a boy who fled to sea and turned to fish, this was me waiting the length of his short life in his cartonated box, waiting for the one big boat to come in to the place where hardly any boats came.
Some boat.
Any boat.
I waited for a boat big enough to brave itself through where the sea dunes and the sand waves folded over, no channel in and no channel out, a boy at the ready with his butter-turned knife to sign aboard to slice meats like fists from shells like plates.
That boy.
I had always been that boy in the cartonated box, waiting for the purple bus to pass through places I could not pronounce with my whistling lisp, places I can whisper to you now with the ease of escaping steam, dark continent-calling places, places misplaced, place names like none in this language we share. I waited for the purple bus to travel through these places edging the round cratered lake where something large from the sky struck long ago, places where the blacktop road sinks through soft-bottomed bogs and erupts flat and dry farther on, a serpentine plumbing of the earth’s thin surface, the purple bus leaning on the quicksand curves, slipped tires spinning, the exhaust pipes gurgling, the white-eyed driver mostly blind and dreaming them along the road he drove, steering the bus to where I always slept in wait.
And I always slept in my cartonated box listening in the early morning chill for the tottering of the bus into the rutted fishhouse lot, the sprung springs and ratching bad brakes, the dark faces and elbows of its passengers pressed against the windows as the women reached beneath their seats for old jars of cold fish stew cooked in stone-scoured pots, grease-streaked bags of fried pork or some night animal snared on a porch or caught in a closet. And I would always wait in my cartonated box with my thumbs tucked under my chin for Big Miss Magine and her ugly sister to unburden the bus’s breaking back, wait for Big Miss Magine to wade through the air to my box, wait for her to slip her lips like a big brown frog through the hole in my box through which I watched the moon at night. And I would watch, no matter the season’s turn, how the blowing slow of her big breath would blue into a settling spread of fog, her words, before she pressed her eye like a painted egg against the moon-cut hole looking in to me, her words, saying You is mine, Fishboy, you is all mine.
And then I could be the Fishboy, fetching in with the ones who had come on the purple bus from around the cratered lake, the lake an hour across and a minute deep, I could fetch in with these tar-colored people with the crude tattoos, the coiled mazes cut into the skin of their cheeks and foreheads with owl quills and bird beaks, these people with nothing in their houses but clothing, wooden stools, stone pots, and ghosts like me. The boy like me then would fetch in with them to haul over the piers the forty-weight baskets of fish and the bottom-dwelling shells shaped like plates and platters, dumping them all along the troughs that spilled onto the tables where the big black women sliced out fillets with thin-bladed knives, knives with just enough curve to work the flesh out of the fish with a plunge of steel and a flick of the wrist.
The shucking of the bottom-dwelling seashells was left to a red-rimmed drunkard, a soft-skulled child, and me, the human-being boy, Fishboy, Fishboy shucking the shellcut between his duties of filling baskets of fish, running in his tied-around-the-neck plastic-fronted apron, skidding barefoot across the gut-spilt floor. I watched the little flat-bottomed skiffs and shallow-draft schooners unload and pack out their cargoes with a wire basket strung from a boom, and I watched, wondering, would a big boat ever come, would a big boat ever come with room enough for me, and when one would come, it was always some frightened trawler storm-blown with a broken rudder or a bad compass, or some wrong-size schooner with old fish and illegal nets, a dangerous crew and a captain with a gun. And even then it would be me begging pardon, pleading for a chance to come aboard, to wade down into the waist-deep icy black bilge water in the hold, to dive into the filth to unstopper the draincocks and scrape away the rotten fishheads so the storage bins could dry. It would be me washing out the dark ‘tween decks with a rag on a stick, stacking in the boards for more of the fifteen tons of sparkling sharp ice I would shovel, bloody-knuckling the crystals pink, praying to any god Please let the captain see it’s me, please see, it’s me, the Fishboy! See! Look! Clean here, clean there, clean and right, fore and aft! See how I’ll work? Let them see how I’ll work until I choke on the frozen smoke… and then, but always then, I would hear the black women holler from inside the long dark sheds More fish! More fish! FishBOY! Then up the hold ladder while the hatches clattered down, I would try to tell them how much shellcut Fishboy could shuck, one hundred and seventy-seven bushels in six hours! my lisping tongue slicing the s’s, and then not the captain, not the mate, not a winchman, nor even a boiler devil but the lowliest seaman whose work I had saved him from doing and done as my own would come out of some soot-nested bunk or from around the corner of some hose shack, eyeglazed and trouser-stained, saying Get along there sissy britches, this is a union-scripted barge. I bet you got to squat to pee, little sweetness, get off now before I split you myself! and I would be lifted up from the deck by the side of his hard-swung boot and I would sail through the air over the rail hearing his rotten rodent-tooth laugh, Thanks for the help in the hold! and I would slap the cold wet concrete apron of the pack-out pier next to the brimming baskets of fish and shellcut, double-stacked for me to catch up, for me to carry straining and slipping across the cutting room floor, watching out the open side of the shed the union-scripted ship casting off, throwing off its lines, and I would turn not to look, hoping anyone seeing the wet on my face would think it was only the scales thrown there by the fishes’ flipping tails as I emptied the baskets into the troughs along the cutting tables deeper into the shed darkness until the last fish would slide beneath the upheld fillet knife of Big Miss Magine, pointing at me, saying in the low black breath whisper, almost in fog, You is mine, Fishboy, you is all mine.”
http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0898/richard/excerpt.html
I’m confused. this is funny?
I’m confused. this is funny?
this is true. i think my reaction to the quote is based on the fact that i see the phrase “making fun” as mean-spirited, which is not the same as “harsh.”
this is true. i think my reaction to the quote is based on the fact that i see the phrase “making fun” as mean-spirited, which is not the same as “harsh.”
March 2nd, 2010 / 6:27 pmanon—
I’m confused. this is funny?
________________
Nah, this isn’t one of his funnier stories. I just posted it because david e mention Fishboy.
March 2nd, 2010 / 6:27 pmanon—
I’m confused. this is funny?
________________
Nah, this isn’t one of his funnier stories. I just posted it because david e mention Fishboy.
O’Connor? To me she is funny (brutally) as well as brutally dark and bizarre; really a most excellent combo of all these, I think.
O’Connor? To me she is funny (brutally) as well as brutally dark and bizarre; really a most excellent combo of all these, I think.
the word ‘brutal’ makes me think of face-fucking
the word ‘brutal’ makes me think of face-fucking
is there a scene of face-fucking in wiseblood or other? probably no. probably. i find dostoevsky hi-larious. in his notebooks for c&p he made constant reference to playing up the humour. true.
is there a scene of face-fucking in wiseblood or other? probably no. probably. i find dostoevsky hi-larious. in his notebooks for c&p he made constant reference to playing up the humour. true.
haha!
haha!
if you have to be told than no
if you have to be told than no
i think the term “literary fiction” is laughable. not to mention oxymoronic.
i think the term “literary fiction” is laughable. not to mention oxymoronic.
Anon,
Nah, this isn’t one of his funnier stories. I just posted it because david e mentioned “Fishboy.”
Anon,
Nah, this isn’t one of his funnier stories. I just posted it because david e mentioned “Fishboy.”
My top ten funniest writers (all quite dead—therefore slightly off-topic):
10. Borges
9. Stein
8. Calvino
7. Dickinson
6. Chaucer
5. Shakespeare
4. Joyce
3. Beckett
2. Faulkner
1. Kafka
Humor, for me, is most often in the syntax, not the punchline, or in the subtlety of the situation, not in the spotlit absurdity or the snide joke.
My top ten funniest writers (all quite dead—therefore slightly off-topic):
10. Borges
9. Stein
8. Calvino
7. Dickinson
6. Chaucer
5. Shakespeare
4. Joyce
3. Beckett
2. Faulkner
1. Kafka
Humor, for me, is most often in the syntax, not the punchline, or in the subtlety of the situation, not in the spotlit absurdity or the snide joke.
I think commenting on the word “literary” is a fucking cliche. And also PBR is not really that authentic a beer for hipsters. And isn’t it funny that term, Microsoft Works.
Yawn.
The point of the quote–not mine–is to read the interview. I think the author is using literary fiction exactly how he means to.
I think commenting on the word “literary” is a fucking cliche. And also PBR is not really that authentic a beer for hipsters. And isn’t it funny that term, Microsoft Works.
Yawn.
The point of the quote–not mine–is to read the interview. I think the author is using literary fiction exactly how he means to.
Lipsyte mentions Marcus and Lutz and Powell (among others) as funny writers. He says they’re “dead serious and dead funny.” Seriously funny. This is key, I think, to humor lasting beyond its own easy (contemporary) reference points.
Lipsyte mentions Marcus and Lutz and Powell (among others) as funny writers. He says they’re “dead serious and dead funny.” Seriously funny. This is key, I think, to humor lasting beyond its own easy (contemporary) reference points.
The things that are being published are funny in many ways. Intended as humor is another thing altogether. I would also go as far to say that authors have no problem being downright hilarious with all meanings implied here, I think the reader is most afraid to laugh for fear that they will be seen as a fool or idiot. I still read the funnies every morning so I’ll live longer and quite often find myself being raised eyebrow at when I laugh aloud. I live by the maxim – If it’s funny I laugh, melancholy, I weep, poorly written, I puke.
The things that are being published are funny in many ways. Intended as humor is another thing altogether. I would also go as far to say that authors have no problem being downright hilarious with all meanings implied here, I think the reader is most afraid to laugh for fear that they will be seen as a fool or idiot. I still read the funnies every morning so I’ll live longer and quite often find myself being raised eyebrow at when I laugh aloud. I live by the maxim – If it’s funny I laugh, melancholy, I weep, poorly written, I puke.
stein is funnier than all of those guys
stein is funnier than all of those guys