Image by Lucy Nicholson at Reuters, from PBS.org.
Sunshine returned this week to my corner of the Golden State. We had endured a rotten spell of grim weather — cold, rainy, grey. The kind of weather that makes me want to curl up on a couch and read Joan Didion and drink something bitter. That kind of bleakness engenders a survivalist solidarity among people who are otherwise strangers. I can’t count how many times in the past couple months I’ve said or agreed with someone else saying, “Well, at least it’s good for the environment, right?” [1] A truth universally acknowledged, indeed.
Basking in sunshine always cheers me up, and this week I noticed an unexpected side effect — humor writing became really difficult.
I started trying my hand at humor writing at the end of 2018. This came about not because I had delusions of being really funny. In fact, my principal delusion was (and remains) that I might, someday, be a really good writer. Having read hundreds of interviews in which published and sometimes famous writers are asked to reflect on the practicalities of writing, I concluded that the common and key practice was not just to write things but to finish things, to submit them. I also saw that I had nothing to show for my literary efforts except an ever-growing digital slush pile of essays I had drafted in the heat of a moment, then revised, and then eventually left to moulder.
The literary essay was also turning out to be a slippery quarry — just as I thought I’d captured my thesis, my arguments would wander far afield, and I’d have to start a separate document to corral the straying sentences. I began to suspect that I’d set my sights too high — that I needed to practice a shorter form, one that required a more precise vision, one with parameters that I could more easily see and according to which I could ruthlessly edit.
Around this time, I began reading McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and found myself enjoying many of the pieces they published, in particular the lists. Some lists appealed to my literary side, like Riane Konc’s reflection on Nabokov’s famous “(picnic, lightning)” [2]. Others read like conversations I’ve had with friends about dating, like Sara K. Runnels’ "I Like My Men Like I Like My… " lists [3]. And the humorous list seemed like a form I could reasonably expect to master. I had, after all, been writing lists for years, though they typically fell into one of two categories — work I had to do or emotions I didn’t know what to do with.
So I noodled around with a few list ideas until an episode of the Good Place reminded me of one of my favorite thought experiments, the trolley problem. It occurred to me that there were so many things in the world that I’d like to be rid of that one trolley might not suffice. I wrote and submitted a list, and it was published in October [4]. I called a good friend who’d helped me edit the piece, and we screamed at each other in sheer excitement — I’d published something!
Another list of mine got accepted at McSweeney’s last week. As delighted as I am to know that my byline will briefly appear front and center next week, I’ve been in a humor-writing slump ever since. I wonder how much of that has to do with the fact that, at the moment, I’m not angry. There’s no shortage of news to be angry about. Yet this week, between working and dancing and talking about my research and sitting in the sunshine, I haven’t been feeling angry in the deep and piercing way I did when I wrote about trolley problems.
Instead, I was feeling cautiously delighted — I was watching the light illuminate yellow-green leaves that bobbed in the breeze. I was planning my trip to the Channel Islands, ordering disposable cameras and a riotously colorful new daypack. I was going to my favorite dance classes and getting down to Lizzo and singing along to gospel choirs in the shower. And this is a version of myself I want to be more often — a person who delights in the world and the people in it.
But as I figure out how to inhabit this version of myself, I’m also trying to figure out how to write humor that matches it — humor that delights in the world. I know it can be done. There are delightful things that I find hilarious, like the fact that bees avoid defecating in their hives and so, when wintery temperatures abate and they can venture out of their honeyed confines, they take cleansing flights. And that’s the proper term for the phenomenon! A cleansing flight — it sounds like a wellness scam, but in fact it’s what, after a long winter, a bee has just got to do.
Then there’s Gwen Thomas’ list of improv rules for pessimists, which I found deeply funny [4]. A great deal of James Acaster’s Repertoire reflects, I think, a fascination with and delight in the weird corners of the world [5]. And no matter how many times I read his letters and essays, E.B. White always surprises and disarms me with his good-natured and good-humored take on life, even if the subject is the death of a pig [6].
the main post
California is mostly out of drought, for the first time in seven years. Truly, a delight.
List: Every Single Possible Way I Have Attempted to Repurpose Nabokov’s Famous Line “(picnic, lightning)”, by Riane Konc.
List: I Like My Men Like I Like My… (Trending Topics Edition), by Sara K. Runnels.
List: Improv Comedy Rules for Pessimists, by Gwen Thomas.
Repertoire, by James Acaster.
Death of a Pig, by E.B. White.
from pillar to post
the best (most delightful) of my bookmarks
Do octopuses dream? Ever since I read Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus, I’ve been fascinated by the scientific and philosophical problem of understanding intelligences that are, like that of the octopus, alien to our own. This article at Atlas Obscura includes a clip of what might be an octopus dreaming.
In the middle of this surreal article about the Club dei Brutti, or the World Association of Ugly People, I had to scroll up to verify that I was reading nonfiction. Rebecca Brill visits Piobbico for the club’s annual Festival of the Ugly and observes their presidential elections. Her writing has something of the picaresque; all the people she describes — Anna, Gianni, Lele, Massimiliano — appear in my mind’s eye as though drawn by Honoré Daumier. That there are people who name and delight in their ugliness delights me. It gives me hope because, as Gianni says when making Brill the 31,310th member of the club, “Time makes us all ugly.”
Nora Taylor shares her delightful theory of the ideal partner — a Sauce Man. She writes, “A Sauce Man is a person of any gender who gives off the aura of feeding you marinara on a wooden spoon, gently blowing on the sauce to make sure it is not too hot, seeking both your approval and admiration in their slow simmering labor. A mix of sensuality and support, a Sauce Man seeks simple pleasures and delights in sharing them with you.” First on her list is Stanley Tucci, while I think first of Patricia Clarkson.
I’m no foodie, but I really enjoyed Helen Rosner’s profile of Niki Nakayama, chef-owner of the American kaiseki restaurant n/naka in Los Angeles.
the shit post
I wasn’t kidding about cleansing flights — in fact, there are people who study the timing of these flights and other people who consider the timing of the first cleansing flight as a possible predictor of honey yields. I take great delight in imagining a group of scientists earnestly considering bee feces.