2000 Paris Review Panel at USC

[Applause] I'm not ready well welcome everybody on this afternoon here I'm gonna introduce the three humorists to my right here to my immediate right is Roy Blount who gets the first laugh of the afternoon on that he's the author of a number of books one fells a super I'm just a bug on the windshield of life what men don't tell women it grows on you which is a volume about a hair the first book of his that I read was three brick shy of a load which was a marvelous book about the Pittsburgh Steelers he has written one of the shortest poems ever a poem exactly which is a song against broccoli which goes the neighborhood stores are all out of broccoli locally number of other books or with Marvis titles now where were we first hubby camels are easy comedies hard and perhaps we should get to talk about that afterwards camels are easy her comedy is hard he summed up his life once by saying raised in South by southern parents couldn't play third base well enough so became college journalists ridiculed cultural enemies boosted integration decided to write teach went to Harvard Graduate School didn't like it went back to journalism liked it got a column ridicule cultural enemies wrote limericks boosted integration wanted to write for magazines took writing job at Sports Illustrated have seen country met all kinds of people heard all kinds of talk like it ready now to write a novel that sums it all up right line Fran Lebowitz is next to a Roy the author of two best-selling books Metropolitan Life is one and social studies is the other Edmund white Marvis critic wrote of her in the Washington Post book will that she is the not only the funniest woman in America she is also the god a guardian of the proprieties like all Saturday she's a moralist and like most Marla she's a conservative she is for the eternal verities of sleep civilized civilization conversation and cigarettes okay and the list of what she is against I must say is somewhat longer a book I've not read which is described here which sounds wonderful a children's story which is called mr. chairs and lies assume eat the pandas illustrated by marker graves and involves two children who unexpectedly discovered two pandas hiding in their New York City apartment building pandas named pandemonium and don't pander to public tastes and they express anxiety about being discovered in they're disguised themselves as dogs something we truly must read she has been working on a novel for a long long time something that everybody in America hopes to see one day she says of herself I've never met anyone who even comes close to me in laziness I would have made a perfect heiress I enjoy lounging and reading and the other problem I have is fear of writing the act of writing puts you in confrontation with yourself which is why I think writers assiduously avoid writing but we would hope that that novel will appear one day what a thing it would be to read and down at the end as Calvin Trillin a famous for just about everything his appeared of course on The Tonight Show Late Night with David Letterman he comes in and says wise things about the culture born and raised in Kansas City wrote a wonderful family memoir called messages from my father he's done a whole collection of collections of his essays on civil liberties with all disrespect enough is enough these are all titles too soon to tell and if you can't say something he's the author of wonderful book called the tummy trilogy which is about his adventures in various restaurants my name is George Plimpton I'm not classified as a humorous but more of an lunatic being a participatory journalist but I have just written a book which is supposed to be funny and since I do have the microphone I will read just one letter these the the book is called pet peeves and the book is a series of letters which are designed to drive a veterinarian nuts and the retin Arian has left his office and these letters have found crumpled on the floor and this book illustrated by Edie Koren is a collection of these weird strange letters and here's just one of them dear dr. Ralph for these than his name is dr. Roth I have purchased an attack dog who has been trained to attack at the command Wisconsin since we live in Wisconsin the word comes up quite often especially during the football season someone will say next weekend we're going to the Wisconsin Purdue game and the door goes into a frenzy and attacks do you know of any way we can deactivate Wisconsin from this dog's neural code or should we move to Alabama so there we are there's your there's your panel to talk about humor I thought perhaps we should take some sort of major statement that somebody has said about humor and talk about that for a while let's see a good win would be Aristotle said that melancholy men of all others are most witty would you say panel that being melancholy is a help in being funny or vice versa that is to say all funny men are now what is the reverse of that well I mean that being funny helps you be melancholy I think I think that most funny writers you never see a funny writer in a photograph in which he or see photograph in which he or she is smiling I don't think I think that comedy writers tend not to have great smile great natural smiles if you get them talking they'll might you know but I think in many ways that being funny writer is a compensation for kind of not a great smile you know you have to prove to people that you don't feel as bad as you look it's just one of my many theories but the question is do I find all melancholy men to be is that the question yes that melancholy is part of being that a melancholic mean melancholic character is in compensation perhaps one is funny I need no conversation for being melancholy I find despair enough I think it's sufficient on its own you say what I think it's sufficient on its own melancholy I think the reason that you don't see funny people smiling is it's hard to look Pleasant for that long I think that's the case with me anyway I think it's a morose turn of mind yes that would make you funny yes I would say morose melancholy is kind of has a kind of touching aspect to it I would say morose that's more so you stand from a rose but down there at the end or a melancholy I guess I'm an exception of the rule I'm a cheerful person and a pleasure to be around [Applause] but I rarely smile here's the statement from the Koran he deserves paradise who makes his companions laugh absolutely I go for that so paradise is for you well but Mark Twain said there is no laughter in heaven because there's no reason to laugh from nothing he also didn't think heaven sounded like much fun because every time everything that people talking about doing in heaven like singing hymns and playing the harp and going to lengthy church services were exactly the things that people didn't want to do on earth well mo ya says tis a strange undertaking to make the gentry I'm scaring you a bit with these things I can tell you're desperate over there what was the last one last one was more yeah tis a strange undertaking to make the gentry laughs which sounds more like Mark Twain's idea doesn't it well the problem is not strange but not very remunerative I mean the I know when people say to me aren't you aren't you ashamed of making a living by by making snide underhanded unfair remarks about respectable public servants my only defense is it's not much of a living well let's take another tack how difficult is it to make people laugh the gentry or people you just made this is easy to make the gentry laughs we'll leave out the gentry fine what is the what is the secret what is it here we have three people who write and presume made is curious because it's very easy to make people laugh presumably in conversation so in theory one a person that can make somebody laugh at a cocktail party should be able to sit down and make and put those that laughter onto paper but that's not so is it cannot be then being drunk like you kind of are you they could be sober well sober or drunk but what is the secret or there must be a secret mustn't there because everybody laughs with rare exceptions maybe four or five times a day but the secret of your success is that you can put that down on paper and make people laugh which the normal person cannot so what is it is it is it a cast of the way you look at life I was taught to diagram sentences in there in high school and I think that's a great yeah I recommend that to anybody who wants to you know put something down on paper that makes anybody do anything you know you got there write well and be precise and I don't and I don't think anybody knows how to be funny but everybody you can I mean you can't tell people how to be funny but you can tell people a little bit how to know right decent but it's much easier to sit down and write a sentence which describes how to build a a house or a playhouse or whatever but it is very difficult to sit down and write something that's what I'm trying to find out turn of mind tournaments like being able to wiggle your ears a minor facility that some people have and some people don't and some years that's trick thumbs harder than wiggling your ears I take your word for it I can't do either one what is the truth um well Roy both has a trick thumb and can wiggle his ears so so that we all would like to see a demonstration of that I think Roy would be able to do it right now I don't go for cheap laughs I don't do anything that you can't do in writing so but well I think there are you know sort of autobiographical elements to things my mother was I wrote a book in which sighted this is an example of why people always ask me why are you why you're funny and it's just at all when you go out on the road promote your book they say how'd you get to be so funny and there's always a sort of element of so called funny you know how did you ever get to the point where some people seem to your publicity release says you're funny but my mother was extremely self dramatizing and was extremely tragic my mother would say things like you have ripped out my heart and jumped up and down on it on the kitchen floor and I figured in my generation it was if my mother had gone on them to say in your dirty shoes you know then it would have been fun you know just had to be pushed a little farther would have been funny and so it's mine I can't equal her a tragedy but maybe I can just push it a little over the top and that's what I often feel that I am doing my mother tongue in chief but also I think I think that if you if you get some response if you happen to be able to make people laugh and you get some response I remember precisely the first time that I realized there was a good thing I was in Sunday school and we came to the passage about holding Jerusalem in your heart and it said if I forget thee O Jerusalem may my right hand lose its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth and I was a shy little boy it was about sixth grade I guess and I stood up and said if I forget the O Jerusalem and my right hand was it kind of like conky the roof of my mouth and and and everybody laughed I was kicked out of class and but but I thought hey that's easy Ryan was there a moment that you suddenly realized that everybody else thought that you were no I went directly from being fresh to getting paid for it there was no moment of my childhood where I was anything but punished for this no transition at all none zero I was fresh I got kicked out of high school I went to New York I was paid it was distant aeneas I think that there's a that southerners have a sense that language itself is funny at least ours I mean it's just you make noises with your tongue and your hard palate Roy can do that too just after he does the trick from anything he's gonna make noise it's fantastic don't don't let him just try to be shy go ahead and insist that he doesn't I know I could only do that till I was 13 years old and started to form words and I became but I think people like to play I think the people you know the language is funny that we got this Bazaar I think the English language is like a George price cartoon you know all these sort of weird things crammed in together all these elements of of Choctaw and Yiddish and and you know every other language crammed in together into into little lines of type and there's something wonderful comic potential in the American English language the great people say that or he really said that the modern modern American picture of fiction but modern American literature began with a novel by mr. Mark Lane called The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which is a comic know that's where the American language first got harnessed into literature was in that novel combination of formal and vernacular English and I think that's a great start for that the first great American novel is still probably the funniest American is there a connection between ethnicity and religion and race and humor you talk about the southern other people's what does that mean there's a connection for most people between other peoples ethnicity but it's not of amusement among whatever the ethnic race it is whatever the ethnic group it is those in one laugh well I think people have talked about the fact that immigrants often or tend to be righter first-generation Americans are often struck by the difference between their families language and the national language of the official language and therefore become very conscious of language and enjoy the our lease or trouble or something are entertained by the difference between waste languages spoken at home and the way they hear it on the radio something and that gives them a sense of the language is not just cut and dried but but a thing that can be a malleable thing in a challenging and interesting anatomic thing and that a lot of you know a lot of Jewish writers have been comic writers and and have written and you know you have Perlman and a lot of people sort of being confronted by this new language and finding it odd and not just taking it for granted also part of that was that is that Yiddish is a very homely language and and so it's funny often just words are funny it's not a it's not a fully developed fancy language and I think that ethnic humor is often shared within the ethnic group I was on a panel once on on Jewish humor with several people including a screenwriter and a book writer for musicals named the Peter stone who knows every Jewish joke I don't mean he knows most of Jewish shows he knows all Jewish jokes and so he so he can so when he talks about it you can see for instance [Music] some of the some of the things that and the same would be true with with Italian jokes within within the Italian community not I don't mean it jokes about two guys who speak broken English or gay jokes or anything like that so he can tell one partners joke about misogyny where where the partner comes home the guy comes home unexpectedly from work and he finds his wife in bed with his partner and he says Jake I have to but you this is a misogynist joke that and and but the people who are hearing it understand that there is that strain whether they like to admit it or not in the in the culture or the materialistic joke is also a partner joke which is that a woman comes home unexpectedly finds her husband in bed with the popsie and screams and yells and I'm gonna kill myself and everything in the pops he runs out it he finally calms her down and says you know we've been married for years oh all right they go out for dinner and the guys partner walks in with a pop see into the restaurant and the woman looks to her husband and says ours is nicer okay so there are two partner jokes right but they're but they're both based on something that an ethnic group in itself in the same way that black people tell black jokes among themselves that probably wouldn't be appropriate for a white person to tell particularly if they're know black people I always thought that the judge about whether you can tell an ethnic joke is would you tell the joke if a person of that ethnic background was standing there if you would there's nothing wrong with it but but often within the group these jokes might be told which would sound really rather nasty outside the group if one member of that group who's bigger than you than you are is in a nasty-looking matter I know one Scandinavian American joke which is there apparently there Lina and what are the Lina and only jokes and all he came home and Lina was sitting on the side of the bed naked and he said Lina why don't you any clothes on she said well I don't have anything to wear and he said what do you mean you don't anything where he opened up the bedroom closet he said here's your yellow dress here's your blue dress here's your red dress here's Sven [Laughter] I can uh Scandinavian no I was doing a story on the on Augusta this is not a joke but Jack Nicklaus used to have this caddy called Willie Peterson and a number of years ago Willie Peterson I couldn't come down to the Masters golf to him because he was in the hospital and the reason he was in the hospital was that he came home late that one night and found his wife in bed with another man and his wife took out a pistol and shot him fern it was invasion of privacy switcheroo but you Joe well there's also the whole element I mean without getting too pathetic about everything I once heard Minnie Pearl of the Grand Ole Opry talk about how she figured out she was going to be funny she entered a beauty contest in high school and she went out strutting along like the other contestants and people started laughing and she it was a shock but she went with it and started you know pretending to be she was trying to be funny and that I think there's none of that that you if people are laughing at you you try to take advantage of it and turn it around and it's there I do think as that humorists of people who can write comedy or write amusing line do you think they look at the world as they move through the day rather differently than the rest of us when you write these marvelous columns but for the nation these little poems and you have to produce one every week presumably there is some way that you look at the world differently than the rest of us who couldn't do I only look at the world differently on Sunday night when I need to write it and then I turn the shower to iambic pentameter and and it works out usually by the time we get out of the shower how does the shower I am big pentameter well you get those special nozzles I mean my candidate was Ross Perot I loved Ross Perot he was the only really imb candidate bumbum give us a cup the skies are terrible because Nader Ralph Nader I just wrote a poem about Ralph Nader but it doesn't use his name as a rhyme it's basically that some people who ordinarily vote Democratic we're looking for more and what they found was somebody more sanctimonious than Albert Gore but these guys Bush is a terrible problem only rhymes with tush and and and I consider that disrespectful and when when actually I did write a poem about Bush that didn't end with his name when his his transcript was leaked from his Yale transcript which as you know was not distinguished I think it's fair to say and I think the fact that that got him into Harvard Business School is another confirmation of which class of Americans the original affirmative action system was set up to benefit but at any rate it didn't seem to make any difference and I wrote a poem oblivious Leon he sails with Marx not quite as good as quails [Music] by the way I get a flat rate for these poems not not by the line I most poets are paid on I get $100 no matter how long the poem is which is a sort of incentive to write two line poems and I when I get $50 a line and I years ago when Lloyd Bentsen was named Secretary Treasury I wrote a two-line poem called Lloyd Benson's dealings with special interest groups when the man is known for pro quo witness in Texas that's how folks do bidness but anyway Clinton is a terrible rhyme and and the last time actually I wrote when mrs. Clinton remember at the beginning of the the late unpleasantness and the White House mrs. Clinton sort of took charge of the defense and went on The Today Show and everything and I couldn't do Clinton so I had to use her I guess we don't say maiden name anymore her slave name and so I wrote a poem and so it's up to our ms Rodham to prove bills White House isn't Sodom it's up to this adroit signora to show that it is just Gomorrah and I would end with a this little soliloquy with a poem I did to show you the trouble with rhyming with Bush I had to use the the elder bushes middle names when he left fortunately he has many middle names so when he left I wrote a poem that was farewell to you George Herbert Walker though never treasured as a talker your predicates were often prone to wander noun 'less off alone you did your best in your own way the way of Greenwich Country Day so just relax and take your ease and never order Japanese what was the question that was an answer no I was asking how those things come to mind you say on on Sunday night sitting in your shower which somehow wicks and I am big pentameter sand that was a very good answer and I went on a little bit after don't anybody else wants to get in your shower friend what about you yeah me what the composition the act of coming of producing pieces columns you have to do the same thing you have to do it once what every two weeks every few years like clockwork they don't come out on the computer I have a pen pad and I have no idea where it comes from if I did more of it would come I would then summon it I don't know deadlines probably are a good thing because they make you write otherwise I don't know who would write other than say Joyce Carol Oates I think other than Joyce Carol Oates I don't know who would write without a deadline they do it does for she would write but I really don't know I have no idea I'm told when Stephen King is asked where his ideas come from he often says Utica which is a city in New York State that nobody's ever been to so it's a mystery I think so just easy as that you is there an audience you think of as you sit down no no if I think it's funny then I think it's funny I couldn't possibly and that's how they were a television that's why it's not funny you you can't imagine what someone else would think it was funny you know it's very individual you read you read the material once you've finished it to somebody as I write it for me I read it as I write it aloud to myself millions and millions of times so by the end of it I'm really sick of it do I have someone's opinion of it no you read your material but it paid to anybody I'm sure it's funny I Alice reads it my wife and I've never shown anything to anybody except Alice before it was and is she brave enough to say she doesn't like it well that's an excellent question because when when a writer hands something to somebody to be read even if he knows realistically that it's sort of a rough draft and needs a lot of work what he really wants in his heart of hearts is for the person to say perfect don't change a word it's brilliant and when there was an older writer at The New Yorker who said to me when when he learned that I showed things to Alice that is a that's a terrible idea I mean that's a very bad bad for the marriage because of the fact that it's a burden on her and and you really want to want to hear that it's perfect and she being honest is going to tell you it isn't etc etc and I said I think you're absolutely right and if I could get along without it I would but I can't so I still do it and he's divorced so I do think it's hard I think it's terribly hard to read something that it's somebody else to see but but she's the only one I trust and and also she I just happened to be lucky I mean I she works a net her she's a works as a college English teacher she's got a very good eye and I mean I if I I suppose if I if my wife were a physicist or something weren't interested and that's sort of thing I wouldn't do it but I used to call that number but they now they it's blocked by the police I used to call the 900 number in the New York Times that gave you three hints to the crossword puzzle for I figured it was about three facts for a dollar sixty-five I don't actually do crossword puzzles but I had two daughters in college at the time and the tuition I was paying I figured three facts for a dollar sixty-five which is sort of bargain I just couldn't pass up so I do the targets of your savagery or wit ever come knocking at your door are you talking to me I'm talking to you and friend I don't think Roy writes things that would have people come now Roy it's a really sweet person unlike Fran and me I know no I I met one of them once at a small dinner party and he and my wife got a terrible shouting match but he never said a word about what I'd written about it I actually wrote a column for brillz content a couple of months ago about going to a sort of fantasy of going to a dinner party in New York and I'm the first one to arrive and the only other person there is Steve Forbes and and I probably said some mildly critical things about Steve Forbes dork robot was one of them and and and and and the hostess says well I have to tend to something in kitchen I'm sure that you and you two have a lot to talk about she leaves and then son and then I suddenly realized that Steve Forbes actually doesn't have to smile all the time usually you always saw him smiling and he cern's kind of maniacal and reaches for the cutlery whereupon about five or six other people I've said rude things about I mean Donald Trump is there and and and a lot of people but I I actually don't see them and they don't really I don't think they'd lower themselves they'd they really be dumb to complain I've never I've never had anybody coming a lot of times they're political figures and things and they I think they would be I think I met Oscar de la Renta once who I had I had written a piece about the salon at Oscar de la Renta's house which was I supposed critical I mean I was supposed to be funny and he mentioned among other things that his name actually is Oscar Renta and he added the day law and he was charming she was absolutely so nice about it there was obvious that he'd read it and because it was you know his friends at reddit right I think I think people I don't think it's a problem I tell you the opposite is the problem if I actually knew people like that I don't think I could write things like that about him I mean even if I didn't like him particularly just the personal contact so so I'm happy not to live in Washington and sort of go to those dinner parties or wherever they all meet each other Junior right after I had published a book in which his father a novel in which his father was poisoned by math Marilyn Quayle he was he was with the Texas Rangers then and all he's Texas Ranger guys there Bobby Valentine there was the manager and and somebody told Bobby Valentine that I'd read the scene I think Valentine was gonna hit me and he felt that it was wrong he I was ready but George W was you know you can imagine he just sort of got up in my face and sort of acted like he was gonna pop me with the towel and was very jocular about it hmm and I was more uncomfortable than and now I don't think I would I feel yeah I think that's right that once you see these people as people you don't want to hurt no I'm not that part I don't take that back but but I once was at an ABA American Booksellers Association which is obviously called something else now but but it was then they had their convention in California and I was part of a breakfast program with Jimmy Carter when he was doing his book and and I and my book was a collection of columns that started in the Reagan know started in the Carter Administration and then ended in the Reagan administration and I actually told him he said well I haven't read your book I understand it's very funny and I said well mr. president I think maybe if you did want to read it it might be a good idea to start at the back and about the time you think you should stop reading would be a good time to stop reading and and then he made a remark in in his speech about something I had said about his his daughter which actually one of the few things that I that I draw the line out on I really don't insult people's children and something about whether how about charming she was or something like that which I hadn't said but it was it was rather ill-tempered I mean it was it was meant to be in complaint and I I do see I was the emcee of a the Episcopal charities benefit last year and the guys the in charge of it said oh the the the mayor mayor Giuliani is has been added to the speakers at the last minute so I hope you have something to say to introduce him and I said well the last thing I said about him in a column was that he may be the only italian-american in the Greater New York area with no personal charm I say how about that so no I don't think they know I said oh I'll try to think of something else but most of these guys are used to all this stuff I don't think they care much it I think it's less intrusive to make fun of somebody than to explain somebody a great solid length in a book you know the making of you know all these books about why Al Gore is the way he is and what his inner life must be and his relationship to his father that's the kind of book that would piss me off if I were the object of one I remember writing in a book about football about paper lion I'd lost 32 yards in four plays as the quarterback for the Detroit Lions and and we went out on the town in Detroit in relief that this was a success I'd survived it and we got back I got back to the room I must four o'clock in the morning and after this night of revelry and celebration and there was a knock on the door and it was an offensive god named Harley Sewell and he lived in a training camp with his wife outside the training camp with his wife and and two children and he felt that I was going to wake up wrong having lost the 32 yards that I would hold my head in my hand in grief and so forth and he wanted to make me as he put it shouted through the door to wake up right and he got me out of bed and took me off I remember putting my head out the window of the station wagon to try to to wake up and he took me to his house and there were pancakes and so forth and two children romping around and an Irish Setter and everything it was it was a wonderful way in a sense he'd done this very kind thing and I wrote about this in paper lyin and he was absolutely outraged because it made him seem like a softie and that the offensive that when he was playing offensive guard that the big tackles opposite him who had Breton who had read the book this was his idea I don't think any of them would read the darn thing his idea was they'd all shy uh I took that guy to gave me some pancakes they do is softy and they'd whack him and you know I was trying to be terribly nice to this man and and the result was his great rage and got angry letters from you so I finally calmed down he ran for public office in Texas and began to forget that but it was what I absolutely agree with Roy I think that I think the worst thing would be one of these psychobabble books where people tell about a politician or somebody why he does something and all of this like these books Hillary's Hillary's the way she is because her daddy didn't come to her graduation then it turns out he did come to her graduation um you know I'd be furious and somebody or anything like that about me but just kind of making fun of you or making fun of your policies I mean I think these guys if they haven't gotten used to it have sort of out of the game by now no the topics you should shy away from then friend that's a question for a friend I never write about people so I've never had this problem or a lack of problem are there topics you mean that you shouldn't make fun of yeah they should steer clear I mean would you come across any what are some of the more extreme that you cackles memorized on my work I don't know you know I am I think you're making a big mistake not memorizing your work clearly about politics first of all so I know I think anything's funny as long as it doesn't happen to you that's the difference between comedy and tragedy it doesn't almost everything happen to everybody know things are funny if they happen to other people if they happen to you they're tragic such as such as almost anything unpleasant for instance the basis of all humor is making fun of something you know people often criticize especially in LA criticize certain kind of humor for being negative that's negative that's you know again something that's I think what funny things are you know even a man's still be on a banana peel I think anything that happens to another person can be funny no matter what it is was leaning on the back of a car when somebody else was in it and the person in the car activated the automatic aerial and he woke up just as Ariel was moving up we just had a few seconds to get up off of the aerial you know if he hadn't had that split-second get off of the our aerial it wouldn't have been fine I mean describing what happened I think it depends on the I think that that as far as offensiveness that there's sort of a self-selection if it's funny it probably isn't offensive and and and the stuff that offends people usually isn't funny I mean that is I wrote a piece once on a guy named Joe Bob Briggs who was actually the pen name of another guy who was a movie reviewer for for the Dallas Times Herald and the the other the real guy he wrote the what the Nuvo log movies reviews and everything and Joe Bob was this 19 year old drive-in movie guy and he he talked about how many breasts were seen in each movie he rated them that way and he was a really crude guy and Joe Bob finally I mean he offended a lot of people I mean he his his word for Mexican was Mexican you know that's the way Joe Bob talked and a lot of gay humor everything that was but but he went on fine or at least on the edge until he wrote a song that was a parody of that song we are the world which was called we are the weird and it was a bunch of mutants and a lot of people from those drive-in movies and everything and the problem with it was it wasn't funny so it just was just lying there waiting for analysis but if it's funny there isn't any analysis you just laugh and and and whether whether it's okay or I think sometimes it has to do with length of time like Lincoln jokes are funny but they're about an assassination I mean they can be funny but it's been it was a long time ago Lincoln would not have survived until now even if he hadn't been assassinated and and we're like there's like there was a great line of Zero Mostel about Romanian Jewish cooking which is a sort of extremely heavy type of cooking that used to be a number of restaurants in New York they're probably maybe one or two left where where they actually have liquid chicken fat schmaltz on the table in a pitcher to to improve on the chef's excesses if you want to and there's a lot of garlic in the food and it took weight you know the Hungarians are worried about I mean Romanians are worried about the Dracula and those guys and then if you don't we're Wolf's and things and and so you use a lot of garlic and if you then use a lot of schmaltz so if he gets through the garlic you hit him with heartburn this second defense but Zero Mostel loved this place called the Parkway but his line about about Romanian Jewish food was it's killed more Jews than Hitler what a German probably a German would have a little trouble expressing an accent that's true too but when you think of it that's kind of and it's a holocaust joke and it's funny and it's also I mean there's I think if it's funny you don't have to worry about it and and if you made jokes about sick children or something it wouldn't be funny I think the fun of being a funny writer is to go after is to try to be funny about sore spots and there's no real point and being funny about something that everybody knows is funny but it's a sort of public service too if there's some kind of thing that's been swelling and building up and nobody wants to talk about it if you can be funny about it it's it's releases lots of tension but if you miss you and your your career is over so we're basically we're basically Boyle Lancers bingo though but I think that you ought to be like a cat cats come into a room and they immediately find the person in the room that hates cats he goes and sits in their lap you have to look for those sports John Mortimer we went to a button Roy we're a conference in Italy and John Mortimer talking about humor talked about how the McCobb is often gives you a wonderful sense it twisted the right way can be funny and he told us he read this clipping from the Edinburgh Evening News which is supposed to be very serious in a way and here it is is 1978 on August 18th and him was the column while they were waiting at a bus stop in Clem ersten mr. mrs. Daniel thirsty were threatened by a mr. Robert clear he demanded that I give him my wife's purse at mr. thirsty telling him that the purse was in her basket I bent down put my hands up her skirt detached her artificial leg and hit him over the head with it it was not my intention to do any more than frighten him off but unhappily for all of us he died yet another one dwarfee all known records for matrimonial homicide mr. Peter Scott of Southsea made seven attempts to kill his wife without her once noticing that anything was wrong in 1980 he took out an insurance policy on his good lady which would bring him two hundred and fifty thousand pounds in the event of her accidental death soon afterwards he placed a lethal dose of mercury in her strawberry flambe all rolled out not wishing to waste this deadly substance he next stuffed her mackerel with the entire contents of the bottle this time she ate it but with no side effects whatsoever warming to the task he then took his better half on holiday to Yugoslavia recommending the panoramic views he invited her to sit on the edge of a cliff she declined to do so prompted by what she later described to some sixth sense the same occurred only weeks later when he urged her to savour the view from beachy head when his spouse was in bed with chickenpox he started a fire outside her bedroom door but some interfering busy buddy put it out undeterred he started another fire and bent down the entire flat the wife of his bosom escaped uninjured another time he asked her to stand in the middle of the road so that he could drive toward her and check if his brakes were working No at no time did mrs. Scott feel that the magic is special at no time did mrs. Scott feel that the magic had gone out of their marriage since it appeared nothing short of a small nuclear bomb would have alerted this good woman to her husband's intentions he eventually gave up and confessed everything to the police after the case of detective said mrs. Scott had been absolutely shattered when told of her husband's plot to kill her she had not tweeted at all and was dumbstruck I don't know where to go from that well we thought that we have another fifteen or twenty minutes or so we thought that perhaps the audience would have some questions to put to the to the panel what strikes you out there that you want to know about the writing of or the life of the humorist here we are just talking about Peter DeVries at lunch how funny funny writer he was and every time he might ask me who I recommend that I always say Charles Portis who's is greatly underappreciated funny novelist comic novelist who wrote great novel called Norwood and other than call masters of Atlantis ear I think we're all daughters of the sound dogs in the South the dog of the dog yeah yeah I think we're all tend to be sort of collectors and lovers special lovers of funny Ronnie I agree about about Charles Portis I think I think I just read Norwood this summer I don't know why I didn't read it some of these are now out in the kind of a paperback yeah the region and the southern writer who's really well I think my name is hilarious yeah I read I read some novels that are that are meant to be funny and I enjoy the sort of I think we happen to be at a time when when a lot of people write short humorous pieces pretty well and they're quite a few of them up by quite a few of them um you know it's like hey I don't think it's ever anything that thousands of people do isn't one of the problems with human oh that humor though that it dies rather quickly more quickly than other forms that it particular if you deal as you do indeed topical subjects and it has a very thing is that something that you think about when you write I wonder if someone's gonna understand what I'm talking about five years from now well if you worry if you I can't imagine people will read five years now that optimistic also if you're writing for a weekly magazine I don't think you worry about five years from now although the New Yorker I must say you know sometimes sometimes you know they read them in doctors offices somebody said I just read this piece you wrote very interesting I said though what piece was that and they named something I wrote eight years ago or something and I I always say hope it was a check-up and nothing serious writer for The New Yorker from North Carolina named Joe Mitchell is a great he died recently it was a great interview of him on NPR one time I wish I could do his voice but he was saying they asked him something he he was talking about how he used to write for The New Yorker and he said he got an award from the University of North Carolina or something recognizing him as a master writer or something he said I called up my daughter and I said I won this award and and all and and she said I see you still fooling him and he said and that just tickled me I was just something for a weekly magazine hoping it was funny can you imagine what a mess I would have made if I try to write literature on the other hand Joe Mitchell was a was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters 1970 the rare reporter and was a real scholar of Joyce but somehow somehow he did come across and wanted to be sort of simple reporter and and he one of the one of the theories of why he quit writing was that he was writing along the same speed as everybody else and then some English professor said he was the greatest master of the English declarative sentence in America and that stopped him cold I don't think it's true I think that a key I did an anthology of southern humor and I read a whole lot of sort of friendly warm-hearted old humor and it was awful and the mean humor the nasty biting humor tended to survive a lot longer than the because the whole heartwarming so humor was so friendly and it clearly was trying to make you laugh whereas the mean stuff was just being mean and it was so meaning that it and sharp and clever that it made you laugh I think if you seem to be trying to make people laugh it doesn't work well Portis and other people great thing about all the porters when I talk to people about how to write for stuff students and stuff that's the only thing I can tell you is that if you're writing funny novel nobody in the novel should be trying to be funny the more they try not to be funny the funnier they can be [Music] probably hey definitely getting older a lot of funny stuff on TV you know that the Larry Sanders Show was one of was wonderful I think and cable TV I think has gotten better than the movies movies you get moving comedy is getting worse and worse on the whole I think in TV is some ways I mean I think there's still funny stuff and um television is this it tends to be dirtier but there's still good Steve out of the Steve Allen's obituaries said that he would call out for people to somebody call itself in the audience for him to write a song and somebody once said Doctor Zhivago and and he wrote a song called Jonathan winters one time there's nothing to do what you asked but Jonathan winters I remember one time on the Carson show he was just taking improvising things little sketches from people in the audience people would suggest things and somebody said airplane somebody else said Indian somebody else said [ __ ] and John said great silver bird they also asked him to do something a lot of things with it with it just kind of a look like a dowel or a stick one time and and I remember one of me did where he said the chair recognizes the delegate from Burundi I once did a documentary on on being a stand-up comic it was an hour-long show way back in the old days when they had our primetime shows and my coach was Steve Allen and I went to all these great comics to learn how to be a comedian for a half hour on Caesars on the stage of Caesars Palace and Jonathan winters is one of them and and my routine was written for me by the team that did laugh-in and I'm sure if you remember that and I didn't think it was particularly funny there were a lot of John Wayne jokes and so forth and so I went to and I went to the the two comedy writers for laugh-in and I said I don't think you've captured my style here and one of them looked to me Pat he's an old Milton Berle joke but he said Plimpton if we could capture your style we put it in a cage and clubbed it to death you know Steve Allen kept trying to make me sound less like Cordell Hull didn't work I went out there was interesting I went out there and perform this terrible half hour Caesar's Palace my name was up there just for one night and Jonathan winners suggested that my entrance that I should pull the curtain aside like this and say hi and I'd resisted doing that I must say interesting it was like I had these jokes anyway the metaphor that I found for it that it was a little bit like fishing at night and you'd throw this joke out there and sometimes and the audience is it's a pitch darkness except for the little votive candles here and there but they're about you know maybe seven hundred eight hundred people out there and sometimes that joke would work a little bit and you'd feel a sense of the line would move with a fishing metaphor and then sometimes you throw it out there and nothing would happen and not a thing and it was then you get what they call flop sweat and you sit there and you throw out the next line and the hope that something catches is a perfectly awful experience I think writing is probably at least you don't have an audience that sit there and hoots at you as you try to throw the line out there I've done a couple of pieces on stand-up comics once when there was a strike at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles and once so the improv which was the first of the comedy clubs I think in New York and one of them one of the things that I mean stand-up comics I have to say as a group I think it is possible to generalize are not the most stable and and mentally healthy secure people and and it and depending on your life view you could say maybe that was the way they were its children there's children and that's why they became sano comedies or being a stand-up comic makes you that way and one of the things that that is sort of frustrating about being a stand-up comic is you comedy's not defensible if if the lady in the second row doesn't laugh it's not funny to her and you can't say madam many people some of them more intelligent and educated than you have laughed at that joke I mean it doesn't do you any good they're gone so I think I think that's one of the things that turns them sort of weird and the and then the other thing is that every stand-up kind of like I ever talked to in this story or other stories they always say that some jokes work sometime and not other times so that so that you might tell a joke or the first show in Las Vegas and and get a tremendous response and tell it in the second show and get no response at all and and it's maddening and I the closest thing I ever did to stand-up comic comedy was I did a show Roy did one to actually really inspired me I wasn't going to do it and then I went to Roy's and there was a program with Roy's picture on the cover I said I'll do it I've always wanted this having a program playbill and I don't know if you had the same experience Roy but I found and I'm I didn't get so that I was saying things word-for-word the same every night but but it was a two-week run and about the end of the second week I was coming reasonably close to saying more or less the same thing I found when when something made people laugh one night and then it didn't the next night that that there was actually a reason for it I don't I think that either I had stepped on the line or or the timing was off or somebody coughed or tupid or they were stupid they were particularly kind of stupid audience right what did you pray for is a Red Hat audience audience they will laugh at a Red Hat but I mean you named that genre by the way of our stand-up thing which is a middle-aged guy in a sport coat talking right that's right a middle-aged what middle-aged guy in a sport coat talking well that's an old Yiddish phrase so my father said when when well what oh I see what you mean that that's it's that it's a good question too the question is how as I interpret it is why is something that seems sort of routine how do you pick that out as being something that's funny and that's true in reporting too because you have a thousand quotes and somehow something sounds funny the-the-the the first example is my is that my father when who was from grew up in st. Joe Missouri and spoke very much like Harry Truman his accent but also knew nitish because he had come from Ukraine when he was like 2 years old something like that and when he when my wife and I first told him we were looking for a house in Greenwich Village he said how much would a house cause my father was shocked and appalled by any price that was anything different from what a prudent man would have paid in 1941 I mean he was just totally and and we told him how much a house might cost in the village which now seems laughable and his response was this phrase which is something like Fenster and my nagging and I and I asked somebody for a translation and it actually means it's going dark behind my eyes which I don't know that and that's what he said but it's just there's something funny about its going dark behind and the other quote is from my grandmother who I mentioned in this book about my father was my mother's mother who was I guess an asterick really and I think was always held up without saying so in words by my father is the sort of person that we shouldn't be that is somebody who still kind of carried around a kind of a shtetl mentality and my grandfather her husband was in the hospital for some minor hernia procedure my mother was with my grandmother whose blood pressure was already stratospheric because of this and my father called and said that my sister we were in high school and had a stomach ache and that the doctor suggests that he bring her into the same hospital possibly to get her appendix out and my mother told my grandmother about this coincidence and medical procedures and her response was give me poison this is this not the person you won the next foxhole really know exactly right exactly right my mother is always telling us kids to be sweet and when those moments when you least wanted to be sweet and then you would hear her saying when somebody would compliment her you and her saying oh you're just being sweet and I felt caught caught between those two if I was sweet I was just being sweet if I wasn't sweet I was being I was breaking my mother's heart that's why I'm a humorous today you weren't breaking her heart you were tearing her heart out what they add to a cynicism which detracts from politics is that what you said Oh democracy sorry this word haven't heard in so long I Frank I didn't recognize it I think it's almost impossible to be a satirist in this era could you have come up with george w bush now Jonathan Swift would be stumped by this yeah it's what I used to call being blindsided by the truth and there I used to have a rule called the hairy golden rule it was like the golden rule except it was named after Harry golden who's who some of you may know used to publish a paper in Charlotte and in the 50s the Carolina is really the Carolina is realized exactly and and which got all over the country and and in the and the 50s he pointed out that the people white people in his part of the south didn't seem to mind standing up with black people because they stood in lines with him and that and stood in various places he had a lot of examples but they didn't like to sit down so he had the vertical integration of the schools that was his he said there'd be no problem if they took the desks out took no keep the desk take the chairs and and and shortly after he did this the the federal court ordered a library in North Carolina desegregated and the first thing they did was to take the chairs out so this was like during the Reagan administration when what was the name of there was a black Secretary of Transportation and it was at Samuel Pierce's name something like that yeah housing and HUD whatever it is and and Reagan was at a about 1990 I mean 18 1983 or 48 not 18 not that oh and the and he was at a reception for big city mayors and his Secretary of Housing and Urban development's Chris came up to say hello and he said hello mr. mayor how are things in your city well my feeling of something like that what does that leave me to say I mean if the president is saying that then all I could do was imagine what he said and reply would you know which maybe is played along saying you know things things are fine in my city mr. president the few potholes and the president doesn't recognize his own cabinet secretaries but or just pretend it was a kind of a joke between them and saying hello count how's the countess how are things in the castle so I think they do it's hard to keep ahead of them found a sign of gradual integration in a desegregation in a hospital and he saw on the wall three thermometers hanging with labels and one said black and one said white no once it colored and said white and the other one said anal a rectal I guess it determined rectal you know that one yeah oh yeah I dressed that sort of gives it away bad dress I wants to give a speech to Clemson and it was an enormous crowd and I was really pleased and everybody and then somebody came up after I mean big auditorium a lot of people show their showed up out and somebody came up afterwards and I said well said they enjoyed it and I said thank you and I was really pleased it's such a turnout and he said yeah I know everybody in Swan Management had to come you have a swine management part Department here by the way I thank all of our children well George has little children now so my children it found me so funny that they've moved far away I have exactly the same experience mine to move to California they couldn't find jobs in Alaska Hawaii California was as far as they could get and I tell you what I find them funny and also my younger daughter was about the only person in the world for a long time who could just crack me up and and took great pride in that and my and and they're still funny there's a there's a there's a element of children that has to do what I call the tiny deflator that always kind of says the truth and it's often funny I and there's still that way even though they're growing up I I had a heart operation a few years ago and I and I was about to go out of the get out of the hospital both of my girls to come home and they were we were all sitting note and the doctor was telling me this sort of regimen he expected me to keep when I got home and how little time at the desk and how many naps a day and all that I was trying to look brave and prudent at the same time and and he got all through and my older daughter Abigail said gee I hate to say it daddy but that sounds sort of like your regular schedule I used to have I can't imagine it now but I think one of the most hellish things in the world is to be on an airplane with little children but I remember anyone never make eye contact with a child an appointment but I was a little kid when my kids were little and one time I just would just went with it one time we were drinking our cokes or something through the earphone thanks and I started making them masks out of the barf bags you know and the stewardess saw me tearing a corner off the barf bag which was just so they could put their fingers or something you know puppets and the stewardess gave me such a lecture for sabotaging the barf bag somebody's going to use that if we used to have fun when I was younger and more flexible one more yeah yeah I didn't hear that George I couldn't hear it either grind the world I heard I just hope it's needed so somebody will pay me but I don't think you trying to fill a need that's you sits out there you feel a need and that you feel you ought to be funny wanted right like to write and just pray God you can keep on being funny past the I mean most people are not very funny past our ages so our I mean buds in mind Mark Twain of all those Pope's that I was started off the proceedings with has something to that point he says the best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up which may be one of the pleasures of writing or trying to write humor I make myself laugh while writing about once every two years usually usually with something that just sort of snuck onto the page which I hadn't expected and I'll laugh and my wife what are you doing in there laughing so I think if I ever were captured by terrorists and put in solitary confinement I would not be totally without resources I wouldn't every year to be able to give myself a giggle we're very glad to hear that there was another one here somewhere wasn't there we are just tell me I'll do it I thought he said he didn't get any cheap laughs no I think all fill all philosophical all philosophical questions go to Fran I think no it's not worth directing right back in that somehow the 30s I think max Eastman wrote a book called the enjoyment of laughter in which he analyzed American humor and somebody I think Robert basically said max Eastman has gotten American humor down and broken its arm he also said that all letters that be all senses to begin with w wasn't that secret that was a great secret all sentences begin with a w were essentially funny why should we yes that's what there's no it's the worst straight line in the world how do you be funny well I'm so glad we've told you how that works any one more any more questions otherwise we'll call it a day and go out and try to amuse our fellow man where you have to follow me home and see sure I think that so there's our better than everybody at everything except abstract thought [Applause] I don't know what that was for your answer for all of us well once again we're so pleased you came on this summer afternoon and thank you so much once again thank you [Applause] [Music]