Which Home Do You Choose?

Of satire, there are essentially three forms: Horatian, Juvenalian, and Menippean, invented by Horace, Juvenal, and Menippus, respectively. Each one has a different position towards critique. As I understand it, Horatian satire is akin to gently correcting the behavior of a cherished group of friends by kindly suggesting refinement through warm-hearted raillery. Juvenalian is reserved for when one is having a particularly bad day and interested in a full-frontal knuckle-up with the perceived object responsible for that day’s downward trajectory, often people or institutions. And Menippean is something a bit more abstract, something like inviting those with distasteful ideas and mental attitudes into one’s home and speaking with them about those same ideas and mental attitudes that one finds to be ready for the trash can. Then, without attributing this garbage to them directly, one chooses instead to soften things up a trifle by conveying information through analogy, metaphor, or allegory. In this form, extraordinary settings and narrative abstraction are quite common.

Unlike other forms of humor that rely on generally unbiased observations of human behavior and its foibles, satire operates by placing its selected subject matter under a certain scorn, derision, or ridicule, with the hope that, by doing so, a shock of recognition will jolt through the reader that renders one repulsed by the hitherto uncontemplated vice or folly and in desire of dispossession at the personal or societal level. And a particularly successful satire will have convinced its reader that all will benefit from the banishment of the iniquity exposed and denounced therein. 

And, if this reads as at all religious in temperament to you, you are neither imagining things nor gaslighting yourself, for satire requires a special something promised by the divine: judgement. 

Satire exists exactly because of its element of judgement, which, channeled through the satirist’s belief system, originates in the satirist’s idea of a more perfect world. The perceived negative elements of personality, philosophy, or society to be receiving the axe are juxtaposed against the satirist’s ideal conceptions thereof, which are championed in a way that should convince the reader of the superiority of those ideals. But a rusty broadsword to the thorax, though diplomatic, won’t quite do here. While satire is, without a doubt, an attack, its vanguard lead neither with lash out nor lambast—seldomly effective routes—rather with humorous irony. A spoonful of sugar makes the satire go down roughshod, and its recuperative effects should eschew the taste of destruction as much as possible, in favor of a constructive relish.

Evelyn Waugh’s 1932 novel, Black Mischief, provides a piercing example of satire anent the theme of birth control. In the Empire of Azania, an advertisement for birth control is placarded on the city wall. And a curious case ensues:

     It portrayed two contrasted scenes. On one side a native hut of hideous squalor, overrun with children of every age, suffering from every physical incapacity—crippled, deformed, blind, spotted and insane; the father prematurely aged with paternity squatted by an empty cook-pot; through the door could be seen his wife, withered and bowed with child-bearing, desperately hoeing at their inadequate crop. On the other side a bright parlour furnished with chairs and table; the mother, young and beautiful, sat at her ease eating a huge slice of raw meat; her husband smoked a long Arab hubble-bubble (still a caste mark of leisure throughout the land), while a single healthy child sat between them reading a newspaper. Inset between the two pictures was a detailed drawing of some up-to-date contraceptive apparatus and the words in Sakuyu: WHICH HOME DO YOU CHOOSE?

     Interest in the pictures was unbounded; all over the island woolly heads were nodding, black hands pointing, tongues clicking against filed teeth in unsyntactical dialects. Nowhere was there any doubt about the meaning of the beautiful new pictures.

     See: on right hand: there is rich man: smoke pipe like big chief: but his wife she no good; sit eating meat: and rich man no good: he only one son.

     See: on left hand: poor man: not much to eat: but his wife she very good, work hard in field: man he good too: eleven children: one very mad, very holy. And in the middle: Emperor’s juju. Make you like that good man with eleven children.

As in the case of Modernity, I’m likewise undecided.

The Divine Intimacy

The strength of a short story may be evaluated by various quality-judgements. And, as the nomenclature suggests, short stories haven’t the time to unimpress. Fortunately, there are many routes that one may take to perform such a feat; the best-cobbled path is, however, in the same fashion as one would win the heart of a lover: intimacy. Dennis Johnson’s collection of linked short stories, Jesus’ Son, not only deeply affects the reader, but also possesses one’s soul with a devilish intimacy nearly divine in its courtship. Some might moot artistic afflatus; some might point to the rampant drug abuse. I remain nevertheless steadfast in the opinion that these slices of someone’s literary heaven exist from a mastery of craft. It may be interpreted that Johnson completes this coaxing, in part, by three forms of ingratiation: a conversational first-person-reportage narrative style, the acknowledgment of the reader with the second-person, and the Big Kiss Goodnight ending.

Johnson’s stories feel like a shifty, likely armed man in a dusty jean jacket whispering unspeakables. Whenever a shifty, likely armed man in a dusty jean jacket descries us at a social gathering and, after cornering us with his broad shoulders, proceeds to delineate to us his heaviest moments, we normally fear for our lives. Though this is often the prudent choice for those in favor of a full life, the opposite is likely our response to Jesus’ Son. Johnson earns our affections with his conversational first-person-reportage narrative style. Reportage, though often considered unliterary, is pungent with authenticity, for it most closely imitates someone speaking directly to us about one’s life. The reportage style is told using the past perfect tense, “I’d been staying at the holiday Inn with my girlfriend,” in conjunction with the simple past tense, “we made love in the bed,” often also using signifying wording, such as “I remember.” Neither does it hurt to compare one’s Holiday Inn romance with a heroin-junkie to Dante’s climb to Paradiso and the Empyrean with his truest love, Beatrice: “we…carried one another to heaven.”

What do you think about the use of the second person to acknowledge the reader? I am not certain about it, but I shall leave that up to you to decide. I trust your judgement. In any case, it certainly is personal. On the wrong day in Germany, you could get the bamboo cane for it. But, in Jesus’ Son, you understand the second person to be a term of endearment, as this usage suggests: “And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.” Consider this supremely yarn-like confidence that Johnson unravels, after confiding in us some heavy exposition about the characters in his story Two Men: “My two friends and I went to get into my little green Volkswagen, and we discovered the man I started to tell you about, the first man, sleeping in the backseat.” Remember?

What is the Big Kiss Goodnight ending? It is what everyone wants. Moreover, it also seems to be a tactic of writers who enjoy finishing stories with a smooch of the angelic. In accordance with the aforementioned considerations as regards a short story’s incapacity to allow a moment’s somnolence, its ending might perhaps be its most important time to excite, and the stories in Jesus’ Son do not leave us blue. Indeed, each story ends with a bang. 

Consider this coda at the end of a story about a less than gentle man named Dundun: “Will you believe me when I tell you there was kindness in his heart? His left hand didn’t know what his right hand was doing. It was only that certain important connections had been burned through. If I opened up your head and ran a hot soldering iron around in your brain, I might turn you into someone like that.” Or this uplifting bit: “Your husband will beat you with an extension cord and the bus will pull away leaving you standing there in tears, but you were my mother.”

Of course, this narrator had no filial connection with the barmaid about whom he is reporting, but that has never been a qualification when considering if one has been another’s mother. 

Pissed from a Distance

Angry, bellowing men with pythons for arms and peanuts for brains are no laughing matter. Disenchanted, seething gentlemen, whose arms exist merely for decoration and whose wits are tucked away in the dark steeples of brooding misanthropy are often a gaggle of laughs. Why we prefer one over the other is uncertain, yet the conundrum remains: why is being pissed from a distance so funny? 

As if Holden Caufield found himself a trifle more well-adjusted English don, the hero from Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, Jim Dixon, sets the modern gold-standard for amusingly irritated young men. However, unlike Caufield, Dixon, despite his patent literary-level hatred for the Post-War English University, is regarded by most of today’s literati primarily as a childish perpetrator of mildly lascivious high jinks. This is not an untruth. How, then, amongst all the griping, does Dixon keep sneaking in the ole’ rib-tickler? By examining a few of Amis’s distancing narrative techniques, and their effects on our humorous interpretation of novel, one may gather how merely being miffed is enough to blister the knees.

It is no happenstance that Lucky Jim is written in the close-third-person narrative style. This narrative choice sets the perfect level of impersonality necessary for harmless irritation and subsequent schadenfreude. Where in more than a few cases the first-person narration style, with its highly intimate connection with authorial intention, might perhaps flounder, the close-third-person succeeds in creating just enough distance between the snappish views of the character and the author who wrote them. This faux distance is important for the reader, as it allows him to fully experience all the fun of the hatred whilst relieving him from any of the personal responsibility for enjoying it. The distant-third-person would ostensibly also be quite effective in the pursuit for amicable animosity, but in its stark dissociation from direct emotional experience, it often cannot quite achieve the level of intimacy needed for one to feel that humbling pang of guilt so closely linked with humor. Therefore, in depicting the Displeased, the close-third-person reigns as the supreme line-walker. How, then, does Amis apply this balanced mode, in conjunction with other techniques, to Jim Dixon’s understanding of the provincial university at which he works and the pedantic characters who inhabit it?

One technique Amis employs to achieve a safe proximity with the Scathing is to affect the first comedic commandment of Euphemism. How does one scathe euphemistically? It is in this very field where Lucky Jim displays its unique brand of genius. The idea here is similar to the effect of outboxing an opponent, whilst simultaneously inquiring into whether he endeavors to continue, yet reminding him he cannot stop the round; it is a kind of controlled, gentle viciousness that is a bit difficult to have happen upon one’s own person, but highly entertaining to watch. Dixon is not bashful about whom he targets for what is more than solely pugnacious satire, rather a kind of ruthless portrayal of truths. For an example of this, seek no further than the first scene of the novel, during which Dixon’s interpretations of Professor of History and mentor, Professor Welch, are described. Welch tells an anecdote to Dixon regarding his playing recorder and piano with a few music aficionados around the school, and how he was observed by and reported on by a local gazette. Whereupon, beginning with Welch, the following takes place:

 “(B)ut what do you think they said then?”

 “I don’t know, Professor,’ he said in sober veracity. No other professor in Great Britain, he thought, set such store by being called Professor.” 

 “‘Flute and piano.”

 “Oh?”

 “Flute and piano; not recorder and piano.” Welch laughed briefly.

A veritable knee-slapper. And Dixon felt the very same way, going as far as to mention that “the older man… began speaking almost in a shout, with a tremolo imparted by unshared laughter”. And, though the laughs indeed remained in the singular form, Welch continued on absently and without consideration for the human constraints of boredom. Dixon, however, like a decent lad, attempts to honor this insufferable codger by “tr[ying] to flail his features into some sort of response to humor”. May we see now how Dixon is following the standards for decorum, responding in seemly ways, seemingly adhering to societal expectations, whilst also taking the piss? This is the very essence of being pissed from a distance. It is a kind of Bad Faith agreement wherein one conforms yet kicks dust. A subtle rebellion. 

Let us now tackle the subject of Bertrand, the unequivocal coxcomb of the novel. Dixon treats Bertrand with palpable discontent. Fitting to the temperament of an exasperated young man, Dixon behaves the opposite way to his contemporary, Bertrand, than he does through his begrudging subservience to Professor Welch. Bertrand is rendered as something of a laughingstock. We are meant to laugh at Bertrand, not with him. Bertrand is described as a kind of Post-War beatnik; he is a self-proclaimed painter and caricature-grade clown; and Dixon sees this to its core. Through his persistent commentary on Bertrand’s madcap insistence on perpetually wearing a blue beret, Dixon dances not around his distaste of Bertrand, stating his claims outright: “He was wearing a blue beret, which had much the same effect on Dixon as Welch senior’s fishing-hat. If such headgear was a protection, what was it a protection against? If it wasn’t a protection, what was it for? What was it for?” Can we not hear Dixon’s irritation? Inevitably, one of the final elements of the novel is a, due to an ignominious lack of physical conditioning on the part of both participants, graceless affray between Bertrand and Dixon, of which event Dixon narrowly claims victory. 

Lucky Jim is a young man’s novel. It preaches to the soul of the forthcoming thirty-years-of-age existential crisis, incisively arguing with, and often fittingly ignorant to, the antithetical notions of career versus freedom, love versus happiness, and suffering fools versus societal dissociation. Lucky Jim, truly a late-stage bildungsroman book, by Amis’s use of the close-third-person narrative style and tastefully detached prose style, a Looney Toons steam-whistle-escaping-from-the-shirt-collar hot-temperedness is rendered irascibility-light, a stiff scotch cut with water, heavy on the ice.  

Plotting over Plodding

If a story were to perform less like a contention with after-dinner bloat and more like a nimble creature flitting across the open plain, then it is likely plotted well. There are a goodish many reasons why one might write a story that plods—saunters in its pilgrimage over antique wooden bridges, stops to contemplate a riverside cowslip—but to incite action is not one of them. The illustrious humorist Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, amongst his many writerly talents, is known for his highly successful snappiness of story and preeminent command of plot. Though he eventually became known as the king of the plotline, Wodehouse reported that his plotting of a story was often his most difficult task. Something of confessed monomaniac himself, he required plotted perfection, a vaudeville-like story so intelligently manipulated and crafted for quickness, that the reader hardly has time to stop and smell the Realism. Nevertheless, even realistic narratives need to move. In Ukridge, Wodehouse’s 1924 collection of linked short stories, “The Exit of Battling Billson” is a typically agile Wodehousian story, through which, upon an analysis of the story’s six major scene-location changes, one may better understand the art of story-movement, and therefore learn to become a bit more up and at ‘em himself.

We begin our jaunt at The Theatre Royal, Llunindnno. It is here where our narrator, Corky, espies “a large man…(whose) air was that of one who has recently passed through some trying experience.” This man is none other than the notorious Stanley Featherstone Ukridge, and it is he who had just experienced the mild ignominy of being forcibly removed from that same theatre. After Corky denies Ukridge’s request “to bung a brick through the window,” the story, only one-page-old and already riddled with tension and expectation, wastes no time pub-crawling to a different public-house, whose “lights… shone like heartening beacons,” in which location a conversation is had, the story develops, and the prospect of movement again looms large. 

Said conversation involves such familiar tones as Ukridge’s managing of a familiar pugilist named Wilberforce Billson, aptly nicknamed Battling Billson, and how Ukridge “couldn’t be more in the velvet if they gave (Ukridge) a sack and a shovel and let (him) loose in the Mint.” Upon a short repartee about this less than likely aspect of grand fortune, Wodehouse shows no fear in beginning the next paragraph with Corky’s saying: “I was in a curiously uplifted mood on the following morning as I set out to pay my respects to Mr Billson.” And in the short span of three pages, we have already been to three locations, presently culminating at another public house, in which Mr Billson is “‘spillin’ (patrons’) beers’” because “‘(b)eer, he proceeded, with cold austerity, ‘ain’t right. Sinful, that’s what beer is.’” After this sound conception, Wodehouse frog-marches us to the next location: “I stood on the steps of Number Seven Caerleon Street,” Ukridge’s trappings. 

At Ukridge’s digs, Corky and Ukridge discuss the unfortunate circumstance of Battling Billson’s new Puritanical attitudes, from which they suffer to learn that Billson, in addition to the consumption of beer, now also believes that ‘fighting’s sinful.’” It is also described, with great dispatch, that Ukridge, fresh out of boxers to manage, decides to fight the match himself. A rigged fight, but a fight nonetheless. We are swimming right along when we enjoy another swift movement to Oddfellow’s Hall for the lacing up of Ukridge’s gloves. Wodehouse summons the occasion with celerity unmatched, the introduction to the hall occurring in the first sentence of page 187’s main expository paragraph.

For the proceeding six pages, a long scene (by Wodehousian standards) depicts Ukridge’s surprisingly capable boxing prowess, and the sudden relapse of Battling Billson into the throes of prizefighting. As it is viewed from more than a few angles, the scene feels something very much like movement or location change itself, each angle containing new happenings. After this highly entertaining fiasco, directly after learning that “a hush fell” on the audience, we awaken back at Ukridge’s flat: “The little sitting-room of Number Seven Caerleon Street was very quiet and gave the impression of being dark.” Even during the last scene, much action is had, and ultimately the story completes itself, as many Wodehouse creations do, on-time, with in a kind of red-herring-led, fully logical, ironically full-circle ending.

Need every story to thrive off a razor-sharp plot such as Wodehouse’s? Yes—if one wants the feeling of movement and action, the feeling of sprinting alongside a story. Some of us might ask: but when do we change scenes? Wodehouse might argue the answer to be right now. Wodehouse does not linger; a sentence is all it takes for us to traipse across villages, cities, and ideas. This lightning-fast teleportation style is a challenge in wit. To be pithy enough to complete such a cross-town leap is, indeed, also a challenge in prose. More still, it is a challenge in plot. And it is whenever these three writerly elements decide to hold hands that we readers behold something truly special.