Brother of the More Famous Jack, by Barbara Trapido

What a delight this novel is! I wrote a couple of weeks ago about “pleasure buttons:” the aspects of fiction that provide a pleasurable experience for readers. The missing one in that discussion turns out to be wit.

In Trapido’s debut novel, 18-year-old Katherine is eager to explore the world outside her mother’s petit-bourgeois bungalow, but is at first hesitant and only too aware of her own naïveté. It’s telling that in times of stress she turns to her favorite novel: Jane Austen’s Emma.

Lacking Emma’s self-assurance, Katherine assumes she’s blown her interview with the philosophy professor Jacob Goldman. She’s chosen philosophy as a shortcut to worldly wisdom, and does not realise that he’s thoroughly enchanted with her original bent of mind. He sees through her youthful lack of confidence to the potential rogue adventurer lurking underneath.

She then gets picked up by the much older John Millet, charmed by his aesthetic knowledge, not recognising that however much he flirts with her, what really turns him on are young men.  John carries her off for a weekend which turns out to be with the Goldman family: Jacob, a very pregnant Jane, and their many children.

The house, as it presents itself from the road, is like a house one might see on a jigsaw puzzle box, seasonally infested with tall hollyhocks. the kind one put together on a tea tray while recovering from the measles.

There’s the family you’re born with and the family you choose, and Katherine finds her real home with the eccentric and outrageous Goldman clan, quite aside from falling head over heels with oldest son Roger. They all adore her right back—even Roger, for a while anyway. In Jane, she finds her true parent.

[Jane] stands hugely in strong farmer’s wellingtons into which she has tucked some very old corduroy trousers. She has these tied together under a man’s shirt with pajama cords because the zip won’t come together over the bulge. Bits of hair are falling out of her dark brown plait.”

This hilarious, madcap novel is full of quips like the title. However, running alongside is a pungent critique of class in Britain, anti-Semitism, and women’s roles. First published in 1982, it might seem dated to modern readers, particularly the debate over women’s issues, such as motherhood vs work, and who does the dishes. However, recent events, such as the current push in the U.S. by a minority of radical evangelists to remove women from the workforce and keep them in the kitchen or making babies, make it newly relevant. It’s a good reminder that women’s gains toward equality have only come about recently and still encounter panic-stricken backlash.

Even the most revolting characters, such as macho Michele “a backward-looking romantic with right-wing views and left-wing friends” come across as hilarious when seen through Katherine’s amused and loving eyes, and then turn around and redeem themselves unexpectedly. It shouldn’t work; I should be horrified by some of the things these characters get up to.

Somehow, though, Katherine’s eagerness for adventure and the sheer number of fantastical goings-on lead to a suspension, not only of disbelief but of censure. I was swept up in a witty fairy tale and willing to go along with Katherine. Toward the end of the novel, a bit of sanity returns as Katherine, older and wiser, begins to see through the smokescreen of antic fun.

The story was not so much laugh-out-loud funny as snort-and-snicker witty, making it the sort of comedy I most relish. I thorough enjoyed this delightful novel and can’t wait to explore some of Trapido’s later works.

What novel has most amused you lately?

The Comic Toolbox, by John Vorhaus

The Comic Toolbox

I am seriously unfunny. I mean, I enjoy a good joke or comedy routine as much as the next person, but fail when it comes to producing one. It’s embarrassing. I only know one joke, well, actually two but the second one is so silly it doesn’t really count: What’s yellow and not a banana? Oh, wait, it is a banana. Silly.

The only person I’ve met who was more humor-impaired than I is my friend, John. He and I were both technical trainers and decided to spice up our dry material with some jokes. I tried to memorise a few with lukewarm results. But John wrote out jokes on index cards and kept a handful in his shirt pocket. When things seemed slow in the classroom, he’d say, “Must be time for a joke.” He’d pull out his cards and leaf through them. Brilliant! The joke itself wasn’t half as funny as the whole performance of selecting it.

I don’t have any ambitions to write for a sitcom or do standup, but I would like to add more humor to my fiction and poetry. I wanted to improve my comic-relief characters. Plus, I’ve been so impressed by Shirley J. Brewer’s use of humor in her poetry that I want to experiment in that vein. But how?

What a joy and relief, then, to stumble on John Vorhaus’s book! It is just what I needed.

He takes a two-pronged approach. The first prong is to create a safe zone. He uses several techniques to ratchet down the fear of failure. One that is most helpful for me is that he breaks each exercise down into progressively more specific questions. Instead of wracking your brain trying to think of something funny to say, you are given a discreet task or question to answer, with plenty of examples. And Vorhaus himself is seriously funny; it’s hard to feel intimidated when you’re snorting with laughter.

The second prong consists of the tools implied by the title. I love tools. I was surprised to discover that what makes a joke work is essentially what makes a story work. I shouldn’t have been surprised, because of course a joke is a story. Vorhaus isolates the factors that make it funny. Using movies and television shows as case studies, he demonstrates each tool in action.

There must be a hundred tools here. The one I liked best was how to create a comic character. Amid discussion and illustrations, he boils the technique down to five elements. Boom! One minute and I had the bare bones of a comic character. Thirty seconds and I had another. Even better, I could see the gaping holes I’d left in the comic characters in my work-in-progress.

There are sections on parody and satire, situation comedy and sketches, but always tools and more tools. This book delivers on its promise: the subtitle is How to Be Funny Even If You’re Not. Finally there is hope for me! I can see that this is a book I will refer to again and again.

Have you ever wanted to write comedy? What are your favorite comic movies or shows? Who is your favorite comedian?