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No doubt
whatever that you will disagree with my list of the Ten Best Writers of
Humour in Living Memory.
So, in
defining the best, and in offering brief samples of their work, it is necessary
to explain the parameters of my choice.
Parameter
itself is a very funny word |
A dictionary definition is: one of a number of
auxiliary variables in terms of which all the variables in an implicit
functional relationship can be explicity expressed.
See!
And think
twice before you destroy my list, for humour is also a funny thing – as I have
felt compelled to write many times. Humour is
invariably funny-peculiar; seldom outright funny-haha.
First of
all, you have to have a ‘sense of humour’. Many people think some of their acquaintances don’t qualify, but
everyone has this indefinable ‘sense’.
The funny
thing is that it is as peculiar to and as unique as each individual’s
fingerprints. Even more peculiar (In
the broader sense of the word) is that our individualistic sense of humour
changes subtly with age or - when circumstances demand it - in an instant.
So, even if
you disagree with my selection (as I myself do, come to think of it – it’s
those damn parameters) the list stays so that a single important point can be
made:-
For 400
years the classics of written humour have been passed down two generations at a
time. “Living memory”, like ‘humour’
itself for the most part, lasts only a time stretching from grandpa to
grandchildren. But the digital age seems to be destroying even that short
shelf-life, and I am hoping that you will restore it by seeking out these
authors, who were popular in my parents time, and that you will invite your
children to enjoy them – even if they don’t accept them as ‘humour’..
I’m not
even going to try to define humour.
Robert
Benchley had a go at it sixty years ago, and his explanation is included here –
in the unlikely event that you will understand his style of humour, let alone
think it ‘funny’. The fact is, though,
that millions of people think he is – or was – funny.
So we come
to our first parameter: The world’s
best writers of humour - ipso fatso (as James Clarke’s cake-lady used to
say) - have to be those who were the most popular in the English-speaking world
during the 20th century.
By the way,
James’s cake-lady prompts me to ask: do you think people’s mistakes are funny?
I once thought it was most amusing that a lady in a swaying cable-car, plunging
in the wind from the top of Table Mountain down to Cape Town said: “I can’t
wait to get back to terra cotta”.
Mistakes can be funny when they are not yours, and when you feel safe or
superior. But they are not humorous.
Charlie Chaplin and the Keystone Cops made mistakes – more often
physical accidents - humorous by repeating the same accident over and over
again. Funny that. But we are not going to try to analyse humour are we?
We’re setting boundaries for selecting the best authors of it. The parameters
operating here are:
The English-speaking world’s
Ten Best Writers of Humour have remained internationally famous for decades.
They do not include
contemporary writers. Not even
Bill Bryson.
They do not include famous
columnists. Not even my ‘favourite
of all time’ Patrick Campbell, or the very famous Art Buchwald, or the
not-yet-Late but famous Dave Barry.
They do not include brilliant
authors who wrote humour but were not known as humorists per se (or
even in facto) – such as Bill Shakespeare, VS Naipaul or Saul
Bellow.
They do include famous
writers of humour whose work cannot be encapsulated in a single sample, or
excerpt. A good example is the work of O. Henry, whose humour usually depended on the final twist of the
tale. Be warned: Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it is not necessarily
humour. In keeping samples as
short as possible in this series, most of the humour is destroyed. My samples of ‘greatest writers’ works
are merely tastes. To judge, you need to savour the relevant short story plot as well as style, construction, etc. Best of all re-read a whole book of your favourite author and see if he/she ranks with my selected list...
One lesson,
from this sunny land with its historic dark shadows, is how often there is only
a small divide between laughing and crying.
Laugh
the Beloved Country is also a
reminder that there are a number of brilliant writers of humour in South Africa
at least equal to those who have found international fame. That twisted soul,
Herman Charles Bosman is one of them.
Like our “Number One” in the following list, Bosman was posthumously
hailed by academics and intellectuals as ‘a genius’. . . a word too often and
easily bestowed, but worthy of Bosman as it is of P G Wodehouse.
Now for the list. I’m appalled to find that in Laugh the Beloved Country we not only attempted in our
introductions to define humour – I also rattled off about two dozen names of
international writers of humour whom I considered worth reading. These included Mark Twain, W W
Jacobs, Jerome K Jerome Professor Stephen Leacock, , Robert Benchley, Ring
Lardner, Dorothy Parker, Damon Runyon, James Thurber, PG Wodehouse, Evelyn
Waugh, Bennet Cerf, S J Perelman,
Kingsley Amis ,Michael Frayn, Russell
Baker, Alan Coren, P J O’Rourke, Kinky Finkelstein . . . and
many more. Fortunately the latter few
of the above names, though among the funniest in my opinion, are ineligible as
they are still writing, or possibly intending to.
But I haven’t mentioned some of the brilliant regular contributors to that
great but Late magazine of English humour, Punch; nor many fine newspaper and magazine columnists around the
world . .
Let me just gather round me my parameters and make a start on the most
obvious selections. |
