Mordecai Richler's Take on Humour

Mordecai Richler. The Best of Modern Humor (1983) Well, when it comes to humour, we disagree. Richler likes satire, and some of the selections are quite cruel. And many of the pieces here are neither satire nor humour, but merely slices of (usually sad) American life.
     The best pieces, or rather, the ones I liked best, are the earliest ones, such as Leacock’s Gertrude the Governess, or Simple Seventeen, or Maurice Baring’s King Lear’s Daughters. Maybe that shows that absurdity is the only universal humour. Or else that I like humour that takes some premise to absurd lengths. I studied logic in my younger days, and learned that reliance on logic is often unreasonable. Logic merely calculates the consequence of some premises, which often reveals some hidden silliness in the assumptions on which the self-diagnosed rational man bases his argument.
     Leacock’s “nonsense novel” satirises how love romances violate common sense and common knowledge. Little has changed in the hundred odd years since he wrote that Nonsense Novel. Baring takes the opposite tack: he makes Regan a suburban housewife of the type that knows what’s best for everyone, but especially herself. The piece shows that this type of woman (and man) is at least as old as humankind.
     But most of the pieces reveal one or another of the deadly sins and their effects. But like Woody Allen’s Kugelmass Episode, they tend to be more sad than funny. So Kugelmass can enter a fictional world, and make love to fictional women? He’s still a sad sack who can’t deal with the realities of his life, and whinges to his therapist about how the universe doesn’t provide the romance that he needs.
     Nevertheless, this anthology is a keeper, if only because it brings together many disparate pieces that would be difficult to find. ** to ****.