Barrel Fever (Sedaris, 1994)

  David Sedaris.  Barrel Fever. (1994) A very mixed bag. In some of the stories, Sedaris comes across as the little boy that tries to shock his elders. But the elders are not shocked. Merely irritated by having a good story spoiled by affected naughtiness. Or if in a more kindly mood, perhaps amused that Sedaris feels that naughtiness is necessary to make his stories worth reading.

Many of the stories read like fictionalised memoirs. Staying true to background reality makes them involving in a personal way; Sedaris comes across as someone with a deep and charitable interest in his fellow human beings, but also with a sardonic awareness of their (our) self-delusions, and of the ways in which they (we) strive to keep our amour propre intact. That justifies the cover blurb describing him as “shrewd, wickedly funny...” despite its exaggeration.

His essays are better, I think. He is both outsider and insider, which adds flavour and spice to his observations about what are after all fairly ordinary slices of a fairly ordinary life. His ability to see what’s odd about the ordinary makes his writing both funny and valuable. It also reassures us that our own fairly ordinary lives are worth living after all. *** 

Canadian Pie (Ferguson, 2011)

Will Ferguson. Canadian Pie (2011) Ferguson has made a decent living writing for hire. Here we have a collection of his mostly commissioned pieces.. They vary in quality, probably because the assignments varied in their appeal for Ferguson. He writes very pleasant light humour, with an irritating habit of doubling the punch line to make sure the casual airline magazine reader gets it. He’s best at satire and personal anecdote.

All in all, I enjoyed the book; I guess I read it casually. A highlight is As the Irvings Turn: A Maritime Soap Opera. It ran on CBC Moncton, but it seems the Irvings were not amused, as the last episode never aired. The opener, The Lost Art of Crank Calls, is one of the best pieces in the book. The examples are clearly based on personal participation.

A good book to have on hand for the times when you have a few minutes of time you’d rather not spend with your gloomy thoughts about the state of the universe. **½ to ****

Leacock Times Three (A Treasury of Stephen Leacock, 1999)

Stephen Leacock. A Treasury of Stephen Leacock (1999)

Literary Lapses. (1910) Including “My Financial Career” (made into an animated short by the National Film Board); “The Awful Fate of Melpomenus Jones”; “Hoodoo McFiggin’s Christmas”; and other classics. The general tone is that of a genial raconteur, but here and there the mask slips, and Leacock the irate satirist shows through.

Sunshine Sketches of A Little Town (1912) This book made Leacock’s reputation as the humourous uncle that everyone loves to listen to. The chapters on the “Speculations of Jefferson Thorpe” and the “Great Election of Missinaba County” and the “Candidacy of Mr Smith” have a dark undertone that seems to have escaped most of the early critics of Leacock’s satire. For satire it is, however genial and sentimental it may appear. Leacock’s theme is the unwarranted self-regard of the human animal. We want status, we want to think well of ourselves, and so we yield to the temptation of misrepresenting our deeds and motives, and valuing respectability above morality. This is often funny, but some of the illusions we agree to foster in each other may lead to real evils. Thorpe falls for a con and loses the money he made trading silver mine stocks. There’s more than a hint of ballot stuffing in the Election, but when Smith wins, everyone agrees not only that his party was the best after all, but that everyone has always known it.

Some of the best passages are Leacock’s wistful recall of the time when the world was kind and beautiful and filled with innocent joy, before career and adult responsibilities led him away from the small town of Mariposa to the cruel, ugly, joyless city. Those of us who had a happy childhood will recognise the nostalgia. It’s one of many reasons why I enjoyed rereading Sunshine Sketches.

Winnowed Wisdom (1926) A more explicitly satirical collection of comments on the follies of humankind. Pretty well all of them still apply.

Recommended. **½ to ****

Dumb Birds (Kracht, A Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America, 2019)

 

Matt Kracht. The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America (2019) Early in his life, Kracht suffered exposure to the mysteries of bird watching. It took, but it left some emotional scars. So he wrote this book, a nicely done satire on field guides, and a fairly gentle put-down of bird watchers. I enjoyed it. But some of the more tight-assed members of the tribe may take offense. It does get a bit repetitive.

 Recommended, but you have been warned. **½

Why the Toast Always Lands Buttered Side Down (Yes, there's an explanation).

 

Richard Robinson. Why the Toast Always Lands Butter Side Down: The Science of Murphy’s Law. (2005) Just what the title says – an investigation into failure, and our propensity to underestimate the probability that something will go wrong. We evaluate the odds as high or low in terms of our desired outcomes. So we buy lottery tickets. We evaluate risk in terms of our fears. So many people would rather drive than fly. Selective memory supplies the misleading data that confirms our fears or supports our desires. So we see coincidence as proof of some rule or of divine protection.

And so on.

Many of these mistakes in parsing the universe are summed up in proverbs. A watched pot never boils. Oh yes it does, but the few times you watch it, it seems to take forever. The extended version is the apparently universal experience that something works perfectly well until you show it off to someone. It’s especially embarrassing when that something is you playing the piano.

All in all, a nicely done, often amusing, and mostly painless reminder of the science that explains why the world often doesn’t work the way we want it to. By the way, toast does land buttered side down more often than not. That’s because it usually drops from about table height, and thus has just enough time to turn over so it’s buttered side down just before hits the floor.

Recommended. ***

Ig Nobel Prizes: Laugh, then Think.

Marc Abrahams. The Ig Nobel Prizes 2 (2004) The Ig Nobel Prizes were devised at Harvard. They’ve grown in size and prestige. Many Nobel winners have happily participated in awarding them, and most winners of the Ig Nobels have felt honoured by the recognition of their research, which First makes you laugh, then makes you think. Traditions such as folding the event program into paper airplanes to be launched at the stage, and a rigidly enforced time limit on the acceptance speech, maintain the Goonish ambience.

Anyone can nominate anyone for an Ig Nobel. Some of the prizes are not so subtle satiric critiques of pseudoscience and other nonsense, but most are awarded for valid scientific discoveries, and many are more significant than a quick read my suggest. Like anecdotes, they may prompt deeper questions than the one they answered.

This collection is well worth whatever you pay for it. I found my copy at a yard sale, hence wildly under-priced compared to its value. A few examples:

2001 Ig Nobel for Astrophysics, to Rex and Rexella Van Impe, evangelists, for their discovery that black holes meet all the criteria for Hell.

2004 Ig Nobel for Public Health, to Jillian Clarke, high school student, for her investigation of the 5-Second Rule for food that falls on the floor. (It fails, but by how much depends on the floor covering).

2024 winners here: https://improbable.com/ig/winners/

A valuable reference work. Recommended ****

Darwin Awards 3 (2003)

 Wendy Northcutt. The Darwin Awards III (2003) A Darwin Awards are given posthumously to people who have removed themselves from the gene pool by means less than wise, and have thereby presumably removed deleterious genes. The tales recounted here raise a mix of laughter, astonishment, and pity, but never in the same proportions.

An example: In Finland, in October 2001, a group of friends were stranded by the side of the freeway after running out of gas. No one stopped to help, so one of them lay down the middle of the roadway, expecting traffic to stop. It didn’t, and his unwise attempt to help caused his demise. Confirmed.

The editors are careful to distinguish between confirmed cases, probably true ones, and personal accounts. Mildly amusing illustrations add to the charm of the book. And it is oddly charming: the generally high level of confidence displayed by the award winners before physics and chemistry interfered with their aims is admirable.

Recommended if you can find a copy. ***

Jake and the Kid (W. O. Mitchell, 1961)

W. O Mitchell. Jake and the Kid (1961) A selection of the short stories based on the radio series that Mitchell wrote for the CBC. Mitchell’s Crocus, Saskatchewan, is very like Leacock’s Mariposa. Like Leacock, Mitchell hides a sometimes bitter satiric insight under slathers of sentiment, poetic justice, and a laid-back style of yarning. I recall listening to some of the radio series when we first came to Canada.

This collection is termed ‘A Novel’, which stretches the concept a bit. The stories do form a kind of a plot around the conflict between Jake Turner and Miss Henchbaw, the schoolteacher who persists in correcting the Kid’s understanding of history as told by Turner. There is a kind of resolution when Miss Henchbaw revises the Kid’s nomination for Golden Jubilee Citizen.

Mitchell has an excellent ear for dialogue, and understands human nature only too well. He does tend to soften his depiction of human evil into mere mischief or pardonable error. But he never glamourises virtue. Jake is the Kid’s hero, but we, who see past and through the Kid’s hero-worship, see Turner’s flaws. This use of the innocent eye also resembles Leacock. It’s a Canadian thing, I guess.

An enjoyable read. Recommended. ***

Vinyl Café Classics: Extreme Vinyl Café (2009)

Stuart McLean Extreme Vinyl Café (2009) Some of McLean’s classics, the ones we want to hear again and again. Such as Petit Lac Noir, when Dave and Morley stop at the wrong cottage, and do the renovations and repairs their friend asked them to do as rent. Or A Trip to Quebec, where Sam misses the bus because Murphy answers "Present" for him. And then meets a girl with a skateboard and has the first love of his life.

There’s one more book of stories to go. I’m enjoying this wallow in McLean’s brand of not-quite-sentimental nostalgia. Well, I suppose other people will see sentimentality where I see bitter-sweet acceptance of the fragility of life, the fragility that makes it precious.

****

Secrets From the Vinyl Cafe (2006):

Stuart McLean. Secrets From the Vinyl Café (2006) The common motif in these stories is misunderstood information kept secret to avoid embarrassment or worse.

Usually the person who misunderstands keeps it secret, as Sam does when he misinterprets some words of Morley’s when she takes Arthur the dog to the vet. Sam believes that Dave is dying too. Dave keeps his confusions secret to avoid the embarrassment of looking foolish or incompetent.

And while these stories often veer towards tragedy, their structure is generally the same: each complication develops perfectly naturally from the current state of misunderstanding or misinformation.

Someone has said that tragedy and farce are two sides of the same page. McLean manages to put them on the same page, and the result is a satisfying mix of reality and the nostalgia that reminds us of what makes life worth living.

****

Two More From The Vinyl Cafe (Vinyl Cafe Unplugged, Vinyl Cafe Diaries)

Stuart McLean. Vinyl Café Unplugged (2000) #3. It begins with a story about Arthur the dog, who figures out how to insinuate himself into Dave and Morley’s bedroom and onto the bed. It includes the story of Eugene and the fig tree, and how Sam helps Eugene bury the and later resurrect the tree.

McLean’s stories are classified as humour or light reading, differentiated from more serious fare. “More serious” usually means “more gloomy” when applied to literature and the other arts. When I see “realistic” in some blurb or review, I know that there will be blood, if not on the saddle (1) then elsewhere. I think there’s  a misclassification, aka “category error”, in these descriptions. Yes, McLean’s stories are humorous. They are also profoundly serious. Dave’s errors of judgement could lead to catastrophe. That they don’t comes down to kindness, love, forgiveness, extended to him by Morley, his children, and his neighbours. And Arthur the dog.

To affirm that these virtues exist, and that without them we would lead Hobbesian nasty, brutish, and short lives, is a serious matter. The cynic will raise his eyebrows, the pessimist will roll her eyes, the moralist will frown and prepare a sharp rebuke. But they’re all wrong. Life isn’t perfect, humans are flawed, and that will cause pain and sometimes worse. But life is a gift, family and friends are treasures, and joys large and small enrich our lives. That’s what McLean’s stories affirm.

Read any of the Vinyl Café collections. Read them all. ****

1) Blood on the saddle
blood on the ground,
great big gobs of blood all around.
Pity the cowboy
lying in the gore,
he ain’t gonna ride the range no more.

Stuart McLean.  Vinyl Café Diaries (2003)These stories fill in the back story of Dave and

Morley and their family. I’m still bingeing, haven’t yet tired of McLean’s bitter-sweet humour, more certain than ever that he’s a major writer.

Humour may be a matter of temperament, but writing humour takes great skill. Getting the timing right is essential, and that’s hard enough live, and  much more difficult in writing. McLean is a master of the momentarily distracting detail, the aside that pauses the narrative just long enough, the word that triggers the insight that makes us laugh. Merely as examples of skill, his stories are masterpieces. In their apparently artless evocations of everyday life, they raise deep questions about what makes life worth living. He occasionally suggests answers, but these at best merely hint at the meanings of his tales. ****

Vinyl Cafe, 1st collection (Stories from the Vinyl Cafe, 1995)

 Stuart McLean. Stories From The Vinyl Café. (1995) The first collection, and it sets the high standard that all the other collections met. Dave and Morley aren’t yet the focus of the history that McLean relates in the rest of his stories. But they are already what they will be: very much ordinary flawed people who try their best to do their best, and fail and succeed as we all do.

McLean’s gift is his ability to stir nostalgia, regret, joy, contentment, and grief without descending into sentimentality. His style is journalistic without being reportorial. We get a mostly neutral narrator who tells us what’s happening, and occasionally allows himself a comment on what he thinks it all means. And what does it all mean? That love makes life worth living.

I’m on a Vinyl Café binge, and I find it hard to stop reading. ****

Dave Cooks the turkey and other mishaps (Home From the Vinyl Café, 1998)

Stuart McLean. Home from the Vinyl Café. (1998) The second collection. It begins with Dave Cooks The Turkey, which has become a fixture on CBC's  As It Happens during the week leading up to Christmas Eve, when they play Alan Maitland reading The Shepherd. It’s as funny on the page as in the audio. The rest of the stories are the same quality. They have the ring of truth, no matter how bizarrely the situation develops. As in Laurel and Hardy movies each consequence follows logically from the previous one, driven by circumstances and character, and ends in bizarre catastrophe. The stories are also elegies for a way of life that’s past, a way of life that never existed, except in the rosy-dark memories of our childhoods and youth. Nostalgia is the common leavening of these tales. They evoke wry smiles and bitter-sweet memories.

Recommended. ****

Mice in the Beer (Ward, 1960)

 Norman Ward. Mice In the Beer (1960. Reprinted 1986) Ward, like Stephen Leacock, was an economics and political science professor, Leacock at McGill, and Ward at U of Saskatchewan. Like Leacock’s, Ward’s humour is witty and sly. Like Leacock, he cultivates an naive avuncular persona, so one lets down one’s guard. Then they slide in the rapier and skewer the target. For example:
     I have no particular reason to be prejudiced against goats and monkeys, for my first hand contacts with them have been limited to those in a life limited spent largely among politicians and university  professors...
     You can see, I hope, why Ward is my kind of humourist. My copy, a Christmas gift some years ago, is a reprint by the Western Producer, a weekly published in Saskatchewan to provide information, instruction and amusement to farmers and their families. Sometime in the 1970s or 80s, they began a program of reprinting books relevant to the Western Provinces. Ward received the Leacock Medal for Humour in 1961.

      About the title: Ward was delivering empty bottles to the local bottle depot. The gentleman who received his offerings mentioned that he found a lot of mice in the empty beer bottles. It seems they crawled in to enjoy the leftover dribbles left  They avoided wine, however, perhaps because stale wine sours.

     Recommended. ****

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 ****.  

Education Substitute: And Now All This (Sellar & Yeatman)

 Sellar & Yeatman. And Now All This. (1932) A follow-up to 1066 And All That. This copy is from the 3rd edition, also of 1932, so the work enjoyed a certain popularity. Whether that derived from the success of the previous volume, or from genuine enjoyment and admiration is difficult to say. The premise is that Education consists of What We All Know. Hence a book that retails this information will make expensive schooling obsolete. I found the humour generally tedious, depending on puns (obvious), misspellings and garbled recall (usually strained), and deadpan absurdities (some quite witty). I guess you had to be there. See the sample page.
     This copy has been very thoroughly read: The spine is

broken, most gatherings are loose, and a couple of torn pages have been mended with sticky tape. The decorations are pleasant enough. The casual racism of text and pictures is jarring nowadays, but does serve to remind us that some of what any given generation takes for granted will certainly offend their descendants. Recommended as a soporific, and as a curiosity demonstrating that fashionable humour ages quickly. *

A Comic Ride: John Gilpin

  William Cowper. Illustrated by C. Gifford Ambler. The Diverting History of John Gilpin (1782/1947) John and wife decide to celebrate their 20th anniversary at The Bell in Edmonton (north of London). Because the chaise will not accommodate the whole family, Gilpin decides to ride. Unfortunately, the horse has other ideas. William Cowper heard the story and made a ballad of it. C. Gifford Ambler created an illustrated edition for PM Productions in 1947. My copy was a gift from Aunt Anne to my late brother Peter in 1948, probably for his birthday.
It’s a charming book, and a charming ballad. I liked it well enough back then to remember John Gilpin as the hero of a strange story about a ride that went wrong. Rereading it now clears up my confused and gappy memory, and confirms my impression of a gem of comic verse. Out of print; used copies sell for £5 and up. Plus shipping.
     Recommended. ***

Give the Devil His Due: The Screwtape Letters (C S Lewis)

C S Lewis. The Screwtape Letters (1942) A re-read. The letters tell the story of a recent convert to Christianity that Screwtape wants to recapture for Hell’s delectation. Unfortunately, despite his excellent advice on how to exploit the weaknesses of human nature, his nephew Wormwood fails. The object of his devilish affections dies in a bombing raid after achieving another step on his journey to full discipleship.
     Ah, those weaknesses in our nature. They’re all caricatures or dark inversions of our strengths and virtues. Lewis understands that only too well. For example, the false humility of wanting “just a little toast and tea” instead of the three course dinner on offer, which imposes extra work on the host. The apparent self-abnegation disguises the actual selfishness of the perpetrator. Lewis also understands the difference between genuine pleasures and their counterfeits as labelled in the list of seven deadly sins. Enjoying food is good. Gluttony is bad. The book is worth reading merely for these and many other psychological insights.
     For Christians, the extra dimension of theology adds more insight. For example, Lewis believes that pleasure and joy are divine gifts. The Devil can’t produce anything like them; at most he can misdirect the desire for these gifts. Simple pleasure is beyond the Devil's power. Thus, Screwtape loses his temper when contemplating the innocent pleasure of a human splashing about in his bath. How dare the Enemy endow this abominable mix of flesh and spirit with the ability to enjoy mere sensations! At best, the Devil can pervert pleasures, or encourage over-indulgence, or shift the focus from the pleasure itself to the ego, thus making them means instead of ends.
     The letters also hint at Hell’s political ideology, which bears an uncomfortable resemblance to fascism and other totalitarianisms.
     One of Lewis’s best. I’ve read it several times now, and every reread reveals more subtle insight and wisdom. Recommended. ****

More small victories: Stories From The Vinyl Cafe (1995)

Stuart McLean. Stories From the Vinyl Café. (1995) I like Stuart McLean’s stories. Reading his anthologies, I can hear his voice. His radio show was a staple in our house. This is another feast for his fans, and as good an introduction as any for those unfortunates who don’t yet know his work.
     Why do I like his stories? One reason is sentences such as Sam was pouring his own cereal, getting most of it into the bowl.
     Recommended. ****

The Best of Herman (Jim Unger)

 Jim Unger. The Best of Herman (1993) A re-read, and as pleasurable as before. Whatever role Herman plays, he’s always the schlemiel that never quite wins, who faces defeat at everything he attempts. But he never gives up. His life skill is endurance, and sometimes wry, sometimes realistic, sometimes grudging acceptance of the losing hands life deals him. Herman is Everyman. The effect is an odd kind of hope. If tomorrow doesn’t appear to shape up as any better than today, at least we can hope that it won’t be much worse. Whatever disaster is heading our way, it will be at least survivable. ****