I’ve been solemnly engaged in the business of writing humor for about fifteen years now. I’ve worked diligently at my trade. I’ve studied under some of the undisputed masters of the craft: Rabelais, Swift, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce and H. L. Mencken, to name just a few. Several of my readers, not all of them family members, have commented on my wit, my penchant for the pithy observation, and the mellifluous beauty of my comic prose (though they didn’t necessarily use the word “mellifluous”).
And what do I have to show for my efforts? Am I rich as Dave Barry? Am I as celebrated as the guy who wrote I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, whatever his name is? Of course not. I’m no more successful than your average adolescent denizen of facebook with 352 friends.
My single published book of humor, The Cynic’s Dictionary, which various readers characterized as “uproariously funny,” “a sheer joy” and “nothing less than brilliant,” never even garnered a review in Publisher’s Weekly, let alone The New York Times. In bookstores across the republic and around the world, it sold out within weeks and was rarely if ever restocked. It won a reprieve in its latter-day incarnation as a budget-priced hardcover; the new publisher told me, “It’s not a good book — it’s a great book.”
But recognition never made its way to my doorstep. While Marley and Me mysteriously vaulted to the top of the bestseller lists, The Cynic’s Dictionary died in obscurity, like some 76-year-old retired schoolteacher in Emporia, Kansas.
Meanwhile, I’ve been struggling to catapult a collection of my online essays into the increasingly impregnable fortress of print. My agent balked. “I love your work, Rick,” she apologized. Translation: nobody was going to buy a collection of essays by a nobody.
I searched for a new agent. Thirty-seven rejections later, I found one. He loved my work, too; he saw me as the ideal humorist for the Baby Boomer generation as it approached obsolescence and death. But five months after I mailed him my freshly printed manuscript, he has yet to send it to a single editor.
I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion, as you probably would, that writing humor is not for the faint of heart or the thin of skin. The trouble with being a humorist is that nobody takes you seriously. Think about it. How often do you see reviews of humor books in the mainstream press? Other than David Sedaris, who seems to have been adopted as a kind of adorable gay lapdog by the NPR-New Yorker crowd, your typical humorist toils in soul-numbing obscurity. The average author of a Lebanese cookbook stands a greater chance of achieving fame, riches, and a well-placed review.
We need to start taking humor more seriously. The tongue-in-cheek, wink-wink nudge-nudge style of public wit has reigned supreme for too long now. It grows wearisome, all that self-conscious skittering around genuine feeling. The best humor is almost always based on truth, not the distancing telescope of postmodern irony. We need humor with a heart and a backbone. We need it desperately. If only we could convince the gatekeepers.
BAYANology 