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Comedic biogs no laughing matter
By Neil Genzlinger |
January 2, 2011, Sunday
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Print Edition
THE British historian Paul Johnson manages to make "Humorists," his collection of 14 biographical essays about funny people, fairly pedestrian for most of its brief length. Until the last few pages, when he makes it odious.
Johnson here roots around in humor's attic, as it were, churning up a musty scent while looking for people who he thinks made noteworthy comedic contributions over the past 300 years. He ends up with what he calls "a strange collection of geniuses, worldly failures, drunks, misfits, cripples and gifted idiots."
Sure, his profiles are worthy enough. For one thing, there's a fair amount of profligacy among this crew. But when it comes to conveying what made these people funny, what impact they had in their day and, especially, what debt they are owed by present-day humorists, Johnson doesn't put much meat on the old bones.
His choices are both interesting and infuriating, heavy on Britons and overwhelmingly male, yet sprinkled with eclecticism. You might expect Charles Dickens and certainly Charlie Chaplin to be here, and they are. More of a surprise is Samuel Johnson, a dour fellow but adept at the kind of wisecracks that turn up in quotation anthologies. And the inclusion of a few artists - Hogarth, Toulouse-Lautrec, Thomas Rowlandson - is a nice touch.
It is in the Rowlandson chapter that you have faint hopes Johnson will show some self-awareness and self-deprecation. But no; this chapter and all the rest go by with no mention of Johnson's own moment as a target of humorists. You begin to realize why: he favors a definition of humor that relies on the creation of chaos out of order a la the Marx Brothers, and gentle pokes at class and marital discord as practiced by Noel Coward and James Thurber. The type of satire abroad in the land today, in which the privileged, powerful and pompous are skewered with their own duplicities, is not Johnson's cup of tea.
Johnson here roots around in humor's attic, as it were, churning up a musty scent while looking for people who he thinks made noteworthy comedic contributions over the past 300 years. He ends up with what he calls "a strange collection of geniuses, worldly failures, drunks, misfits, cripples and gifted idiots."
Sure, his profiles are worthy enough. For one thing, there's a fair amount of profligacy among this crew. But when it comes to conveying what made these people funny, what impact they had in their day and, especially, what debt they are owed by present-day humorists, Johnson doesn't put much meat on the old bones.
His choices are both interesting and infuriating, heavy on Britons and overwhelmingly male, yet sprinkled with eclecticism. You might expect Charles Dickens and certainly Charlie Chaplin to be here, and they are. More of a surprise is Samuel Johnson, a dour fellow but adept at the kind of wisecracks that turn up in quotation anthologies. And the inclusion of a few artists - Hogarth, Toulouse-Lautrec, Thomas Rowlandson - is a nice touch.
It is in the Rowlandson chapter that you have faint hopes Johnson will show some self-awareness and self-deprecation. But no; this chapter and all the rest go by with no mention of Johnson's own moment as a target of humorists. You begin to realize why: he favors a definition of humor that relies on the creation of chaos out of order a la the Marx Brothers, and gentle pokes at class and marital discord as practiced by Noel Coward and James Thurber. The type of satire abroad in the land today, in which the privileged, powerful and pompous are skewered with their own duplicities, is not Johnson's cup of tea.
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