Comedies of Humanity: Then vs. Now (With Pictures)

Have you ever thought about how funny our human race is?

1.

***

Throughout history, we humans have tended to think that we are progressing and that our ways are superior to those of the past, but we also tend to bewail the inferiority of the current generation of youth.

2.

***

Before no-fault divorce, people seemed less afraid of getting married. They did it young. They did it often. Why weren’t they worried about getting stuck? You would think that nowadays, with our easy divorce laws, society would feel less need of  live-in courtship to test potential spousal compatibility.

Let’s Play, “Spot the Killer in Three Easy Steps” (or, Why Dorothy Sayers is Awesome)

(Image from HERE)

The problem with mystery novels is that they are expected to be surprising. This of course makes them unrealistic, because in real life, the sort of people who are the most likely to commit crimes usually do commit most of the crimes. In detective fiction, they rarely do. Readers of such literature will be aware of the following sacred and hallowed genre premises:

1. The least likely suspect is most likely to be guilty.
2. There are no random crimes.

Not to mention:

3. The inhabitants of small country villages spend so much time bashing each other on the head and having affairs with each others’ spouses, per capita, that it’s a wonder they get anything else done (or retain any population).

The Oxford Comma is Useful, Desirable, and Correct

Why I’m Agnostic (About Diet): 7 Quick Takes (Volume III)

“Then Tolstoy and the Humanitarians said that the world was growing more merciful, and therefore no one would ever desire to kill. And Mr. Mick not only became a vegetarian, but at length declared vegetarianism doomed ("shedding," as he called it finely, "the green blood of the silent animals"), and predicted that men in a better age would live on nothing but salt. And then came the pamphlet from Oregon (where the thing was tried), the pamphlet called "Why should Salt suffer?" and there was more trouble.” G. K. Chesterton in The Napoleon of Notting Hill.

***

1.

This is me, enjoying some food.
You will note that I am NOT
eating onions.

When I was a kid, my parents handed me food and said that it was good. I was happy to agree with them. Except for onions. Onions were not good. My mom would put them in her spaghetti sauce, I would pick them out, and then my dad would notice the little pile of diced onion on my plate. The resulting conversation would be strained.

In fact, my mom still wants me to enjoy the benefits of onions. "But they are sweet, Vidalia onions!" She will cry. 

"They are still onions," I mutter rebelliously, especially since they are raw.

Probably I am turning down a marvelous health benefit that would get rid of my pimples or protect my intestines or something.

***

2.

The problem is that nowadays, the media won’t let us eat good food in peace. Instead, we have learned that if we don’t eat the right foods, we will be unhealthy, but that the right foods might be the wrong ones and will make us sick. You absolutely must read this hilarious post about the tragedy of the healthy eater, the perils of internet research, and the way your food is trying to kill you:

The Tragedy of the Healthy Eater. As I said, it’s hilarious.

***

3.

I have developed sympathy for the people who claim that because there are so many religions, none of the religions can be true. Those people are wrong, of course. The truth is that there are only two kinds of religion: the religion of works, which teaches about the things that you need to do in order to win the gods’ favor/be a good person/avert hurricanes, etc.; and the religion of grace, which teaches about what God has already done and offers freely to you.  Yet I sympathize with the overwhelmed religious seeker.

The variance of diet advice overwhelms me. My problem is that I like to please everyone. Some of my friends believe that milk should be consumed regularly. Others believe that it is extremely unhealthy at all times. Me: I settle for drinking half a glass of milk.

Yesterday I asked my husband if he thought that I should be careful not to drink too much milk (now that I’m pregnant, I find myself drawn to a nice cold glassful in the evening, partly because it fobs off my ice cream craving). He said that he’s already drunk far more milk than I ever will, and that I shouldn’t worry. I sighed over the fact that my milk is 2% instead of skim, and that even the milk-lovers advise skim. He reminded me of the folks who believe that dairy is only healthy if taken whole-fat (the fat is supposed to help you digest the sugar). This cheered me right up, because 2% is in-between whole fat and skim. Now I can drink my glass of 2% in good conscience. Of course, I make sure not to fill the glass all the way up to the top in case the no-milk-allowed people are correct.

The moral of the story is that if you want to feel good about your position, you should find people who are more extreme, on both sides of the issue, than you are. That way you’ve proved yourself a moderate in the middle of the road. That’s where truth is said to lie.  

The Socratic Root Vegetable (Flash Fiction)

Once upon a time, a mistake was made in the kitchens of the Bastille. The error was so strange as to seem a miracle. This is what occurred: on the day in question, a young prisoner received in his bowl, hidden beneath the starvation-broth of prison, a raw turnip. The prisoner marveled.  The vegetable brought back to him memories of freedom and meals along the Rue Chalet. Once, he recalled, he had eaten a turnip with onion and pheasant, and another time mashed turnips with sausages.

           

Slowly he drew forth the marvelous prize. He imagined the crunch it would make beneath his teeth, and the thought filled him with joy.

           

The vegetable was ellipsoid and more slender than most. Studying it, the prisoner saw a vision of a man with coarse lavender garments and a fiercely ugly face. Slowly he traced his fingers across the ridges. It was a wise, knowing countenance, the sort that he had hoped to see on his lawyer. Once he had had a lawyer. Now he was forgotten. So long had he been alone that his clothing was mere shreds, symbolic of his hopes.

The prisoner’s nails were long. He used them to take a nick out of the turnip where the little man’s neck might be. The sliver of vegetable tasted fresh and good upon his tongue. Working with concentration and snail-like speed, he proceeded to free the little man’s head, and jacket, and trousers, and feet, eating each scrap as it was cut away. At last the fellow lay in his palm. An ugly man, but a unique one nonetheless. He called it Socrates.

           

***

           

Socrates had lived with the prisoner only a few days before the aptness of his name was proven, for he possessed the ability to rouse the prisoner’s mind from the hopeless torpor into which it had sunk.

           

“Once,” said the prisoner to his turnip, “I believed in the equality of man. ‘Égalité,’ that was my watchword. Do you believe in the equality of man?”

           

Socrates said nothing, but the ridges of his ugly face showed that he pondered.

           

The prisoner admitted, “Perhaps it is a fantasy. The brains and muscles of men are distributed entirely unequally. I myself ought to have received more brains. My father is a clever man, and my brother is a clever man, and even my nephews are clever. But I? I am an idealist, a man of dreams and revolutions. People said at one time that my pamphlet was clever. Yet what has it done for me?” He pointed to the stones around them.

           

Socrates also glanced about, but only as if to say, “Why complain?”

           

The prisoner tried to make his point more plainly. “Their God-given intellects enable them to sit at home in safety. By now they have pawned my watch and sold my books. My intellect merely betrayed me into this living grave. Is that equality? No, it is clear proof that men are born unequal!”

           

Somewhere in the prison, a madman shrieked, and a key ring rattled in a keeper’s hand.

           

The turnip whispered something, and the prisoner laughed. “You claim that the material state does not disprove the spiritual, eh? The mere fact that I rot here does not disprove my moral equality with his majesty King Louis? Perhaps. In the realm of God there is truth without prison. Yet here I sit. Be careful, my friend, or I will think that you are suggesting I should hurry to the realm of God.”

           

(Image of the real Socrates)

The turnip seemed to smile. It was a companionable smile, but not a sympathetic one. What can a root vegetable know about the sufferings of a sensitive human mind? 

           

Slowly the prisoner exhaled. “Your nose reminds me of the nose of Père Aboit, the schoolmaster. Do you know what he would say to me? He would say that the ways of God are inscrutable. Once I told him that mathematics are also inscrutable. He whipped me for impiety and insisted that I memorize the common sums. You yourself, Socrates, are worse than he, for at least he told me that six of six is thirty-six. You tell me nothing.”

           

The turnip smirked.

           

“You are infuriating! As bad as the real Socrates! Forever questioning and badgering, yet never venturing an answer of your own.” The prisoner drew himself up. “Who are you, to look at me thus? Here in this cell you shall treat me as an equal.”

           

Yet as the days went on, the argument was not resolved. Continuously did the prisoner implore his vegetable to cease with smirks, and wise looks, and other subterfuges. He begged it to be free and equal and speak as man to man. Yet it would not.

           

At last, the prisoner came to a realization. He had expected too much of Socrates. How could a newly-carved turnip understand equality, when it had never seen beyond the confines of this cell? How could the ugly little man be free, unless he tasted freedom? The prisoner was grieved. He had come to treasure his friend. Yet because of that love he must act. He must send Socrates forth to feel wind and hear the chatter along the Rue Chalet.

           

The next day, the prisoner hid his companion in the slop bucket. It was not a fragrant way to escape, but it would serve. Socrates would be taken away.

           

Life in the cell was lonely after that, yet no longer bitter. The prisoner had found his philosophy. The equality of men, he explained to himself, is in their equal ability to choose the good and noble course. That was the equality which no prison cell or king could take from him.

*** 

           

Far off in the Bastille kitchens, slops and peelings were being thrown into cauldrons. Steam rose. Somewhere a kitchen boy was weeping because a guard had boxed his ear.

           

Yet in the cell of the prisoner, quiet reigned. The prisoner was at peace.

END

Why Hardy Boys Novels = Pride and Prejudice

Some literary authorities cite seven basic 

plot types, but I propose an eighth

And now for something... completely different

It behooves the ambitious analyst to categorize, organize, and otherwise provide structure to the examination of literature. Those who desire to leave a mark upon the world of literature wrack their brains to produce a new system.  For example, according to Wikipedia, British literary figure Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch described all plots as development of one of seven types of fictional conflict: Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, Man against God, Man vs. Society, Man in the Middle, Man & Woman, Man vs. Himself. As my own humble yet valuable contribution to the literary theory of the Western World, I propose recognition of another type of plot. It may be summed up as “Wait…you mean it’s HIM?”

           

            The “Wait… you mean it’s HIM?” (W...YMIH) plot is found in a multitude of books. It transcends genre, delivering climaxes in tales as divergent as detective stories and romance novels. Let us take two wildly different pieces of writing as our example, and compare the plot of the typical Hardy Boys tale with that of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Ridiculous, disrespectful, sacrilegious (this for the Janeites), you say? Ah, but I do not claim that Miss Austen and the legion of Franklin W. Dixon ghostwriters handled their plot with equal humanity and dexterity. I only point out that each used the same one.

           

            Like other plots, the W...YMIH begins by establishing a problem, in this case a problem centered on the question: “Whom?” Elizabeth Bennet (and her mother) wonders whom she will marry. The Hardy Boys wonder whom they will turn in to the police for the crime in question. Both parties are in search of their man. Immediately the story proceeds to the introduction of the “Rude Gent.” This fellow, lavishly well-off in Miss Austen’s story, is also wealthy in the Hardy world. He catches the protagonists’ attention through his uncalled for ill-temper. To a discerning reader, the “Rude Gent’s” behavior is enough to mark him at once as the character upon whom we ought to fix our eye, but the protagonists, unaware of literature's tropes, fail to grasp his significance even when he moves beyond “Rude Gent” and slides into the role of “Rude Gent Who Keeps Showing Up.” In the case of the Hardy brothers, he generally bashes them on the head once or twice when they are not looking. In the case of Mr. Darcy, he proffers insults .

           

            The “Rude Gent Who Keeps Showing Up” (RGWKSU) is clearly qualified to answer to the great question “Whom?” Mr. Darcy is suitably rich and single. The Hardy Boys’ villain is suitably possessed of means, motive and opportunity. However, the plot is not so simple and uninteresting as to allow an epiphany in the first few chapters: no, a “Distracting Gent” must first appear. In the case of the Dixon ghostwriters, some deserving and put-upon person (a friend’s father, a young clerk seeking to rise in the world, an old man protecting his nearest and dearest) behaves in a suspicious manner and must be investigated. While the brothers are chasing their Red Herring, Elizabeth Bennett finds herself fond of a Red Lobsterback: Wickham, in his dashing scarlet coat, appears to be a better “Whom” than Darcy.

           

            The truth about the RGWKSU is finally revealed through climactic action. Mr. Darcy gallops to London and, through his timely intervention into Wickham’s marital schemes, preserves the Bennett family.  What is the feeling of Elizabeth Bennett when she realizes not only that he is a far worthier sort of man than her Lobsterback, but also that she loves him dearly? “Wait… you mean it’s HIM?” The Hardy boys’ villain also behaves decisively. Generally, he does something along the lines of knocking our heroes unconscious, trussing them like turkeys, confronting them in a scene in which he reveal their own guilt, and then unaccountably allowing the brothers to escape. The brothers are left in no doubt “whom” to denounce to the police.

            Thus it may be seen that the W...YMIH plot provides delight, excitement, and drama to readers across the genres. It’s variability and universality are its strength. I defy even Sir William Lucas to produce such a son-in-law—I mean, such a literary theory.

I issue this question to my readers : is it true that plots are universal, or can you cite any authors that you consider truly original in their plot development? 

 

Joining up with Amongst Lovely Things for a hunt through the archives. 

Head over there for "funniest posts."