In Praise of "Dinah the Christmas Whore," and "Holiday Noods."
One of the things I do is publish the online magazine, Instant Noodles Lit Mag. In fact, it just ended its fourth year of existence. And my goal for every end of year is that it go out, not with a bang, or with a whimper, but with a giggle. This, it seems, is a huge, massive, gigantic ask.
Presumably, if you read this blog, you are either an author or an aspiring author, and so I ask you, why so hard to make funny?
I have just ended my thirty-third geez, thirty-third? Thirty-third and final year as a college teacher. That's right! I'm officially done with all of that. In any case, in all those years I taught many things, among them reading, essay writing, critical thinking, survey of British literature, film studies, the usual things college English teachers teach. And in all of those classes, whenever remotely possible, I snuck in some humor writing for my students to read because, IMHO (in my humble opinion) there is nothing more difficult to read or write than humor. And my students proved this fact to me over and over. It's not that people are inherently humorless (though I confess it is a secret theory of mine); it's that making something funny without inflection or action or facial expressions is very difficult. And reading something, and reading well enough to understand everything you read, is also very difficult, and most readers do not seem to know humor when they see it. Now, I will say that I edit a lot of people who seem to want to be funny writers, but, sadly, the offering seems to go no further than a fart joke, or what we in the USA would call "Animal House humor." I'm looking for Groucho Marx, Monty Python, Woody Allen (one hell of a humor author), and what I get is, at best, Dave Barry. Oh dear lord do not send me to ironic hell where all I get to read is Dave Barry!
If you want to read funny writing then I would recommend, for fiction, SIDE EFFECTS by Woody Allen, and, for non-fiction, David Sedaris, who has turned mocking his family into an art form.
For my students Woody Allen was frequently over their heaeds in vocabulary alone. Sedaris is more the common man, though he can use the pricey words too, but he also has the advantage of being readily available to listen to.
Of all the great Sedaris stories I would share two with my students. One was the print version of "Dinah the Christmas Whore," from the book HOLIDAYS ON ICE, and the other was the THIS AMERICAN LIFE performance of "Repeat After Me." (And don't forget to suport your local NPR station so we still get great shows like this under the new American regime.) And you can click on the link to hear "Repeat After Me," but I will use this space to share a little of "Dinah the Christmas Whore."
On her birthday, according to Sedaris, his older sister, Lisa, drags him out of the house to go rescue a co-worker. When they arrive at the co-worker's house, a seedy aprtment in a seedy building, the co-worker's boyfriend charges Lisa, but she grabs him by the throat and throws him to the ground, and tells Sedaris to guard him.
"Guard him? Who did she think I was? 'Don't leave me!' I yelled, but she was already gone."
Sedaris is making a classic move, setting himself up as a coward in a scene where more is exptected of him. What makes it funnier is that early in the story he had been imagining himself as a drifter who roams the word with a probiscous monkey, punching out cowboys and other he-men. But now, in the thick of it, he calls out for his sister to help him. It's the basic juxtapostion of reality versus fantasy that makes it such a funny moment, and that's what Sedaris does so well. He is always elevating some pompus ass, usually himself, and then turning him around to show us the toilet paper tail sailing out of the pompous man's pants.
Presumably, if you read this blog, you are either an author or an aspiring author, and so I ask you, why so hard to make funny?
I have just ended my thirty-third geez, thirty-third? Thirty-third and final year as a college teacher. That's right! I'm officially done with all of that. In any case, in all those years I taught many things, among them reading, essay writing, critical thinking, survey of British literature, film studies, the usual things college English teachers teach. And in all of those classes, whenever remotely possible, I snuck in some humor writing for my students to read because, IMHO (in my humble opinion) there is nothing more difficult to read or write than humor. And my students proved this fact to me over and over. It's not that people are inherently humorless (though I confess it is a secret theory of mine); it's that making something funny without inflection or action or facial expressions is very difficult. And reading something, and reading well enough to understand everything you read, is also very difficult, and most readers do not seem to know humor when they see it. Now, I will say that I edit a lot of people who seem to want to be funny writers, but, sadly, the offering seems to go no further than a fart joke, or what we in the USA would call "Animal House humor." I'm looking for Groucho Marx, Monty Python, Woody Allen (one hell of a humor author), and what I get is, at best, Dave Barry. Oh dear lord do not send me to ironic hell where all I get to read is Dave Barry!
If you want to read funny writing then I would recommend, for fiction, SIDE EFFECTS by Woody Allen, and, for non-fiction, David Sedaris, who has turned mocking his family into an art form.
For my students Woody Allen was frequently over their heaeds in vocabulary alone. Sedaris is more the common man, though he can use the pricey words too, but he also has the advantage of being readily available to listen to.
Of all the great Sedaris stories I would share two with my students. One was the print version of "Dinah the Christmas Whore," from the book HOLIDAYS ON ICE, and the other was the THIS AMERICAN LIFE performance of "Repeat After Me." (And don't forget to suport your local NPR station so we still get great shows like this under the new American regime.) And you can click on the link to hear "Repeat After Me," but I will use this space to share a little of "Dinah the Christmas Whore."
On her birthday, according to Sedaris, his older sister, Lisa, drags him out of the house to go rescue a co-worker. When they arrive at the co-worker's house, a seedy aprtment in a seedy building, the co-worker's boyfriend charges Lisa, but she grabs him by the throat and throws him to the ground, and tells Sedaris to guard him.
"Guard him? Who did she think I was? 'Don't leave me!' I yelled, but she was already gone."
Sedaris is making a classic move, setting himself up as a coward in a scene where more is exptected of him. What makes it funnier is that early in the story he had been imagining himself as a drifter who roams the word with a probiscous monkey, punching out cowboys and other he-men. But now, in the thick of it, he calls out for his sister to help him. It's the basic juxtapostion of reality versus fantasy that makes it such a funny moment, and that's what Sedaris does so well. He is always elevating some pompus ass, usually himself, and then turning him around to show us the toilet paper tail sailing out of the pompous man's pants.
And though this story was written by Sedaris as an adult, he is able to channel his young self in the paragraph above where he tells the readers how, to him, a whore was more exotic than any celebrity could ever hope to be. His ability to channel himself as he was in high school adds to the silliness of the story, because only a high school kid would find anything exotic in a woman who has to be rescued from her abusive boyfriend. The younger version of Sedaris, much like the version you can go see perform live and in person, is still on the hunt for stories that will shock his audience, make them gasp with disapproval. And in this scene he tries a little of that on his mother, after he and his sister arrive back at their house with Dinah in tow:
We get absolutely into Sedaris' up-to-no-good personality. In fact, at one point, his mother accuses himself of always needing to "...stir the turd." And he has presumably always been that way, and is to this day.
The book, HOLIDAYS ON ICE, includes the famous essay "Santaland Diaries," and I highly recommend it for some holiday reading. If you treat yourself to one from the store or the library, you won’t be disappointed. And, as you read it, look for what makes Sedaris funny: the snark, the juxtaposition, the tattling, the way he is never afraid of being the jerk.
So, why humor for the holidays? Aren’t the end-of-year holidays for Norman Rockwell and nostalgia?
Well not for me, honey! I've always been one who wants to deface all the signs for sale in HomeGoods that exhort me to LIVE! LAUGH! LOVE! I prefer to DIE! CRY! & HATE! I mean, truly, all the happy endings at this time of year make me diabetic! I'd prefer it if, "Every time a bell rings" an angel gets hit with a fly swatter. Truth is every single one of us had lived through a very bad end of year, and even the good ones are never as good as the hype. It's the insistence that they cannot be anything but holly-jolly that irks the mistletoe right out of me.
So, in my little fiefdom as leader of the Instant Noodles Lit Mag, I have opted to request the end-of-year issue focus, at the bare-minimum, on the light-hearted. And the response proves my theory. Because Instant Noodles has no submission or reading fee, we usually get inundated, each call, with submissions numbering in the low hundreds, many of which are wildly off-topic, or not quite ready for prime time. The lack of a fee (in my theory) causes people to just throw something at the call. But, when we ask for light-hearted, when we make it clear we're hoping for a laugh, or at least a wan grin, the submissions go down by two-thirds, and while some still ignore the call (depressing pieces, pieces not remotely on themes), there is a lot less in general. But, we persevere all the same. This year's issue was themed around the name of the magazine, and called "Holiday Noods." We asked for lighthearted pieces relating to holiday fails, humorous stories about noodles, or nudity, or any combination there-of.
My husband (David Yurkovich) asked me what I wanted for the cover, and, as we always try to get some sort of instant noodle cup into the cover, I asked for something resembling a person wearing a barrel instead of clothes, and the barrel to be a noodle cup. He did me one better. The cover instantly took my breath away, made me laugh, and made me feel guilty for laughing. Dave took the barrel idea, and transformed it into a hot tub, leaning into the "nudes" idea a bit more than I had expected, which makes it funny, and decidedly weird.
The book, HOLIDAYS ON ICE, includes the famous essay "Santaland Diaries," and I highly recommend it for some holiday reading. If you treat yourself to one from the store or the library, you won’t be disappointed. And, as you read it, look for what makes Sedaris funny: the snark, the juxtaposition, the tattling, the way he is never afraid of being the jerk.
So, why humor for the holidays? Aren’t the end-of-year holidays for Norman Rockwell and nostalgia?
Well not for me, honey! I've always been one who wants to deface all the signs for sale in HomeGoods that exhort me to LIVE! LAUGH! LOVE! I prefer to DIE! CRY! & HATE! I mean, truly, all the happy endings at this time of year make me diabetic! I'd prefer it if, "Every time a bell rings" an angel gets hit with a fly swatter. Truth is every single one of us had lived through a very bad end of year, and even the good ones are never as good as the hype. It's the insistence that they cannot be anything but holly-jolly that irks the mistletoe right out of me.
So, in my little fiefdom as leader of the Instant Noodles Lit Mag, I have opted to request the end-of-year issue focus, at the bare-minimum, on the light-hearted. And the response proves my theory. Because Instant Noodles has no submission or reading fee, we usually get inundated, each call, with submissions numbering in the low hundreds, many of which are wildly off-topic, or not quite ready for prime time. The lack of a fee (in my theory) causes people to just throw something at the call. But, when we ask for light-hearted, when we make it clear we're hoping for a laugh, or at least a wan grin, the submissions go down by two-thirds, and while some still ignore the call (depressing pieces, pieces not remotely on themes), there is a lot less in general. But, we persevere all the same. This year's issue was themed around the name of the magazine, and called "Holiday Noods." We asked for lighthearted pieces relating to holiday fails, humorous stories about noodles, or nudity, or any combination there-of.
My husband (David Yurkovich) asked me what I wanted for the cover, and, as we always try to get some sort of instant noodle cup into the cover, I asked for something resembling a person wearing a barrel instead of clothes, and the barrel to be a noodle cup. He did me one better. The cover instantly took my breath away, made me laugh, and made me feel guilty for laughing. Dave took the barrel idea, and transformed it into a hot tub, leaning into the "nudes" idea a bit more than I had expected, which makes it funny, and decidedly weird.
My favorite touch is either the tatoos the couple are sporting, or the fact that it is made to look like a photo taken at a Sears portait studio.
Here is a poem from the issue that made me laugh:
Santa Dad, by Jamie Johnson
Pop dashed around near and far
By the light of the Christmas Star
As the children dozed
The Guinea Pig froze
He forgot that gift in the car.
Are you an author? Start working on your holiday piece for next year now! The theme will be "GRAVY" for 2025. C'mon, gravy is funny all on it's own! You can do it!
To read Instant Noodles just stop by the link. You can find the guidelines for next year's issues there too, and submissions are already open! Give humor-writing a try! And if you're blue when the world is zipping along to computer-generated Christmas carols, try a few stories from David Sedaris!
Happy Holidays, and Happy 2025!
Dianne
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