LESSONS FROM LAUGHTER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 742, 2 October 1953, Page 7

LESSONS FROM LAUGHTER

EW ZEALANDERS J still take themselves too seriously; they seem to have developed a defensive attitude, an attitude which is not necessary; and they show a tendency to apologise for faults that really are not there. This opinion was expressed to The Listenér by Professor Joseph Jones, of the English Department of the University of Texas, who has been in this country for several months as a Fulbright lecturer in American literature. Professor Jones has been studying New Zealand literature. He will be heard shortly from main national stations in a series of six talks on American humour. "Humour forms a significant part of American literature, and has done so through its whole history," he told The Listener, "But in New Zealand the early promise of a robust strain of frontier humour does not seem to have developed. I thought Maning’s Old New Zealand the most outstanding humorous writing I’ve come across here, but there’s a good deal of distance between Maning’s gusto and current satire-with nothing between. "One of the additional graces of Samuel] Butler’s Erewhon is the occasional moment of relaxation when Butler says something just for the sake of being funny. Any satirist who knows his business will provide enough absurdity to keep the satire from grinding grooves. And New Zealand humour takes a satiric line, often highly literary. "Maning may have imported his humour, but I think New Zealand touched Butler deeply. He _ took his back with him. It was inspired here. Apart from such pioneers, however, I can see no trend towards an indigenous humour, There is no New Zealand writer with a reputation established on the basis of this sort of writing alone, and no apparent promise of-such a writer. Modern authors show no well-

defined tradition of New Zealand humour." Professor Jones felt there was ample material here for the development of a native humour, but it had not been exploited. There was a feeling among some authorities that a humorous plav. for example, might fail for lack of an audience; or worse still, might be duly approved and ‘appreciated — with seriousness and solemnity. This very trait of seriousness, the Professor thoyght, was a fruitful source of comedy. "Controversy in which both sides are tremendously earnest and quite unyielding enables the observer to stand outside the argument and say. ‘Look, they’re funny, aren’t they!’ Thurber provides a magnificent example of this in The Male Animal, which exploits a very serious argument between a board of trustees and a university professor, When it was written the events which inspired The Rape of the Lock had both sides furious, but the poem

through the medium of satire, in effect. says, ‘Look, they’re making a mountain out of a mole hill. That’s funny!’ And. of course, it is," In the field of verse writing Professor Jones found more cheerful prospects. "In fact," he said, "it seems that when a New Zealander wants to say something funny. he does so in verse. Personally I prefer prose as a medium; ‘but ‘Whim Wham,’ for example, has a long "and quite distinguished ‘record as 2 humorist. In the work | of Denis Glover humour is quite clearly an ingredient, too. Airini Woodhouse’s anthology of Farm and Station verse includes some very good examples of authentic local humour, though some of the incidents described-worthy of the prose of a Mark Twain -would have been hetter handled in prose."

Asked about graphic humour Professor Jones said that here again there seemed to be no flowering of a truly indigenous product. There were individual exceptions, such as Minhinnick and Lodge. but there did not seem to be any widespread exploitation of New Zealand’s own experience. There was no New Zealand equivalent of Al Capp and his Lil Abner. "Al Capp’s work is completely original, a splendid series of take-offs. He is a master of the art of burlesque. Perhaps the nearest approach to this type of thing I’ve seen here is the Australian Bluey and Curley stripbut this does not live up to its potentialities. When, as happéns only occasionally, real Australian folk material is used, it is very good. More often the artist takes a joke most people have heard before. and simply works it in Surely New Zealand artists cou'd produce a newspaper strip with continuity humour and real. vitality from the on nnn ere

source material around them right here." "All really first-rate humour, it seems to me must show its ‘illuminating frac-tion’-some variable residue of truth and wisdom that passes over and condenses after the effervescence of laughter." says Professor Jones in the first of his six talks. "Whether we always realise it or not, we learn something from a good laugh: and the lesson is sometimes a deep one." Professor Jones begins with a quick look at American humour from the’ frontier days down through such figures as Mark Twain and Petroleum V. Nasby to the present, which he thinks. may come to be regarded as a golden age in American hum6ur. Americans. he says, live now in the .most prolific age of graphic humour their nation has seen, with The New Yorker and Walt Disney as the two great stimulating agents mainly responsible. Since The New Yorker has bred most of the present-day graphic hémorists, he discusses the work of severa] of these -George Price, Peter Arno, Helen Hokinson Charles Addams and James Thurber-hefore going on in his third talk to a fuller discussion of the place of The New Yorker. His summing up is that in its treatment of the American it has kept its leurels green "by an attitude of mind which strives to unite a quick and keen-eved svmvathy with the resolution to be fooled as infrequently and as little as possible." This. says Professor Jones, embodies the very heart of what is most to he cought after in the humorous view of life. In the second half of the series Professor Tones deals with three big figures from the present or recent past-S. J. Perelman, Wil] Cupvy and James Thurber. Throughout the talks he uses many entertaining illustrations. New Zealand readers will’know the work of Perelman and Thurber. but for a great many this will be their first meeting with Will Cunpvy a man who wrote funny pieces with even funnier footnotes about birds. beasts and fishes, and who for vears before he died in 1949 worked on a book about the hallowed names of human history-a book which turned out to be his masterpiece. The first talk bv Professor Jones will be heard from 1YC at 10.0- p.m. on Thursday, October 8, and the second at. 9.37 p.m. the following Saturday.