Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker (36 page)

F
EBRUARY 2ND

Very down. Spotted two little “cracker” glossaries
out already.
Must do something
soon.
What about a sort of who’s-who approach? Rosalynn Carter
so tough
under that sweet exterior, etc. etc. Juxtaposed to Amy, Miss Lillian, and Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Wish I knew Alice Longworth
better.
Use tape recorder for chapter on New Southern Personalities. Racist clubs, etc. etc. Almost definitely have title: “The Reign in Plains Falls Mainly on the . . .”—but can’t come up with last word.

F
EBRUARY 10TH

Decided best thing go to racist club. Went to door, met by Bill. “Good evening, sir,” etc. Bill said club had to let Sam go, because wanted to call members by first name. Bill said doormen, waiters, etc., at Union League Club call members by first name. Very gripping. Took mental notes. Good to be reporting again. Went upstairs, had Wild Turkey Old-Fashioned. Hand
stopped shaking.

F
EBRUARY 17TH

See now must zero in on
energy,
Carter’s plan: the new expectations, the new more modest life styles.

A
PRIL 25TH

Tried to focus on energy, but too worried about
small red rash.

M
AY 6TH

Definitely decided not to stress First One Hundred Days because too limiting. Definitely decided to forget whole New South angle because too stale. Definitely decided not to try to
lighten up
because too nervous.

J
ULY 15TH

Now see must focus on
revisionist
theories. New Populism really New Conservatism. Carter Administration as caretaker government, Carter as apostle of closed government, Carter as savior of Northern élite. Ordered big lunch, but couldn’t get it down. Decided small red rash definitely
spreading.

1977

POLLY FROST

NOTES ON MY CONVERSATIONS

Conversation has been [Fran] Lebowitz’s lifetime work. The writing of her books, like the plastering of a wall for a fresco, is best viewed as a preparatory phase. . . . Instead of bemoaning Lebowitz’s failure to publish, one might envy her progress. Her work is now custom-tailored, her clientele is elite. She has gone from
prêt à porter
to
haute couture.

—Vanity Fair.

Y
OU
haven’t read anything by me for some time, because I have been devoting myself to what I felt was my true art form: conversation. When I made this transition, the critics labelled me “lazy” and “a procrastinator.” The fact is, I did not stop writing in order to lounge around at parties—that has been only a necessary adjunct to my work.

The moment I said my first word, I knew that talking was all I ever wanted to do, despite considerable discouragement from my family. They felt I ought to accomplish something. Yet I never found doing things satisfying. There wasn’t the sense of completion I’d get from talking about doing something to the point where it couldn’t be done, shouldn’t be done, and nobody even wanted it to be done anymore. But had I done it, it would have been the best thing I ever did.

In response to demand for a retrospective, I have singled out my most famous (and infamous!) conversations. In doing so, I have had to omit numerous smaller works: kaffeeklatsches, yammers, retorts, insinuations, complaints, tipoffs, disseminations, and greetings. This is unfortunate.

My work falls into three major periods:

THE EARLY CONVERSATIONS

The seminal influences on me were the Masters—Dr. Johnson and Oscar Wilde. Many lay people don’t know how carefully Wilde worked on his aphorisms. People seem to think that being a conversationalist means you just get out of bed in the morning and open your mouth. They don’t understand the preparation that’s involved, not to mention the skill and patience required to make your interlocutors stick to the subject.

An example of the kinds of challenges I faced: On October 19, 1981, I met several friends at Dolores’s Coffee Shop, and we engaged in lighthearted banter. Everyone asked me, “What on earth have you been doing lately—if anything?” I didn’t reply. I couldn’t tell them I had been carefully crafting my wit, as that would undercut the element of surprise essential for the conversation to work. I waited until the cheeseburgers were served before introducing my topic. (Note on the participants: The initials “P.F.” stand for me.)

P.F.: I’ve been thinking . . . about death.

T.D.: Thanks a lot—you just ruined my lunch.

P.F.: Perhaps if you simply think of death as annihilation your appetite will return.

L.B.: Can’t we talk about something else?

P.F.: No!

(A critical note: During this time, I was studying Wilde’s techniques for keeping his listeners on the track, and developing a few of my own.)

S.E.: Hey, has anybody seen Jeff recently? He was supposed—

P.F. (
cutting him off
): Doesn’t anybody want to hear what I have to say?

E
VERYONE
(
resignedly
): O.K.

P.F.: Well, forget it—I’ve decided not to tell you.

My reputation as a conversationalist really began to be established when I moved from coffee shops to cocktail parties. It was there that I began to experiment with material and develop techniques. In particular, the technique of cornering enabled me to extend the duration of small talk beyond anything previously known. It has been noted by critics that my small talk was about duration itself.

During what I now refer to as my “representational” period, T.D. would often ask me what exactly it was I brought to the art of conversation. Traditionally, the immortal conversationalists came to talk from other disciplines—Northcote from painting, Socrates from philosophy, Heine from poetry. I began to feel that this was what was responsible for the constant intrusion of subject matter into their speech.

MIDDLE WORKS

More and more, I challenged the assumption that I shouldn’t speak unless I had something to say. Words themselves were becoming of less interest to me than pure sound. I was fascinated by the possibilities of yelling, whispering, and changing my accent midsentence. Also, the visual effects, such as rolling my eyes, drumming my fingers, and grinning inappropriately.

I was able to experiment with these ideas in 1982, when I gave over two hundred interviews, culminating in
EXCLUSIVE SELF-INTERVIEW,
excerpted here:

You ask if there’s any recurring theme in my work. Well,
CONVERSATION
#87 was, on the surface, a simple story about dinner at Shirley’s house but was actually about not having been invited to Roger’s for some time. Then, around
CONVERSATION
#157, Roger pointed out that I was still talking about the same thing. So, yes, there are recurring themes in my work. But, to return to your first question. You asked if I don’t feel my conversations should be a two-way street. No, I don’t. I don’t believe in art by committee. Life and art? There is no separation. Everything—my most recent trip, along with any others I have ever taken, all the facts in the most recent issue of
Newsweek,
Thursday night’s dinner, as well as its effect on my digestion, the entire plot of the last movie I saw—everything becomes part of my conversation. What’s the most interesting thing I’ve ever said? Impossible to answer. Like all conversationalists, I am always most in love with what I am saying at the moment.

The big breakthrough in my style came in 1983. Until then, I had always carefully planned out what I was going to say in advance. What might happen if I simply responded on the spot to what people were saying? The results of these experiments in form surprised even me. An example, from a telephone conversation in late 1984:

S
HIRLEY:
Hello?

P.F.:
(silence)

S
HIRLEY:
HELLO?

P.F.:
(very long silence)

At this point in the conversation, Shirley slammed down the receiver. I had never gotten this effect out of her before.

Improvisation led me to question the role my friends were playing in my conversations, which I felt was much too great. I became interested in the idea of using non-friends—people who were no longer speaking to me, strangers, inanimate objects.

MY LATE PERIOD

By March 3, 1985, the cocktail party had become a moribund form—an exchange of anecdotes, business cards, lunch dates. Shallow gestures, devoid of meaning. People felt that when I walked toward them they were about to make a connection. No—I wanted to bring them face to face with something or other. (But what? I never could decide.)

The listener had become passive. Telephone receivers were placed down on kitchen counters while listeners made trips to the refrigerator or thumbed through magazines. In my apartment lobby, they’d continue to get their mail, with only an occasional “Mm-hmm. . . . Mm-hmm.” I didn’t feel like popping one of my aphorisms after all this mumbling!

In August, the whole Street Talking Movement was coming to a boil. I was one of the ones who felt that the talk going on inside restaurants (“Check, please”), office-building elevators (“Seventeenth floor, please”), as well as hotels and theatre lobbies, had lost its vitality. Outside, it was all new and experimental. I no longer wanted to talk to people. I wanted to talk at them.

Although I felt that my Street Talking should be primarily an urban phenomenon, I did once yell at a combine on the edge of a wheat field in Saskatchewan.

When I went back indoors in October, I was attacked by the critics. I felt I had exhausted the rant and rave, especially in
STREET-CORNER CONVERSATION WITH PASSING CARS.
I needed fresh forms. I was dying to work with the toast, the waffle, and the quibble. And in order to do so, it was imperative that I once again sit down at the dinner table.

At this point, I would like to say something about critics. I have been accused by critics of “dominating the conversation,” of “not allowing anyone else to get a word in edgewise.” The most annoying thing about all this criticism is it makes me forget what it was I wanted to say. . . .

This morning, I started putting my wit in code. A conversationalist can’t be too free with his/her best lines. Give a seemingly off-the-cuff recital of one and the next thing you know, it’s on every bumper sticker and T-shirt. That aphorism may have been as much as one month in the making, and meanwhile I haven’t gotten anything for my work.

Then, at lunch, I discovered I possess that indefinable but unmistakable something known as Presence. This has had its effect on my style, as I no longer need to enter the conversation at all. In fact, talking doesn’t seem enough anymore. Now I plan to explore the other art forms—for example, having my picture taken.

1986

STEVE MARTIN

WRITING IS EASY!

W
RITING
is the most easy, pain-free, and happy way to pass the time of all the arts. As I write this, for example, I am sitting comfortably in my rose garden and typing on my new computer. Each rose represents a story, so I’m never at a loss for what to type. I just look deep into the heart of the rose, read its story, and then write it down. I could be typing
kjfiu joew.mv jiw
and enjoy it as much as typing words that actually make sense, because I simply relish the movements of my fingers on the keys. It is true that sometimes agony visits the head of a writer. At those moments, I stop writing and relax with a coffee at my favorite restaurant, knowing that words can be changed, rethought, fiddled with, and ultimately denied. Painters don’t have that luxury. If they go to a coffee shop, their paint dries into a hard mass.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

I would like to recommend that all writers live in California, because here, in between those moments when one is looking into the heart of a rose, one can look up at the calming blue sky. I feel sorry for writers—and there are some pretty famous ones—who live in places like South America and Czechoslovakia, where I imagine it gets pretty dank. These writers are easy to spot. Their books are often filled with disease and negativity. If you’re going to write about disease, I would say California is the place to do it. Dwarfism is never funny, but look at what happened when it was dealt with in California. Seven happy dwarfs. Can you imagine seven dwarfs in Czechoslovakia? You would get seven melancholic dwarfs at best—seven melancholic dwarfs and no handicap-parking spaces.

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA: WHY IT
’
S A BAD TITLE

I admit that “Love in the time of . . .” is a great title, up to a point. You’re reading along, you’re happy, it’s about
love.
I like the way the word
time
comes in—a nice, nice feeling. Then the morbid
Cholera
appears. I was happy till then. Why not “Love in the Time of the Blue, Blue, Bluebirds”? “Love in the Time of Oozing Sores and Pustules” is probably an earlier title the author used as he was writing in a rat-infested tree house on an old Smith Corona. This writer, whoever he is, could have used a couple of weeks in Pacific Daylight Time.

A LITTLE EXPERIMENT

I took the following passage, which was no doubt written in some depressing place, and attempted to rewrite it under the sunny influence of California:

Most people deceive themselves with a pair of faiths: they believe in
eternal memory
(of people, things, deeds, nations) and in
redressibility
(of deeds, mistakes, sins, wrongs). Both are false faiths. In reality the opposite is true: everything will be forgotten and nothing will be redressed.

—Milan Kundera.

Sitting in my garden, watching the bees glide from flower to flower, I let the above paragraph filter through my mind. The following New Paragraph emerged: