Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker (65 page)

The lasting achievement of Brillat-Savarin is that he endowed living with a certain ease. Intricately versed in the difficulties of existence, he came to the unorthodox conclusion that a cookbook—a bastard form, but a wealthy, happy bastard—could offer the widest and most tender range of remedies. I’m not sure whether he knew how to fold the wings of a chicken akimbo, and if you’d handed him a snow pea and told him to stuff it he would have responded in kind; but it takes someone like Brillat-Savarin to remind us that cooking need not be the fraught, perfectionist, slightly paranoid struggle that it has latterly become. His love of food is bound up with a taste for human error and indulgence, and that is why “The Physiology of Taste” is still the most civilized cookbook ever written. I suspect that Brillat-Savarin might have been bemused by Martha Stewart, but that he would have got on just fine with Ed Debevic and his Burnt Meatloaf.

I sure wish that he had been on hand for my terrine of sardines and potatoes. There I was—apron on, gin in hand, closely following the recipe of the French chef Raymond Blanc. All went well until I got to the harmless words “a piece of cardboard.” Apparently, I needed cardboard to lay on the terrine mold; the cardboard then had to be covered with “evenly distributed weights” for twelve hours. Weights? Cardboard? Twelve hours? They weren’t listed with the ingredients. I had my sardines; I had my twenty capers and my freshly grated nutmeg; but I had no cardboard. Frankly, it would have been easier to kill a turtle.

That’s the trouble with cookbooks. Like sex education and nuclear physics, they are founded on an illusion. They bespeak order, but they end in tears.

1995

MARTIN AMIS

TENNIS PERSONALITIES

I
HAVE
a problem with—I am uncomfortable with—the word “personality” and its plural, as in “Modern tennis lacks personalities” and “Tennis needs a new star who is a genuine personality.” But if, from now on, I can put “personality” between quotation marks, and use it as an exact synonym of a seven-letter duosyllable starting with “a” and ending with “e” (and also featuring, in order of appearance, an “ss,” an “h,” an “o,” and an “l”), why, then, “personality” and I are going to get along just fine.

How come it is always the old “personalities” who lead complaints about the supposed scarcity of young “personalities”? Because it takes a “personality” to know a ̶0;personality”? No. Because it takes a “personality” to
like
a “personality.”

Ilie Nastase was a serious “personality”—probably the most complete “personality” the game has ever boasted. In his memoir, “Days of Grace,” Arthur Ashe, while acknowledging that Nastase was an “unforgettable personality,” also recalls that Ilie called him “Negroni” to his face and, once, “nigger” behind his back. Ilie, of course, was known as a “clown” and a “showman”; i.e., as an embarrassing narcissist. Earlier this year, his tireless “antics” earned him a dismissal and a suspension as Romania’s Davis Cup captain (“audible obscenities and constant abuse and intimidation”). Ilie is forty-seven. But true “personalities” merely scoff at the passage of time. They just become even bigger “personalities.”

Jimmy Connors: another total “personality.” Imagine the sepsis of helpless loathing he must have inspired in his opponents during his “great runs” at the U.S. Open. There’s Jimmy (what a “personality”), orchestrating mass sex with the Grandstand Court. It’s great for the mild-mannered Swede or Swiss up at the other end: he double-faults, and New York goes
wild.
Jimmy was such an out-and-out “personality” that he managed to get into a legal dispute with the president of his own fan club. Remember how he used to wedge his racket between his legs with the handle protuding and mime the act of masturbation when a call went against him?
That’s
a “personality.”

Twenty-odd years ago, I encountered Connors and Nastase at some P.R. nightmare in a Park Lane hotel. Someone asked these two bronzed and seersuckered “personalities” what they had been doing with themselves in London. “Screwing each other,” Nastase said, and collapsed in Connors’ arms. I was reminded of this incident when, last fall, I saw an account of a whistle-stop tour undertaken by John McEnroe and Andre Agassi. Questioned about their relationship, Agassi described it as “completely sexual.” Does such raillery inevitably come about when self-love runs up against mutual admiration? Or is it part of a bonding ritual between “personalities” of the same peer group?

By turning my TV up dangerously loud, I once heard McEnroe mutter to a linesman (and this wasn’t a Grand Slam event but one of those German greed fests where the first prize is something like a gold helicopter), “Get your fucking head out of your fucking [personality].” Arthur Ashe also reveals that McEnroe once called a middle-aged black linesman “boy.” With McEnroe gone, it falls to Agassi to shoulder the flagstaff of the “personalities”—Agassi, the Vegas traffic light, the “Zen master” (B. Streisand) who used to smash forty rackets a year. And I don’t think he has the stomach for it, funnily enough. Nastase, Connors, McEnroe, and Agassi are “personalities” of descending magnitude and stamina. McEnroe, at heart, was more tremulous than vicious; and Agassi shows telltale signs of generosity—even of sportsmanship.

There is a “demand” for “personalities,” because that’s the kind of age we’re living in. Laver, Rosewall, Ashe: these were dynamic and exemplary figures; they didn’t need “personality” because they had character. Interestingly, too, there have never been any “personalities” in the women’s game. What does this tell us? That being a “personality” is men’s work? Or that it’s boys’ work?

We do want our champions to be vivid. How about Pete Sampras, then—so often found wanting in the “personality” department? According to the computer, Sampras is almost twice as good as anyone else in the sport. What form would his “personality” take? Strutting, fist-clenching, loin-thrusting? All great tennis players are vivid, if great tennis is what you’re interested in (rather than something more tawdrily generalized). The hare-eyed Medvedev, the snake-eyed Courier, the droll and fiery Ivanisevic, the innocent Bruguera, the Wagnerian (and Machiavellian) Becker, the fanatical Michael Chang. These players demonstrate that it is perfectly possible to have, or to contain, a personality
—
without
being an asshole.

1994

JOHN UPDIKE

CAR TALK

A
HUMAN
being has vocal cords, a tongue, teeth, and, for expressive reinforcement, eyes and hands; a car has nothing but its horn and lights. Yet cars do talk; they can say “Howdy!” (a brief, deft toot) and “I hate you!” (a firmer, sustained blast) and “Do it!” (a flicker of the headlights). As their drivers are sealed ever more inaccessibly into a casing of audiotapes, cell phones, and deafening air-conditioning, automobiles for the sake of their own survival are evolving increasingly complex speech patterns. There is a distinct difference, to the attuned ear, between the highly respectful honk used in a service station during an annual car inspection in response to the command “Sound your horn” and the just perceptibly more urgent, less deferential beep that announces to the inhabitants of a domicile that a summoned taxi or car-pool van impatiently awaits.

Meaning is, as with other languages, a matter of context. The polite, minimal sounding of the horn—the automotive equivalent of a throat-clearing—that declares simple presence (“Howdy!”) in nonthreatening circumstances becomes, while one is passing on a four-lane highway an automobile that has an aura of wanting to change lanes with an abrupt swerve, more admonitory—something like “Watch it, buddy, you’ve got two tons of moving metal right here in your blind spot!”

If no response is indicated, the same utterance, more insistently intoned, takes on a suggestion of rebuke and heightened anxiety: “Hey, you’re riding me into the median strip!” And if the swerve does take place, within inches of one’s front fender, a strengthened intonation moderates the meaning to, roughly, “You crazy blind idiot, go back to driving school!” Then, if no penitent reverse-swerve or apologetic slowing communicates regret, the next level of volume declares, “You bastard—you cut me off! Drivers like you should be in jail, and I’d ram you right in your vanity plate if I didn’t hate fussing with the insurance agent and weren’t already late for the dentist!”

As with birdsong and insect stridulation, impressive amounts of information are packed into virtually indistinguishable sounds. In city traffic, one moderate toot, not quite deferential, informs the car ahead at an intersection that the light has changed from red to green. “Let’s go, daydreamer!” might be a translation. The same toot, amplified by a few decibels, points out to a truck being slowly unloaded that double-parking is illegal and obstructive, or to a taxi that passengers should not be unloaded in the middle of the avenue. Another few decibels suggest to an errant pedestrian, “I’d be within my rights to run you over, and my brother-in-law’s a lawyer,” or to a messenger on a bicycle, “Having thin wheels, Lycra shorts, and a Walkman on your head doesn’t make you immune to the laws of physics. Someday you’re going to get flattened, and don’t look for me among the mourners!”

The highest, most prolonged volume of the horn transcends communication and expresses—at, say, the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel—frustration to the point of insanity. The noise can be read as existential protest, a frantic desire on the part of automobiles to opt out of their very condition of car-ness, as cattle at the chute of the slaughterhouse moo to be released from their condition of steer-ness.

Car lights, too, say more than they used to. Having the controls on a stalk behind the steering wheel has considerably enhanced their eloquence. Flashed lights, for instance, once only hinted that a police car was lurking around the corner, but now, flicked demurely, say “Do it” and “Thank you,” much as the Italian word
prego
says both “Please” and “You’re welcome.”

Headlights lit in broad daylight used to mean, “We’re all in a funeral procession. Don’t muscle in.” But now such headlights, enlarging in the rearview mirror, cry out, “Here I come, hell for leather, and no doubt crazed on drugs!” Red tail-lights, braked into luminescence, can mean not only “I’m braking” but “Stop tailgating, I beg you!” The latter can be reacted to before it is consciously understood. As in many, even more highly evolved languages, signifiers can signify their opposites: at night, high-beam lights in your eyes mean either that the offending driver has forgotten to switch to the low beam or he is telling you that
you
have. Even turned-off lights can say something: in a locked car parked in your favorite curbside spot, the message reads, “Tough luck, kid. I got here first.”

1997

VERSE

E. B. WHITE

CRITIC

The critic leaves at curtain fall

To find, in starting to review it,

He scarcely saw the play at all

For watching his reaction to it.

1925

SONG TO BE DISREGARDED

I wrote six poems

With love for a theme;

I slept six nights

With love for a dream.

I’ve read them over,

And dreamt them again:

Never give a lover

A bed or a pen.

1928

TO A PERFUMED LADY AT THE CONCERT

Madam, the pervasive scent

Rendering your person smelly

Formed a thick integument

Round the music of Corelli.

Lost on me the Sarabande.

Lady odorous and rare,

You were such a proper noseful

All the brasses of “La Mer”

Seemed by contrast quite reposeful.

Lost on me the muted trumpet.

Baby drenched in fragrance vile,

Scent in public may be legal

But it blanketed the guile

Of a piece like “Eulenspiegel.”

Lost on me was Dicky Strauss.

Madam reeking of the rose,

Red of hair and pearl of earring,

I came not to try my nose,

I was there to try my hearing.

Lost on me the whole darn concert.

Madam! Lady! Baby doll!

This is what the world objects to:

Must you smell up all the hall

Just to charm the guy you’re next to?

You were lost on him already.

1932

SONG OF THE QUEEN BEE

“The breeding of the bee,” says a United States Department of Agriculture bulletin on artificial insemination, “has always been handicapped by the fact that the queen mates in the air with whatever drone she encounters.”

When the air is wine and the wind is free

And the morning sits on the lovely lea

And sunlight ripples on every tree,

Then love-in-air is the thing for me—

I’m a bee,

I’m a ravishing, rollicking, young queen bee,

That’s me.

I wish to state that I think it’s great,

Oh, it’s simply rare in the upper air,

It’s the place to pair

With a bee.

Let old geneticists plot and plan,

They’re stuffy people, to a man;

Let gossips whisper behind their fan.

(Oh, she
does?

Buzz, buzz, buzz!)

My nuptial flight is sheer delight;

I’m a giddy girl who likes to swirl,

To fly and soar

And fly some more,

I’m a bee.

And I wish to state that I’ll
always
mate

With whatever drone I encounter.

There’s a kind of a wild and glad elation

In the natural way of insemination;

Who thinks that love is a handicap

Is a fuddydud and a common sap,

For I am a queen and I am a bee,

I̵7;m devil-may-care and I’m fancy-free,

The test tube doesn’t appeal to me,

Not me,

I’m a bee.

And I’m here to state that I’ll
always
mate

With whatever drone I encounter.

Let mares and cows, by calculating,

Improve themselves with loveless mating,

Let groundlings breed in the modern fashion,

I’ll stick to the air and the grand old passion;

I may be small and I’m just a bee

But I
won’t
have Science improving
me,

Not me,

I’m a bee.

On a day that’s fair with a wind that’s free,

Any old drone is the lad for me.

I have no flair for love moderne,

It’s far too studied, far too stern,

I’m just a bee—I’m wild, I’m free,

That’s me.

I can’t afford to be too choosy;

In every queen there’s a touch of floozy,

And it’s simply rare

In the upper air

And I wish to state

That I’ll always mate

With whatever drone I encounter.

Man is a fool for the latest movement,

He broods and broods on race improvement;

What boots it to improve a bee

If it means the end of ecstasy?

(He ought to be there

On a day that’s fair,

Oh, it’s simply rare

For a bee.)

Man’s so wise he is growing foolish,

Some of his schemes are downright ghoulish

He owns a bomb that’ll end creation

And he wants to change the sex relation,

He thinks that love is a handicap,

He’s a fuddydud, he’s a simple sap;

Man is a meddler, man’s a boob,

He looks for love in the depths of a tube,

His restless mind is forever ranging,

He thinks he’s advancing as long as he’s changing

He cracks the atom, he racks his skull,

Man is meddlesome, man is dull,

Man is busy instead of idle,

Man is alarmingly suicidal,

Me, I’m a bee.

I am a bee and I simply love it,

I am a bee and I’m darned glad of it,

I am a bee, I know about love:

You go upstairs, you go above,

You do not pause to dine or sup,

The sky won’t wait—it’s a long trip up;

You rise, you soar, you take the blue,

It’s you and me, kid, me and you,

It’s everything, it’s the nearest drone,

It’s never a thing that you find alone.

I’m a bee,

I’m free.

If any old farmer can keep and hive me,

Then any old drone may catch and wive me;

I’m sorry for creatures who cannot pair

On a gorgeous day in the upper air,

I’m sorry for cows who have to boast

Of affairs they’ve had by parcel post,

I’m sorry for man with his plots and guile,

His test-tube manner, his test-tube smile;

I’ll multiply and I’ll increase

As I always have—by mere caprice;

For I am a queen and I am a bee,

I’m devil-may-care and I’m fancy-free,

Love-in-air is the thing for me,

Oh, it’s simply
rare

In the beautiful air,

And I wish to state

That I’ll
always
mate

With whatever drone I encounter.

1945

DOROTHY PARKER

RHYME OF AN INVOLUNTARY VIOLET

When I ponder lovely ladies

Slipping sweetly down to Hades,

Hung and draped with glittering booty—

Am I distant, cold and snooty?

Though I know the price their pearls are

Am I holier than the girls are?

Though they’re lavish with their “Yes’s,”

Do I point, and shake my tresses?

No! I’m filled with awe and wonder.

I review my every blunder. . . .

Do I have the skill to tease a

Guy for an Hispano-Suiza?

I can’t even get me taxis

Off of Sydneys, Abes, and Maxies!

Do the pretty things I utter

To the kings of eggs and butter

Gain me pearls as big as boulders,

Clattering, clanking round my shoulders,

Advertising, thus, their full worth?

No, my dear. Mine come from Woolworth.

Does my smile across a table

Win a cloak of Russian sable?

Baby, no. I’d have to kill a

Man to get a near-chinchilla.

Men that come on for conventions

Show me brotherly attentions;

Though my glance be fond and melting,

Do they ever start unbelting

With the gifts they give the others?

No! They tell me of their mothers,

To the baby’s pictures treat me,

Say they want the wife to meet me!

Gladly I’d be led to slaughter

Where the ermine flows like water,

Where the gay white globes are lighted;

But I’ve never been invited!

So my summary, in fact, is

What an awful flop my act is!

1926

FULFILMENT

For this my mother wrapped me warm,

And called me home against the storm,

And coaxed my infant nights to quiet,

And gave me roughage in my diet,

And tucked me in my bed at eight,

And clipped my hair, and marked my weight,

And watched me as I sat and stood:

That I might grow to womanhood

To hear a whistle, and drop my wits,

And break my heart to clattering bits.

1927

BOHEMIA

Authors and actors and artists and such

Never know nothing, and never know much.

Sculptors and singers and those of their kidney

Tell their affairs from Seattle to Sydney.

Playwrights and poets and such horses’ necks

Start off from anywhere, end up at sex.

Diarists, critics, and similar roe

Never say nothing, and never say no.

People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;

God, for a man who solicits insurance!

1927

DON MARQUIS

MOTHER’S HOME AGAIN!

’Twas on the Eve of Christmas

A face against the pane

Peered in at the firelight;

’Twas worn with vice, and plain;

But all the children shouted:

“Mother’s home again!”