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Humor: Torment Behind the Art

Edward L. Flaim

Serious Humor: An Oxymoron or Effective Tool?

I was sorely tempted to seek permission to skip this month’s column due to illness. Recently I underwent two operations to implant an intrathecal pump to ameliorate chronic pain syndrome. The first operation is relatively simple. The pain specialist sedated me, I remained conscious but oblivious, and he inserted a shunt into my intrathecal canal, which is essentially identical to a lumbar puncture or, for those who prefer more gruesome terminology, a spinal tap. He next ran a tube to a box-shaped contraption I wore around my neck, filled it with morphine and adjusted the dosage over four days to determine whether I was a proper candidate for the pump. I was. Goody, goody! Soon there would be no more complaints from relatives and friends about the massive doses of oxycontin and percocet I swallowed all day.

Two weeks later I returned to the hospital for abdominal surgery to implant the pump and run tubing under my skin into the intrathecal spinal canal, an overnight operation. I expected general anesthesia for this mother. No such luck. I remained conscious, screaming, for an hour and a half. Later my doctor informed me that half of those people awaiting surgery mysteriously vanished. So I had a legitimate reason for begging Judy and Joan to relieve me of this month’s duties.

However, I couldn’t bring myself to do so. I thought of the two people who actually read my column, and my sense of obligation set in. So here I sit, writhing in pain, serving those two connoisseurs of humor. Poor, poor pitiful me!

In last month’s column, I paid homage to Orson Scott Card’s Character & Viewpoint, specifically noting that “comedy almost always deals with pain, and comic characters almost always suffer.” Card was addressing humor as fiction.

However, humor is not always fictitious. As stated by William Zinsser in On Writing Well, “Humor is the secret weapon of the nonfiction writer. It’s secret because so few writers realize that humor is often their best tool—and sometimes their only tool—for making an important point.”

This appears to be a paradox. Writers of fiction realize that many of their readers haven’t a clue as to what they are attempting to accomplish. In On Writing Well, Zinsser recalls an inquiry as to a parody he wrote for Life. The question? "Should I refer to you as a humorist? Or have you also written anything serious?”

Zinsser responds, "If you’re trying to write humor, almost everything you do is serious. Few Americans understand this. Humorists are triflers who have never produced serious works. Pulitzer Prizes rarely go to the humorist. They go to the Hemingways and Faulkners who are indeed serious writers. The prizes rarely go to our humorists."

However, our humorists are serious writers. Once again, Zinsser describes their work perfectly. “They are as serious in purpose as Hemingway or Faulkner—a national asset in forcing the country to see itself clearly. Humor, to them, is urgent work. It’s an attempt to say important things in a special way that regular writers aren’t getting said in a regular way—or if they are, it’s so regular that nobody is reading it.”

In referring to Catch-22 and Dr. Strangelove, Zinsser asserts, “Those two works of comic invention are still standard points of reference for anyone trying to warn us about the military mentality that could blow us all up tomorrow. Joseph Heller and Stanley Kubrick heightened the truth about was just enough to catch its lunacy, and we recognize it as lunacy. The joke is no joke."

My friend, Oz—is this a cheap ploy to cast suspicion upon someone other than the actual perp? —was driving to Boston when he stopped at the entrance to the New Jersey Turnpike. He paid his toll and attempted to move on when the Man, a/k/a Cop, waved at him to pull over. The cop conducted a warrant-less search of Oz’s car and found an unloaded .25 Beretta. Oz was arrested, spent a night in jail and was released on bail the following day.

A preliminary hearing was scheduled for six months later to contest the legality of the search. Two months prior to this hearing, Oz received a letter from the President. “Greetings from the President of the United States.” Oz had been drafted.

He reported to his draft board as scheduled, prepared to serve his country by moving to Canada. No need to travel, though. The Draft Board found Oz too immoral to kill women, children and old folks after being arrested for possessing an unloaded, unregistered handgun. The army chose not to draft people familiar with firearms. The military felt Oz had an obvious propensity toward violence, something no war condones.

Oz still faced his preliminary hearing. The judge found the search of his car illegal, suppressed the evidence and Oz left the courtroom a free man, not entirely unscathed and definitely suffering. Attorneys are not cheap. But he felt it worth every cent to avoid fighting in what he considered an immoral war.

Humor is often based on pain. It may also be based on the lunacy of situations Sometimes pain is justified by the outcome and the revelation of lunacy in a purportedly sane society.

Oz never became as famous as Arlo Guthrie for his littering draft rejection. However, Oz’s rejection was even more absurd and ridiculous. Military logic. Another scribble in Ed’s Book of Oxymorons.
 

About the Author
Ed’s two readers have read his biography. For those who haven’t, you may find it in previous issues.

Ed thought he’d add a new tidbit. Ed cannot recall his draft classification other than what he informed the Maryland Bar Character Committee. The Army would draft women, children and old folks before resorting to drafting Ed.

Ed did play his part in the Vietnam War. Although he was an anti-war activist, Ed was not anti-soldier and solicited contributions from other anti-war activists who felt similarly. He and his anonymous supporters rented two apartments for returning veterans to wash the spit off their faces delivered by the ignorant who believed that 18-year-olds made foreign policy. Most of our returning new friends had finished their tours and said, “No, thank you, Uncle Sam,” when requested to serve a second tour. “We won’t be fooled again.” Others did return, mainly the poor, to accumulate more income to assist their families. Vietnam was not a rich man’s war, designed primarily to be fought by those who couldn’t or wouldn’t buy their way out.

This meager column is dedicated to those soldiers forced to fight in this conflict, particularly those friends whose names are now engraved on The Vietnam Memorial Wall and the walking and crippled wounded for whom the conflict will never end. Conflict. Vietnam was not a war, remember?