This afternoon, I was looking for a story collection called Nelson Algren's Book of Lonesome Monsters: 13 Masterpieces of Black Humor. My dad suggested I look at our anthology bookcase. (Yes, our bookcases are full, genre-designated, and replace what are known in other people's apartments as "walls.") I grew up walking past the bookcase dedicated solely to my dad's books and plays every day, meaning a) I only recently learned God does not live in a steambath off-broadway, and b) I wound up asking my father, Daddy, what's a "dick?" at age 5. But there was just one mysterious book on those BJF shelves that I never once inquired about: Black Humor, a collection of essays by Joe Heller, Nabokov, Edward Albee, and Thomas Pynchon (among others) he edited in 1965. Recently, whenever I'm working on my book, the title keeps haunting me. Judging by these excerpts from my dad's introduction, I now know why:
"There is a new mutative style of behavior afoot, one that can only be dealt with by a new, one-foot-in-the-asylum style of fiction."
"If you are doing anything as high-minded as examining society, the very best way to go about it is by examining first its throwaways, the ones who can't or won't keep in step...Perhaps 'bad' behavior of a certain kind is better than 'good' behavior."
"The novel is the proper place to open every door, to ask the final questions, turn over the last rock, to take a preposterous world by the throat and say okay, be preposterous, but also make damned sure you explain yourself."
"If you are alive today, and stick your head out of doors now and then, you know that there is a nervousness, a tempo, a near-hysterical new beat in the air, a punishing isolation and loneliness of a strange, frenzied new kind."
"The Black Humorist is a kind of literary Paul Revere, a fellow who unfreezes his mind, if only for a moment, and says, 'For Christ's sake, what in hell is going on here?'"
"There is a fading line between fantasy and reality, a very fading line, a goddamned, almost invisible line."
"The novel is the proper place to open every door, to ask the final questions, turn over the last rock, to take a preposterous world by the throat and say okay, be preposterous, but also make damned sure you explain yourself."
"If you are alive today, and stick your head out of doors now and then, you know that there is a nervousness, a tempo, a near-hysterical new beat in the air, a punishing isolation and loneliness of a strange, frenzied new kind."
"The Black Humorist is a kind of literary Paul Revere, a fellow who unfreezes his mind, if only for a moment, and says, 'For Christ's sake, what in hell is going on here?'"
"There is a fading line between fantasy and reality, a very fading line, a goddamned, almost invisible line."
BJF wrote this in the 60s–over forty years ago. But somehow this "near-hysterical beat in the air," the need to confront a preposterous world, and rising prominence of "society's throwaways" is eerily relevant today. Despite lacing his definition of the then-emerging genre with such ominous, esoteric themes, he ultimately noted that "the effective social critics are working through humor." And then I had a kicker for my book's elevator pitch: a black humor renaissance.
"There is an awful lot of questioning these days, some of it despairing, bleary-eyed, bedazzled, some of it young, vigorous, outrageous. And a group of novelists, very often working obliquely, coming at you from somewhere in left field, throwing you some laughs to get you to lower your guard [will] follow every labyrinthian corridor to its source."
~Dad, 1965
~Dad, 1965
Somewhat related is the fact that, while eye-ing our anthologies, I spotted a tiny red paperback called The Rascal's Guide: Naughty Women and How to Tame Them, with my father's name barefaced in bold-face on the spine. This odd collection was his very first Editor credit, published in 1959, making him just four years older than me at the time. Among the story titles:"What to Do When the Lady Is a Tease"
"How to Be Unfaithful"
"Southern Girls–Lousy Lovers?"
"Secrets of a New York Free-Loader"
"The Grande Olde Sport of Girl-Tickling"
"How to Lush It Up and Influence People"
"Making It on Madison Avenue"
"A Tip for Rogues: The Wildest Party in the World"
"How to Be a Damned Fool at a Convention"
Then I remembered the time my dad disliked one ex-boyfriend because he used the word "awesome" twice over dinner. When he disliked another because he had never "shown much interest" in my dad's books. Another because he "just seemed too calm."
The point? My elevator pitch may fail. My first manuscript may wind up in several recycling bins, stained several times by several manicured D-girls' red polish. Ideally, Knopf will publish it, commission a glossy Chip Kidd-designed cover, and feature it prominently in every Barnes & Noble across the country. But someone like my father was first published in the form of a 35¢ cringe-inducing cad's guide, earning the most laughs not from a reader, but fifty years later when his daughter recites its chapter titles back to him. But then? He went ahead and canonized Black Humor, instantly earning himself a spot in every index of every book dedicated to the genre written after his own.
