Harlan Ellison's Watching Part 23

"I called it a vulture, and also a carrion crow."

"Yes. You got it all wrong. Why did you do that?"

The laughter was now ubiquitous. The largish young man kept turning and looking. He was beginning to understand that whatever it was he'd said wrong, it was apparent to everyone else in the audience . . . but him. In anger, he turned back to me and demanded, "So why did you do that?!"

At which point I'd had about enough, and I said, as flatly and George S Pattorily as I could, "Because I d.a.m.n well felt like it."

My tone made it quite clear to those ridiculing the young man, that the game was over. Now came the lesson. "Sir," I said, "everyone is laughing at you because it is obvious from the story that I am familiar with the Prometheus legend and have, in fact, written a pastiche on that myth, a retelling, an updating, a variant version, if you wish. When one writes a variant on a well-established legend, one reinterprets it to contemporize it, or to focus on aspects the original either saw one way or ignored entirely. I used the heart, rather than the liver, because in the days when the Prometheus legend was new, it was commonly thought that the liver was the residence of the soul . . . which is why the victors often ate the livers of those they'd vanquished, to absorb the fallen enemy's bravery and wisdom. Did you ever hear this expression, 'Bring me his liver and lights'? That meant his soul and his eyes. But today we think of the heart as the organ of choice. As for the crow, or vulture, rather than the eagle . . . well, I wanted a darker image. We think of the eagle as our national symbol, as a creature of honor and fort.i.tude, soaring and pure. I wanted a bird that feasted on carrion. So I changed it. He isn't chained to a rock, either. These are what we call 'artistic license' and if used within the consistent framework of logic in a story, they are considered quite artful and legitimate."

I thought that would do it, and would get him off the hook. I thought anyone of even pa.s.sing intelligence would understand and be content. I thought I was dealing with a rational human being. What I was dealing with, sadly, was a stone science fiction fan.

"Well, I still think you shouldn't have written it wrong," he said, and sat down heavily, to a tsunami of hisses and catcalls. Realizing I could do no better, I threw up my hands and went on with the evening's presentation.

Perhaps medium long was inaccurate, because all of the foregoing is merely backstory for the punchline of the anecdote.

I thought no more about that interchange, returned to Los Angeles, and was startled a week later when I received a most troubled phone call from the then-fiction editor of Omni. (I hasten to advise that the fiction editor at that time was, and remains, a superlative writer, as well as a friend of many years. It was not the current fiction editor, Ellen Datlow, who has been at her post with distinction for quite a few years. The editor of whom I speak knows I bear him illimitable affection, and we have laughed over this anecdote many times. It is not told to embarra.s.s him, or to make him seem less worthy an editor than he proved himself. It just happens to be one of those dopey things we all do every once in a while, and I need it to make my point, so don't go looking for anything malicious, because it ain't there.) Anyhow. He called, and he said, "Listen, we got a letter in the office the other day, from a guy who heard you read 'On the Slab' at NYU, and he's pointed out a lot of errors in the story, and we'd like you to rewrite them to take care of it."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "You're putting me on!" I cried. "You mean to tell me that humorless dweeb wrote you a letter?!?!"

"Uh-huh."

"And you actually are taking it seriously, about a story that hasn't even been published yet, and you're asking me to honor the imbecile nitpicking of some yotz with a flat affect who may, for all I know, believe Bacon wrote Shakespeare's stuff, who may, for all I know, think Stephen Crane had no right to do a Civil War novel because he wasn't in the fight, who may, for all I know, interpret everything so literally that he wonders if the light goes out in the refrigerator when he closes the door? Is that what you're telling me?!"

My friend the editor fumfuh'd for a moment, and then said in a smaller voice, "Well, he said in the letter that it would embarra.s.s us at Omni if readers thought we didn't know it was Prometheus's liver, and not his heart, that was eaten . . . "

"Send back the story!" I howled. "I'll return your f.u.c.king check! This is unconscionable! It's deranged! I'm going to kill you!"

Well, it worked out just fine. I calmed down after the fourth phone call-yes, we discussed this hot and cold and tepid for more than a week-because he refused to send back the story (demonstrating a lot more good sense than previously), and at one point I said something like, "Look, kiddo, myth and legend are plastic, they're fluid, they're malleable. They belong to whatever culture takes them up. And we, as Artists, are required to examine and retool not only myths and legends, but all variations of those myths, and all commentaries on those myths and legends and variations! It is our b.l.o.o.d.y job, fer crissakes!" And along about the fifth or sixth phone call he came on the line and said, with awe in his voice, "How did you manage to do that?"

"Do what?"

"Get that into the book."

"What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"You telling me you haven't seen William Irwin Thompson's book, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light! Mythology, s.e.xuality, and the origins of culture? Everybody's reading it; it's knocking people on their a.s.ses; it's the cutting edge of new thinking about mythology."

I had not, at that moment, even heard about the Thompson book though now, six years later, I must have given away at least a dozen copies to other writers. And if you haven't found it yet, run don't crawl.

"So what's all this about me being in the book, or whatever?"

"No, you geek," he said, happy to turn it all back to me, "it's what you said that's in the book."

"And what wisdom is that, may I ask?"

I heard him riffling pages. "Listen to this: it's from the prologue." And this is what he read to me: The structural anthropologist urges us to ignore the orthodox who labor so patiently trying to eliminate the apocryphal variants from the one true text. The priests of the temple of Solomon worked to construct the canon of Biblical literature, and in this work the dubious folktales of the peasantry were dismissed, but for us a legend or midrash (a folktale variation on Biblical stories) may be a greater opening to the archetypal world than the overly refined reactions of the urban priestly intelligentsia.

(He stopped there, but the very next paragraph-page 11 of the St. Martin's Press hardcover edition-was even better:) Once we are freed from the quest for the one true version of a myth, we are also freed from the concern for determining the exact provenance of the variant. How can one tell where a myth comes from? A midrash from the Middle Ages may go back as an oral tradition into the darkness of time. Where do children's rhymes come from? What ancient motif is simply reclothed in a modern story or a children's skip-rope song? Can one really claim that the date of the singing is the date of the song? . . . Libraries have been burnt and whole religious movements wiped out because their belief and myths have been considered to be of dubious origin by the upholders of orthodoxy; yet it is sometimes precisely the heretical myth that opens a doorway into the archetypal world . . . But there are other reasons why all the version of a myth must be considered . . .

. . . and he goes on brilliantly for another two hundred and sixty pages-including feetnotes but excluding index-to codify them reasons for my not having to rewrite "On the Slab" to satisfy the witless pecksniffery of a stone science fiction fan. But had 1 not worked my magicks and caused William Irwin Thompson to write that book overnight so that St. Martin's Press could print it the next day and get it into the editor's paws by the following afternoon, I'd have had to return a check I'd long-since cashed and turned into groceries.

End of anecdote the second.

I approach the subject of this dissertation which is, in truth, a film review, as well as a discussion of one of the truly Forbidden Topics one does not broach with those who read magazines such as this one.

I won't keep you in suspense any longer. The thread that links my opening anecdotes is an obvious one: the prime mover in each is a person demonstrating boorishness posturing as wit. Narrowness of vision coupled with a literal-mindedness that is insensitive to a jocular interpretation. Both are so concretized in egocentrism that they have been walled off from recognition of the truth that insufficient knowledge has turned them into a parodic absurdity. They come to this unfortunate state, I submit, because they are devoid of true wit. And that, I further submit, as the core of my argument, is a widespread condition among science fiction readers and fans.

(Before I go on, let me state for the record that this is not a universal flaw in sf readers and fans. I speak here not of all, but of most.) If you take instant umbrage at this essay, consider for a moment that those who do not credit this absence in their own makeup will not be bothered. They will chuckle and murmur, "How true, how true." But those who twitch may well perceive a node of familiarity, and will rush to accuse the messenger of garbling the communique; for them, the self-examination may founder on guilt (however mild) and the potential revelation of this Forbidden Topic will be obscured by subconscious self-serving. For every Sidney Coleman and Mike Glyer, every Lee Hoffman and Mick Glicksohn, there are a hundred Marley E. Bechtels and Jacopo Madaros, two hundred Gerald B. Storrows and George Sokols.

The former group are well-known and unarguably funny men and a woman who also happen to be sf readers and fans; the latter group are sf readers who are, in my view, at one with the largish young man from the NYU audience. It is not important for our purposes here that you know the former group, or what it is they have said and written over the years that marks them as witty. They are offered as palliatives for those who will forget that I carefully said most, not all.

But the latter group are paradigms I need to press my premise that most readers of science fiction, and most fans, are devoid of true wit. So here is the litany of unbreathing metal that pa.s.ses for sensibility in these (otherwise probably wonderful) stone science fiction fans.

* In a clearly antic short story I wrote that appeared in Asimov's in December 1986, a fantasy t.i.tled "Laugh Track," the protagonist, a man given to first person recollections presented much in the manner of Damon Runyon, muses about his employment with a despicable tv producer named Bill Tidy. I wrote: Each of us has one dark eminence in his or her life who somehow has the hoodoo sign on us. Persons so cosmically loathsome that we continually spend our time when in their company silently asking ourselves What the h.e.l.l, what the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, what the everlasting Technicolor h.e.l.l am I doing sitting here with this ambulatory piece of offal? This is the worst person who ever got born, and someone ought to wash out his life with a bar of Fels-Naptha.

But there you sit, and the next time you blink, there you sit again. It was probably the way Catherine the Great felt on, her dates with Rasputin.

Bill Tidy had that hold over me.

In the September 1987 issue of Asimov's, Marley E. Bechtel of Kenmore, N Y had a letter published. The salient sections for our interest here are these: "Dear Dr. Asimov: "In the mid-December issue, there seem to be at least a couple of mistakes that should have been caught in the editing. First, in 'Neptune's Reach,' we are told . . . "

[And Bechtel goes on at some length to fault the story's author on what may well have been a valid technical point. Bechtel then gets to the second dire "mistake":]

"In Harlan Ellison's 'Laugh Track,' he comments that 'It was probably the way Catherine the Great felt on her dates with Rasputin.' How could they have dated, as she died in 1796 and he was not born until around 1871?"

To which one should properly respond, in the original Prometheus legend the line read "It was probably the way Fay Wray felt on her dates with King Kong."

Literalmindedness, pecksniffery, sententiousness; the egocentrism of needing to demonstrate a humorless familiarity with data that contravenes the purpose of an attempt at wit. The mark of the cloven hoof of the stone sf fan.

* In a recent installment of this column, I eased into a seminal discussion of Woody Allen as a consummate director of fantasy-an obviousness that seemed to me to have escaped the notice of most critics-with a completely hoked-up bit of tomfoolery that had me and Allen in a bathyscaphe at the bottom of the Cayman Trench, eating hot fudge sundaes. As almost everyone was aware, Woody had received both the Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1974 for Sleeper, but in my thesis that sf aficionados had overlooked much more significant fantasywork by Allen, I employed the literary contrivances known as absurdity, engrossment, farce and sarcasm, which included Allen's inquiring if he had never been awarded a Hugo (clearly untrue) because he was Jewish. I then cited as refutation the fact that I, as a Jew, had been so honored, as well as Silverberg and Asimov and others, and included in the list of prominent Jews who owned Hugos the well-known Mormon, Orson Scott Card. If those lunacies had not tipped off any but the dullest intellects that this was a bit of vaudeville, surely having Woody Allen get the bends as we surfaced in our bathyscaphe should have.

Yet the editors of this magazine (and I personally) received about a dozen letters protesting the content of that essay, all of them reading that crazy stuff as absolutely true!

A Gerald B. Storrow wrote, in part: " . . . are we to gather that Ellison considers it a worthwhile use of your pages to seriously ask [sic] ourselves if there is truly anti-Semitism in Hollywood?" Apart from splitting the infinitive, Mr. Storrow went on at some length seriously accusing me of "name-dropping" because I used Woody Allen's name. (How he expected me to talk about Allen without using his name is a manifestation of paralogia that amazes even one as jaded in these matters as I.) When I made the error of responding to Mr. Storrow's letter, I wrote: "I have long said that readers and fans of science fiction are as devoid of wit as cardboard; and sadly, sadly, my theory keeps reproving itself.

"A sense of humor isn't what counts. Everyone has some sort of rudimentary sense of humor. h.e.l.l, lizards, puppies and potato bugs have a sense of humor. It is wit that is in such short supply. And nowhere more tragically than among those who preen and strut with false pride that they are Slans, drenched in the ability to 'understand' science fiction."

I then pointed out all the glaring tip-offs that the essay had been written in an antic manner, suggesting that he might not really be as perceptive as his insulting letter contended. And I concluded as follows: "Yet this condition of yours does trouble me. While I'm not licensed to practice medicine, I would suggest a double-dose daily of James Thurber, Peter De Vries, Will Cuppy, Max Shulman, S. J. Perelman, Dave Barry and Daniel Ma.n.u.s Pinkwater. Stay away from fried foods and Henry James."

(Courtesy with the humorless, however, is a mugg's game, and it became obvious when this attempt to uncloud Mr. Storrow's mind produced further egregiously crabby letters, that the gentleman merely craved attention. This will be the last of that, you may be sure.) * George Sokol of Montreal sent a letter alternately praising and vilifying me, to what end I'm not sure even after rereading the letter several times. But the gist of it (though he obviously understood the bathyscaphelbends business was a put-on) was this: "Why . . . why would you want to include that ghastly bit about Mr. Allen getting the bends (oh, G.o.dly ghosts, that awful desease [sic] dreaded by all bathyscaphers!)?

"The very purpose of the bathyscaphe was so that the need for gradual decompression could be eliminated, thus eliminating the risk of getting the bends. The bathyscaphe is a pressurized, navigable underwater ship, or vehicle! Please, I would think you would know that whenever a writer is being cute while writing, he should try and be as sincere and real as possible, and not just pile on the 'style' for style's sake."

Well, Mr. Sokol is certainly being sincere and real, and in his sincerity and realoidness he reaffirms the thesis of this discussion. And he's one of the good guys who seems to be enjoying the columns! So I hope he'll believe I'm sincere and real when I tell him though I'm bewildered by the s&r of his letter, and consider him a nice fella for not being mean to me in his communique, I will raise this matter of liver versus bends, and eagle versus bathyscaphe on my next date with either Fay Wray or Catherine the Great, whoever comes first.

* And finally, we come to Jacopo M. Madaro of East Boston who took the following offhand drollery from my July column as matter for umbrage . . . I wrote: The potty is the last private place for a reader in the world. No one bothers you. Unless you live in a large Italian family, which is another sociological can of worms entirely.

Jacopo responded to my larking as follows: "It just happens that I am both Italian (a bona fide alien) and a sociologist. I am not aware of any sociological taxonomy based upon national or ethnic 'cans of worms.' Therefore, I have to conclude that your statement is well worthy its excretory context. Cordially yours, worms notwithstanding, Jacopo M. Madaro."

You think you get weird mail!?!

(Pause. I had not, in fact, planned for the preamble to my thesis and review to go on at this length. Honest. But once I got into it, the floodgates opened. And during the days through which I have been writing this, I have had occasion to read the preceding sections to a fairly large number of professionals in the sf field. Just to make sure that what I was saying here was not merely a product of my meanspirited nature. Was I b.u.mrapping fans without cause? Does anyone else feel as I do about this subject, that fans in the main are a humorless bunch who could drive you crazy if you try to write funnystuff? So I called F--, and I called M--, and I called W---, and I called A--long distance, and a couple of others, and everyone of them whooped and laughed and said, "True! How true! Oh, yeah, ain't that true!" And then they told me their proofs of the thesis, and then they egged me on to sic'm, to write it all, and then they made me promise I wouldn't use their names because if anyone was going to get killed for this, as much as they loved me, they'd rather it was I, not them. So okay, B & N & D & D, I won't used your names, you buncha pork sc.r.a.ps, you! And I make this pause, and tell you all this, because each of the above initials said I had to include my reply to Dr. Jacopo M. Madaro, which I hadn't intended to do because it was what he wrote that counts, not what I replied. But since they all made such a who-struck-John about it, I've decided to include the response here; but I feel I am trying your patience with these many side-channels to the main stream, and I want to spare those of you who grow weary. So. My letter of response to Dr. Madaro follows. It will be set in smaller type so you can identify where it starts and ends. If you wish to skip it, feel free. If not, read on.) Dear Dr. Madaro: Sorry it took me from May till now to respond to your charming note. I've been busy.

Apart from the usual umbrage taken by those who puff up their chests in letters because they think they are safe from actual, slap-in-the-face retribution for unsolicited rudeness, your rush to the defense of all Italians everywhere, since the dawn of time till the final tick of eternity (one presumes), is touching. Imbecile, but touching.

Nonetheless, I will reply to your snitty remarks as if they made sense. I do this in the spirit of kindness toward the afflicted; something like social work among the intellectually impacted.

I had not realized that merely by claiming ownership of the appellation "sociologist" one was accorded the right to issue obiter dicta on all human behavior. But as you not only manifest a need to make such p.r.o.nouncements, but apparently are unfamiliar with a commonplace in large Italian families that I and a number of my Italian-American friends have experienced firsthand, let me poke a pinhole in the darkness and permit the light of new data to illuminate your store of taxonomical minutiae: In large Italian families (and to very nearly the same degree in Jewish families of any size), unless they are extremely wealthy and have a plethora of bathrooms, members of the household bang on the door to the toilet and demand immediate access, at any hour of the day or night, even if you sneak in at 4 AM to read Thomas Hardy or Playboy.

There is a bewildering manifestation of some sort of specialized telepathy in this matter. Even if dead asleep or outside in the yard, members of large Italian families (and to lesser degree in Jewish families of any size) rise as if under the voodoo command, and rush to the potty to bang on the door and demand immediate access. Silent as the grave, as one may keep, they know you are in there, and the banging commences.

This is a fact of life. Sorry you never caught up with it in your pursuit of the t.i.tle "sociologist." Sometime maybe I'll explain to you why women put a roll of toilet paper on the roller one way, and men do it the other way. But enough education is enough. We mustn't strain, don't you agree?

And in conclusion: as a Jew who was raised in and around many Italian families, I a.s.sure you my offhand comment was made on the basis of experience in the field. It was not offered as a veiled slur against Italians. I know what a tough time you have keeping Italian names off the gangster characters in TV shows, and I don't want you to think I was trying to add to your burden. Yet I confess to a sinister subliminal resentment of Italians, based no doubt on my having discovered that Columbus was a Jew, and his discovery of America was likely his way of finding a place for his people safe from the Inquisition, and the resultant animus I harbor deep within myself at Italian Catholics copping the credit for yet another superlative act by the lowly Semite.

Is that what you were fishing for? Yours in unbridled bigotry, with the hope that the next time you try for "cultured prose" you scribble a note deserving of something better than a C-.

For those of you who seek the core of the argument, your reward is at hand.

There is far less humor written in the genre of sf than in almost any other category of fiction I can think of, with the possible exceptions of the western, the heavy-breathing bodice-rippers (unless you interpret them not at face-value but as hilarious put-ons from word one), and the Dostoevskian angst-klatsch. I submit that's because those who write this stuff understand a priori that the audience is muy serioso, and the giggles won't go down smoothly. If one tries to name the writers of sf who have made a mark with humor, the list is not a long one. De Camp, Reynolds, Fred Brown, Geo. Alec Effinger, Harvey Jacobs, Bob Sheckley, sometimes d.i.c.k Lupoff, and perhaps a few more whose names escape me at the moment, with absolutely no intent to ignore those equally as proficient but simply absent from recall as I write this.

(I have to write apologia like that. You do send mail.) And though you'll get no argument from me that humor is a specialized way of thinking and writing, nonetheless it is self-evident from existing evidence of sixty-one years of material published as scientifiction, sf, sci-fi, or science fiction, that this is not a canon overbr.i.m.m.i.n.g with yocks.

As I wrote earlier in this essay, possibly years earlier in this essay, a "sense of humor" is not the problem. It is the Gobi aridity of what does pa.s.s for a sense of humor among fans and readers. It is the absence of True Wit. And so we will understand, in the General Semantics sense, what is meant by "humor" and what is meant by "wit," which are no more the same thing than "morality" is the same as "ethics," I adjure you to pay heed to my lexicological chums from the unabridged Random House Dictionary of the English Language.

hu*mor (hyMM'mar or, often, yMM'-), n. 1. a comic quality causing amus.e.m.e.nt: the humor of a situation. 2. the faculty of perceiving what is amusing or comical: His humor buoyed him up through many depressing situations. 3. the faculty of expressing the amusing or comical: The author's humor came across better in the book than in the movie. 4. comical writing or talk in general; comical books, skits, plays, etc. 5. humors, amusing or comical features: humors of the occasion. 6. mental disposition or temperament. 7. a temporary mood or frame of mind: He's in a bad humor today. 8. a capricious or freakish inclination; whim or caprice; odd trait. 9. Old Physiol. one of the four elemental fluids of the body, blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile, regarded as determining, by their relative proportions, a person's physical and mental const.i.tution. 10. Biol. any animal or plant fluid, whether natural or morbid, such as the blood or lymph. 11. out of humor, displeased; dissatisfied; cross: The chef is feeling out of humor again and will have to be pampered, -v.t. 12. to comply with the humor or mood of in order to soothe or make content or more agreeable: to humor a child. 13. to adapt or accommodate oneself to. Also, esp. Brit., humour. [ME (h)umour < af="">< l="" (h)umor-="" (s.="" of="" (h)umor)="" moisture,="" fluid="" (medical="" l:="" body="" fluid),="" equiv.="" to="" um(ere)="" to="" wet="" +="" -or="" -or']="" -hu'mor*ful,="" adj.="" -hu*mor*less,="" adj.="" -hu'mor*less*ness,="" n.="" -syn.="" 3.="" humor,="" wit="" are="" contrasting="" terms="" that="" agree="" in="" referring="" to="" an="" ability="" to="" perceive="" and="" express="" a="" sense="" of="" the="" clever="" or="" amusing.="" humor="" consists="" princ.i.p.ally="" in="" the="" recognition="" and="" expression="" of="" incongruities="" or="" peculiarities="" present="" in="" a="" situation="" or="" character.="" it="" is="" frequently="" used="" to="" ill.u.s.trate="" some="" fundamental="" absurdity="" in="" human="" nature="" or="" conduct,="" and="" is="" generally="" thought="" of="" as="" more="" kindly="" than="" wit:="" a="" genial="" and="" mellow="" type="" of="" humor;="" his="" biting="" wit.="" wit="" is="" a="" purely="" intellectual="" manifestation="" of="" cleverness="" and="" quickness="" of="" apprehension="" in="" discovering="" a.n.a.logies="" between="" things="" really="" unlike,="" and="" expressing="" them="" in="" brief,="" diverting,="" and="" often="" sharp="" observations="" or="" remarks.="" 8.="" fancy,="" vagary.="" 12.="" humor,="" gratify,="" indulge="" imply="" attempting="" to="" satisfy="" the="" wishes="" or="" whims="" of="" (oneself="" or="" others).="" to="" humor="" is="" to="" comply="" with="" the="" mood,="" fancy,="" or="" caprice="" of="" another,="" as="" in="" order="" to="" satisfy,="" soothe,="" or="" manage:="" to="" humor="" an="" invalid,="" a="" child.="" to="" gratify="" is="" to="" please="" by="" satisfying="" the="" likings="" or="" desires:="" to="" gratify="" someone="" by="" praising="" him.="" indulge="" suggests="" a="" yielding="" to="" wishes="" by="" way="" of="" favor="" or="" complaisance,="" and="" may="" imply="" a="" habitual="" or="" excessive="" yielding="" to="" whims:="" to="" indulge="" an="" unreasonable="" demand;="" to="" indulge="" an="" irresponsible="" son.="" -ant.="" 12.="" discipline,="">

wit1 (wit), n. 1. the keen perception and cleverly apt expression of those connections between ideas which awaken amus.e.m.e.nt and pleasure. 2. speech or writing showing such perception and expression. 3. a person having or noted for such perception and expression. 4. understanding, intelligence, or sagacity: He doesn't have wit enough to come in out of the rain. 5. Usually, wits. a. mental abilities or powers of intelligent observation, keen perception, ingenious contrivance, etc.: using one's wits to get ahead. b. mental faculties; senses: to lose one's wits. 6. at one's wit's end. See end1 (def. 23). 7. keep or have one's wits about one, to remain alert and observant; be prepared for or equal to anything: It pays to keep your wits about you if you plan to drive at night. 8. live by one's wits, to provide for oneself by employing ingenuity or cunning; live precariously: He traveled around the world, living by his wits. [ME, OE; c. G Witz, leel vit; akin to WIT2] Syn. 1. drollery, facetiousness, waggishness, repartee. See humor. 4. wisdom, sense, mind.

Now if you have paid close attention to the section in, the definition of humor noted as Syn. 3, you and I will both share an understanding of why "sense of humor" isn't the problem, but "true wit" is. Because most of what pa.s.ses for humor in this genre is a sorry adumbration of that which we find howlingly funny in other literary forms.

In the vast archives of sf we find an inadequate portion of caricature and burlesque; absurdity and buffoonery (at least of the intentional sort); ridicule and farce; satire and high comedy; burlesque and black humor; overstatement and engrossment; travesty, sarcasm, slapstick and drollery. There are some exceptions, of course. There are and have been writers who could not keep a straight face as they wrote some of this longwinded, far-flung, heroically self-important fustian . . . and they have palliated the pomposity of it all. But even those who have done it well, done it well enough so that we actually smiled once in a while as we read, and even more rarely laughed out loud at the printed page-laughing with the author's invention, rather than at it-have done it as five-finger exercise. No decent living can be made from humor in this field, not even by a Sheckley or a Goulart or a Harrison.

Try to recall the last full-length comic novel you read that could be counted as science fiction. Sheckley and Goulart come immediately to mind and then pffft! Spinrad, who reads a lot of this stuff, when I called him to jog my memory in case some prominent pract.i.tioner had slipped through the interstices, came up with the same list I'd already a.s.sembled, and stressed Effinger. So I called Effinger to see how well he'd done with humor, and he said, "Are you kidding? They hate my funny stuff. They send me letters asking me why such-and-such is supposed to be funny. I write it to amuse myself. It's hard enough making a paycheck with the serious stuff, but why get myself creamed on purpose trying to make fans laugh? Most of them don't get the point, anyhow."

But fans do enjoy one form of humor. And that is the saddest part of it all.

The form of humor that fans dote on, that they slaver over, that they indulge in among themselves, that they slather across fanzine pages, that they interlineate and cross-quote, that they revere and unmercifully visit on the rest of us is . . .

The pun.

That most witless thalidomide b.a.s.t.a.r.d of True Wit. That intellectually-debased sediment found at the lowest level of humor. That coa.r.s.e-surfaced imposition on our good offices that never produces a t.i.tter, a giggle, a chuckle or a laugh, but which takes as a measure of its effectiveness . . . a groan of pain. The pun is what sf fans and readers hoist banners in aid of.

But (as film historian and sf reader Bill Warren pointed out, when I called to read him the preceding pages) fans don't even do real puns. They change one letter of a word and think "sci-fri" is hilarious. Kindergarten word-play.

There are some things in this life that one definitely does not do.

You don't make jokes about air piracy as you go through the metal detector of O'Hare Airport. You don't drive down to East L. A. and scream Puto pendejo! at a Chicano street gang. You don't eat unidentifiable mushrooms while on a forest stroll. You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger, and you don't mess around with Jim.

While in Paris, during a sober interview on French television, because I was p.i.s.sed at Parisian rudeness, I vouchsafed the opinion that the one thing the French know nothing about is love. You can tell the French that their cooking sucks, that their army is comprised of cowards, or that their admiration for Jerry Lewis proves they have no taste, but you do not tell them they don't understand love. There remains a warrant for my arrest, still valid in France.

Similarly, one does not tell fans they have no sense of humor. That fans are clever beyond belief is Accepted Wisdom with which one does not tamper. To write an essay of this length, pointing out what nearly every sf professional, knows but will never say aloud, is tantamount to suicide.

But because that is so, in my view, it explains why sf fans and readers have championed one of the worst films in recent memory, s.p.a.ceb.a.l.l.s (Brooksfilms/MGM) co-written, produced and directed by Mel Brooks.

See how it all ties together, however long it took me?

s.p.a.ceb.a.l.l.s rivals L'Avventura as the single most obstinately boring film of all time. An invincibly tasteless farrago of lame jokes, obvious parodies, telegraphed punchlines, wretched acting and idiot plot so sad that its funniest bit is a rip-off of Chuck Jones's "One Froggy Evening."

Mel Brooks. Since The Producers we have watched a Brobdingnagian wit shrink in on itself as if suffering from some hideous malaise, with only one period of remission-Blazing Saddles and Yowng Frankenstein (197374)-until it has become dwarfish. And if "dwarfish," the sensibility that has given us s.p.a.ceb.a.l.l.s goes by the name Dopey. And its confreres are certainly Sleazy, Party, Mockie, Shallow, Sleepy and Tyro. Party makes all the scatological and potty-training remarks; Tyro is in charge of the "home movies" look and sound of the film; Shallow selects the subjects to be satirized; Sleepy is in charge of keeping the boredom quotient high; Sleazy makes all the soph.o.m.oric s.e.x comments and the s.e.xist asides as if he had just discovered his wee-wee; and Mockie makes sure there is an abundance of self-hating Jewish references. But Dopey is the governing intelligence, selected by secret ballot on which None of the Above is the lone candidate.

An incredibly self-conscious movie. One grows weary of the Moonlighting shtick (totemized as "breaking the fourth wall between players and audience") in which characters turn and speak to the camera: "Nice dissolve." And when the head and arm of the Statue of Liberty come spiraling down out of s.p.a.ce to the planet, only those who batten on puns can fail to perceive that they are about to see an hommage to Planet of the Apes, and only they laugh when the icons. .h.i.t the sand and two people in monkey masks ride up. (When I saw this film in the company of a selected fan audience, and they did indeed react as described, it gave me a firm conviction that Brooks had reached precisely the audience he wanted: adolescents, and those who suffer from arrested adolescence.) What sort of dribblebrain chooses to parody the Star Wars films (themselves parodies of the first of the trilogy and the totality a parody of the parodic form called "s.p.a.ce opera") ten years too late? Hardware Wars, a twelve-minute live-action short written, produced and directed by Ernie Fosselius in 1978 did it all funnier, faster, and with infinitely greater panache.

The writing is so much succotash that one has to have one's leash jerked to remember that this howling, blithering runamuck was actually directed by something approximating a human intelligence, not just slopped together in a tureen in some biochemistry lab, plugged into a Voss electrostatic generator and shot up with ten million volts of idiocy, at which point it leaped through a cas.e.m.e.nt window and ran off shrieking into the countryside, with a deranged Mel Brooks tearing his hair, rending his flesh, ripping his raiment, and shouting, "It's alive! It's alive!"

Brooks's direction is an infirm, broken-backed, whimpering creature, shot through the brain and the heart, and left to thrash out its tormented death in the bush. Direction that does not even have the sense to be pa.s.sively bad, but is Brooks's usual bombastic, farting, geshryingly aggressive one-man Grand Guignol . . . written, directed and acted by Brooks with the same maturity and insight one encounters at lunchtime in a grade school, when one of your playmates turns his eyelids inside-out just as you're biting into your peanutb.u.t.ter&jelly sandwich.

Brooks continues to be more interested in-perhaps obsessed with-his own obnoxious comic persona than anything else, to the sacrifice of pacing, content, idea development or even honest humor above the level of the tuchis or bellyb.u.t.ton. He is a greedy talent, unwilling to give up a single ort from the groaning board of his films to other performers, sequential storytelling, or the ultimate primacy of loyalty to the work as a whole. It is a stark demonstration of disrespect for the audience, a loathing that says, "Open your mouth, I wanna pee in it again." He will cut the throat of logic, put out the eyes of artistic ambition, and disembowel integration of gag with story for the sake of one more booger or fart.

The moral of this film is: don't trust the coming attractions. (Your physician would refer to them technically as "trailers.") The trailers for s.p.a.ceb.a.l.l.s were hilarious. Kids, don't try this at home.

And though s.p.a.ceb.a.l.l.s made $28 million after 26 days, it is considered a critical and financial basket case. But it has been halloo'ed and praised by flotillas of sf fans and readers. (It is only interesting, I suppose, that Ebert-an ex-fanzine publisher and one-time fan-loved it while Siskel-with whom I seem to agree only when a two-headed calf is born-found it a dreary effort about as momentarily filling as a toxic waste burrito, my words not his.) It is a film fans seem to love, following my thesis, because True Wit is wasted on them. They respond to the pun, to the trumpeting bleat of dumb humor . . . like the call of the wild as like seeks like.

There have been witty films. The Princess Bride is an exemplar. Splash. Dr. Strangelove. And outside the genre, a plethora, most evident at the moment being In the Mood.

But s.p.a.ceb.a.l.l.s is a fan's movie.

It is one sustained pun groan from opening credits to fadeout. One throws up one's hands in sorrow and frustration, and wonders why we bother.

Why the liver and not the heart.

Why the carrion calf and not the eagle.

Why Catherine the Great never had a date with King Kong.

And why it should be that the literature we love should be dominated by readers and fans who are capable of laughing at this film . . . the same sort of people who laugh at paraplegics and old men falling downstairs.

The great French director Alain Resnais (and I've quoted this before) calls Brooks and his ilk, "The smart-aleck directors." Those who crave such inordinate portions of self-attention that they abandon all hope or desire for anything like Art or even a good story. And fandom clasps s.p.a.ceb.a.l.l.s to its Kiss-A-Wookiee T-shirt. Lepetomane lives! The pun rides triumphant!

Now don't be angry because I revealed the Forbidden Truth. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you folks are as clever as you think you are. Maybe I'm not as clever as I think I am. Maybe pigs'll fly.

Just remember: who loves ya, baby?

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction / February 1988 INSTALLMENT 29:.