Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2015 Mark Twain, James Thurber, and David Sedaris: American Literary Humorists Liz Sills Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Sills, Liz, "Mark Twain, James Thurber, and David Sedaris: American Literary Humorists" (2015). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3948. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3948 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. MARK TWAIN, JAMES THURBER, AND DAVID SEDARIS: AMERICAN LITERARY HUMORISTS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Communication Studies by Liz Sills B.A., Transylvania University, 2008 M.A., University of Montana, 2011 May 2015 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This document could never have been completed, first and foremost, without the continual support of my advisor, Nathan Crick. My committee members have also been invaluable, each in their own way, so special thanks as well to Andy King, Gregory Schufreider, and Bridgette Davis. Thanks as well to Sarah Hayden, Steve Schwarze, Shiv Ganesh, Charles Mann, and Kent Filbel for being astounding troves of conversation and ideas. Finally, thank you – so, so much – to Matthew Perreault, for being himself. Finally, of course, I would be remiss not to thank Samuel Clemens, James Thurber, and David Sedaris. They, most of all, made this possible. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………………..ii ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………..v CHAPTER ONE: DEFINING THE AMERICAN LITERARY HUMORIST……..…………1 Defining the Funny…………………………………………………………………......1 Defining Rhetoric………………………………………………………………………6 The Funny and Rhetoric…………………………………………………………….....10 Defining Ideology……………………………………………………………………...25 The Funny, Rhetoric, and Ideology……………………………………………………28 Next Up………………………………………………………………………………...36 References……………………………………………………………………...………37 CHAPTER TWO: QUESTIONS OF ENTERTAINMENT…………………………………...40 Defining the Media of an Author’s Time…………………………………………….....44 Finding an Audience for the American Funny…………………………………………54 Countering Mass Society…………………………………………………………….....62 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………73 References……………………………………………………………………………....74 CHAPTER THREE: MARK TWAIN………………………………………………………….76 Twain’s Audience………………………………………………………………………77 Audience Agency……………………………………………………………………….89 Ideology and Practice…………………………………………………………………...95 Funny Popularity……………………………………………………………………….102 The Resonance of Twain’s Funniness………………………………………………….122 Twain’s Hiccups Today……………………………………………………………......126 Appreciation from a Distance………………………………………………………….133 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...141 References………………………………………………………………………………143 CHAPTER FOUR: JAMES THURBER….……………………………………………….......146 Thurber’s Audience……………………………………………………………………147 Thurber’s Funny Influence…………………………………………………………….164 Thurber’s Resonance, Then and Now…………………………………………………178 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..197 References………………………………………………………………………….......199 CHAPTER FIVE: DAVID SEDARIS..…………………………………………………….....202 Sedaris’s Audience………………………………………………………………….....206 Sedaris’s Popularity and Importance…………………………………………………..226 A Contemporary Look at a Contemporary Author……………………………………239 Sedaris in the Future………………………………………………………….………..249 References……………………………………………………………………………..252 iii CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………….255 VITA………………………………………………………………………………....………..261 iv ABSTRACT This analysis is an attempt to study funny texts without destroying their funniness. To wit, I examine the works of three writers who I have identified as the hallmarks of the institution of the American Literary Humorist during the generations through which such individuals have existed. These include Mark Twain, James Thurber, and David Sedaris, all of whom are often identified as the standout funny writers of their generation, and all of whom are often compared to each other in content and personality. To understand their texts, I examine each of them in light of the times in which they live and the ideologies that populated their contemporary public spheres. I use that as a fulcrum to examine how their works resonate in their own times and also to speculate how they might rub contemporary readers as they continue to be celebrated as pinnacles in the pantheon of American letters. v CHAPTER ONE: DEFINING THE AMERICAN LITERARY HUMORIST “Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.” ~Mark Twain in Following the Equator (1897/2011) “Well, there isn’t a trace of humor in communism, is there?” ~James Thurber, The New York Times Book Review (1952/1989) “If you aren’t cute, you may as well be clever.” ~David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000) The following chapter lays some groundwork for the analysis ahead. It defines terms, overviews theory, and previews arguments. Its goal is to find the sticking place where the interplay of the American Literary Humorist with the American public can be analyzed. This spot lies, cheerfully, at the intersection of funniness, rhetorical impact, aesthetics, and ideology. Without any of these components, we lose one of the quintessential characteristics of this purportedly unique cultural figure. Without funniness we lack laughter, without rhetoric we lack an audience, without aesthetics we lack writing, and without ideology we lack the common ground of American-ness. As such, this chapter is going to flesh out the parameters of this theoretical intersection. Its interior, of course, is far too vast and diverse to categorize here. We must focus on the container or be swept away by the limitless potential of the thing contained. But as we overview each of these components, we gain some idea of how they come together to form the niche in which the American Literary Humorist hones his craft. To begin, we’ll delve right into the theoretical meat of the humorist’s work, which is the nature of his funniness. Defining the Funny Although we use the term “humorist” throughout this analysis quite simply because it has long ago been coined as the go-to moniker for men like Twain, Thurber, and Sedaris, it actually 1 over-essentializes the nature of their material. “Humorists” may work in either comedy or humor, for example, or more specifically they may wield satire or burlesque, or they may employ any of a number of other strategies to create a buildup toward the tension-releasing payoff of laughter. As such, this analysis will not refer to the content of these writers’ work exclusive as “humor;” instead, it will revolve around their quality of “funniness,” or their tendency to deal in “the funny.” This terminology will avoid semantic confusions that might result from trying to identify particular instances of work as either “comedy” or “humor” or some other instance of the broad range of species of funny discourse. Furthermore, whereas “comedy” and “humor” sound like awfully stuffy academic terms for a concept that is supposed to be lighthearted and whimsical, it seems much more appropriate to refer to the institution of “the funny” with a phrase that often makes people smile or giggle. “The funny” it shall be, therefore, and it shall itself be a little funny. Having established this overarching term, though, we’ll proceed to flesh out some of the distinctions that it glosses over, why those distinctions are important, and how all of the subgenres of The Funny come together under the umbrella of things that elicit laughter. The Funny is often intuitively defined in a gratingly tautological way: something exhibits funniness if it’s funny, and it’s funny if it exhibits funniness. Alternatively, The Funny is often approached from an “I know it when I see it” angle, since it’s assumed that everybody can figure out what funniness is for themselves because most people have the capacity for laughter. But these definitions, while useful in everyday conversation, give us little idea of the craft or cognition that leads up to that happy affective payoff of laughter. Tension reduction gives us a great springboard toward understanding the funniness of things. Laughter is sometimes understood as an evolutionary response to a threat being neutralized, which is why many individuals laugh in a way that seems reminiscent of sobbing or 2 actually cry when they laugh too hard – or why infants laugh during a game of peek-a-boo when their parent emerges safely from their brief but provoking disappearance behind their hands (Morris, 1967; Sroufe and Waters, 1976). When something is funny, therefore, it follows a period of mounting discomfort, a momentary shift in perspective during which the discomfort is neutralized and revealed to be safe, and then a resulting ease of tension, often through the physical act of laughing (which evolutionary theorists argue is a sound designed to carry to others and spread the word that safety is at hand, thus our greater tendency to laugh