HUMOR IS SERIOUS BUSINESS

By H. N. Burdett

Insomnia in the wee, small hours of the morning is a personal affliction of relatively recent vintage. There are books at my bedside to ensure that, should they occur, such hours will be spent more productively than tossing and turning them away.

In preparation for slumber interruptus, volumes by E. B. White, S. J. Perelman and Joseph Epstein are within easy reach. Anything more challenging would have the effect of caffeine at a time when sleep is required, not stimulation.

At 4 a.m. on a recent morning, the old grey cells were up and running and annoying the hell out of the rest of my contentedly dormant self. I listlessly reached for one of my most beloved of all books: the one that shows the aforementioned Mr. White at his typewriter on the front cover, apparently taking dictation from a dachshund.

There's a dachshund who answers to the name of Tribbie in my family. She is owned by my daughter and grandson. In recent months I have been infused with inspiration not only by Tribbie, but also by a papillon who answers to the name of Penny, as well as by a veritable herd of felines who answer to no names, or anything else, but were nonetheless christened, respectively, Mowie, Conan, Cal and Ellen.

The aforementioned felines and canines do not so much get along as tolerate one another, that is for the most part. Their truce is an uneasy one. Tribbie and Penny not infrequently feel compelled to defend their downstairs territory against all enemies foreign and domestic, bewhiskered creatures all, with impressive ferocity. The barking ones, for reasons unknown to me, are not allowed upstairs in my daughter's house; it may have something to do with their voracious appetites and the need to protect the purring ones from near certain starvation.

Cal and Tribbie sometimes wrestle. When I first witnessed one of their contests, I was horrified to mistake it for a life and death struggle. But rather than blood, I observed a kind of camaraderie. I can never figure out who wins these matches, or even who may be the better wrestler. To the combatants, such calculations miss the point, which, I take it, is, mere exercise.

But I digress. Let's see, I believe I was expounding upon The Essays of E. B. White, which I selected in an effort not to waste three or four hours of insomnia. On the back dust cover of this particular volume, there is a quote from the author himself, his spot on characterization of the essayist as "a self-liberated man (I envision Joan Didion wincing), sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him is of general interest."

To double down on my assurance that should my reading ploy succeed I might return to much needed rest with a smile of contentment, I found White's wonderful piece titled, "Some Remarks on Humor" and was particularly taken with the following passage:

Practically everyone is a manic depressive of sorts, with his up moments and his down moments, and you certainly don't have to be a humorist to taste the sadness of a situation and mood. But there is often a rather fine line between laughing and crying, and if a humorous piece of writing brings a person to the point where his emotional responses are untrustworthy and seem likely to break over into the opposite realm, it is because humor, like poetry, has an extra content. It plays close to the big hot fire which is Truth, and sometimes the reader feels the heat.

Reflecting upon that dollop of wisdom, any chance of stealing a couple of more hours of overdue rest was totally negated. Whenever I re-read a few of White's pieces (as with peanuts, it's hard to stop at one), I invariably conclude that he has already written everything worth writing. But then I have virtually the same invariable conclusion whenever I read Shakespeare and Saul Bellow. In the intimidating shadows of those giants, I pick up my pen and audaciously scratch out my own take on the world and its foibles. The gods must be in stitches.