Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about humor in literature. To me, it seems that funny writing is often viewed as an inherently less important form of literature, less worthy of close analysis because it’s considered (correctly or incorrectly) less likely to provide significant commentary on life’s big issues.

It’s not surprising that people don’t always take humor seriously because, well, it seems like a contradiction. Funny writing is entertaining, and we usually seek out entertainment for its own sake. When we turn on the TV or listen to music, for instance, sometimes we’re looking for information or intellectual stimulation – but a lot of the time, we’re just hoping to be amused. The same is probably true when we read something funny – maybe the laugh is all we’re looking for so we don’t look any deeper.

When I heard Heather McHugh read at the Wallace Stevens Poetry Program, the thing that was most striking to me was how funny she was. It was unexpected – I haven’t been to a huge number of poetry readings, but based on my experience I was expecting a sort of stuffy intellectual person reading pretty-sounding, possibly cryptic lyrical passages about her search for self or her feelings about life and fate and death and all those kinds of issues. And she did read serious poetry – but there was also funny in there, and it surprised me. My professor for another creative writing course, the Art of Audio Narrative, expressed that same kind of surprise in response to an audio project I did on humor. He commented that the exploration of laughter and happiness is rare in audio narrative, although it’s common to hear long pieces dwelling on tragic or morbid topics.

In general, it seems like funny stuff isn’t even put on the same literary playing field as serious literature. As an English major, I’ve read The Wasteland more times than I really want to think about, and the majority of the reading I’ve done as a student of literature has been of a similarly serious nature. I have a hard time even coming up with occasions where I’ve discussed humorous literature in my courses. Jonathan Swift’s biting satire in A Modest Proposal and Gulliver’s Travels has its funny moments, for instance; and there are Shakespeare’s comedies, although they tend to be overshadowed by the weightier tragedies and histories; and of course Steve Almond’s short story collection Not That You Asked, which we read in Ellen’s creative writing course last semester, was hilarious. But in general, comedy seems to be considered a lesser form. Case in point: The professor teaching the drama course I’m taking this semester opened up the class on the first day by explaining that drama comes in two basic forms, tragedy and comedy – and that tragedy is more interesting, so we wouldn’t be discussing comedy this semester.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with focusing on serious subjects in literature – I think tragedy can tell us a lot about the human condition. But I think it’s weird that comedy seems to be viewed as less important, when it seems like humor can teach us a lot about ourselves, too. After all, human beings are the only animals that have the ability to express emotions through writing – and also the only animals that crack jokes*. So jokes seem like they must be at least a little bit important to what makes us human. And literature, to me, is basically just what happens when humans explore what it is to be human.

* I’d say ‘the only animals that laugh,’ but I think possibly there are other primates that engage in some similar behaviors; also, dolphins always seem to me to look like they’re laughing…possibly at us