padroni di commedia

Midweek, and the early morning calm of my still-dark bed-sitting room (which doubles as Danse Macabre's European nerve-centre) is shattered by the phone.
'Uhh?'

'Carrière here.'

'Who? What ti--?'

'ADAM Carrière…'

'Wh--?'

'The publisher, you idiot. I need you to do the comedy issue's intro.'

'Adam? It's four in the morning here.'

'Yeah? No time to talk now--so I'll have it by the weekend, right?

'Well…'

'Good--You know the drill: not overlong, informative, tight, whet the appetite for the good stuff…'

(I can quite clearly hear noises off: bottles clinking; a cork popping; excited teenage squealing.)

Female voice: Adam, come ON! You PROMISED we'd do ching-ching at The Rampart!

Adam: I'm doing business here, all right, woman?

Male voice: C'mon, Transylvania; as your attorney, I advise you it's time to hit the Strip.

Adam: Coming, coming--GODDAMNIT!

(A high-powered engine revs and whines menacingly in the Vegas night; Adam speaks back into the phone, sneeringly) 'And at least TRY and put a couple of chuckles in.'

'Can I--?'

'No.' Click. And he was gone.

For us, Comedy means something that makes us laugh, whether it's stand-up, writing, sit-com, cartoon--whatever. But apparently its meaning has shifted since the Ancient Greek word komoidia, which came to mean a story where there was a happy(ish) ending--as distinct from Tragedy where everybody ends up--sort of--dead.

As far as THEY (the folk who study this stuff) can tell, the word itself probably originally referred to village revels, fertility rites--that kind of thing, with bawdy songs and recitations thrown in. Those zany* Ancient Greeks would also have a good laugh at stereotyped characters and people the audience would have known--public figures for example.

(Already sounding familiar isn't it!)

In Poetics, Aristotle** defines Comedy (we get the English word via Latin comoedia, and Italian commedia) as one of four genres of literature; the other three being Tragedy, Epic, and Lyric. He takes the view that comedy originates in the light treatment of base and ugly subjects; adding its origins are not clear, as it wasn't really treated seriously from the start (a certain soft irony there, isn't there--not treating comedy seriously--whatever next?)

From then to now, and in different places, all sorts of comedy forms have thrived--each bringing their own conventions to the party--conventions the audience would have known well. And, of course, people inevitably took what they liked from one style, and mixed it in somewhere else: the Italian Commedia dell'arte for example (itself going back to Roman, and ultimately Greek comedies) with its stock comic characters and plots, which French dramaturges like Molière drew on heavily.

(Something obviously tickled a few funny bones--Tartuffe is STILL performed in London's West End.)

Then there's satire, from Swift through to modern satirists like P.J. O'Rourke, and the late, great Hunter S. Thompson. Or comedies of manners: being British I think straightaway of P.G. Wodehouse's dreadful young man Bertie Wooster and his clueless aristocratic chums from the Drones Club.

And by the bye, I heard one of the most enjoyable, darkest farces I've ever come across on the radio this week (read by Kelsey Grammer--Frasier himself): Mark Twain's The Facts in the Great Beef Contract--a brilliant example of how a really good comic writer can make us laugh at the horrific and the disturbing.

(And while we're on this, Adam emailed me following his early morning--for me, late night for him--phone call: not to apologise for his brusqueness, but to tell me to mention Dante's Inferno when I got to black comedy. So now I have.)

Isn't it interesting, too, that a lot of the best modern TV comedy is intentionally uncomfortable at the very same time it's being funny? Just think of The Office or Alan Partridge's outings.

Now THEY (different set of experts, psychologists and quite a few other 'ologists) have done a lot of work on why we laugh. There are theories of a reflex triggered by a release of tension (a great example is the Porter scene in Macbeth); repressed emotions coming through; a spontaneous reaction to an incongruous or absurd situation and so on. (A professor I spoke to about it on the phone this week--from the University of Kirkcudbrightshire--even mentioned something called 'the Play Mechanism' and 'Bonding,' although it might have been 'Bondage.' In either event, it was a terrible line.)

But whatever, a lot of the best comedy just spontaneously overflows the banks of any too-stiff a categorisation in its ability simply to be funny and delight us. I'm sure you'll find a lot of the really good stuff to tickle you in these pages--and I'm going to put a small bet on that some it may be rather dark comedy as well--perhaps with elements of the infernal, even.

*We get the word 'zany' ultimately from stock characters of the Commedia dell'arte: Zanni was an Italian dialect version of Gianni or Giovanni--John.

**And of course, Monty Python pays its own tribute to the great man, in the person of the Philosophy professors from Wooloomooloo University: the Bruces' Philosophers' Song: '…Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle…'

Sincèrement,

David Hughes

éditeur Européen,

Danse Macabre

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le premier magasin littéraire en ligne au Nevada,

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Share the laughter with us on YouTube, at Poets & Writers, and in The Book of Faces...

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

Taft

Everybody remembers Taft as our fattest president.

Teachers telling us the story: how Taft got stuck

in his own bathtub, how it took four grown men

to dislodge him. We’d gape at the comedy of it:

Taft holding out his fat arms for pulling, One,

Two, Threeeeeeee… and nothing. The three men

wiping their sweaty brows: We need another man.

Poor naked Taft, President of the United States,

and stuck in his cold marble tub, moustache wet

with exasperation. How long did he sit there,

cold and silent, realizing he needed help? Freed,

how long did he stand naked in front of those men

to thank them? Or did he dash off, modest towel

fluttering behind him like a white flag? Don’t think

he didn’t know. His college nickname was Big Lub.

He once sent a telegram to the Secretary of War

which read: Went on a horse ride; feeling good

to which the Secretary responded: How’s the horse?

Even during his presidential campaign, his opponent

gave out buttons that read: Nobody Likes a Fat Boy.

He was six foot, three-hundred and forty pounds.

He knew. But Taft could give a fuck. He was

ballsy. Ballsy enough to build the White House

a new bathtub, a huge bathtub, big enough

for six men, or one President. Ballsy enough

to let Mooly Wooly the cow graze brazenly

on the White House lawn just so that he could

gulp all the fresh milk he wanted. Ballsy enough

that when a New York State Senator named

Chauncey Depew put his skinny hands on Taft’s

wide belly and asked What are you going to call it

when it comes, Mr. President?

Taft just replied, Well, if it's a boy, I'll call it

William; if it's a girl, I'll call it Theodora; but

if it turns out to be just wind, I'll call it Chauncey.

Forthcoming in Everything is Everything (Write Bloody Publishing, 2010).

Our review of this gem will appear in Danse Macabre XXX.

Taft was originally published in No, Dear Magazine.

CRISTIN O’KEEFE APTOWICZ has been published or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s Internet Tendancies, Rattle, Pank, Barrelhouse, Monkeybicycle, decomP, Umbrella, and The Other Journal, among others. Her latest book, Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, was published last year by Soft Skull Press. Her latest collection of poetry, Everything is Everything, will be published in January 2010 by Write Bloody Publishing. For more information, please visit her website: www.aptowicz.com.

Penn Kemp

Couplet du commedia

Re:Verse

Purr verse
In verse
Dis course
Tra verse la la
Die verse

Diversión

Is a lute dissolute?
Only when it doesn't play.

Canadian poet, performer and playwright PENN KEMP has published twenty-five books of poetry and drama, had six plays and ten CDs produced as well as Canada's first poetry CD-ROM and several award-winning videopoems. She performs in festivals around the world. Her Muse News is renewed monthly on http://www.mytown.ca/pennletters/ and on http://facebook.com/pages/Penn-Kemp/126450531030?created. Penn can also be heard on myspace.com/pennkemp and http://www.mytown.ca/pennkemp/. Penn is the Canada Council Writer-in-Residence at the University of Western Ontario for 2009-10. As part of the residency, Penn is hosting Gathering Voices on Radio Western, CHRW 94.9 FM. Gathering Voices airs every second Wednesday starting September 2 from 6-6:30 pm on www.chrwradio.com. On alternate Wednesdays, catch the show from 6:30-7 am. Archives of past interviews, writing exercises and Penn's sound operas are now up here.

John Cleese

An Ode to Sean Hannity

Aping urbanity, oozing with vanity,

plump as a manatee, faking humanity

journalistic calamity, intellectual inanity

FOX Noise insanity, you're a profanity, Hannity.

JOHN MARWOOD CLEESE is an Academy Award-nominated English actor, comedian, writer, film producer, and tall person.

The above ode first appeared on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

Used without any permission whatsoever, but we're fans, so please don't sue us.

Issue XXIX

commedia

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♠ Danse Macabre ♣

An Online Literary Magazine™

♥

Volume Four, Number Nine

Adam Henry Carrière / Stonesthrow Publishing LLC.

ISSN pending.

Danse Macabre XXIX

commedia