Wallace and Humor

I'm gonna start this post with a Deep Thought by Jack Handy. Hopefully this quotation will make sense by the end of the post.

"I hope life isn't a big joke, because if it is, I don't get it."

I was introduced to David Foster Wallace about 2 years ago in a writing class, and, I must say, reading his writing is really depressing, not because he writes about sad things, but because he writes so well and so imaginatively that you kick yourself for all the humor and beauty you miss in life.

About a year ago Wallace committed suicide. He shot himself after suffering from depression for years. I usually read one or two of his essays each year (coincidentally around the time he died). This past week I read "Some remarks on Kafka's funniness from which probably not enough has been removed."

Here is a quick paragraph from that essay. Just to prep you a bit, Kafka was a tragically humorous early 20th century German writer. Anyway, here's what Wallace wrote:

And it is this, I think, that makes Kafka's wit inaccessible to children whom our culture has trained to see jokes as entertainment and entertainment as reassurance. It's not that student's don't "get" Kafka's humor but that we've taught them to see humor as something you get--the same way we've told them that a self is something you have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from the horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. It's hard to put into words, up at the blackboard, believe me. You can tell them that maybe it's good they don't "get" Kafka. You can ask them to imagine his stories as all about a kind of door. To envision us approaching and pounding on this door, increasingly hard, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it; we don't know what it is but we can feel lit, this total desperation to enter, pounding and ramming and kicking. That, finally, the door opens....and it opens outward--we've been inside what we wanted all along. Das ist komisch.

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Now I don't really want to talk about Kafka, I'd rather talk about what Wallace saw in Kafka. This part in particular:

It's not that student's don't "get" Kafka's humor but that we've taught them to see humor as something you get--the same way we've told them that a self is something you have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from the horrific struggle.

So, now I want to talk about the central joke of the self that Wallace saw in Kafka's writing. I'll interpret this central joke as being about life rather than strictly interpreting it as self-development (although it could be argued the two are synonymous). I don't know about everyone else but I've often thought my own life as tragically humorous--an interesting mix of joy and suffering with a twist of irony to keep things fresh. I think part of the reason I've always been drawn to writers like Wallace, Kafka, or Shakespeare, is that they carefully capture this sort of humor. However, like Wallace here mentions, it's not the typical humor we're used to with a punch line and a big "a ha!" moment. For, while life often contains this type of "i get it" humor, the type of humor with the sharply percussive punchlines that twist your mind, the big joke of life is generally a more difficult type of humor, the type of humor where you're personally connected to the joke, the "it's always funny when it's someone else" kind of humor where you find out you're the joke; when this happens it takes a special type of maturity and experience to see the humor and laugh at yourself (and often years after the fact).

I think what Kafka and Wallace are pointing out is that our lives are really funny, but they're funny in this painful, personal, sort of way, where the humor is had by seeing the contrasted tragedy and joy intertwined in your experience. Further, I think they're pointing out that the big joke of life is that it's progressively subtle, it's more of a slowly growing comedic escalation, gathering complexity each day you live. And, since there's no laugh track,we usually laugh at the wrong times, or, even worse, not at all (we usually laugh years later through epistemic distance, which is really sad cause we don't see the humor when we need it most). But, I guess that's part of the joke as well.

So, I guess my main point is that life is funny, but it's not the humor that's easy to laugh at. Also, no one is as uniquely qualified to see the humor in your life as you are. So enjoy it, cause your life is one great inside joke.