{"id":74545,"date":"2014-07-25T15:07:41","date_gmt":"2014-07-25T19:07:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=74545"},"modified":"2014-07-25T15:07:41","modified_gmt":"2014-07-25T19:07:41","slug":"the-best-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/25\/the-best-medicine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gerrit_van_Honthorst_-_De_vrolijke_speelman\"<\/a>

Gerard van Honthorst, The Merry Fiddler<\/i>, 1623<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

\u201cHe knew everything there was to know about literature, except how to enjoy it.\u201d \u2014Catch-22 <\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Can a reader and a character be simultaneously amused? I\u2019m sure plenty of really smart people have written about this\u2014and maybe even answered it authoritatively\u2014but I can\u2019t find any such answer myself. I suppose the question also holds true for movies and TV\u2014although arguably the blooper reel changes the entire conversation\u2014but I\u2019m chiefly interested in the question as it pertains to writing. I really want to know!<\/p>\n

So far as I can tell, accounts of people being amused are never amusing. (In my opinion, this also holds true for most stories involving drug-induced antics\u2014a scourge of modern storytelling\u2014but I\u2019m willing to admit this might be one of my \u201cthings.\u201d) When a character \u201claughs,\u201d \u201cjokes,\u201d \u201ckids around,\u201d \u201ccracks up,\u201d et cetera,\u00a0it is not funny, even in an otherwise funny piece of writing. (Although, I think you\u2019ll find in the funniest, characters don\u2019t go around guffawing much.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying a character can\u2019t laugh within something funny, but, rather, that their amusement is wholly divorced from the reader\u2019s. It\u2019s not just that human beings are sadists who, famously, enjoy watching the misfortunes of others; we all like to see beloved protagonists find love, get redeemed, generally achieve happy endings. Emotion is communicable. Laughter, maybe, isn\u2019t. Or at any rate, the necessary distance imposed by narration makes the communication tricky.<\/p>\n

Nothing is deadlier than writing about the workings of humor, so I\u2019ll keep this short. If you can think of an exception to this, won\u2019t you let me know? Am I just reading the wrong books? Has some author cracked this code? Or is this, maybe, just one of my \u201cthings?\u201d Inquiring minds want to know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHe knew everything there was to know about literature, except how to enjoy it.\u201d \u2014Catch-22 Can a reader and a character be simultaneously amused? I\u2019m sure plenty of really smart people have written about this\u2014and maybe even answered it authoritatively\u2014but I can\u2019t find any such answer myself. I suppose the question also holds true for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[11479,412,71,411,410,747,75],"class_list":["post-74545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-characters","tag-comedy","tag-fiction","tag-humor","tag-laughter","tag-novels","tag-writing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Best Medicine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein asks, Can a reader and a character be simultaneously amused?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/25\/the-best-medicine\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Best Medicine by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"July 25, 2014 \u2013 \u201cHe knew everything there was to know about literature, except how to enjoy it.\u201d \u2014Catch-22 Can a reader and a character be simultaneously amused? 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