See, Dave, you were 'having me on', what many USAmericans would call
'teasing' or 'joking'. Billions of words've been written on English wit;
how USAmericans don't get it and can't do it themselves. If I didn't
believe there was a divide in the humor [humour] department between our
countries, I wouldn't mentioned it here. But I find the divide fascinating
all real. The difference may be tied to our separate 'takes' on religion,
conformity, 'sociability', and word choices. Naturally, these differences
hang mostly on who were our respective forbears.
[A quick non-aside here and now: You write 'centre', we write 'center'.
Most Americans would assume that the Brit spelling is 'older', but in fact
it is 'younger' than the American spelling. Many phrases and expressions
used now in the USA are no longer used in the UK [UQ]. This is just one
'proof' of how insular USAmerica is and has been. That's the second part of
my theory about our different humor and our ways of being sociable or
religious. I theorize, in a nutshell, that those differences derive from
who came to America [largely from your country], as well as their
offspring-generations who remained secluded here, geographically, for some
500-plus years. After all, island folk (e.g., Brits, Japanese,
Scandinavian) are known for their resourceful "visiting" [read 'plundering']
other countries with more and different resources.
All USAmericans needed to do was to lay claim to and wrest the entire
country's land from native Americans, buy land "owned" by Russia and France,
steal some from Mexico, and this immense, geographically varied and rich
land was all we needed; we didn't need, weren't close to, and didn't want
[for sheer pragmatism and comfort] to go beyond our country.
A (dwindling as immigrants continue coming here) majority of USAmericans
are, then, fascinatingly, a little Museum of Merry Olde England and its
significant attached land bits called Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and
Cornwall, as well as hundreds of little islands.
So "our" humor, as distinct from "your" humour, comes from those of you who
came here----and mainly as opposed to those of you who stayed there:
Strongly non-conforming yet conformist religionists, a sprinkle of landed
gentry, some renegades, near-starving displaced Scottish Highlanders, and
starving Irish and Welsh.
[On a related issue that I'd like to understand: Exactly who were the
slavedrivers [literally] in early USAmerica?] Irish? Scottish? Welsh?
Aside from the non-nuance of emailed messages, then, an English ironic
statement will fly directly over an American's head but will be caught by
most Brits.
Trying to characterise Brit humour and American humor intrigues me. Y'all's
'super-subtle' irony tends to be self- or country-deprecatory, whereas
Americans' irony tends more often to be brash, in-your-face, obvious, and
'other-demeaning'. Our other immigrant-imported humor, especially from the
huge influx of western Europeans and middle Easterners (in the
destructing-dynasties days of the mid-1800s), and much later the eastern
Europeans (glasnost Russians, "revolting" Hungarians, to name just a few)
give us quite different, and wonderful, wit styles. As our Asian immigrants
assimilate, we're getting---much too slowly, for my taste---Chinese,
Japanese, Thai, and Filipino humor.
End of lecture, flawed as it surely is, since it's totally unresearched
(!!).
And now, Dave, to the unsurnamed mysteryman, F, surely his relative
obscurity's due to his humorlessness.
BTW, the only witty person (your style) I regularly converse with here is
the man who sells me stamps at the US Post Office branch nearby. It usually
takes me a few seconds to "get" which parts of what he says are wit, and
which I should take as literal. <sigh> Brilliant, that one----and much
appreciated by me!
unKaramazatic joodles
2008/9/9 David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
> Judy! The F Russian novelist is (in roman letters) Fyodor of course.
>
> 'Chess' is one of those wee books that hit you like a rocket, it was
> his last and he committed suicide a while after.
>
> I'm very wary of statistics: who was it made the adaptation 'There are
> lies, damned lies, and statistics'?
>
> Best
>
> Dave
>
> 2008/9/8 Judy Prince <[log in to unmask]>:
> > Yes, JM Forster---one of the quickest aids for novel-reading [which I
> > generally loathe to do, despite it having been a big hunk of my
> > schooling]---does creatively simplify and clarify how to "niche" novels
> > rather than just pocket their chronology and inevitable lead into the
> next
> > generations.
> > I took a Women Novelists course once, the female prof who'd decided that
> > there were clear gender-markings of subjects and handlings-of-subjects.
> As
> > we ran thru the Usual Suspects of women-writ novels----unfortunately,
> mostly
> > the bottom-of-the-barrel ones----so that she could buttress her premise,
> I
> > felt I'd explode if I didn't stop her.
> >
> > I asked her to rebut the view that Tolstoy, especially in W & P, if not
> AK,
> > exhibited ALL of her so-called Female Novelists' Subjects and Techniques.
> > Don't remember a bit of her response, just felt tremendously relieved
> to've
> > stated My Truth. <g>
> >
> > In the 19th c---Englishly, at least---there was an audible frustration
> > constantly emitted by successful male novelists who were angered at
> readers'
> > choosing female-authored novels over theirs. Odd, that.
> >
> > Don't know contemporary stats, but it seems for every male-written and
> > male-read SF novel, there's a handy Bodice-Ripper [some quite
> > sophisticated!] read by a female. I'd love to be a little mouse <ahem>
> > looking at the books that Educated Folk read for their amusement.
> >
> > Thanks for reminding me of _The Death of I I_, David. Haven't read it
> since
> > uni days, and suspect that I'd receive it altogether differently now.
> >
> > Have never heard of Stefan Zweig's _Chess_. Should I put it ahead of all
> > the Scots' novels and poetry as well as Goethe and Montaigne? Someone
> > advises me that reading Proust [no, I have NOT read this much-touted
> > 'madeleine-crusher'!] is not worth the wearying. Well, Dave---is it
> true?
> >
> > I'd much rather read your begun-memoir than all the other stuff, anyway.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Judy who wishes she knew the _F_ Russian novelist's name
> >
> >
> >
> > 2008/9/8 David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
> >
> >> Judy, yes, Tolstoy can be a bit soap-operatic, however, if you get
> >> past the first three hundred pages or so of War and Peace, you get, as
> >> Forster said in Aspects of the Novel, 'great chords' beginning to
> >> sound. On a smaller scale in 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' a certain
> >> inevitability happens, that one only normally associates with those
> >> Antique Greeks, or Shakespeare at his best.
> >> Or maybe Stefan Zweig's novella 'Chess' or maybe etc ... I'm sure you
> >> know what I'm getting at.
> >> There was also another 19th century Russkie writer, who was in some
> >> ways completely barking, as we say over here, but also magnificent. I
> >> think his first name began with F.
> >>
> >> best
> >>
> >> Dave
> >>
> >> 2008/9/8 Judy Prince <[log in to unmask]>:
> >> > Hadn't I hesitated just _this_ much, thinking 'hey, this echoes....',
> >> having
> >> > years ago done a respectable minor in 'Rushing Lit' at U of Michigan!
> >> But
> >> > ease yourself, Christopher---you wrote the collapsing scaffold
> POETICAL,
> >> and
> >> > those lightweight Russian novelists/shortstorytellers hadn't the
> talent
> >> to
> >> > distill their comparison, had they?
> >> > On that subject, naturally: Who's your favourite 19th c Russian
> writer?
> >> > Overall, mine's Chekhov. Fun as Tolstoy is, he's too 'soap
> operatic',
> >> > couldnae even insinuate War into Peace in that interminable book.
> >> Gogol's
> >> > 'Dead Souls'---fantastic! Pushkin......hmmm......groundbreaking, in
> >> Russia
> >> > and at that time.....but.....too much the writer of domestic 'cameos',
> >> > Tolstoy in poetry.
> >> >
> >> > Then there's the man who can describe the 'battle' of the blundering
> >> sexes,
> >> > the quintessential Russian writer: Lermontov. 'A Hero of Our Time',
> the
> >> > passionate, but gently objective slivering away at our bleeding
> corpses.
> >> > His incisions, so blindingly felt, nevertheless don't hurt.....they
> >> build
> >> > us new tissue [scaffolds of incipient poetry?].
> >> >
> >> > Ah yes, $$$ Casually Acquired clothing: best to buy basic jeans and
> >> you'll
> >> > never go wrong.
> >> >
> >> > Judy
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > 2008/9/8 Christopher C Jones <[log in to unmask]>
> >> >
> >> >> Many thanks but I should perhaps say that writers using scaffolds
> which
> >> >> are later removed has been used before by Bakhtin and was it Tolstoy?
> >> >> Collapsing scaffolds is more so one of my variations especially when
> it
> >> >> comes to novel creation of worlds. Many best wishes all the same and
> >> >> thanks.
> >> >>
> >> >> PS. I have just discovered a dress code called neat casual attire,
> which
> >> >> appears to what got termed designer wear in my days, especially since
> it
> >> >> cost two or three times what a business suit would.
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> On Sat, 2008-09-06 at 02:19 -0400, Judy Prince wrote:
> >> >> > Love this image/analogy of yours, Christopher: "a scaffold which
> >> needs
> >> >> to
> >> >> > be removed or collapses into the text....."
> >> >> > Judy
> >> >>
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> David Bircumshaw
> >> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> >> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
> >> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> >> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
> >>
> >
>
>
>
> --
> David Bircumshaw
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>
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