The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [57]
Think of it as a tale of two stories. If the setup implies one story line (the one listeners believe in), the punch reveals that a second has been tucked inside all along. But the equation never quite adds up. It defies logic, like a magic trick. The mind boggles, and so we laugh.
SETUP + PUNCH LINE = LAUGHTER
Or alternatively: INCONGRUITY x CREDULITY = SURPRISE!
To be effective, the first story, the setup, targets a specific audience assumption. Only if the aim is accurate will the trap spring, two ideas crash-bang-wallop, and then bumble about, rubbing their heads, quaking with mirth. This chicanery relies on intellectual prestidigitation; somewhere buried in the setup is a slippery item about which the joke turns, which stand-up Greg Dean calls the “connector.”
Here’s a Dean special:
For Father’s Day, I took my father out—it only took seven shots. I could always drink him under the table.
This double-yolker has two connectors: “shots” and “took out” (both our flexible friends, puns). But the method only works if your aim is true, landing bang on listeners’ target assumptions. Which is why the best jokes are
Concise (only telling details, no superfluous or repeated words)
Easy to follow (expressive delivery and weighted pauses, focusing attention on the connector and the reveal)
Timed to maximize misunderstanding and surprise
Save the punch till the last word.
Play it how you want it. Roseanne Barr’s feisty Lady Caliban comic persona grabbed audiences by the throat, but liked to leave them hanging. She began with a premise, took a little journey (“the hook”) drawing out the first story line, sinking it in listeners’ imaginations, and then . . .
And the target assumption? Barr’s character: that she would want to please her man.
Please.
➺ Rule seven: Let humor shift the temperature
But the best humor is organic not premeditated—and medicinal, according to Norman Cousins, who beat 500-1 odds of recovery from an agonizing condition with an inspired hypothesis: If illness is psychosomatic, why not wellness? Treatment began with episodes of Candid Camera.
Cousins’s smart inversion has suggested a sneaky humor tactic. Why sweat up a quip if you can snatch laughter from the jaws of the social need it serves, by taking the mood and shaking it?
To neutralize a problem, isolate, then ironize it. Use repetition. Say, she says, “Don’t get me started . . .” You say (warmly, not snootily): “Don’t get her started.” He spills wine? Say, “My shirt. My shirt!”
Dropped a clanger? Make light: “Is it time to talk about the weather yet?” or “This reminds me of a joke. Shame I can’t remember it.”
Nervous? “Don’t worry about my wobbly voice, I’m just terrified.”
He said something funny but the feeling isn’t mutual? Don’t let silence gouge an embarrassing hole. A light eyebrow-raiser—“You!” “Honestly!”—is enough to let conversation continue smoothly.
We tease those we care about, because this flattering liberty assumes the other person will get the joke. Use the power. And if pressed by a pachyderm pest, try this boaster blunderbuss, overheard by cocktail-talk collector Andrew Barrow:
“Congratulations. Are you frightfully pompous now?”
TYPOLOGY OF BORES, CHORES, AND OTHER CONVERSATIONAL BEASTS
CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? Mendax mirabundus
Thank heaven for eyebrows. How else to sustain that look of amazement as Can You Believe It launches into another vertically challenged tale?
Few companions are as wearing. Coercive little phrases—“Wasn’t that incredible?”—reach out from her flat-as-yesterday’s-lemonade recitals, pulling her audience by the ear, demanding that they (a) show amazement and (b) wake up.
To an extent, such cues are welcome clues—how else to know which parts are meant to be fascinating? However, emotional stage directions preempt spontaneous wonder, and subject to such bullying, the rebel in us recoils while the nice conformist affixes a smile, wondering why we