It may be obvious from previous posts, Best Tech Guy isn’t your average geek. He’s a technology consultant who also writes code. Unlike pure geekdom, consulting requires interpersonal skills. It also requires a bit, a gag, a sketch, a schtick, a number. Mine is obvious. I do my, “Your virtual space is like your physical space. Think of it like remodeling your home” routine, and clients instantly comprehend my expertise and my place in their world. Appreciating the niche work that I do makes them feel smart, and they hire me to do my thing. Best Tech Guy is popular with our clients too. His thing usually involves arrogance and a British accent. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, he does the number known as, “I read it in the New Yorker, so it must be true.”
Warning: spoiler alert. This is the part where I blatantly rat him out, probably because I can’t compete with the British accent. (I’m well practiced at the arrogance.) Best Tech Guy’s theory is that all smart, well-educated, liberal Bostonians, i.e., 95% of our clients, subscribe to the New Yorker. But because their lives are full of competing priorities and your average New Yorker article is the length of a bible, nobody reads it. So when he wants to make a point that no one will argue with, he confidently cites some New Yorker article he claims to have read, knowing full well that any self-respecting liberal will shrug non-committedly rather than admitting to not having seen nor read the fictitious article in question. It’s better to keep up the pretense that we all have time to read the New Yorker, we just missed that particular article, rather than admitting that being part of the in-crowd means compulsively renewing our subscriptions without ever making time to read past the “Shouts and Murmurs.”
It turns out, based on my own hypothesizing and analysis (totally unsubstantiated by proper research or third-party critical scholarship), he may be on to something. In class last semester, I had the pleasure of reading a range of great comic works from Allen to Wodehouse. We analyzed Oscar Wilde and Monty Python until exam time, aka, the moment I realized I should have taken better notes. The final exam was especially tricky, until I noticed something. The four anthologies on the syllabus shared a common characteristic. They were collections of humor pieces, some or all (in the case of Woody Allen) previously published in the New Yorker.
Here’s the exam question
Focusing on two or three writers—Benchley, Thurber, Allen, Sedaris—discuss the different ways in which they develop the short humor piece. Aspects to consider are style, tone, form, tendentiousness [intention to provoke or promote a particular point of view, often the author’s] or lack of it, etc. [he really did write “etc.”]
Here’s an excerpt of my answer. You can skip this part if you’re in a hurry. I’ll understand. Really. Go on. I’ll never know.
Robert Benchley, James Thurber, Woody Allen, and David Sedaris are all known for their short humor pieces. In addition to the publication of successful anthologies, each reached the height of success in his career—publication in the New Yorker magazine. All four essayists are known for their smart writing. They appeal to elitists and an audience in the New Yorker that considers itself intellectual. And the works of all four men are marked by a degree of tendentiousness.
Woody Allen’s aim is to mock intellectuals. That he does this in the New Yorker is the height of irony. His humor is dependent on his audience’s familiarity with the persons referenced in his essays. Schmeed, Metterling, Helmholtz—these may be household names, if your household is full of highly-educated, New York Times reading, politics-watching, probably Jewish, middle-class New Yorkers who regularly attend psychoanalysis. His humor is not for the masses, but for the very people whom he mocks. Allen is a smart-aleck, and he knows it. His target audience is a willing participant in this game. He mocks them for being intellectuals; if they were not intellectuals, they wouldn’t get the jokes; they would rather get the jokes and feel part of the in-crowd than get offended by being the objects of his jokes. And so the cycle continues.
Robert Benchley’s essays do not require the subject matter expertise that Allen’s call for (the holocaust, Hassidic Judaism, college, psychoanalysis, the atom bomb, Impressionism). His works appeal to a broader audience. The tone is far less mocking than Allen’s, and the language is simpler, making his essays accessible to a wider segment than the audience circumscribed by Allen. However, Benchley’s works are more likely to stray into absurdity. His very serious sounding essay titled Do Insects Think? is so strange it’s almost not enjoyable. Presumably Benchley is mocking generations of scientists who have asked very ridiculous questions and spent years seriously attempting to answer those questions. This short essay pokes fun at the kind of absurd research that goes on in well-respected laboratories.
But again, a level of sophistication is required on the part of the reader. A familiarity with Shakespeare is required to enjoy Shakespeare Explained. An experience with ennui and an eight-course meal are required to understand Christmas Afternoon. These subjects and emotions may be more familiar to the average audience than the subjects of Allen’s works, but they still require an uncommon perception and a comfortable life. French for Americans may be enjoyable to a person who has never been to Paris. Perhaps a reader might be reassured to know that news from home is available at the American Express and the crullers are almost (but not quite) as good at the Hartford Lunch as they are at home. But it seems more likely that the untraveled reader will feel left out of the jokes. His laughter will have the hollow ring of the poseur.
Ultimately, I examined all four authors (yes, I am an overachiever), but only included analysis of two above to attempt to bore you a little bit less. The point of this ramble is that certain kinds of wit play to certain kinds of crowds. That may seem incredibly obvious, but in the case of the New Yorker, the individuals in question are so obsessed with being counted as the in-crowd, they will act like they get the jokes even when they don’t. And they will laugh at the jokes, even when they are the punch line. It’s writing for snobs, by snobs. Like that classic Seinfeld episode in which Elaine gains the confidence of a fictitious New Yorker editor to ask him why a particular cartoon is funny. He defends the cartoon by being pompous and implying Elaine is not smart enough to understand it. She calls his bluff. He admits it makes no sense. She tells him he should be ashamed of himself for printing it. Adding mockery to her shaming, she says, “You doodle a couple of bears at a cocktail party talking about the stock market, you think you’re doing comedy.” He replies earnestly, “Actually, that’s not bad.” Elaine, flattered, responds, “Really? You know I have others.”
Even Elaine, on a mission to discredit the sacred New Yorker editorial process, standing at the brink of success, would rather go out for the team than be right and alone. Being part of the in-crowd was a bigger success to her than proving them wrong. There are too many ironies to count, starting with the fact that Elaine is the New Yorker’s target audience. If she wasn’t, she would not have seen the cartoon. In an absurdly meta-twist, the cartoon featured in the television episode was drawn by one of the New Yorker’s great cartoonists, Bruce Eric Kaplan, and the real-life editor the television character was based on recently provided a not-funny analysis of the Seinfeld episode and the cartoon. (Yup, you guessed it: published on the New Yorker’s website.) He was bummed because the Seinfeld writing team didn’t use his real name. He wanted to be part of the gag, in with the coolest crowd on TV.
I’m sure I am making a much bigger point about human nature, pack animal mentality, our measures of success, and not being picked last for dodge ball. If it’s not quite coming together for you, I will leave you with this thought. None of this is relevant if you haven’t seen that particular episode of Seinfeld or read these authors. Trust me. I read it all in the New Yorker, so it must be true.
Visualizing Shakespeare 