"Stand Up" as Fiction: The Humanity of Humor

Poet James B. Nicola deconstructs the art of writing humorous writing through Douglas Fergus’s Small Portions Café: A Tempting Assortment of Stories, Lucky Doug Presss, 2021

How does a writer keep you on board for the ride? And a fiction writer, at that, when his story isn't even supposed to be true? And a humorist—how does he make you laugh? In the Ken Burns series on Mark Twain, undisputed master of both fiction and fun, one commentator says that even academics with graduate degrees cannot tell us quite how Twain did what he did, and does still; his technique has defied analysis for generations.

 In his first collection of short stories, Small Portions Café, Douglas Fergus does it, too—makes us laugh. A lot. And keeps us on board for the ride. But I think I can tell you a few of the ways he does it, or I think he does, without my being a spoiler. Of course, I don't know how I'm going to do it. Yet. As I look at the blank page. But that’s what writing is all about, I guess.

 The idea for that last bit, by the way, I got from Mr. Fergus himself. That’s one of the ways he does it: his style—with its streams of consciousness . . . conscience . . . unconscionableness . . . incontinence (infra)—may descend from Proust’s and Joyce’s, but it is also the heir of ancients like the Roman playwright Plautus, what with their blatant theatricality that acknowledges audience as audience, actors as actors, play as play. For example, in the opening monologue of Plautus’s comedy The Menaechmi (Twins), the actor playing Pseudolus disses one of the other actors, still back stage. There is neither suspension of disbelief nor fourth wall (between stage and spectator); the audience need never believe the characters are anything but actors playing roles in front of them. I discuss Complicity in my nonfiction book Playing the Audience: how actor, audience, and author are mutually complicit in the joke, in the sheer joy, of putting on a play—in play-ing—together. Likewise, Fergus never lets us forget the fact that he is, quite joyously, writing what we are reading. For himself. For us. With us. An example:

 Although the new More Johns were not yet collector guitars, I reasoned that one of them could become a collector guitar in years to come. Logically then, a purchase today could be considered an investment, especially if I write the word could in italics again. (p. 47) 

When his detours ramble far off base, he is courteous enough to put them in parentheses—like an aside in the theater. The close-parenthesis makes it easy (as well as economical) for him not to have to say, "Meanwhile, back where I left off.... "

 Indeed, you could characterize his "genre" as "stand-up fiction," for these stories summon echoes of monologists like George Carlin of yore or, more recently, Tig Notaro, who can go off on a tangent, or fraternize with an audience member, and come right back to the topic at hand—I won’t say without missing a beat, for "missing" a few beats is the point of going off on a tangent in the first place. But they do it without losing our interest, our involvement. And usually they dose us with a few good yucks along the way.

 Fergus's pearls of perception sometimes border on perspicacity or even wisdom, sometimes more silly than incisive, but they are never vicious or mean. And so I think of him, too, as a "sit-down commentator" sort of comedian, like Andy Rooney, who regaled us at the end of Sixty Minutes with a weekly silly-gism about our crazy consumerism or linguistically-challenged modernism. ("Never have I heard 'mow the grass' or 'cut the lawn.' Hmmm," p. 112).

 I might also suggest humorist Robert Benchley (like me, a native son of Worcester, Massachusetts) and his many short films, one of which won an Oscar back in 1935. His oeuvre might be characterized as Lectures on the Ludicrous, not unlike much of Fergus’s. Check them out.

 The comic commentator in Fergus emerges through tone, topic, voice, or vision. But these "small portions" are, after all, short stories; more importantly, then, they evidence the instinct—or technique—of a seasoned practitioner of fiction in how they keep us involved, either by tickling—or sizzling.

 For example, through sheer diction. David Lodge’s essay on Jane Austen’s Emma (in The Art of Fiction) points out how Austen’s choice of the word seemed, in the novel’s first sentence, thrusts the heroine’s entire situation into doubt, and provides us with at least a smidgen of suspense. Seemed? You mean Emma wasn’t what she seemed, Jane? And so we are tickled into wonder.

 A fabulous Fergusism of this same principle drops on us when one of his heroes walks into a bank:

 Knowing I was active duty military, they assumed I was a good credit risk. (p. 36)   

 Assumed serves up a soupçon of suspense not unlike Austen's seemed. Whether what ensues shall be financial mayhem or madcap hi-jinks—we are poised to pay attention and find out.

Getting us to identify with person, plight, plot, or simply task at hand, is another technique for keeping readers in the loop. Fergus adds to this the author’s eternal challenge: How shall I put this? So there seems to grow an ever-evolving intimacy not just with his characters, but also with himself: plus a growing trust that whatever he takes us through, he will be going through, too. (Or, on one occasion, will be going through him! Read on.)

Because of this relationship, in a story called "Process of Elimination," when he deals with the very personal topic of chronic constipation, I was not immediately turned off by the potentially prepubescent scatological subject. Rather, I remembered how masterfully Tommy Orange, in his novel There, There, used the same ailment as not only a plot/character device, but also as a metaphor for the insidiousness of inertia: Poop or get off the pot, buddy, so to speak. Yet neither Orange nor Fergus exploits grossness as a substitute for intimacy between author and reader; rather, as simply one of various means to achieve that intimacy.

 Fergus’s meaning may be less metaphorical but is no less vital. It is one to which all of us who have ever had a lingering pain or excruciating illness, that finally yielded to relief, can relate:

 In all my life before or since, I have never experienced anything like it. The thrill of starting a motorcycle race with fifty other riders all revving and then racing away from the starting line is nothing compared to...

 ...well, compared to being cured of whatever ails us. Indeed, this narrator’s reaction is not smarmy or snarky at all, but one of a marked joy and gratitude, in which we, too, take delight:

 Yippee! Oh what a beautiful day being empty of poop! Wasn’t life grand?! Yes! Yes, it was! I felt anything was possible. I would begin a new phase of life. (p. 93)

 All right, it's not quite Jean Valjean dedicating his life to God after the bishop saves him from Javert. Nonetheless, the moment is personal, enormous—and ours.

Because these narrators seem to be avatars of the author, the ride that Fergus takes us on seems to be one rooted in truth—involving a steady growth, not just of humor, but also of humility. Of humanity. His. And so we read on (even when, in the collection’s longest piece, the story or the satire may not be nearly as engaging as the silliness).

 You will also find tidbits of poetic artistry scattered here and there, if you are on the lookout. The subtlest is also the broadest, bookending the book. The introduction’s title, “Spiral Bound,” provides a pun it its own right, suggesting not just a dime-store notebook (as opposed to its more expensive cousin, the gift-shop "designer journal") but also the verb "to spiral," whether in a jeremiad about some injustice or a tiff about some triviality—fair game for both the stand-up and the sit-down humorist. But then we read the first sentence:

 While stationed at Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska, I decided to write a book. (p. 1)

Right off the bat, “spiral bound” evokes "skyward bound" or "outward bound" (or even "inward bound") as well as a writing tablet. By the end of the volume, I developed the distinct impression that during the journey of reading this book, and the adventure of writing of it, we were even more meaningfully "home-ward bound" (home being finally found inwardly, in the heart, as well as outwardly, in the heavens—metaphorically speaking, that is). For Fergus has finally arrived at where he should have been, and has become who he was supposed to be, all along: quite an author and comedian. And he has become not just Douglas Fergus, but, to us, Doug.

 I suspect that when you turn to the About the Author page at the end, you too will see, there in the photo, the twinkling face of not just a new writer, but a new friend.

James B. Nicola’s poetry has garnered two Willow Review awards, a Dana Literary award, seven Pushcart nominations, and one Best of the Net nom. His full-length collections include Manhattan Plaza (2014), Stage to Page: Poems from the Theater (2016), Wind in the Cave (2017), Out of Nothing: Poems of Art and Artists (2018), Quickening: Poems from Before and Beyond (2019), and Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense (2021). A Yale grad, he also has enjoyed a career as a stage director, culminating in the nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Guide to Live Performance, which won a Choice award.