A Bad Start

THERE IS A certain theory of the psychology of comedy that would have the comic think everything funny. For myself, I will laugh at almost any incongruity. When I go to The Comic Strip, a club in New York featuring unknown comedians, I giggle at each hopeless tyro while my companions self-consciously sip their beers and check their watches. Thus I have found this theory quite encouraging, and even fancied myself something of a comic.

Then I read Andrew Ward's Fits and Starts, touted by its publishers as "one of the funniest books in years." I didn't laugh once. Dismayed by the prospect of discarding either the theory or my own pretensions, I read it again. I laughed less.

I've decided that its neither the theory nor the pretensions that must go, but the book. It's simply not funny. Ward tries to use words he finds intrinsically funny like "airsick bag," "acne," and "sweater vest." This comic strategy can work with great success, as with Esquire's annual lists of funny words. Ward, unfortunately, chooses the wrong words.

His other devices don't work either. He seeks laughs through what might be called the comedy of recognition--the creation of familiar situations with which the reader will identify. This method depends on the sort of person who will shout "Hey--that's ME" when he sees his face in a group photograph. To this end, Ward gives us accounts of riding in the family car, going to high school, fertilizing his lawn, etc. He doesn't realize that this is not enough; these situations can at best serve as a matrix for creative comedy.

Ward leans most heavily on self-deprecation, recounting complexion problems, physical and sexual awkwardness, troubles with athletics and school, which only embarasses the reader. Woody Allen, among others, used self-deprecation as a vehicle for more complex comedy; Ward flails away at himself and expects laughs. His self-deprecation seems less a comedic device than an unholy bargain, trading self-respect for laughs, resembling nothing so much as a child banging his head against the crib to gain attention.

Cleverness makes a good comic, a broad vision of the human condition a great one. Ward's uninspired tales demonstrate neither. The book does introduce a masterfully controlled, subdued, wistful writing style, particularly in the concluding vignette, "With My Grandparents at an Inn: August, 1970." Here Ward has crafted a poignant, affecting reminiscence of his grandfather marvelous in its insights and impressively written, a welcome departure in style and substance from the rest of the book. If anything could save this book and Ward's reputation, this does.

Fits and Starts gives us a writing style badly married to a puerile sense of humor. Ward should give up comedy and write more about his grandfather. Unless, of course, he laughs at all the jokes in The Comic Strip.