on-writing-well

Humor 227
Balenciaga with a stroke of his pen. Thenceforth, to the very
end of his administration, he stuck with long-waisted day
dresses in neutral duns and beiges.
John Foster Dulles, on the other hand, favored a slinkypajama
look and pastel pants suits with a touch of glimmer in
the fabric. Oodles of bangles, upswept blond wigs, and pompommed
mules. Despite his staunch anti-Communism, he
was oddly partial to red, though I believe on good authority
that Sherman Adams at least once took Foster aside and
made the point that bright colors did not become a big-boned
frame. Sherman, though he was undone by vicuna, lingers in
my mind s eye as a creature of whimsical ostrich-feather boas
and enchantments in lightly starched lemon voile. ...
Enjoyment, finally, is what all humorists must convey—the
idea that they are having a terrific time, and this notion of
cranked-up audacity is what I wanted my Yale students to grapple
with. At first I told them to write in one of the existing
humor forms—satire, parody, lampoon, etc.—and not to use "I"
or to write from their own experience. I assigned the same topic
to the whole class, bringing in some absurdity I had noticed in
the newspaper. The students jumped boldly into free association,
surrealism and nonsense. They found that it was possible to
slip off the chains of logic and have fun making a serious point
within a given humor form. They were heavily under the influence
of Woody Aliens non sequiturs ("For this the Rabbi bashes
his head in, which, according to the Torah, is one of the most
subtle methods of showing concern").
After about four weeks, fatigue set in. The students learned
that they were capable of writing humor. But they had also
learned how tiring it is to sustain a weekly act of comic invention,
writing in other voices. It was time to slow down their
metabolism—to start them writing in their own voice, about
their own lives. I declared a moratorium on Woody Allen and