Earlier this year the State Library of New South Wales launched its inaugural Russell prize for humour writing. It was warmly received, in as much as the comic side of Australian writing was getting a look in within the hierarchy-mad world of literary prizes. But “humour writing”? What’s wrong with saying satire? Or just plain old funny?
There was something about the award that seemed to ghettoise literature that deigns to make a reader laugh. Bernard Cohen’s winning entry, The Antibiography of Robert F Menzies, had been years in the writing and was more than deserving, but the book’s win felt like a second best at best. It seemed unlikely Cohen would appear on any other literary prize long-lists.
There have been times when I’ve been dispirited by the local titles in Australian bookstores – long lines of ochre-red rural dramas, dark blue covers promising stories of overcoming family grief, trauma as plot points galore. Good grief! On a recent trip to the US – which really, as a trip, felt like a series of linked visits to a host of bookstores, walking out of one and into another – that feeling was doubled.
The aisles of new releases were lined with tall stacks of high comedies. Nell Zink’s zany misfire of a novel, Mislaid, sings with zingers. The literature It boy of New York, Joshua Cohen, was willing to go in for gags in an otherwise stern-faced 600 page-plus epic, The Book of Numbers. But it was Paul Beatty’s magisterial satire (but-also-not-quite-satire) The Sellout, which came with blurbs from both the usual literary heavyweights and ... uh … Sarah Silverman, that drove home the discrepancy.
Beatty’s novel is about race right now, with riffs on white supremacist revisionism rendered literal, as an entire black Los Angeles suburb is wiped off the map. What Beatty, among his contemporary American authors, instinctively understands is that satire is something of a strategy and inherently difficult to master. (Speaking of difficult, good luck finding a Beatty novel in stock at a bookstore in Australia).
As an argument against contemporary Australian literature, this may look a little like the tired criticism often levelled at Australian films – that our depressing, Debbie Downer-directed movies are driving away audiences with “dark themes”. But that’s not an argument to which I readily subscribe. It’s certainly not the case that Australian satire, in the literary sense, is not being produced – it’s just there in works that might not be being sold as such (possibly out of fear of ending up on a “humour writing” shortlist).
Steve Toltz is touting the comic novel as a space for making cracks about (and documenting the crack-up of) mentally unstable characters. Krissy Kneen’s erotic novellas, taking their lead from Nicholson Baker here and there, contain comedy among all the cumming. Most significantly, Maxine Beneba Clarke’s debut collection Foreign Soil contains several stories which balance the heartbreak of reality with a knife-sharp sense of humour born of frustration and anger – humour as the loaded gun it should be.
But with all our high seriousness, we might be scaring our emerging writers straight, sucking the funny right out of them. A number of young and new writers – friends of mine – have deeply weird and witty social media accounts, but they present seriously elsewhere. It’s like straightening up in front of the teacher.
Christopher Currie is undoubtedly the funniest writer in Australia, although you might not be able to tell from his work in fiction. The disparity between Currie’s social media presence and his debut novel, The Ottoman Motel – a sparse, deeply serious lit-thriller – looms large. Currie’s curation of the actual names of Queensland politicians into groups including MOST QUEENSLAND (Roger Brisbane, John Bjelke-Petersen, Michael Punshon) and PROBABLY A FILTHY VICTORIAN (Bevan Collingwood) needs to be read to believed but easily rivals the best work of the Onion and ClickHole combined. His parody of author photos is an instant classic and his send-up of cookbooks ahead of the Christmas rush had me choking at my desk at work. That’s the real definition of “not suitable for work”.
Currie’s second novel, Clancy of the Undertow, is due out in January. Aimed at a younger adult audience, it might usher the highly viral laughs of his web-based work into their print equivalent. It also might not, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not like I’m suggesting Tim Winton open a comedy club or do a standup set anytime soon – and I’m certainly not suggesting Tim Minchin write a novel (please, no). But we could all learn to lighten up.
Rebecca Varcoe understands as much, and her terrific Funny Ha Ha (a small, labour-of-love magazine) smartly bridges the gap between literary and comedy festivals, providing a potential solution. Varcoe has assembled writers Rebecca Shaw (aka @brocklesnitch), Luke Ryan and Elizabeth Flux (editor of Voiceworks), all deeply passionate about the piss-take and totally serious about the potential audience crossover. With its gargantuan headcounts, wouldn’t it be smart to see someone propose a literary stream to the Melbourne international comedy festival?
The people who shift books seem to get this. Indeed, a number of publishers and bookstores use humour incredibly well online. The Twitter accounts of Brisbane’s Avid Reader bookshop (whose social media is, unsurprisingly, run by Currie), mid-weight publishing champions Text Publishing, local lit mag the Lifted Brow and short story supporters the Review of Australian Fiction are all must-follows in as much as they have individual voices that aren’t just standing around trying to sell to you.
There’s little that can be said to be social about direct marketing; these accounts go in for a dialogue. If funny cuts through to sell books, why can’t our literature be a little on the lighter side? I’m being serious. Humourlessness isn’t a particularly prized characteristic in people, so why should it be so in books?
Insert fart noise as concluding statement here.
