Wildly unreasonable, illogical, and inappropriate

Thoughts on Slapstick, Or Lonesome No More by Kurt Vonnegut and Chapters by Tim Key

To describe something as absurd is, according to the dictionary bods, to describe something as being wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate.

Sounds like a way of life to me.

Absurdity is “my bag.”

Indeed, emotionally, I’m pretty stunted: unreasonably, illogically, and inappropriately so. On the Top Trumps card for Glenn Fisher, the strange, weary-looking creature — dressed in the pseudo-intellectual 70s-Woody-Allen-character style — would score way low in the emotional intelligence category.

My emotional deficiency has many downsides, but one of the few silver linings is that when something does trigger a clear and obvious emotional response, you know it’s worked damn hard to get it.

On the comedy front: that’s particularly so.

Most modern comedy leaves me feeling a bit “meh.” In the last decade or two, only the likes of Chris Morris, Charlie Brooker, Richard Ayoade, Bob Mortimer, and most recently, Tim Robinson have properly caused a chuckle (and the odd Instagram reel of game-play penguins inexplicably shooting each other whilst singing noot-noot — they get me too).

I realise, more and more, that what connects these particular writers (and perhaps the penguins too) is their penchant for absurdity. (Get in there, Fisher, justifiably using the word “penchant” — you go girl.)

“Unreasonable,” “illogical,” and “inappropriate” are words that would surely litter many a review of a Chris Morris comedy or even an episode of Ayoade’s Travel Man. The trigger-happy penguins certainly so.

They are also words that might be used to describe the work of Kurt Vonnegut and Tim Key.

(Phew, we’re onto the books.)

I’m going to assume — if you can be arsed to read my drivel here — you know who both of these chaps are.

If you don’t, chances are you’re not going to be inspired to read either of these books based on the fact I’m saying they’re good because they’re absurd.

More likely, if you know neither Key nor Kurt, the writing of both will leave you scratching your head and thinking: I don’t get it. (Coincidentally, that’s the same reaction I have when Michael McIntyre appears on screen, except I start vomiting too, screaming, red-faced, berserk.)

It seems absurdists tend to flock together. Despite how unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate we might be, we do have a certain honour code, a secret handshake of sorts, the way stand-ups “in the know” use knowledge of Daniel Kitson as some kind of admittance to a private comedy club we can only hope exists.

Tangentially, I wonder if the desire to create a “closed shop” culture around absurdist art in any form is a contradictory plea to the wider world for acceptance, a way of saying to our fellow man, or woman: I’m not being unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate am I? You think like this too, right?

Maybe it’s just me — I’m projecting again, damn it. And Christ, I’m going on a bit today. Forgive me, it’s because I’m writing this on a train on the way to a family funeral in Grimsby. Open fields rush by and a tired-looking man drinking a Fosters at 10 am sniffs across from me. I have my laptop open on my lap (where else?), and a woman in a tracksuit keeps eyeing my brown tweed jacket like it’s some form of alien garb. (I’m a 70s-Woody-Allen-character, can’t you see?)

We should get to the books:

An extract from one of Key’s poems, called Wood:

It was fucking cold and I was wearing totally the wrong clothes.

Just to run you through it, I’d gone for denim shorts, no top, pop socks, sandals, my little yellow beret and a wooden necklace.

I was freezing my nads of here!

There was nowt else for it: I charged into FatFace.

That line: I charged into FatFace caused me to laugh aloud when I first read it. And then again when I read it aloud to my partner in the pub. The “no top” preceding it had set the ground, got the smile, and then to follow it up with charging into FatFace, the fact he is charging in. Genius.

It describes an absurd situation. It’s doubly absurd because it’s also utterly mundane. It’s triply absurd (triply?) because it’s a poem, which we expect to be delivered in hark-the-herald-angels-sing style language, communicating some obviously profound observation.

Yet it is, in fact — and as per the dictionary bods — wildly unreasonable, illogical, and inappropriate.

Why?

It’s the unexpected juxtaposition.

This, for me, lies at the heart of successful absurdity and is perhaps its superpower.

You see, because of unexpected juxtapositions things appear absurd — unreasonable, illogical, and inappropriate — on the surface. In being so, they force us to ask, fundamentally… existentially even: What is going on here?

When we ask this question, we engage with the content on a deeper level.

We’re in.

We’re properly in.

Or in other words, it’s got us.

We never ask Michael McIntyre what is going on here? His “comedy” is all surface. There’s a wheel. Idiots are spinning on it, screaming with innocent joy. It’s entertainment: nothing more and, to be fair, nothing less.

When there is unreasonable, illogical, and inappropriate juxtaposition… and when it is unexpected… we look at things differently.

Key’s poems, on the surface, are absurd. But go a little deeper and they reflect the silliness of our culture, the true absurdity of capitalism, the fickle nature of our celebrity obsessions. Sounds too deep, right? But it’s true.

Meanwhile, Vonnegut’s writing does the same. He made a whole career of it and — arguably — he achieved an almost perfect expression of it in Slaughterhouse 5.

But let’s seek an example from Slapstick:

I am barefoot. I wear a purple toga made from draperies found in the ruins of the Americana Hotel.

I am a former President of the United States of America. I was the final President, the tallest President, and the only one ever to have been divorced while occupying the White House.

I inhabit the first floor of the Empire State Building with my sixteen-year-old granddaughter, who is Melody Oriole-2 von Peterswald, and with her lover, Isadore Raspberry-19 Cohen. The three of us have the building all to ourselves.

This is from the first few pages of the book and you’re already asking: Kurt, mate, what the fuff is going on here?

The names seem unreasonable. The setting is surely illogical. And in a story you thought had something to do with Laurel and Hardy given the prologue, it appears inappropriate.

Ta-da.

It’s the holy trinity of the absurd!

And frankly, we’re nowhere even close to the true absurdity that lies within the book.

Yet it works.

Vonnegut writes in such a light and direct way that your left brain slides over each unexpected juxtaposition with ease, while your right brain wanders behind, figuring out exactly what it all means.

(Disclaimer: I did happen to watch the Robert B. Weide documentary about Vonnegut — Unstuck In Time — just before reading this, so when Vonnegut says it is his most autobiographical book in the prologue, I can see why. But if I had read this without having watched the docco, would I have been able to read it on that level too? I don’t know. I’m just riffing here — give me a break.)

I do know Vonnegut was one of the greats. Indeed, part of my reason for picking up Slapstick was because I realised I’d been hiding from him.

Yes, I’ve read Slaughterhouse 5, Breakfast of Champions, Cat’s Cradle… the classics if you will — but something in my younger self had “identified a likeness too close to source.” I don’t know how but I had inherently recognised my own developing style in Vonnegut’s writing and shied away from him. I want to write like this, an earlier me must have thought, stop reading in case you copy.

I’m correcting that now and am on to Mother Night.

Fuck it if I’m copying. Life’s too short.

Of course, I’m not the only one to shun Vonnegut. Until recently, Vonnegut has always been considered a “lesser writer” in some way because his work is absurd… because it is, undeniably, funny.

You can’t be funny and profound is the commonly held misconception.

Yet, my feeling is that if we want to reflect the unreasonable, illogical, and inappropriate nature of modern life with accuracy and authenticity, we must do so in an unreasonable, illogical, and inappropriate way.

And if we do that…

Well…

It would make absurdists of us all.

Wait. Is that the piece?

Is that it?

It is. Stop here.

It feels weird to stop now. There was a rhythm developing, right? But fuck it. That’s where it ends.

Who makes the rules anyway? You’ve got shit to do. I’ve got shit to do…

Let’s do it.

My recommendation: Read Slapstick in a high building, looking out over things. It’s not important what things you’re looking out over, but you should be looking out over something. But to be clear, I don’t mean in a dismissive way, or a judgemental way, but rather in a way that makes you want to embrace the world. Meanwhile, read Chapters huddled over a picnic bench outside a pub, reciting it to a loved one or a friend, and sharing in the laughter that will surely ensue.