I Will Resume Ridiculing and Deleting Them Later

I got a very nice comment from an anonymous reader today.

Steve, I don't want to sound patronizing, but your writing is getting very, very, good (I speak only as a simple reader myself, not as any kind of writer, or expert). Not that your posts weren't enjoyable before, but now you proffer deep insights and poignant observations at a rate and in a manner that seems effortless-the rare kind of effortless that comes from real talent, and long practice. The kind of effortless that knows where the words come from and where they go and lets them- beautiful and economic. Maybe it's time you published something 'serious.' Nothing wrong with cookbooks and comedy of course, and you excel at both, but perhaps you should write something to benefit people (not just their stomachs and funnybones) and glorify your creator. Anyway, that's my two cents. Great work.

Thanks, whoever you are. I don't know why you wouldn't want to sound patronizing. None of my other commenters seem to mind.

I never really gave much thought to stepping outside the humor category. Humor is what I've always wanted to do. But I admit, there are problems with it. The brilliant people who worked at The National Lampoon thirty years ago managed to inject poison into the American sense of humor, mainly through movies, and the effects have done nothing but spread. As a result, humor is increasingly cruel and obscene. Revolting, antisocial jokes that shocked Lenny Bruce's unfortunate audiences wouldn't raise an eyebrow today. We are awash in bad taste. And I get caught up in it, myself. That's bad. It diminishes me as a person, and it exerts pressure on my readers, to conform to my lowered standards. I try to keep really awful stuff out of my work, but sometimes a joke is just so funny, I let temptation get the best of me. If only I could let you in on the stuff I've censored. You'd howl, but you'd understand exactly what I mean. If you think the stuff I've allowed to get past me is bad, you would be amazed by the things I've refused to publish.

Here is how humor works. You sit with the keyboard in front of you, fingers tapping away, and funny things pop into your mind. You don't carve them gradually into shape. They just appear. Maybe they require a little adjustment, but the basic ideas appear, fully formed. And if they're really funny, you feel a powerful temptation to use them, whether or not they're good for you or your audience. It's a constant battle, now that the level of discourse permits humorists to say virtually anything they want. In the old days, you'd say to yourself, "No way will they print this," and you wouldn't even bother typing it out. Temptation was less of a problem.

I put at least one thing in the cookbook I would like to remove or at least change substantially. It's a macaroni and cheese recipe written in the voice of Hunter S. Thompson. I was appalled by the depraved values he preached, and by the selfish act that ended his life. And the bizarre behavior of his family after the fact--drinking a cheery toast around his gory corpse--led me to believe there wasn't much possibility of shocking anyone close to him. So I figured it was all right to write a parody penned by his ghost. To show the world that maybe it was a mistake to revere him and to excuse and even praise his final act. But in retrospect, I think I may end up reinforcing his family's misguided notion that it was okay to treat his passing disrespectfully. He was a miserable, tortured, empty person, and he wasted his life, and he harmed society, and his death was ignominious in the extreme. I think I would have been better off writing about something else. But once you get past a certain point in the publishing process, you can't get your publisher to make changes.

It's easier to behave when you write seriously. On the other hand, you have to be more careful about troublesome things like facts. You have to actually know something. Sometimes it's more work than humor. I can crank out a good draft of a cookbook chapter in two hours. I can do that when I write seriously, too, but only when I write about things requiring little research.

I sometimes think it would be great to emulate Dennis Prager. To try to guide society back to firmer ground, via radio and books and columns. But I don't think there's any market for that kind of thing. If there is, hasn't Cal Thomas already filled the available slot? And naturally, I question my qualifications.

I appreciate the comment, regardless. And I hope whoever wrote it will see this and realize I didn't dismiss the suggestion.