The Life of Mary Karr

Mary Karr is an American poet and memoirist. She was born on January 16, 1955 in Groves, Texas to JP and Charlie Marie Karr. Growing up in east Texas Mary developed a biting sense of humor that brings her books to life. After a brief stay in Los Angeles, California Mary moved to St. Paul, Minnesota to attend Macalester College before leaving to travel the country for two years. She later enrolled into graduate school at Goddard College in 1979. This is where she met friend and mentor Tobias Wolff. In 1983, Mary married poet Mike Milburn they had one son Dev, before they later divorced. Mary has served as assistant professor at Tufts University, Emerson College, Harvard and Sarah Lawrence College. Karr has received numerous awards and accolades including the Guggenheim Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, Bunting Fellowship (Radcliffe College), The Whiting Writer's Award National Endowment for the Arts grant. She is currently Jesse Peck professor at Syracuse University in New York.








The Liar's Club










In 1995 Mary Karr exploded into the writing world with a bang. The Liars’ Club tells of Karrs troubled childhood in fictional Leechfield, Texas. With a father who is not around, a mother she says “Fancied herself a bohemian Scarlett O’Hara” (pg 11 Liars Club) and stead fast older sister Lecia, Mary’s family draws you in with all there eccentricities. The Liars’ Club received critical acclaim and stayed on the New York Times best sellers list for over a year. In 1996 Mary received the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for best first non-fiction work.















"At some point the fire fades to orange background, and I stare only at mother's face. It is all streaked up with lipstick and soot, so she looks like a bonifide maniac." (Liar's Club, p 152) You can relate Mary's childhood to that of her mother's favorite song "Mack the Knife". This depicts how Mary's mother at times can be deceiving and give the illusion that she is content in her role as a matriarch keeping her teeth tightly concealed beneath her smile. Through out the book you see the mother's mood go from stable to "nervous". It is in these times of nervousness that Charlie Marie bears her teeth.

"Oh the shark has zippy teeth, dear,

And he shows them pearl whites.

Just a jack knife has his teeth, dear,

And he keeps them out of sight..." (Liar's Club, p 89)

Cherry








In September 2001 Mary Karr leapt back into the New York Times best sellers list, once again, with her insatiable coming of age memoir Cherry. With her no nonsense humor and raging hormones Karr weaves a delicate web that is an adolescents girls sexual awaking. Cherry is at times shocking but hard to put down. It also divulges into the murky waters of Karr's use of illegal drugs and alcohol. Enamored with the Hippie culture and a group of laid back surfers Mary dives head first into the world of LSD, marijuana and pills. Of the experience she says “I also learned about funerals early. The book opens when I'm moving to California with this bunch of surfers who hollowed out a board to transport a brick of pot and various pharmaceuticals. Most of them went to prison. Two were suicides. One vanished into the Witness Protection Program. The only ones thriving today are me and my pal Doonie, and we both stopped drinking and drugging more than a decade ago. That says something about how the countercultural winds blew over me.” (1997-2008 Barnesandnoble.com llc)
(http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Cherry/Mary-Karr/e/9780141002071#EXC )







"Sure you were told that drugs cut a coiled and downward swerving path to degradation if not death. That was part of their allure." (Independent News and Media Limited) Littered with drugs, Jimmy Hendrix, overdoses, and suicide Cherry will pull at your heart and leave tears of laughter in your eyes.


Sinners Welcome





In 1996 Mary Karr shocked her fans by converting to Catholicism. She did so after an ex-heroin addict told her to get on her knees and pray for help to stop drinking. She took the advice and from it birthed a new look on life and her fourth volume of poetry, Sinners Welcome. Of the choice she made to stop drinking she says, "I haven't had a drink for about 16 years. It just took three minutes a day. When I first started praying, it was just, ""Help me stay sober. Thanks."" (www.beliefnet.com)








When asked about the title and how she chose the name Mary states, "At the church I went to in Syracuse, there is a banner outside that says "Sinners Welcome". The church is located in the poorest part of Syracuse, where all half-way houses are. Therefore, about 20-30% of the parish are disabled, either physically or mentally. I always loved walking in under that banner. I used to think you had to be good to go to church. Turns out you can go whether or not you have been to confession. Who needs it more than a sinner?" (www.beliefnet.com) In Sinners Welcome, Mary Karr takes a daring leap by mixing faith, love, and the remnants of a rebellious adolescent all into one book.




How the reader can relate to Karrs works


Mary Karr said it best when she told David Ian Miller, "On a good day for me, I'm in touch with the human heart, the human comedy, and the human drama." (www.sfgate.com, Finding My Religion) A well rounded and provocative writer, Karr draws on the three things we crave as humans. Throughout her books and poems she is able to consistently pull the reader in with a cynical best friend like humor.

Work Cited:


Barnesandnoble.com llc 1997-2008
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Cherry/Mary-Karr/e/9780141002071#EXC

Belief Net
http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/Catholic/2006/06/Mary-Karr-Guided-By-Prayer.aspx

Google Images
Google.com

Karr, Mary
Liars’ Club
1995 Published by
Penguin Books
375 Hudson St. New York, New York 10014

Lappin, Elena
(Cherry by Mary Karr) Article
Friday, 22 June 2001
Copyright 2008 Independent News and Media Limited
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/cherry-by-mary-karr-675087.html

Miller, David Ian

"Finding my religon"

www.sfgate.com

YouTube.Com

Group members

Kevin S. Dehn , Jeanette DiGiovenale,Jennifer Hasselbach

An Anatomy of Humor: Heidi Julavits

How can a book about one of America’s greatest fears be considered funny? Most people wouldn’t consider being hijacked and taken hostage a totally hilarious situation, but humor is not always obviously laugh out loud funny. Freud says that depending on how the humor is delivered, is how funny it is. According to the philosopher Monro, there are ten situations that can create laughter. In The Effect of Living Backwards there are many things masquerading as something that they are not. There are also many shortages of knowledge and/ or skills.

The book starts out in one of the main character’s views. Her name is Alice, and she is trying to get into the International Institute for Terrorist Studies in Lucerne. As Alice tells the admissions officer of her life, she gets asked the question “How can you be so certain?”. Right away one of the situations that Monro mentioned that creates laughter, something masquerading as something that they are not, comes in to play. The first sentence of the novel is “When I arrived at the Institute, my name was still Alice…” and at the end of the prologue, she ends up making out with one of her professors and thinking to herself “ It was not the sort of thing that ‘Alice’ would ever do, and therein lay its singular appeal.”

At the beginning of chapter one Alice and her sister, Edith, are flying to Morocco for Edith’s wedding. Hobbes said that laughter is mean spirited, and throughout this chapter, Alice makes fun of how “blond” Edith is. She tells Edith that she is losing her “spark”, that ever since she got engaged, she hasn’t been the same sexy promiscuous woman that she knew. Then Alice admits that saying that was a “mean and petty sibling maneuver” which made her feel better about herself because she humiliated Edith.


All of the shame stories are narrated by the person whose shame it is. In “A Mother’s Shame”, Alice and Edith’s mother is on a trip to Machu Picchu with her aunt. This story is funny because it seems like whenever Alice and Edith’s mom isn’t around her aunt, both of them are having sex. According to Monro, indecency is one of the criteria of laughter.

In chapter Two Alice tells of how she is not yet a very observant person. She learned to be very observant when she was taking an exam at International Institute for Terrorist Studies in Lucerne. Alice had been up all night studying for the exam and being interrogated, as had everyone else in her class, and the professor walked in forty-five minutes late and informed everyone that the exam had been moved to another room. The exam had been moved because the professor said that the room was being painted a “brighter shade of ecru”. The last question on the exam was “What color were the original walls in the Curtis Fishbeiner Lecture Hall?” the answers they could choose from were “Shell Pink, British Khaki, Petit Beurre, and Ecru”. The true original shade of the walls were Petit Beurre, and since the majority of the students trusted the professor when he said that they were ecru, everyone failed the exam. This would be an example of any shortage of knowledge or skill, that Monro explains.

In Cyrus’ Shame, Hobbes’ theory is put to work when Cyrus is on the train and sees a fat woman running to catch up to the departing train. Before she saw him staring at her, I think he was amused. When she yelled for help, he decided to help her, but she did not make the train. The only thing he had of hers was her handbag, which he stole her money out of.

The humor in chapter three can be seen through a scene where Bruno is interrogating Justin about his girlfriend. Bruno is telling Justin about his girlfriend and how un-catholic she acts, “but those girls are only ever catholic after the fact” he says. Bruno uses this humiliation to make Justin feel that he is inferior to Bruno. According to Hobbes, humor is a way to show judgment or power over someone else. Bruno does this well by pointing out to Justin that his girlfriend is still with him for herself, not for him.

In the fourth chapter, Smythes uses a Freudian type of humor by pointing out the sameness in two very dissimilar things. During a lecture at the Institute, he points out how the ideal way to hold hostages in a terrorism situation is much the same as holding a dinner party. “If the terrorist assembles his guests with sagacity,” he says, “the party will run itself. He can sit back and let ‘humanity’ dictate the behavior of his hostages; he need barely posses a gun.” Later in the chapter another Freudian type of humor was used by Alice. She defined “fright distance” as a way to measure fear. This is a play on words; the phrase flight distance is used when describing the distance of a specific flight pattern.

During “Winnie’s Shame” we see a type of humor as defined by Henri Bergson. Bergson believed that humor was a way of self policing through humiliation. In this chapter Winnie sets out to find her father, and when she finally does, she lies to him about who she is so that she can interview him. When she does meet him she is disappointed by who she finds. Her father is not a great man, he is merely a bad poet. After this humiliating experience Winnie is not likely to question her reality again the way she did by trying to find a person who was not in her life for a reason.

Situational humor and scenarios – Alice and Edith’s father questions the girls on moral dilemmas.
Choices and reasons- whether Alice would use the wire cutters to end the hijacking. What was her reason to not cut the wire?
Imaginary love- Alice’s unusual attraction to Pitcairn.
Bruno’s wife- afraid to disabled people. Bruno tried to see her reaction to his fake blindness. She actually left him.

“Gesina’s Shame” is the shame story of Gesina, the hotel worker who is in cahoots with the hijackers. In “Gesina’s Shame” we learn that when she was a young girl, her mother took a job in Switzerland as a private teacher for two young boys in a wealthy family. Gesina and her mother move to Switzerland and move into the estate of the wealthy family. As far as we know the family consists of a father and two sons of somewhat similar age. Gesina and her mother are forced to live above the carriage house. Gesina’s toys are confiscated and she is forbidden from interacting with the two boys. The narrator tells us that this is because the father feared that if the boys had any kind of distraction from study then they would become competitive and attempt to kill each other. As the story continues, the young Gesina attempts, several times unsuccessfully, to gain the interest of each of the boys and get them to play with her. Then, Gesina finds a red rubber ball. With this ball Gesina is finally able to manipulate the boys into playing with her. She convinces each of them that the other is sneaking out to the carriage house to play with her and the red rubber ball. They each become intrigued and end up sneaking out to the carriage house to play. On the day that Gesina and her mother are set to leave she invites each of the boys to come out and play with her at separate times. They both end up being there at the same time and the ball is destroyed. The boys begin to fight one another and there is a terrible storm outside. The boys fight near the fence and Gesina sees their father outside with a rifle. She hears a loud boom and then she sees nothing by the fence. As she leaves she thinks she sees a ghost rapped in bandages in an upper window of the house. She later sees the older brother many years down the line. We are led to believe that this older brother is the now blinded Bruno, who tells Gesina that he lost his eyes while playing with his younger brother, who we are led to believe is Pitcairn.

As the rest of the main story continues, Alice is at the hotel, with the rest of the hostages, along with their captors. While eating yet another meager meal, an argument erupts and Bruno, out of what seems to be an overwhelming sense of failure and frustration, proclaims that everyone is free to go. Alice goes upstairs to retrieve Winnie, but discovers she is bleeding. They call an ambulance and everyone is loaded in. They are all driven far from the city to a helicopter and while they are loading into the helicopter Winnie has her baby. Everyone, with the exception of Bruno and Edith, gets in the helicopter, and as Alice attempts to board she falls out and the helicopter takes off. So, Alice returns to the hotel to try and find Edith. When she returns, Edith is there with no sign of Bruno. Edith is tearing up the floor searching for her engagement ring. Alice convinces her that they must leave. Alice evacuates first, and while she is outside “falling stars”(bombs) bombard the hotel and it goes up in a blaze. Alice, while attempting to reenter the burning building, is confronted by Bruno who tells her with extreme jubilation that he has won and Pitcairn has lost. He also informs Alice that Edith sold her out and has been selling her out from the beginning. Alice ignores him and saves Edith anyway, even though she knows Edith had been working against her. The story continues into the future and Alice is the guardian of the now deceased Winnie’s daughter. Edith is married and living overseas. Alice is not sure of the point of the entire hijacking experience. She finds herself dreaming/fantasizing about the nonexistent life between her and Pitcairn. And at the very end of the book, in an imaginary letter for Pitcairn, we learn that perhaps all of the shame stories had been told by alice. “if you could tell him, please, tell him when you see him next, that I am alone again and just my plain old self, not Cyrus, not Sad or Winnie or Bruno or my mother.”[350] These of course are the names of most of the shame stories.

The humor in this story or at least this section of the story is somewhat hard to find. After all, the story is not exactly full of all kinds of laugh out loud humor. However, there is one part in particular that is quite humorous or comical. During “Gesina’s Shame” when she first plays with the younger brother and the ball in the carriage house crawl space. The whole scene plays out like a kind of awkward first-time clumsy sexual experience. “This isn’t fun. I thought this was supposed to be fun. It’s never fun the first time, I said. Nor the second nor the third. But it is intriguing how it makes you feel dirty and that is why you will do it.”[286] Of course she is talking about playing with the boy and the red rubber ball, but it sounds like she is talking about something completely different. This is why it is humorous. According to Freud there are several reasons why something is humorous. First, the naïve, Freud contends that an instance of the naïve is comic. It is because the naïve is a difference between inhibitions. Gesina does not have the same inhibitions as the younger brother. This is comical. Also, this is an instance of a conceptual joke, and Freud contends that these jokes are examples of faulty thinking and diverging from what is actually being said. In this instance we are somewhat forced in to the faulty thinking and diverging from what is actually being said. Gesina is talking about playin with the ball but the way it is said sounds a lot like a first time sexual encounter.




There are a lot of instances in this novel when many of the theories that Freud, Hobbes, Monro, and others that we discussed in class were used. As we said in class, however, it is very hard to dissect humor without taking it apart so far that you lose the humor.



Alisa, Jonathan, Jeanette, Caitlin

Works Cited

Julavits, Heidi. The Effect of Living Backwards. New York: Berkley Trade, 2004.

Freud, Sigmund . "Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious"
www.blackboard.uc.edu

Google images
www.google.com

www.nataliedee.com

Effect of Living Backwards Review

"Backwards is a colorful, bright, funny, and intriguing and you genuinely care about Alice. Her smartly off-kilter sarcasm and sharp, cynical sound bites allow her to cope... while Julavits's elliptical narrative makes our own days seem boring and linear by contrast."--- Seattle Weekly

The Effect of Living Backwards, is a story about a woman named Alice who is a dropout social work student who by "chance" gets on a plane bound for Mellila, that is hijacked by a blind man, and his two accomplices. Alice and the other passengers are taken for the most interesting flight of their lives. It is not until Alice speaks with the man named Pitcairn from the International Institute for Terrorist Studies in Lucerne that she begins to wonder about the situation and its meaning. Each of the passengers are armed with their truths and shame.

Mother’s Shame

This story is about an 18 year old girl who goes to Peru with her aunt (Aunt Bea). Aunt Bea is a pretty woman, but mocks any man who is kind to her. In Peru the first man Aunt Bea spurns is a balding English-man. In the end, her niece, who we later find is Alice’s mother, ends up sleeping with the balding man. After thinking on her escapade for a while, she and her aunt visit Machu Picchu. In the tour, she stays with the tour group but Aunt Bea soon disappears but she believes she simply decided to walk the exhibits on her own. A bony man leads Aunt Bea into the picnic area where her niece is and says he rescued her from being neck deep in a mud pit. The boy who rescued her is a bug boy at the exhibit and his name is Harold. Aunt Bea’s niece grows very fond of Harold. Ten months later, Harold tracks down the niece in the States and they agree to marry. It’s like the typical storybook ending. But The Effects of Living Backwards is not the typical storybook, so what significance does Mother’s shame story have?

Bruno’s Shame

This shame story was about how he met his wife and lost her. His wife lied to him and told him she was a part of a group that she really was not. She was a nun who left the covenant. She left because she thought very wicked thoughts about people with missing body limbs. Bruno tried to help her to see that it was nothing wrong with her and that maybe she would show affection towards someone she loved. So to help her, he got together with his fried who was a make up artist. He had the artist make him a blind man and then had him call his wife and tell her about the accident. She does not seem upset or anything and does not show any emotion. When he goes home he continues with the joke and his wife had told him a long time ago, that if anything terrible ever happen to him she would leave him. So he figured since they were married and said their vows “In sickness and in health” she would not leave him. But that part of the vow was taken out. In the end he went blind and when his wife left she never came back. To me the point of this shame story was to inform us of how he lost his sight. Not only that but also the shame of him loosing his wife because of the horrible joke he played on her. He tried to make different types of adjustments to their life to get her to stay with him such as living in the dark and wearing sunglasses so she would not have to look at him. I feel that if he would have just listened to his wife more than maybe he would not be left along. He was not understanding of her ways or feelings.

Winnie’s Shame

Winnie’s mother has a rare form of epilepsy that is triggered by smells. There was a medication she was taking but it made her gain a lot of weight and with that she was very sad. In the birth of her two daughters she never cuddled with them nor had that mother to daughter time with them, for this she decided to get off the medication and result to other methods. In order to have a better relationship with her children she put them on a strict meat only diet for a Tibetan seer said “meat makes you odorless to the enemy” (174). Winnie’s sister claimed that all the meat she was eating triggered her to have a thirst for blood. She would kill stray cats, beavers, rats and even the neighbor’s dog once. When they got to college Winnie moved into a vegetation cooperative and after college, Winnie’s sister bought an organic farm in Iowa. Things were going pretty good for the girls. Winnie decides to locate her father whose sperm was donated to her mother. She pretended to be a journalist doing an article on emerging poets. When she met up with him she asked him many questions, simply trying to get to know what he was about. Winnie went on with her lie, going back and forth from the vegetarian lifestyle to devouring herself with meat. Back at home, Winnie’s mother had a group of girls sleeping outside in tents, starving them, and put the girls through various tests as if they were in the military. Winnie’s sister caught a bunch of squirrels and began cooking them, making the young girls stomachs growl louder and louder. Winnie leaves to go to the police station to tell them what is going on back home. When they arrive back at the house they find Winnie’s mother has been suffocated to death. Winnie’s sister tells the police the hungry girls did this. Soon after the sister flies back to her farm and is not seen ever again. The funeral was attended by lots of people. Winnie goes to the casket and camera crews follow, hoping for an emotional moment from her for the movie they are making. Winnie fails to show any emotion for her mother. Interesting story indeed; Is the significance of the story the lack of a father figure, Winnie’s inability to show emotion for her mother, or is this simply a story to throw readers off?

Through out the entire story, there are many references to these shame stories. Many of the characters mention that life is meaningless, meaning is only ascribed by you. What you may find meaningful, only carries meaning to yourself. This story is a mind bender, it keeps you wondering what is real and what is not. It really shows that hind sight is the only way you can ascribe meaning.

"The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday--but never jam today."
"It must come sometimes to 'jam to-day,'" Alice objected.
"No, it can't," said the Queen."It's jam every other day: to-day isn't any other day, you know."
"I don't understand you," Alice said. "It's dreadfully confusing!"
"That's the effect of living backwards," the Queen said kindly: "it always makes one a little giddy at first--" --- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass (and What Alice Found There)

Feminist Humor

Behind every successful man is a surprised woman.
-Maryon Pearson-

Feminism is the belief in the political, social, and economic equality of women. Women seeking change in this country have accomplished forms of equality through feminist movements. Feminism is considered to be divided into 3 movements. The first movement was legal equality, the second was socioeconomic equality, and the third was ultimate equality. The first movement works towards giving women basic human rights. For example, at the beginning of the twentieth century, women finally gained grounds to vote in 1920.(Gwyn Kirk)


This was only the start of women uniting to change oppression against women. There was a large increase in the number of female writers in this time period. A large portion of that writing contained feminist humor with such writers as Margaretta Newell and Mary Austin. Both of these writers had prominent articles written in that time that reflected on women’s roles in society.(Gwyn Kirk)

The second part of the movement involved women changing their roles in society. An example seen of this was in the 1940s and 1950s. At that time women entered the workplace due to a lack of men for the war effort. This shift in socioeconomic role forever changed the idea that women were meant solely to remain at home and be house wives. This is when the fight for equality in the workplace began.(Gwyn Kirk)

Women worked in terrible conditions and for less money than men. Men were terrified by womens' eagerness to work and get an education. Even today, women are paid $.77 to every man’s $1. The right for women to get an education has been sought after by women to attain equality in social status. We discussed this when reading about Nancy Walker and the idea that education withered the body and would cause problems in child bearing. Men were threatened by women’s intellect.(Gwyn Kirk)

Feminist humor rose from the feminist movement. Women began using humor as a tool for their frustration. In the beginning, men thought women were not worthy of being humorous and women who did write with humor were considered unwomanly and masculine. Humor theorist, Nancy Walker, says that humor was seen as unusual from women because women are considered to be emotional. Women were meant to be quiet and subordinate. For that reason, women often wrote under pen names so their voices could be heard. Men frequently would refuse to read something they knew a woman wrote.(Walker)

In more modern day, feminist humor is still prevalent but has a very different style. Women still find a lot of use of humor on topics which are considered based towards women such as working in the home and home life. For example, Julia Slavin’s novel is set in a suburban area and deals with the mom, Wendy, and her son, Dylan. Many women still find the use of comedy as a means for getting attention on a true issue. Female humorists use several different types of discourse to practice their humor. One style rising in popularity is “stand-up” performance. It is interesting to note, that women have made large strides but differences are still found. A female cannot publicly say that same things as a man without it being taken in a different way.


For example, men commonly use vulgar humor which is very explicit about sex. Very few female stand-up comedians can entertain a crowd with the same kind of vulgarity. If a crowd does respond to a woman’s use of that humor, it’s partially from the unusual nature of a woman being so vulgar in public. Women are still expected to be somewhat demure in hostile humor is rarely taken as well from a woman as it would be from a man. One female stand-up comedian both beloved and hated for her vulgar humor is Kathy Griffin. Roseanne Barr and Lisa Lampanelli are other prime examples of modern female humorists given negative reviews for their vulgar style. Also, Aimee Bender’s short story entitled, “Mother Fucker” caught every one’s attention because of the vulgarity of it; this was not an expected title from a woman.


Chelsea Handler

Many other female humorists take use of novels and short stories as a means for sharing their feminist humor. Feminism is based off of the idea of inequality. The use of irony or satire to reflect those ignored inequalities is popular in feminist writing. Chelsea Handler is a woman that has her own television show and has written a few books. Her works use lots of irony and satire while discussing the differences between men and women. She also goes for shock by blatantly discussing topics such as sex.

Nancy Walker states that women humor now deals with the perception of self. Lorrie Moore’s short stories from Self Help are a great example of humor relating the perception of the self. In the story “Go Like This,” a woman describes how she is planning her own suicide. Perception of the body is also common in feminist humor today, says Walker. “Skin Care,” a short story by Judy Budnitz discusses body image.




Feminist Humor is always evolving. Watch how different these two comics are.

Another common tool seen in feminist humor is the flipping of common gender roles in a piece of work for comic effect. Our laughter in those instances recognizes our pre conceived notions of female versus male roles in society. Both male and female humorists comment on the differences between men and women. Male humorists tend to make their commentary with a demeaning tone towards women. The inappropriateness of their tone in modern times gives them a shock value earning a laugh. Female humorists tend to make their commentary with a frustrated tone. They can comment on a range of issues; whether it is social inequality or lack of chivalry in modern day.(Stillon)

In the beginning feminist humor was needed as a way of bringing around major social change. In modern day feminist humor is focused towards overall equality. Modern feminist humor may not always be directly attacking the gap between men and women. In modern day, feminist humor is seen more when women refuse to line up to their established societal role.

Sources:
"Ellen Degeneres-One Night Stand part 1." YouTube. 22 Nov. 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVy3m8retZE

Gwyn Kirk and Margot Okazawa-Rey. Women’s Lives: A Multicultural Approach. McGraw Hill Companies Inc. 2007 New York.

"Last Comic Standing-Iliza Schlesinger." YouTube. 22 Nov. 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1cT_w6wvzk&feature=related

Stillion, Judith. Feminist Humor: who appreciates it and why. Psychology of women quarterly, 11 (2): 219-232.

Walker, Nancy. "A Very Dangerous Thing." http://www.blackboard.uc.edu

Created By:
Katie Frisbee, Missy Feltz, Samantha Speiles, Jeanette Digiovenale

Biography of Heidi Julavits

Jeff Giles called Heidi Julavits "such a gifted, visceral writer … that even her most painful visions can be beautiful to behold." She has also been described as “a woman of many parts” by Robert Birnbaum.

Background

Heidi was born in Portland, Maine to an English teacher and a lawyer. She attended Dartmouth College and after graduating, Julavits traveled to Japan until she returned to the US to work odd jobs such as a waitress, copywriter and teacher. She eventually enrolled in the graduate writing program at Columbia and took writing classes to improve. Julavits had a difficult time finding work until she met with a man named Dave Eggers who put a piece of her work in an issue of the Esquire. Her writing attracted the attention of G.P. Putnam’s Sons and a literary deal was worked out and her first novel, The Mineral Palace ,was published. The novel was given mixed reviews but Julavits says, "I would read a reviews with the tiniest little criticisms in it, and I would be completely under the table for three days." Mixed reviews never stopped Julavits and in 2003 her second novel, The Effect of Living Backwards was published. Heidi Julavits was able to overcome some challenges regarding the controversy surrounding the topic of a hijacking after the attacks of 9/11. Critics looked at Julavits’ second novel as “more livelier” and said she was able to go back to her black humor, unlike what was found in The Mineral Palace.

Along with turbulence within her writing, Heidi found trouble in her first marriage to Manny Howard, a former magazine editor. She married him in 1997 and divorced in 1999 after discovering he had been stealing money from her bank account. She then remarried another author, Ben Marcus in 2002 and they began editing a literary magazine, The Believer, together. They currently have one child and reside in Maine but travel back and forth between Portland and Brooklyn.

Accomplishments

Heidi Julavits is an eminent author who has shown to have several successful types of writings published throughout her career. Her credentials and experiences have led her to become more and more established in the literary field. In 1998, Julavits started her career with short stores and had her first one discovered in the Esquire magazine. In the same year, she also made two book deals with a publishing company, Putnam. Her writing includes books as well as short stories which have been published in The Best American Short Stories 1999, Zoetrope, McSweeney’s, and Time. Her main debut which established her as a respectable book writer was a novel known as The Mineral Palace in 2000. Another famous novel later written by Julavits was, The Effect of Living Backwards, which was labeled and awarded as a “New York Times Notable Book” and a “San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year.” Following after her many publications, Julavits was able to acquire the position as the editor of a well established literary journal called The Believer and a journalist for Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, and the New York Times Magazine. Julavits has proven to be a very talented writer through the basis of her past accomplishments and experiences.
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Book Reviews

Although Julavits has an impressive history as an author, some of her writings seem to get mixed reviews. From one side of her reviews, there seems to be many readers who adore Julavits literary works. One notable quote about Julavits book was made by a previous author we have read from in our class. Aimee Bender’s opinion on The Effect of Living Backwards was, “A wonderfully absurdist game of chess—Julavits packs her novel full of odd and piercing moral dilemmas, wicked insights, and memorable characters. The Effect of Living Backwards is a delicious feast of case studies gone haywire.” Other well-known writers, who have some similarities in relation to Julavit’s writing style enjoy reading her books and believe her work and style of writing to be extraordinary. Another positive quote was from the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review and was, “Julavits is an energetic, playful writer, and one can imagine she crafted The Effect of Living Backwards for repeated reading, with each read-through revealing new Nabokovian tricks and riddles.” Some believe Julavits’ innovative writing style makes her books more interesting and desirable for the reader. Also her novel, The Mineral Palace, has received good reviews and was found by some reviewers as a "marvelous debut." Jeff Giles from Newsweek went on further to describe her book as "harrowing, poetic, and tragic enough to satisfy both Faulkner and Oprah." Some believe that Julavits’ books can be enjoyed by a variety of readers and is entertaining no matter who you are. Some readers will admit her books can be difficult to read, but are still worth the trouble. For example, Dave Eggers’ opinion on The Effect of Living Backwards was, “With astounding intelligence and unceasing acuity, Heidi Julavits fulfills the great promise of her talents, and jumps to the forefront of her generation. This could be the smartest and most challenging book I’ve read by anyone our age, and beyond that, it’s just plain hard to put down.” From reading many book reviews on Julavits’ works, it is apparent that many find her to be extremely talented and an insightful writer.

On the other hand, some critics did not consider Julavits’ writings as overall good pieces of work. According to a post by Anita Gates in the New York Times, there were shortcomings and dislikes found with Julavits's type of style and some of her ways of portraying information to the readers. Some readers have a difficult time making sense of Julavits’ meaning and purpose behind her stories. Some who reviewed Julavits’ books and styles of writing recommended the reader to read her book in one sitting in order to keep from getting lost in her story lines. Julavits tends to fill her books with many events and dialogue which can confuse readers at times. According to Elsa Gaztambide, “Julavits' writing style is a sophisticated balance of suspense, humor, and intellectually stimulating prose, which produces a novel unfit for the easygoing reader because of its intense and profoundly dark undertones.” Therefore, not everyone finds Julavits’ stories pleasant and would not consider her writing style to be proficient.

The Uses of Enchantment

The Uses of Enchantment, Julavits’ third novel, has been described as "[A] crisply written but overcomplicated novel, a cat's cradle with so many overlapping fibs, stories-within-stories, allusions, and red herrings that even multiple readings won't release all the knots. " Entertainment Weekly.
Booklist said it was "[A] moodily atmospheric yet sometimes wildly funny tale of sick, twisted love, into which Julavits effectively reels the reader by juxtaposing past and present, factual and conjectural sequences”
The Uses of Enchantment was published in 2006 and follows her pattern of dark stories that have a serious subject line. As in The Effect of Living Backwards, with a terrorist plot, this novel deals with the subject of kidnapping and witchcraft.

The story takes place in 1985 at a prep school where a 16 year old girl, Mary Veal, is abducted after a field hockey practice. She suddenly reappears and there become questions about her abduction. Did it really happen? Mary has no recollections about what happened to her and her mother thought it would be a good idea if she went to a psychiatrist named Dr. Hammer. Mary’s mother was socially conscious, yet came from a background of Salem witches. Mary is very hostel towards the doctor and he soon realizes her memories of the abduction is coming from a 17th century story about an Indian girls’ abduction. The doctor and Mary’s mother come to question whether the abduction really occurred and if Mary made all of it up.

Julavits follows her pattern of writing in the present and past and back and forth when Mary returns to her old town 15 years later for her mothers’ funeral and begins questioning her past and the people in it.

Below is a link to a video of Heidi Julavits describing how in a way this third novel was somewhat “autobiographical” and how her past living in a Victorian house and being allowed to play in a creepy cemetery gave her somewhat of a basis for this book. She also talks about how in her writings she creates adolescent women who are destructive and have had tortured rough lives, (such as Anne Frank, Ask Alice) as has her main characters and have something destructive such as kidnapping and hijackings occur in her novels. Yet as characters they are become strong, important, and in her words, “special”. Julavits believes that young adult women readers relate in some ways to these characters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dapegY0nZ4

Hotel Andromeda

The work of Julavits is not limited to a purely written format. Hotel Andromeda is a short story that she has composed as she might any other, but she collaborates with a photographer named Jenny Gage to add a visual element to the work. The raw style of Gage’s photographic work coupled with Julavits’ sometimes very on edge style of writing blend together creating synthetic multi-sensory experience. The story itself revolves around the live of quintuplets who are abandoned by their mother who had undergone a process of artificial insemination, taking a samples from five “ …screened, gold-medalled men whose sperm was centrifugally spun into cellular cotton candy and layered over a glass honeycomb tray.” The five girls grow up to be little more than living, breathing science experiments living in a hotel and having daily visits with a certain Dr. Gloria. Their days are spent squandering, pillow fights and the immature behavior of adolescents marks their existence. In contrast the photographic work reflects haggard women in their late 20’s or 30’s, which look off at nothing in particular, reflecting little emotion as though they are internally broken. The humor in this work can be found in the insights into the women’s mindsets, and a deeper meaning can be found in the emotional trials in the lives of our specimens. The women take a downward turn after one of the five disappears, leading them ultimately break down and Danielle, brightest of the five reveals her inner feelings of inadequacy and isolation. To give an example of the humor found in this writing here is an excerpt of a question posed by their doctor, which also gives insight to the mindsets of the young women:

“Do you wish your mother would visit?
Regina: No
Lydia: No
Pamela: I don’t care
Dora: Do you wish your mother would visit?
Danielle: Our mother should do what she likes.”

Julavits vs. Slavin

Heidi Julavits and Julia Slavin represent a class of contemporary feminist authors who are adept at writing scathing and witty social and political satires. The status quo is called into question through the use of anecdotes on the everyday reality in which everyday people live. Julavits in The Effect of Living Backwards takes an approach that is more grounded in the realm of actual possibility, while Slavin in Carnivore Diet takes us into the world of magical realism. Both, however, seem to have the same effect on a reader in their use of the use of everyday situations and conversations that anyone for the most part could see themselves in and relate to. Both authors are also on the cutting edge in challenging old stereotypes as in the traditional roles of women in society, revealing a more ambitious independent image of women. The feminist element is only one of many that contribute to these well rounded and thought out satires as both authors are actually attacking, in a humorous way, all segments of modern American society, through their own unique perspectives.

Writing Style

Overall, Julavits has a unique style of fictional writing which some consider creative and inventive while others find it unusual. One thing that can be observed about Julavits is that although her books contain some absurdities, she conveys a bit more realism in her stories then by past authors we have read such as Bender. For example, The Effects of Living Backward has a more realistic view of two sisters who share a love/hate relationship compared to a family with pumpkins for heads as we see in Bender’s writings. Many of Julavits’ works do tend to have an exceptional type of humor that can also appear unpromising. Julavits also admitted that her first novel, The Mineral Palace, is not normally like something she would write because of its overall sense of seriousness. In her later writings, Julavits incorporated more humor in her works. When referring to The Effect of Living Backwards, she said, "Since my first novel was primarily bleak, I really wanted to inject some humor into this new book." Also when being interviewed about her writing style, Julavits said, "I am a fan of literature that is funny but kind of savage at the same time. The books I love most are the ones that make you laugh, but an hour later, there's an aftertaste of despair." Even though she has humor in her writing, many of her stories reveal to the readers serious topics through imaginative and metaphoric ways.

Julavits is known for convey real life experiences in her writings and focuses more on modern themes. One prime example is when she referred to the terrorist attack as “The Big Terrible” rather than calling it “911”. Her message about “The Big Terrible” can be put in the perspective of real life experiences just like the tragic event of September 11th. Furthermore, as a reader, one can see the theme of human nature and truth in Julavits’ writing. Many of the ideas from Julavits’ stories come from her very own personal experiences. The Mineral Palace was about a young bride who moves to Colorado to be with her husband. Some of the events in the novel come from her grandmother’s personal experiences. Furthermore, one thing that inspired Julavits in the plot of, The Effect of Living Backwards, was when she was young, one of her cousins was killed on a plan that was bombed by terrorists in Rome.

Terrorist Attack (Side note)

Readers may pay special attention to the fact that Julavits actually started writing The Effect of Living Backwards before the event of September 11th. Here are direct quotes from an interview pertaining to the accommodations she had to make just recently after the event.

“I decided that I relied too heavily on landscape in my first book to do the lion’s share of the psychological work—not that this was a fault in the book, but rather it was a strength of mine that made me subsequently weak in other ways. So deciding to set my entire book in an airplane was the conceptual equivalent of tying my stronger hand behind my back. That said, of course, I since have moved out of the airplane, and my book is hardly, hardly, short. I also failed to follow my own restrictions, and introduced a formal element, alternating each chapter with confessionals by ancillary characters, which ends up blowing the whole plane idea wide open. Of course, I am up against an entirely new set of challenges now, given that the book is not only set on an airplane, it features a hijacking. My choice to pursue this subject matter has been severely shaken these past few weeks; also my choice to utilize terrorism as a metaphor for family dynamics (my two main characters are sisters). This is not to say that terrorism, due to its new immediacy, is beyond the reach of metaphor; it is simply to say that the book I will write now, versus the book I might have written, will necessarily be the product of a very different mindset.”

"Once the trade towers were attacked, I had to decide, 'did this book take place before or after?' It changed everything.”

In the days following September 11th, Julavits had a difficult time deciding whether or not to finish her novel that was about terrorism. She had to make some adjustments in her book and she made a bold statement by having it published after one of America’s most disastrous events. Julavits waited many months and finished The Effect of Living Backwards at the end of the summer of 2001.

Work Cited
"Believe! Heidi Julavits Has Emerged from Her Tennis-Ball Canister!" Powells. 16 April 2007. http://www.powells.com/authors/julavits.html.

Benson, Heidi. "Funny things happen when a hijacking occurs in young writer Heidi Julavits' second novel". San Francisco Chronicle. 5 July 2003. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/07/05/DD245371.DTL

Birnbaum, Robert. "Heidi Julavits". The Morning News. 10 January 2007. http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/birnbaum_v/heidi_julavits.php.

"Heidi Julavits Biography". Encyclopedia of World Biography . 2007. http://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2007-Co-Lh/Julavits-Heidi.html

Julavits, Heidi. "Hotel Andromeda". Artspace Books. Hong Kong, 2003.

Maclaughlin, Nina. "The uses of Heidi Julavits". The Phoneix. 15 November 2006. http://thephoenix.com/Boston/Arts/27467-uses-of-Heidi-Julavits/

"The Effect of Living Backwards: Editorial Review". Amazon.com. 2008. http://www.amazon.com/Effect-Living-Backwards-Heidi-Julavits/dp/product-description/0425198170

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What's real and what's not?

An Anatomy of Humor: Judy Budnitz

What kind of author uses the issues of teenage suicide to get us to laugh by have cheerleaders cheer into a pep rally bon fire? What kind of author deals with teenage pregnancy by telling her parents it’s God’s child? Judy Budnitz, in her first mainstream short story collection, Flying Leap, explicitly uses humor to delve into deeper topics of the human psyche. In Budnitz collection of stories, we learn how high of an emphasis we place on becoming or simply being normal. Henri Bergson says that laughter is a social function, or, that humor allows us to select what aspects of humanity are acceptable. Budnitz utilizes humor, namely irony and puns, to highlight of we as people deal with normalcy.


Got Spirit

Got Spirit is a story about a group of cheerleaders whose lives were going all to well that is, until they lost their spirit. From then on, the cheerleader pyramids fall apart, they lose team members and eventually all die a tragic pep rally bonfire death. After the omen of the earthquake of falling cheerleaders which was probably a .002 on the rector scale, the three cheerleaders who were hurt in the earthquake were out for the season. Therefore the cheerleaders were forced to have emergency tryouts to get their momentum back. But how to replace their perfect team members they had to ask themselves. They looked for girls with dignity, style, lots of spirit, and of course a natural blond. This was just a few of the requirements. The cheerleaders believed that if they “started making compromises, exceptions, then everything would fall apart”, so they stuck to the requirements. One of the girls whose name was LaShonda was really great except for one problem. She would have to use the mens locker room to get ready for pep rallies instead of the womens. Later the girls find out that LaShonda had committed suicide because he didn’t make the team, yet the cheerleaders do not feel responsible. Another girl named Corrie tried out and got rejected even though she had won a silver medal at the Olympics. Her mom didn’t take rejection so well and went crazy. Corrie’s mom shot the mother of the girl who was accepted in the stomach. Later in the season the cheerleaders then attend a Halloween party. A few of the girls, being the girls that they are, got into a fight in the bathroom. Accusations of infidelity among the cheerleaders and there boyfriends arose. All of this was happening while Staci, a fellow cheerleader who was shunned at for getting fat, was actually in the next stall giving birth to a baby boy. Staci then puts the baby in the trash and goes back to the party. The police officers eventually break up the fight and then find the baby in the trash and arrest Staci. Staci was, of course, kicked off the team. After all of this Bunny, the captain, went kind of crazy. Crazy enough that she and her fellow cheerleaders led themselves not into victory at the homecoming game, but right into the pep rally bond fire.



Above is a video clip from the movie Bring it on: All or nothing. This movie gives you a visual of how the cheerleaders from this book act, only on a much crazier level. There are a few scenes we can help picture what’s going on in the book. The first scene we will see starts at 0:50 where they are doing tryouts. During this time we can compare Bunny to the Captain Camille and the power and control she has. The second scene starts at 3:40 and 4:36. In this scene we can get an idea of the type of cheerleaders they are looking for.

While reading this story one can come across more humor than really realizing. We can say that this story is actually portraying how people on the outside look at and judge cheerleaders. The story was very humorous especially when the team noticed that Staci was putting on weight and Bunny said asked Staci, “Do you feel okay? You look a little sick. Do you think you need to throw up?” “No,” Stacie said. “Well I think you do,” Bunny said (Budnitz 65). Also during this part and throughout this book we see a lot of power and control from Bunny. When she tells Staci to go throw up she goes. She is the captain of the squad and uses her power for good and evil cheerleader purposes. “When she jumped, they jumped. When she screamed, they screamed. When she flung herself into a round-off back-handspring double tuck with a split landing, they did the same (Budnitz 67). We all can relate to these cheerleaders in one way or another. We all went to high school and many of the characters in the story may have acted like some of your school mates. We can take this story and the story Debbieland by Aimee Bender and make many connections of similarity. The Power and control of both Bunny and the girl who beat up Debbie are the most prominent of the similarities. Although the two characters are written on end of two different spectrums of life they are one in the same. They both need the power to feel in control and are natural leaders of the pack. The narrator from Got Spirit and Debbie from Debbieland are also very alike because they survived. Though the narrator in Got Spirit went along with the pack she learned to become her own self and grew to be a better person. Debbie from Debbieland was in fact a good person to begin with but had problems accepting that there wasn’t anything wrong with her because of the teasing and taunting. She eventually grew up and learned to love herself the way she was.
After reading this story we can see just why Budnitz is considered a little crazy for her writing. Here we have the stereotypical cheerleader in a high school story but with those magical Bender-Budnitz twists. We read pun after pun not realizing it because it is pushed deep within the lines of catfights and the aftermath of the earthquake of cheerleaders falling out of the precious pyramid. We may ask ourselves why are we all laughing at these poor cheerleaders cheering their way into a pep rally bond fire. Don’t worry according to Bergson its okay to laugh at this. We just have to put the three rules of laughter into affect. We laugh at the cheerleaders because we might see certain attributes of ourselves within them therefore we laugh, who would of though you and one of these cheerleaders had something in common? Budnitz has created this bubble where she uses humor in order to help us deal with our emotions. The so called ice breaker of the story is the underlying fact that this whole story is actually an answer in a college acceptance essay for the one survivor of the squad. We really forget that this is what the natural blond is considering turning in order to get into college and do something other than play around with the spirit that apparently lives in all cheerleaders. We laugh to deal with the underlying issues Budnitz has stashed in the margins. Drug use, football, gasp teenage sex life, double gasp teenage pregnancy, eating disorders, we have all seen it in our own high schools our own world and reading a story with a little humor in it can make us come together and realize what the message is hidden in the margins.

What Happened
The story begins on a hot summer afternoon where two sisters, Leah and Ellie, are sitting on a swing. Ellie, the younger of the two, looks up to Leah and like most younger siblings Ellie’s story fades into the background. We instantly learn that Leah is a bit absent minded. After the discussion of a tattoo, Leah realizes she is late for work and rushes off to the local diner. She spends most of her time serving coffee to old ladies and catching the occasional smile from the cook Raymond. We then learn that back in spring on the night of prom, Leah and her boyfriend Corey had parked behind a gas station and had sex. Jump back to Leah getting off of work in time for family dinner. Leah reveals that she is pregnant. There are meetings with the soon to be grandparents and plans are made for Corey and Leah to be married. We eventually learn that the Leah and Corey have a baby boy named Stan. The baby’s mysteriously dark complexion and big brown eyes worries Corey and we soon learn the truth that the father of Stan is Raymond, the cook. Afraid of what will be done and said, Leah takes off with Stan in the middle of the night.


Anatomy of Humor: Judy Budnitz

The picture above is of the famous "Golden Girls" sitting around the table eating cheesecake and gossiping and talking about their troubles. Much like the little old ladies in the story at the diner.

There were several moments of humor in this story. First of all, the old ladies in the diner gossiping and talking about how Mrs. Ramsey got “robbed” for weeks was amusing since old ladies, especially from the south, are known to over-exaggerate and gossip all the time. Since making fun of old people isn’t exactly PC, having someone else describe the situation makes it okay to laugh. Freud would term this as tendentious humor, as it is meant to joke about a subject that is slightly inappropriate, since older people are supposed to be wise and respected, etc.


The picture above goes along with the irony discussed. It’s a serious accident, but it’s kind of funny since it’s a car lodged in a pain/accident center.

A couple of other moments that were funny would be when Leah broke the news that she was pregnant to her family. First, she instantly zones out and pictures giving her dad the Heimlich maneuver, due to his response to her news. While at the same time little innocent Ellie is deep in thought contemplating her mashed potatoes. Another is the fact that as soon as Leah tells her family she is pregnant and learns their reaction, she instantly denies it. She compares herself to Mary, saying its Gods child. This moment creates a sort of ironic situation since a serious subject, teenage pregnancy, is being discussed, yet there are thoughts of potato mountains and a flabbergasted father receiving the Heimlich for no apparent reason interjected, which makes the scene comical.
Once again we see Budnizt intertwine many issues that we all hear about or face into a story with elements of fantasy. The fact that Leah would have sex as a teenage is appalling to her parents. Then she gets pregnant and with a black baby to top it off. Budnizt creates many diversions to help along the way when talking about the racial tension and issues that are dealt with in the story. We have this heartfelt story of acceptance within Leah’s family but racial discrimination outside in the real world. Budnizt has created a story letting the read teach him/her that racial discrimination still can occur and it can have a lasting impact on all peoples that are involved. We as the reader feel the emotions of Leah being a teenage mother when the little old ladies stop being nice when her belly pops up. We feel the emotions of Corey when he realizes Stan was not his child and though he had loved Leah, he wasn’t ready to grow up. We feel the emotions of Raymond the true father of Stan, when he steps up to the plate and disappears into the night to be with his son and Leah. Because Budnizt lets us feel these emotions sometimes through her humor and sometimes through the pain we feel a closer connection to the characters, people in real life who had to deal with racial discrimination and to other readers.



Work Cited

Bergson, Henri. "Laughter": An Essay on the Meaning of Comic.

"Henri Bergson's Theory of Laughter." Timo Laine. 2004-2008 Timo Laine. April 9, 2006.
http://www.timoroso.com/philosophy/writings/sketches/2006-04-09-henri-bergsons-theory-of-laughter

Budnitz, Judy. Flying Leap. 1998. St. Martins Press. New York, New York.

Humor and the Body

From the beginning of our lives we enter with only one thing, ourselves. The human body is the how the rest of the world perceives someone day in and day out. People take great pride and work tirelessly to make sure that they are represented as they want physically. We are socialized to walk, dress, and style our appearance according to what society’s standards.
Humor with the human body goes in great line with Henri Bergson’s theory of laughter. Bergson believes laughter to be innately human and nothing is more connected to humanity than the body (Bergson). Body Image is the perception a person has of their own physical appearance. While inner beauty is highly respected, our body is the portal between ourselves and the world around us. If our bodies are not in order then we do not have the ability to develop beyond that. This basic idea is practiced in many religions where the human body is discussed as “a temple” and in Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs where physical health and body image are the first step towards total health.
Bergson also speaks to the fact that we find humor when we are emotionally distant from what we are laughing at (Bergson). This would explain why most people can laugh when someone else falls but feels embarrassed when they themselves fall. The same gag of a man being hit in his genitals can make a second man laugh an infinite amount of times but you will never see a man laugh after he himself is his in his genitals. When we are involved in the physical act of making love to another person, many emotions are felt but humor is not usually one of them. To the contrary, entire movies are based off toilet humor involving sexual acts; movies such as “American Pie” (which interestingly enough was so popular it developed into a trilogy all based off of that sexual humor).
Bergson theorizes that all laughter is social. What we find humorous about the human body is based off of the standards set by our society (Bergson). This social theory of laughter and the body can also be supported by Hobbes theory of laughter. Hobbes believes people laugh at others to represent a feeling of superiority (Hobbes). These theories are both reinforced in America by society’s love to laugh at the morbidly obese. Obesity is opposite of the American ideal for appearance and when we observe those who do not fulfill the ideal then we feel superior in our ability to fulfillment. For another example, most people would not be able to look someone in the eye without being distracted if the person they were speaking with had a unibrow. This cosmetic deviance is easily modified and people find humor due to their own ability to better maintain themselves.

A large amount of stress can be found in working towards society’s standards for the human ideal but a lot of humor can be found with the human body as well. Humor is found throughout the human body in many different facets. Distortion of the face can supply humor. This can range from physical characteristics to facial expression. Americans have a certain ideal for physical beauty and if someone’s face ranges to far from that then humor can be found. We also expect appropriate expressions in certain situations and certain beauty standards to always be met. A child making a serious face is humorous because of its unexpectedness.

Moving down from the face, the body itself contains infinite possibilities for humor. Extremes such as dwarfism, obesity, or gigantism contain elements of humor for individuals for the aforementioned discrepancy from social ideals. In some instances it can also be referenced to Hobbes theory of superiority and ridicule. Honestly, ask any junior high student who has been made fun of for developing at a different rate than those around them if they believe in Hobbes theory of ridicule being a basic element of humor. Although it is condemned in most parts of society to ridicule someone who is physically handicapped people still, although with guilt, find humor.
If physical characteristics do not supply enough humor, comedy historically has been based on the distortion of the body through movement. Comedians such as Jim Carey and Steve Martin have made entire careers off of the idea of physical comedy. People find a lot of humor in the movement of the human body when it goes against what they try to portray constantly. Many people will freeze before risking looking awkward. Comedians will distort their appearance to the most extreme from societal norms for humor. Even more humor is found from those who do not realize their physical insufficiencies. When someone is dancing poorly and believes they are doing well, Hobbes theory states that people find that even more humorous than if someone danced knowingly bad.

Although dancing is far from the only physical act that provides humor due to its awkward deviance from societal expectations. Physical violence and sexual acts are both well practiced examples as well. Many movies focused on teen audiences, mostly due to their desperation for superiority, contain endless amounts of humor directed towards the body and its acts. YouTube can find you 30,000 video clips if you type “hit in balls” in the search engine. YouTube also finds nearly 15,000 video clips to the search “funny falls”. The first video that shows for “funny falls” has been watched over two million times.

Humor and the body has been filmed since Charlie Chaplin’s time and continues to be a basis for humor. The consistency in social norms designating our humor with the body reinforces several theories on laughter. The undeniable connection between self and body linking humor with conflict from societal norms is not going anywhere in society anytime soon.

Works Cited
"American Pie." Soundtrack Collector. Nov. 5, 2008. http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/catalog/soundtrackdetail.php?movieid=54190

Bergson, Henri. "Laughter": An Essay on the Meaning of Comic.

"Elaine's Dance." YouTube. Nov. 5, 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xi4O1yi6b0

"Funny Faces." Humor Pictures. Nov. 5, 2008. http://humor-in-photos-and-pictures.blogspot.com/2007/08/funny-faces.html

Hobbes on Laughter Author(s): R. E. Ewin Source: The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 202 (Jan., 2001), pp. 29-40 Published by: Blackwell Publishing for The Philosophical Quarterly Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2660519

"Jim Carey Teaches Karate." Martial Arts.ca. Nov 5, 2008. http://www.martial-arts.ca/MA-Project/Videos_Humour.htm

"Serious Baby" YouTube. Nov. 5, 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5ALIL7T764

"Tell Jokes With Body Language." FamilyFun.com. Nov. 5, 2008. http://familyfun.com/games/healthy-fun/feature/famf-laughing-matters/famf-laughing-matter3.html

Created by: Katie Frisbee, Melissa Feltz, Samantha Spieles, and Brian Clemens

Take a Leap!

Judy Budnitz is classified as a humorous female writer. When reading her collection of short stories in Flying Leap the reader may be slightly confused at first when they don’t find many “laugh out loud” moments in her stories. Through a deeper examination of Budnitz as a writer and her stories specifically, the humor becomes more clearly evident and shows itself through the thickness of the stories themselves. In contrast to other female humorous writers, Budnitz definitely puts her own spin on humorous writing that differs from other writers. This makes it interesting to analyze Budnitz and her idea of humor and how she expresses it in words. She might not be labeled as the most drastic or absurd of humorous writers, but she definitely has her own tactics that she applies in her style of writing. Budnitz’s stories may be more relatable to the reader using real life circumstances and twisting them around a bit. This may make it easier for her to pull readers in, intriguing them, yet still getting her point across.

In Flying Leap, Judy Budnitz writes in such a way that individuals can interpret and relate to her stories indifferently. The stories are rooted enough in the real world to provide concrete value and relevance for the reader who perhaps thinks in a slightly more concrete and realistic manner, but abstract enough that each reader can make it personal, take it to mean something different, or draw his or her own conclusion. Her stories range from very realistic, “What Happened,” to “Skin Care,” a story with some slightly more absurd elements, without losing relevance. A commonality amongst this grouping of short stories is each story deals with very trivial issues, ones most people have either faced or can parallel. Perhaps reader A reads “What Happened”,a story about two sisters, one sister who runs from home after having a biracial child, the other, who narrates the story from her own perspective, revealing her feelings toward her sister and her sadness after her sister runs away, and he/she relates to the underlying racial tension in the story, but reader B may read the story with relation to the other sister, the bystander, the one dealing with so much on the inside while trying to pretend that everything is ‘okay’ externally, or reader C may read “What Happened” as a metaphor for something else. Budnitz’s writing is transitional in the way that so many different points-of-view can derive significance from the same story. Her stories also transcend time and culture. People 100 years ago, or in China could grasp the concepts of her stories and apply them with just as much relevance as today’s reader and tomorrow’s reader. Everyone understands the concept of ‘an elephant in the room’ even if at different times or in different settings a different phase is used to refer to it.


Judy Budnitz’s collection of short stories in Flying Leap displays a more realistic view of tough situations that take place in people’s lives such as divorce, teenage pregnancy, racism, and death. Those are just a few circumstances that are evident in a few of the stories. But as we look deeper into the work of Judy Budnitz, we find that the theme throughout is not about those circumstances that arise during a person’s life, but it is how a person reacts to those “tough” situations during their life. In her book, we find that the people react in different ways depending on the circumstance. I will only touch on two of the circumstances and the character’s reaction.

Why not your Heart?

"Guilt" is about a son, Arnie, whose mother is dying from a heart attack. The two aunts of Arnie want him to give up his heart to his mother so that she may live. He is burdened with the decision to give his mom his heart and die, or not to give his heart to his mom and let her die. While this is happening the two aunts are pressuring Arnie into giving his heart to his mom. They guilt trip him by saying, “Your mother worked herself to the bone for you, so you could go to college. She nearly killed herself so you could go and study and make something of yourself.” (Flying Leap, p. 17,18) Later in the story, we find out that he has decided to give his mother his heart. In this specific circumstance, her son has chosen to give up his life in order to save the life of his mother. As the story continues though, we find out that his mother’s body rejects the heart and dies anyway. Arnie is continuously blamed for his mother’s death. The two aunts deal with their sister dying by putting blame on others. They blame Arnie for not wanting to give his heart away and yet he still gets blamed after his mom dies for giving her a ‘bad heart”. In our realistic world, I believe we tend to put blame on others when death comes into our lives. In this story, it was the two aunts who put blame on Arnie, the son, even when he donated his heart to his mother. Therefore, the common theme in this story is when dealing with death, blame is often put onto another individual.

Keep Quiet!

"What Happened" is based out of the south, which is an important concept to grasp when reading this short story. Leah, the main individual, works at a diner. The cook at the diner is an African American man named Raymond. A little bit into the story it is revealed that Leah is pregnant. Corey, her boyfriend, at the time admits that it is his baby and they get married. So, Leah has the baby. But as the baby is growing it is looking less and less like the “father”. The baby is named Stan and is dark complected, which is totally opposite of the “father’s” characteristics. Eventually, Corey notices that the baby does not look a thing like him and confronts Leah about it. She explains it by saying, “…he’s mine, not yours.” (Flying Leap, p.152) Immediately after, we find out that Leah has taken the baby and ran away. Some time after Leah’s disappearance, we find that Ellie, her sister, has gone to the diner to talk to Raymond. She asks Raymond some questions and then a few days later Raymond disappears. As a reader we are not told straight answers to whom the father of the baby is, but only clues to assume. On page 143, the story begins by saying, “Things happen sometimes in a way you don’t expect”. (Flying Leap) Leah reacts towards the situation by running away, while her family and others react by pretending the incident never happened.

The Helpfulness of Titles
Budnitz’s use of titles in her short stories is definitely interesting. Her first short story in the collection is titled, “Dog Days.” At first by simply reading the title, readers may think the story may be about lazy days, people acting like dogs, relaxing and enjoying themselves. We find out through reading the stories that in fact, it does have to do with laying around lazily with lack of things to do, but we find out that there is an actual dog in the story that gives the title a whole new meaning. There are actual “Dog Days” where a homeless man dressed as a dog comes around to this family’s home in search for scraps of food. Readers can then apply the two meanings (surface, and deeper level) to this specific title.

Her other stories such as “Scenes from the Fall Fashion Catalog” may give readers a wrong message as well. They may be anticipating something about a model, a fashion magazine, or something along those lines, only to find out that this isn’t exactly true when we find out that each fashion statement has a story behind it that really has little to do with the actual choice of clothing. We find out that “Got Spirit” is about the stereotypical cheerleaders, and “Average Joe” is about an average male named Joe, but in each of these stories, even the ones that do have a relative significance due to immediate assumption of the title, many of her stories’ titles have a deeper meaning. This makes it interesting in reading her later stories, because the reader’s anticipation of a future story may change due to their views on past stories.

Relating to the Theorists:
Henri Bergson argues that laughter has a social function, and that comedy is purely human. He also says that laughter is the laughter of a group. Bergson says that we get humor out of humiliating others. This can be seen in “Got Spirit.” This story is about a group of stereotypical cheerleaders that find the need to be skinny, date the football players, be close knit, and fulfill the expectations of their peers as to what a cheerleader is and does. They take this position seriously, and humiliate one another in order to stick to their standards. We as readers find this humiliation funny. When there is a conflict between Staci and Bunny on the cheer squad, Bunny notices that Staci is gaining some weight. Bunny says “Do you think you need to throw up?” (Flying Leap P. 65) Stacy replies “No,” (65) and Bunny says, “Well, I think you do” (65). She then goes on saying how she is “doing this for [the squad].” We as readers may find this funny, because Bunny is humiliating Staci in front of everyone else, telling her what she finds necessary, even though Staci doesn’t clearly agree. This instance we find sheer ridiculous, yet the cheerleaders find it a very serious matter.
This instance between the cheerleaders can be analyzed on another level by Hobbes. He says that humor is a social process, and that people feel the need to be superior to one another, and search for power. In this particular part of “Got Spirit” Bunny obviously is the leader of the squad and feels that she has the power to tell the teammates to do what she believes is right of them, even though she may be acting out of her own selfish needs. Hobbes agrees that it is human nature to be selfish. He says that humor arises when we feel we have gained superiority over someone else. So Bunny receives humor out of gaining power over Staci. When Bunny states that she is doing this out of appreciation for the whole squad she is attempting to cover up her selfishness, and that she is really doing it for her own benefit and superiority.

The style an author chooses to use in his or her writing is extremely important; it determines the effectiveness of a literary piece’s impact on a people. Judy Budnitz does an incredible job captivating her audience in Flying Leap. Not only does she use literary pieces to impact her readers, but she uses situations that people can relate to in their own lives to captivate the reader.


Works Cited:

Bergson, Henri. "Laughter": An Essay on the Meaning of Comic.

Budnitz, Judy. Flying Leap. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.

"Cure for Stinky Dog." YouTube. April 10, 2007. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnuBP2McXjQ



Jennifer Hasselbach, Rachel Kohler, and Erika Edwards