When we read a story and recognize ourselves in the characters or situations, see our failings repeated like a line of falling dominoes, and when that recognition makes us laugh with delight — what a fine gift that is from a writer to a reader — a funny story.
Flash could use a good laugh. I think we all could right now. Maybe not as much as we could use health care reform, but funny is always a welcome treat. Writing humor is a tricky business, though. When you dissolve into giggles at the funny little erotic toe haiku you've just written, the rest of the world will probably be giving you sidelong glances and backing carefully away.
I want to talk about how to write funny flash, and I'll start by insisting on this rule: it's all about the writing. It's not the characters. It's not the situation. It's the writing, the words, the very carefully crafted language. Don't even talk to me about the Three Stooges. We're writers! It's the words, honey.
Some of my favorite flash fiction writers have written funny stories, and they have kindly given me permission to talk about them. Matt Bell wrote "Custard's Last Stand", a tiny gem of a story that is a favorite of both my mother and my son — not an easy demographic to hit no matter how big your funny bone.
"Yankee Doodle" started to play, but still the little bastards waited, hiding in bushes, behind sheds, around the corners of houses. They were already sweating, anticipation the only exercise they'd gotten in preparation for this moment.
Finally they charged, their fat little bodies crossing the street, heaving at the sides of the ice cream truck. Moments later, they'd tipped it over and raided its contents. For the first time, the overweight children of the subdivision tasted success born out of teamwork. It tasted like ice cream sandwiches, like flag-colored popsicles dripping from their double chins, and man, was it good.
The reader is already anticipating something delightful, from the story's title, and the sentence structure, the rollicking rhythm, the popping p's of dripping popsicles, the colors and sounds and tastes and smells — it's all in the words, and the story is a gift of great charm and humor.
Martin Heavisides wrote "Things Are Looking Up". This flash is part of his new novel, Undermind, and he wrote in the perfectly outraged voice of a young man who is in over his head, just living in the world. This is how it starts:
Tightrope walk for charity to the floor your office is on — does that strike you as a sensible idea? Half of us have never seen the inside of a gym. I'm on floor 23 — the line starts on the ground and makes a beeline diagonally up, better hope some joker in office supply isn't in charge of opening the window, make you sweat a few extra seconds before releasing the latch to let you in.
And this: "Safety net, pfft! our boys have better cojones than that." What is the ancient long-running fart who drives the engine of our company getting at with this remark, anybody care to hazard a guess? I mean I know they talk about the balls of your feet, but I don't see where they really have much bearing. Keep in mind the changing complexion of the work force. A lot of gals'll be making the walk, all of them in flat, sensible shoes, I can guarantee you that. Nobody's made a single complimentary reference to the superior quality of their ovaries.
Well a lot of us will be plunging to our deaths pretty soon...
There is a huge body of literature that deals with man, lost in the cold-hammered steel of industrialized society. Martin nails it in a flash, and it's the way he tells the story, that extraordinary voice.
One of my favorite funny stories was written by Ravi Mangla. "Troubadours" is a slow-talking cowboy of a story, and the code of the old West, the values a man should live by are quietly reintroduced to the unsuspecting hero over the body of a dead squirrel.
The Troubadour flayed a thick strip of drywall above the electrical outlet. With a flashlight clamped between his front teeth, his arm crooked like an arcade claw, he removed a white squirrel by the scruff of the neck. He laid the squirrel on its back, touched its chest, tipped his cowboy hat back with his thumb.
"This feller's been poisoned," he said. "No doubt about it."
The troubadours are exterminators, but not your usual exterminators:
"What you need to understand, sir, is that we're ethicists. We don't genuflect to the proclivities and whims of our employers. We're our own men. We answer to a higher authority," the third Troubadour said.
"Our job is to get rid of what doesn't belong — whatever seems least deserving of the space it occupies," the second Troubadour said.
"And what doesn't belong?"
They were quiet.
"You're saying I don't belong."
"We never said that," the third Troubadour said.
The inevitability of his redemption makes this story one of my favorites.
The second and third Troubadours lowered their nozzles. The third Troubadour fished out a ten-gallon hat from the duffel bag by his spurs. He slapped it around a few times. Swirls of dust fled from the felt. "Join us," he said, extending the hat.
I took the hat, turned it over in my hands. "Do I have time to set my affairs in order?"
"We're late as it is."
"Time is of the essence."
"Come with us."
I pulled the hat tightly over my head, worked the crease in the brim until it was good and straight, and followed them outside, to the basketball hoop, where our horses were hitched and waiting.
Stories of salvation and redemption are thick on the ground. This one is something special, and it's not the story — it the way Ravi told the story. The language, the voice, the rhythm, the words. "This feller's been poisoned." It works its way down to my funny bone with sharp little knives.