Looking for some laughs? This year's Thurber winner

Photo by ~Ealasaid~ available through a Creative Commons license

If you're ever looking for tales to tickle your funny bones, a good place to look is the Thurber Prize, an annual award for humor writing. The award has been around since 1997, and you can find its list of past winners and finalists on the Thurber House website.

The prize's namesake is 20th century humorist James Thurber, whose works spanned commentary, fiction, children's literature, "New York" magazine cartoons and short stories, including perhaps the story he's best known for, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." In our library you can find "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" in The Greatest American Short Stories: Twenty classics of our heritage (SSC GREATEST) as well as Russell Baker's Book of American Humor (818.02 RUSSELL). Ben Stiller is directing and starring in a movie version of the story, too, that's set to come out this Christmas.



Below are the finalists and winner of this year's Thurber Prize.

Winner
Dan Gets a Minivan: Life at the Intersection of Dude and Dad
By Dan Levin
814.6 ZEVIN

Finalists
Hope, A Tragedy
By Shalom Auslander
FIC AUSLANDE

Lunatics
By Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel
FIC BARRY (also on audiobook, AD FIC BARRY)

Recent Humorous Novels

Lunatics / by Dave Barry

Philip Horkman and Jeffrey A. Peckerman first meet on a soccer field in Fort Lee, N.J. during a girls' 10-and-under league championship game after Horkman calls Peckerman's daughter offside. Though initially only a mild disagreement, the battle between Horkman, a coarse, "forensic plumber," and Peckerman, a pet store owner, soon escalates into an absurd fight leading to several wacky shenanigans. (FIC BARRY)

The Sisters Brothers / by Patrick deWitt

In the heart of the Old West, a man known only as The Commodore orders bumbling assassins Charlie and Eli Sisters to track down and kill a grizzled prospector named Herman Kermit Warm. During their journey from Oregon to the Sierras, the pair confront a strange cast of characters including a witch, Indians, a parlor full of drunken floozies and a gang of murderous fur trappers. (FIC DEWITT)

Ranchero / by Rick Gavin

Nick Reid is an ordinary low-key guy doing odd jobs at a rental store in the backwater Mississippi Delta until his boss sends him out to repossess a television from no-account hick Percy Dwayne Dubois. Refusing to give up his TV, Percy Dwayne hits Nick upside the head with a fireplace shovel and, with TV, wife, and son in tow, makes a hasty getaway in Nick's borrowed 1969 Ford Ranchero. Now Nick, out of a car and soon to be out of a job, has no choice but to track Percy Dwayne down. (FIC GAVIN)

Pym: A Novel / by Mat Johnson

Having been laid off from his job as a teacher of American literature, Chris Jaynes becomes obsessed with the book The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, the only full-length novel Edgar Allen Poe ever wrote. Inspired by a mysterious slave narrative which may confirm the truth about Poe’s novel and its mysterious island, Jayes buys a boat, hires a crew and sets sail after Poe’s mythical island. (FIC JOHNSON)

The Ask / by Sam Lipsyte

Recently laid-off university employee Milo Burke is doing whatever he can in odd jobs to help his family. Then his old boss, the college dean, offers him his job back under one condition: Milo must get a wealthy alumnus, who just happens to be Milo’s old roommate, to donate a large sum of money to the university. (FIC LIPSYTE)

Dollarapalooza, or, The Day Peace Broke Out in Columbus / by Gregg Parr

Disgraced former professor Vonn Carp returns to his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, to take part in his father’s lifelong dream, the startup of a general store called Dollarpalooza. When the store falls on hard times, partly due to a “Wow-mart” moving in across the street, Vonn stumbles upon a new business model to make a difference in people’s lives “one dollar at a time”—he’ll answer any question any customer may have for one dollar. (FIC PARR)

The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady / by Elizabeth Stuckey-French
In 1953 during a faulty nuclear experiment, Marylou Ahearn had her body contaminated by Dr. Wilson Spriggs. The result was the death of Marylou’s daughter, Helen, from cancer 10 years later. Now, in the present, 77-year-old Marylou is determined to get revenge on Dr. Spriggs, going so far as to move to Florida into a house right down the street from where he now lives and plotting his doom in quirky fashion. (FIC STUCKEYF)

The Family Fang: A Novel / by Kevin Wilson

Performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang are slaves to their art, so much so that they’ve incorporated their only children Annie and Buster (popularly known as Child A. and Child B.) into their oddly subversive work. Escaping as soon as they can away from their circus-like childhoods, Annie and Buster ultimately return years later, their lives now in disarray, only to be caught up in one last performance. (FIC WILSON)

The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics / by John Pollack

Ever heard that "to write with a broken pencil is pointless"? How about that "when fish are in schools they sometimes take debate" or that "a criminal's best asset is his lie ability"? Always "be true to your teeth or they will be false to you" and "you'll feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it". For as long as puns have been around, people have been telling each other achingly bad jokes like back when "ancient orators tended to babylon" or "when backwards poets wrote inverse". But some people think the pun as more than just the lowest form of humor. Author of this delightfully groan-worthy book on the history of puns, former Clinton speechwriter and winner of the O'Henry Pun-Off John Pollack believes that "punning" virtually revolutionalized language and has been instrumental in the integration and development of modern civilization.

The pun is more than just a lame (pun)ch line, something history testifies to. From the ancient Egyptians whose heiroglyphics attest to the humorous double-meaning symbols to the French wits of the 17th century, puns have always been at the forefront of exposition and repartee. In the English language particularly, the Norman Conquest diversified the vocabulary to a point that by Elizabethan times, "the play upon words was not merely an elegance of style and a display of wit; it was also an means of emphasis and an instrument of persuasion" (p. 63). The art of the pun is, even today, still a worthy tool for any wannabe wordsmythes, encouraging the broad and cross-cultural use of words to communicate intelligence. Because of its utility, puns are a universally acknowledged currency for any format of both oral and written correspondence and almost any type of social interaction, even texting. Pollack says that the pun will never die. Moreover, it will continue to proliferate as a low-brow gag and a device to be infused during the most proper of conversations. No matter what, it will always be more than just 'some antics'. (808.7 POLLACK) 

Ridicule (1996) DVD / a film by Patrice Leconte; starring Charles Berling, Jean Rochefort, Fanny Ardant & Judith Godreches

"The soul of wit is to no one's place."

"In this country, vice is of no consequence, but ridicule can kill."

In pre-Revolutionary France, Gregoire Poncedulon de Malavoy is a low-level magistrate whose province in the southwestern part of the country is being overrun with pestilence due to a malfunctioning drainage system. Malavoy, an engineer as well as a baron, thinks he can solve the problem but he'll need the permission and backing of the King (Louis XVI) to do so. Arriving at lavish Versailles, the young baron finds that rather than concerning themselves with more serious matters of running the country, the king and his consorts are perpetually engaged with le bel esprit--the art of wit. And while the atmosphere effects an air of frivolity, it is in fact the meanest, most malicious brand of discoursing and gamesmanship in which cutthroat wars of words (actual staged contests) routinely serve up the public humiliation and permanent disenfranchisement of anyone not up to par--no matter what their title or pedigree. More detailed issues of governance are relegated to slow-moving bureaucrats who, as Malavoy soon discovers, intentionally stall the process of bringing matters such as the baron's request before the king out of little more than careless indifference. Most of the people the baron speaks with about his little problem seem somewhat annoyed he even brings it up ("Poor people, they're not only dying, they're boring").
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Even just to get close to his majesty, Malavoy finds that he will have to employ his own rather clever but amateurish wordsmythe skills and develop a savage, scathing tongue of his own if he is to be admitted into the inner circle of the king's patronage. He seems to have no chance at all until he meets the clever, but discerning (and less vicious) Marquis de Bellegarde who coaches him up on the finer points of repartee. Before long Malavoy, owing to the marquis' advice but mostly to his own ability to effect biting insults in the direction of the most deserving members of the court, finds himself climbing the ladder toward a royal appointment. At the same time he finds the stakes of the game growing more and more dire as his own honor and character become entangled with the pernicious objectives of the other members of the court, most notably the lusty and calculating Madame de Blayac. A real snake in the grass but a woman who's in good with the king, Blayac has her own designs on Malavoy, even as his affections indelibly lie elsewhere, and has no reservations about tripping up the baron's plans.
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Ridicule is a film set in a time and place where all compliments are two-faced, every truth is dubious, wit carries the day and sincerity is detested. Of course it could be any time or place, our own for example. And while it's a film about language and rhetoric, very little is actually said. None of what the characters verbalize actually means much if anything because being casually clever is everything and straightforwardness is a sure path to rejection. The tongue is the real instrument of choice among the royal court, insults and ridicule the currency of the power brokers. In an odd way, it's upstarts like Malavoy who most intrigue, rustics from the provinces perceived as something of a novelty among the more well-bred cosmopolitans. Being acid-tongued carries a price of course, and not only within heat-of-the-moment verbal confrontations in which the next one-upism could make or break you. For the France of that time was powderkeg atmosphere in which the ever-increasing smugness of the royal court and aristocracy offset the growing restlessness of a powerless bourgeoise and hoards of suffering peasants, a particularly vital part of world history the film ever-so-slyly alludes to. (DVD RIDICULE)

Fail Nation: A Visual Romp Through the World of Epic Fails / Failblog.org Community, eds.

The word "fail" has taken on a different meaning in this new millenium. No longer does it indicate a mere lack of success, limited achievability or inadequate results. Nowadays it's become a hip term in the American slang vocabulary, connoting mishaps, mistakes and other ironical human failings of extraordinary imbecility or of an otherwise ludicrously tragic nature. Something or someone may deemed a "fail" or even an "epic fail" in situations when the circumstances are absurdly ridiculous to the point of being just plain pitiful (see image at right). An extensive network of online contributors has taken it upon themselves to maintain an interactive website, a blog actually called failblog.org, which chronicles the world of fails, epic fails and other occasions of humanity's inglorious shortcomings. The book Fail Nation offers a generous sample of the blog's material though certainly only a small portion of the website's multitude of funny anecdotes. (818.602 FAIL)

"Oh Yeah, Well ... !"

Viva La Repartee: Clever Comebacks and Witty Retorts from History's Wits and Wordsmiths / by Mardy Grothe




Spoken, written, 'texted', behind-the-back & below-the-belt comebacks for all occasions aren't on TV (or bathroom stalls), they're dredged up from the past in Mardy Grothe's compilation of real-life repartee. Herein is a collection of the classy--and not so classy--zings, slings, daggers and punch-lines elicited from the world's most renowned wise-guys.

To be sure, there's the usual line-up of Wilde, Moliere, Churchill, Groucho and Twain; but there's also the likes of Dolly Parton, Margaret Thatcher, and Calvin Coolidge. Stylistically it's not just one-liners as various spheres of laconic interplay are featured through political, literary, and relational vignettes; displaying the circumspect universality of clever wordplay. In addition, the author splices things up with inadvertent anecdotes, puns, and oxymorons providing the necessary alternative to straight-forward banter.

While it's apparent that Grothe tries taking on a mammoth singlehandedly, failing to capture in his little book what would no doubt be a library of volumes otherwise, it's still a fair-to-middling survey of what's out there. More of a traditional approach with it's clean-even-when-risque exposition, its dry retorts are decidedly more Shakesperean in taste (i.e., "...any news today?...Not one 'new'.", p. 47) reserving more commonly parrotted rejoinders (i.e., "Cram it with walnuts, ugly!", -The Simpsons) for the playground. Despite obvious shortcomings, the book does exhibit some explanation of what real wit is, altogether in it's various forms and often unconventional settings.