Topical Guide 230
Mark Dorset
Humor as a Weapon
“What did Robby do? . . . Did he refuse to roll with the swells?” I asked, grinning.
Mr. Summers’s eyes widened. His nostrils flared. His jaw muscles rippled. The veins in his neck stood out. His face reddened. After a long and terrible silence, he said, in a voice made tense by his effort to control it, “What do you mean by that, Peter?”
“I just—I—I didn’t really mean anything—I was just making a joke,” I said.
“Making a joke. Oh, yes. You’re quite the humorist, aren’t you? You weren’t just ‘making a joke,’ Peter. You were being sarcastic, weren’t you?” he said, accusing, not asking. The veins in his neck were more swollen, his face redder.
“Sarcastic?” I asked, shaken.
“Yes,” he said, “sarcastic. It seems to me that often, much too often, there’s a hidden meaning in what you say.”
“I don’t know what you—”
“Oh, yes, you do. Oh, yes, you do know,” he said at once. “You know very well what I mean, Peter. . . . Nobody likes a wise guy, Peter,” he said, his lips trembling. “A Tar does not act like a wise guy.”
“I’ll add that to the traits,” I said.
Instantly, all the blood drained from Mr. Summers’s face. It was, for me, an exhilarating sight. Whatever else might happen, the blanching of Mr. Summers marked a victory, a small victory certainly, one likely to be reversed by a punitive counterattack, but a victory never to be forgotten.Little Follies, “The Young Tars”
The artist cannot dignify officialdom by opposing it in a solemn fashion, because that would mean taking it too seriously and inadvertently reinforcing its authority, thus acknowledging that authority. . . . In today’s rushed, confusing society in which everything mixes and is mixed up and destroyed, the ridiculous does run the risk of “swallowing up” art too. But the artist, even if he has been relegated to the position of a buffoon, tries to assume . . . an ambiguous stance, to place himself on a shaky seesaw, to transform the loss into a later gain.
She lifted the glass, took a sip, and said, “We had to get out, of course.” She looked for some sign of understanding from me. “You know,” she said.
I didn’t, but I nodded and said, “Mm.”
“The Fascists,” she said.
“Oh!” I said. “Yeah.” I knew who they were, in a way. …
“Yes, yes. That’s why. The Fascists. Andrew—but of course he wasn’t Andrew then—was a marked man, a very comical man, very funny. He was a cartoonist then, you know. A caricaturist. He was very popular—very, very popular. He was even in a nightclub, as an entertainer. He would go around and make pictures of people—not just the way someone would go around and sell you cigarettes or take your photograph. No, he was a performer, with a spotlight on him. Such a big man, you know.”
A smile, a sip.
“He had a pad of paper mounted on a board that he held in the crook of his arm—like this—and in a hole in the board a pot of paint. Black paint. One big brush. And he would make his pictures with big gestures—like this—big swooping gestures. His pictures often appeared in the papers, too. Very often. People always laughed, even the people he drew. They were flattered to have him make their pictures. They were happy to join in the laughter at themselves because—because they were—people. We like attention, you know, people, and we know how ridiculous we are. It’s one of the ways you can spot us. You catch us laughing, and you know we’re human.” She leaned toward me through the smoke. “It’s a dead giveaway,” she said.
She poured a little more into the tiny tumbler.
“Then those Fascists came in,” she said. “Andrew made such comical pictures of them all—those Fascists. For the papers, you understand. And then, pretty soon, they ran all the papers—those Fascists. And they didn’t want to look comical. So he made his drawings for the walls. Huge.”
She looked up at the stone wall and swept her hand to indicate the grand size of Andy’s caricatures and shook her head at the inadequacy of her gesture. I thought of the scaffolding in the studio and the enormous size of the painting he was working on. “Uh-huh,” I said. “I understand.”
“Good,” she said. “Huge caricatures, and more comical than ever. He painted by night. And he signed his pictures with a little drawing of a bat.”
She took a sip. “Well, you know, there was a price offered, a price offered for him, for ‘The Bat.’ Money, you know. When money is offered, you would be very surprised how cheap you can buy someone. How cheap it is to buy a betrayal. Trust comes dear,” she said, “but treachery is cheap.”At Home with the Glynns
[more to come on Tuesday, April 5, 2022]
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