Lesson
65
The
incongruous setting
But that’s an exaggeration--just a modest and soft bit. DeWitt did add a few crumbs on the subject of
creativity for those listening closely.
But that was about all. My tablemates thought this was funny and kind of cute because of their own expectations.
The annual bun-fest, always held in or
around Orillia, gives locals a night out that includes a cocktail hour, book
signings, and a chance to meet current and past medalists. The performances of
previous winners have created the anticipation that the medal recipient’s
speech will be funny and thought-provoking and will help justify the $65 per
ticket cost of the evening out. Patrick deWitt is funny and thought-provoking
when writing books, but not so much when asked to perform on stage--unless
unintentionally, because of the setting.
Patrick probably finds it more
comfortable in the spotlight now after over two years of picking up honours for
his dark but comical novel, The Sisters
Brothers, the book that won the 2012 Leacock Medal. Still, I suspect he
remains most at ease in the context of written words.
In another way, the issue of context
probably constitutes the greatest factor in the humorous effect of his medal-winning
book. Please allow me to illustrate with the following lifeless summary of The Sisters Brothers, which I prepared
as an exercise.
The Sisters Brothers,
the second novel by Canadian-born, Oregon-based Patrick deWitt, describes a
transforming journey made by Eli and Charlie Sisters, two men who are different
in many ways but have a fraternal bond that keeps them together as business
partners. They do contract work, now exclusively for a powerful entrepreneur
identified as “the Commodore,” who has asked them to travel to California on
his behalf and negotiate with Hermann Kermit Warm, an inventor with a special
process for mineral exploration. The brothers are to deal with Warm through
Henry Morris, an intermediary in the Commodore’s employ.
The Commodore puts hard-nosed Charlie in
charge. Eli, the sensitive narrator of the story, thinks about leaving the
business because of all the travel and the tense interactions with customers.
Eli also worries about his weight, his teeth, the lack of female affection in
his life, his widowed mother, and his brother Charlie’s taunts. Charlie drinks
heavily and focuses clinically on work.
Whew! That was tough, trying to
outline the story of The Sisters Brothers
without the nineteenth-century context of cowboys, gold rush prospecting,
horses, guns, knives, and killing. I pulled those elements out of the
description to try to evaluate the impact of the incongruous setting and the
writing style.
The book teases us into compassion for
the brutal and reminds us of the universality of human concerns in the
tradition of recognized literature. It has carried off so many literary prizes
that any comment on the quality of the writing seems redundant, and critics in
Canada, the United States, and abroad have detailed the book’s literary merits
many times.
So, I focused my thoughts on why the
book made me laugh, always coming back to the gun-slinging, the dirty work of
mid-1800s hit men, and the violence of the Old West in contrast with the
clowning and bickering of the brothers.
When Eli confesses a fear of spiders,
cares for his one-eyed horse, fusses over toothpaste flavours, or feels hurt
over his brother’s teasing, we might not find it funny if he weren’t also an
assassin ready to blow a stranger’s head off or do what was “necessary” to
extract information from an old woman. Because Eli, the narrator, relates all
this in the formal old-time Western sort of way (“that’s some nice shooting,
brother”), he enforces the incongruity in almost every passage.
Patrick deWitt definitely knows the
importance of setting and context, and he may have been more aware of the
expectations at the Leacock Medal banquet than it seemed.
In verifying the facts of the 2012
event, I read that Arthur Black and Dan Needles bookended deWitt’s acceptance
speech. Both are polished speakers and hard to match. In similar circumstances,
I too, would have limited myself to “Uh . . . uh . . . thank you.”
Writing Exercise
Write a short story
about a pair of humour writers doing contract work in the Old West.
In his brief Leacock Medal banquet remarks, deWitt mused a bit about the craft of humour writing, noting some people think “life itself is a joke,” and adding, “if that is true, it is a complex one.” The author also managed to hint at his inspiration by quoting the British playwright Joe Orton. Orton, who was brutally murdered in his mid-thirties (Patrick deWitt was about the same age when he wrote The Sisters Brothers), was a champion of black comedy, calling it “a weapon” and a “dangerous” one.
In his brief Leacock Medal banquet remarks, deWitt mused a bit about the craft of humour writing, noting some people think “life itself is a joke,” and adding, “if that is true, it is a complex one.” The author also managed to hint at his inspiration by quoting the British playwright Joe Orton. Orton, who was brutally murdered in his mid-thirties (Patrick deWitt was about the same age when he wrote The Sisters Brothers), was a champion of black comedy, calling it “a weapon” and a “dangerous” one.
He won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize as well as spots on the short lists for the Man Booker Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Walter Scott Prize.