I used to write non-fiction, probably because I’ve always read more of it than other forms of printed verbiage. When I was much younger, I sometimes wrote poetry, but not much else. I have noticed that, for many people, non-fiction is not really writing. Or perhaps Literature (N.B. the capital L).
Real writers write fiction.
As I’ve explained, elsewhere: several years ago, while recuperating from spinal surgery, I had an idea for a novel... so I started writing with no idea where it would go. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the story just generated itself. Once I had my characters in place, and dropped them into some odd situation, they tended to come up with their own dialogue, and actions that I didn’t anticipate. Not only that; they usually said, or did, something funny. One character even suggested an ending for a book that I had never expected, that was better than what I had planned—and was slyly hysterical.
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised.
I’ve always been one snarky practical joking son-of-a-bitch. And it’s only reasonable that creatures of my imagination would assume characteristics that resemble their creator. After all, even God—or so we’ve been told—created man in his own image (‘though, admittedly, that says a lot more about the unreasonable level of self-esteem of the authors of Genesis than of the nature of the deity). Setting implied self-deprecation aside for the moment, let’s just say that I enjoy writing funny stuff. It’s a pleasant change from decades of trying to explain factual things truthfully and clearly via text.
In retrospect, snarkiness is not the only thing fueling my newer writing. Mendacity has a lot to do with it. Quelle surprise; writing fiction, like being an actor—or politician—is little more than lying at a professional level.
But a funny thing happened—well, not funny in the way we’ve been talking about funny. While non-fiction isn’t regarded as being serious writing, amusing fiction isn’t either. My work regularly falls afoul of an unwritten code that insists that serious writing should feature stress, personal disaster, shame, or failure—but never, it seems, the tragedy of slipping on a banana peel. Franz Kafka (a serious writer most people would agree) wrote stories that contained all the elements required of serious literature, but—when he read them aloud—he laughed hysterically. And Shakespeare was so fond of Falstaff that he used him in several plays (and not just the comedies).
Maybe, in our search for “serious writing,” we tend to lose our sense of humor.
PG Wodehouse is one of my favorite writers. I’ve read almost all of his nearly one hundred books, several of them multiple times. He is widely respected by other writers—yet no one considers him to have been a writer of serious literature. Michael Phillips wrote:
“In my opinion, P.G. Wodehouse is the wordsmith and writing technician par excellence of all time. I could conduct a complete writing seminar using nothing but his books, and yet as works of fiction, they are pure farce, without any eternally redeeming value.”
That reads, to me, like damning with not-so-faint praise.
I suppose I could aspire to more, as a writer, than being funny but I don’t really see the point. My writing is, frankly, frivolous. The great themes and passions are conspicuously absent. I share that (but, alas, not much else) with Wodehouse—but it’s good enough for me.
Maybe the critics and professors have refined their literary tastes to such an extreme that their funny bones have wasted away from disuse. Maybe the problem is the misapplication of the adjective “serious” before “writing.” Maybe we should just call it “writing” and be done with it. And—if I might add just one more “maybe”—maybe we should strew our therapeutic banana peels before, and whoopie cushions beneath, anyone who dares to aspire to serve as an arbiter of seriousness.
Paid subscribers to these substack pages get access to a complete edition of my novella: Noirvella is a modern story of revenge, told in the style of film noir. They can also read the first part of Unbelievable, a kind of rom-com that forms around a pompous guy who is conceited, misinformed, and undeservedly successful. Both books are sold by Amazon, but paid subscribers get them for free!
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