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Search - Mrs Fisher Or The Future Of Humour

Mrs Fisher Or The Future Of Humour
Author: Robert Graves

MRS FISHER OR THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW For a full list of this Series see the end of the Book. First Published - - October, 1928. Second Impression - November, 1928. IV C .. L J MRS FISHER O OR, THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR There are few even of the less obvious problems in the encyclopedia of predic tion that have not been confidently ... more »settled in the last few months by someone or other in one way or the other. Yet the most important problem of all, the master-problem conditioning all the rest, has been everywhere avoided. The futures of Xylography, of Yiddish, of the Zebra these are suggestive and even exciting titles. But the gap shows only the more plainly with each new prediction. Like the hundred-yard gap that once appeared menacingly in the Roman Forum and the soothsayers said that someone must piously leap in and close it and 5 MRS FISHER one Mettus Curtius, a Roman Knight, leaped in with horse and armour and the earth closed above him and he was never heard of again. Hell and farewell. Why I am playing Mettus is that I really dont care any more than Mettus did whether I am heard of again. Other writers do. That is why they hold back and pretend that the gap is not there, and temporize with Nuto, the future of Nutting Nitor, of Knitting Netora, of Netting Notorius, of Knotting and Nugae Bugae of Noughts and Crosses. The difficulty about the Future of Humour is, of course, that if the writer does his job conscientiously his examples of the humour of the future will be con sistently not-yet-funny and therefore altogether implausible so he will forfeit his claim to a sense of humour in the present. If, on the other hand, he remains a humorist of the present his 6 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR readers will complain that he has not conscientiously revealed the future. When Mettus Curtius leaped into the gap he at once became a type of tragic courage. He was not even given the alternative of trying to leap across it though certainly if one is in sufficient haste and desperation it is possible to cross any chasm in safety, simply by assuming, with all the humour lessness of faith, a bridge that is not there. The gap had to be filled. He remains a type of tragic courage and tragedy is too single-minded for humour - or of unconscious humour , which is, if any thing, less intrinsically humorous than faith. The joke is always on Mettus, but that does not matter to Mettus, since it is his own joke and he put it there for reasons of his own. Here at least are two paragraphs wasted in so-called brilliant and provocative writing. Now let me go on slowly, MRS FISHER and contradict myself generously, and be altogether unsystematic, for humours sake, and be dull, for your own sakes. For if you cannot at some point of the book pause and find it dull, you will think yourselves dull. And it is your sense of hunxour that is on trial, not mine. I have publicly thrown mine into the gap. In this context I will record that the happiest half-hour of my life was once when put by accident for some weeks in the company of thirty or forty men whom I detested and who detested me, I decided finally to entertain them, from the Saturday-night stage. There were two possible results. Either I might really have amused them so extremely that our mutual detestation would have made a beautiful moment of it for us all, or I might have bored them extremely, and the joy of boring people whom one detests under pretence of amusing them 8 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR is more beautiful still because entirely ones own. I succeeded in boring them, though honourably for humours sake trying to amuse them. And they tried to conceal their boredom and detestation, as gentlemen, by a little perfunctory clapping. So I sang one more song, pretending to be flattered, and they rewarded me by not clapping that one at all. The future of humour is not to be discussed in the sort of way that one discusses the future of medical research or mechanical invention...

ISBN-13: 9781406738902
ISBN-10: 1406738905
Publication Date: 3/15/2007
Pages: 120
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Speath Press
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
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