The American Mind / The E. T. Earl Lectures

by Bliss Perry

"It iz a verry delicate job to forgive a man without lowering him in his own estimashun, and yures too."

See how the moralistic note is struck in the field of political satire. It is 1866, and "Petroleum V. Nasby," writing from "Confedrit X Roads," Kentucky, gives Deekin Pogram's views on education. "He didn't bleeve in edjucashun, generally speekin. The common people was better off without it, ez edjucashun hed a tendency to unsettle their minds. He had seen the evil effex ov it in niggers and poor whites. So soon ez a nigger masters the spellin book and gits into noosepapers, he becomes dissatisfied with his condishin, and hankers after a better cabin and more wages. He towunst begins to insist onto ownin land hisself, and givin his children edjucashun, and, ez a nigger, for our purposes, aint worth a soo markee."

The single phrase, "ez a nigger," spells a whole chapter of American history.

That quotation from "Petroleum V. Nasby" serves also to illustrate a species of American humor which has been of immense historical importance and which has never been more active than it is to-day: the humor, namely, of local, provincial, and sectional types. Much of this falls under Bergson's conception of humor as social censure. It rebukes the extravagance, the rigidity, the unawareness of the individual who fails to adapt himself to his social environment. It takes the place, in our categories of humor, of those types of class humor and satire in which European literature is so rich. The mobility of our population, the constant shifting of professions and callings, has prevented our developing fixed class types of humor. We have not even the lieutenant or the policeman as permanent members of our humorous stock company. The policeman of to-day may be mayor or governor to-morrow. The lieutenant may go back to his grocery wagon or on to his department store. But whenever and wherever such an individual fails to adapt himself to his new companions, fails to take on, as it were, the colors of his new environment, to speak in the new social accents, to follow the recognized patterns of behavior, then the kindly whip of the humorist is already cracking round his ears. The humor and satire of college undergraduate journalism turns mainly upon the recognized ability or inability of different individuals to adapt themselves to their changing pigeon-holes in the college organism. A freshman must behave like a freshman, or he is laughed at. Yet he must not behave as if he were nothing but the automaton of a freshman, or he will be laughed at more merrily still.

One of the first discoveries of our earlier humorists was the Down-East Yankee. "I'm going to Portland whether or no," says Major Jack Downing, telling the story of his boyhood; "I'll see what this world is made of yet. So I tackled up the old horse and packed in a load of ax handles and a few notions, and mother fried me a few doughnuts ... for I told her I didn't know how long I should be gone,"—and off he goes to Portland, to see what the world is made of. It is a little like Defoe, and a good deal like the young Ulysses, bent upon knowing cities and men and upon getting the best of bargains.

Each generation of Americans has known something like that trip to Portland. Each generation has had to measure its wits, its resources, its manners, against new standards of comparison. At every stage of the journey there are mishaps and ridiculous adventures; but everywhere, likewise, there is zest, conquest, initiation; the heart of a boy who "wants to know"—as the Yankees used to say; or, in more modern phrase,—

"to admire and for to see,
For to behold this world so wide."

There is the same romance of adventure in the humor concerning the Irishman, the Negro, the Dutchman, the Dago, the farmer. Each in turn becomes humorous through failure to adapt himself to the prevalent type. A long-bearded Jew is not ridiculous in Russia, but he rapidly becomes ridiculous even on the East Side of New York. Underneath all this popular humor of the comic supplements one may catch glimpses of the great revolving wheels which are crushing the vast majority of our population into something like uniformity. It is a process of social attrition. The sharp edges of individual behavior get rounded off. The individual loses color and picturesqueness, precisely as he casts aside the national costume of the land from which he came. His speech, his gait, his demeanor, become as nearly as possible like the speech and carriage of all his neighbors. If he resists, he is laughed at; and if he does not personally heed the laughter, he may be sure that his children do. It is the children of our immigrants who catch the sly smiles of their school-fellows, who overhear jokes from the newspapers and on the street corners, who bring home to their foreign-born fathers and mothers the imperious childish demand to make themselves like unto everybody else.

A similar social function is performed by that well-known mode of American humor which ridicules the inhabitants of certain states. Why should New Jersey, for example, be more ridiculous than Delaware? In the eyes of the newspaper paragrapher it unquestionably is, just as Missouri has more humorous connotations than Kentucky. We may think we understand why we smile when a man says that he comes from Kalamazoo or Oshkosh, but the smile when he says "Philadelphia" or "Boston" or "Brooklyn" is only a trifle more subtle. It is none the less real. Why should the suburban dweller of every city be regarded with humorous condescension by the man who is compelled to sleep within the city limits? No one can say, and yet without that humor of the suburbs the comic supplements of American newspapers would be infinitely less entertaining,—to the people who enjoy comic supplements.

So it is with the larger divisions of our national life. Yankee, Southerner, Westerner, Californian, Texan, each type provokes certain connotations of humor when viewed by any of the other types. Each type in turn has its note of provinciality when compared with the norm of the typical American. It is quite possible to maintain that our literature, like our social life, has suffered by this ever-present American sense of the ridiculous. Our social consciousness might be far more various and richly colored, there might be more true provincial independence of speech and custom and imagination if we had not to reckon with this ever-present censure of laughter, this fear of finding ourselves, our city, our section, out of touch with the prevalent tone and temper of the country as a whole. It is one of the forfeits we are bound to pay when we play the great absorbing game of democracy.