THE CHINAMAN'S HEAD
By WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT
(1886). Formerly with Century Magazine, and at present associate editor of The Literary Review. Contributor, particularly of poems and humorous verse, to many magazines. He is the author of Merchants from Cathay; The Falconer of God; The Great White Wall; The Burglar of the Zodiac; Perpetual Light (memorial).
Humor depends upon incongruity, exaggeration, misunderstanding, ignorance, the unexpected, and the use of the absurd in a thousand different ways. Humor that is spontaneous is always most effective.
A good humorous story is realistic, its humor apparently created from within, by the characters, rather than from without, by the author.
The Chinaman's Head is an example of the simple, humorous story. It gives sufficient character indication to support the incongruity, the misunderstanding, and the unexpected on which the humor of the story depends. The brevity of the story contributes to its effect.
There must be oodles of money in it, I thought, and what a delightful existence, just one complication after another. I can imagine a beginning: “As he looked more nearly at the round object in the middle of the sidewalk, he discovered that it was the completely severed head of a Chinese laundryman.” There you have it at once—mystery! Gripping! Big! Large! In fact, immense! Then your story covers twenty-five chapters, in which you unravel why it was a Chinese laundryman and whose Chinese laundryman it was. Excellent! I shall write mystery stories.
I lit another cigarette and sat thinking of mystery. Did you ever realize this about mystery? It gets more and more mysterious the more you think of it. It was getting too mysterious for me already. Just then my wife called me to lunch.
“Did you ever think, my dear,” I said affably as I unfolded my napkin and the roll in it bounced to the floor. They always do with me. It seems a rather cheap form of amusement, putting rolls in napkins. “Did you ever think,” I said, recovering the roll.
“Oh, often,” said my wife.