Download More ebooks [PDF]. Format PDF ebook download PDF KINDLE.

Full download ebooks at ebookmass.com

Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered

Culture–and the Magic That Makes It Work
Jesse David Fox
For dowload this book click BUTTON or LINK below

https://ebookmass.com/product/comedy-book-how-
comedy-conquered-culture-and-the-magic-that-makes-
it-work-jesse-david-fox/
OR CLICK BUTTON

DOWLOAD NOW

Download More ebooks from https://ebookmass.com

More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Comedy in Crises Chrisoula Lionis

https://ebookmass.com/product/comedy-in-crises-chrisoula-lionis/

Uncertainty: How it Makes Science Advance Kostas

Kampourakis

https://ebookmass.com/product/uncertainty-how-it-makes-science-
advance-kostas-kampourakis/

Comedy and the Politics of Representation 1st ed.

Edition Helen Davies

https://ebookmass.com/product/comedy-and-the-politics-of-
representation-1st-ed-edition-helen-davies/

The Punk Turn in Comedy 1st ed. Edition Krista Bonello

Rutter Giappone

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-punk-turn-in-comedy-1st-ed-
edition-krista-bonello-rutter-giappone/
Faking It With the Guy Next Door: A Sweet Small-Town
Romantic Comedy (Second Chance Café Book 3) Kate
O'Keeffe

https://ebookmass.com/product/faking-it-with-the-guy-next-door-a-
sweet-small-town-romantic-comedy-second-chance-cafe-book-3-kate-
okeeffe/

How to Date a Rockstar: a second chance, forced

proximity, small town, rockstar romantic comedy (Cash &
the Sinners Book 1) D.E. Haggerty

https://ebookmass.com/product/how-to-date-a-rockstar-a-second-
chance-forced-proximity-small-town-rockstar-romantic-comedy-cash-
the-sinners-book-1-d-e-haggerty/

Images at work: The material culture of enchantment

David Morgan

https://ebookmass.com/product/images-at-work-the-material-
culture-of-enchantment-david-morgan/

Never Fall for Your One that Got Away: A laugh-out-loud

sweet romantic comedy (It's Complicated Book 4) Kate
O'Keeffe

https://ebookmass.com/product/never-fall-for-your-one-that-got-
away-a-laugh-out-loud-sweet-romantic-comedy-its-complicated-
book-4-kate-okeeffe/

The Object of Comedy: Philosophies and Performances 1st

Edition Jamila M. H. Mascat (Editor)

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-object-of-comedy-philosophies-
and-performances-1st-edition-jamila-m-h-mascat-editor/
 Begin Reading

Table of Contents

A Note About the Author

Copyright Page

Thank you for buying this

Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook.

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.

Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

For email updates on the author, click here.

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your
personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available
in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you
believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on
the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at:
us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
For my parents
 Humor is the last stage of existential awareness before faith.
—SØREN KIERKEGAARD, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical
Fragments

Comedy is to make everybody laugh at everything, and deal with

things, you idiot.
—JOAN RIVERS, to a heckler in Wisconsin
 1

COMEDY

This is a love story.

“You nervous?” In my memory, that was the first thing Jerry Seinfeld
ever said to me. It was May 2015, and I was about to interview him
onstage at Vulture Festival, in front of five hundred people. That
afternoon, Seinfeld looked like a cross between a tech CEO and Jerry
Seinfeld. Black T-shirt under a well-made gray checked blazer, small
glasses surrounded by only a whisper of silver frames, the very
close-cropped hair of a man who gets it cut often. It’s possible he
said something else first—I don’t know, like, “Hello” or “How’s it
going?” But what I remember was, “You nervous?” See, Seinfeld
rose to prominence in the comedy clubs of the 1980s, when
comedians were forced to see every onstage interaction as a battle
to the death—kill* or be killed. I told him, “No,” by which I meant,
“Yes.” How could I not be? I was going to be asking the writer of
many of my favorite jokes where they came from.
The audience was younger than I expected, considering how long
Seinfeld had been famous. They reminded me of, well, myself. My
feeling of How did I get here? transformed into How did we get
here? Before that point, I had a narrative of myself as a fan of
comedy, starting with me as a kid watching Seinfeld reruns every
day while doing my homework and building to me talking onstage
with the guy with the name. But in that moment I started seeing
myself as a part of a much larger cultural shift.
To quote the question asked by many a Jerry Seinfeld
impressionist: Who are these people? Simply put: comedy nerds.
Comedy nerds are nerds, but, if you can believe it, for comedy.
People who follow the trends and study the foundational texts, and
who, if you asked, would say, “Of course comedy is an art form.” A
few months before I interviewed Seinfeld, I had been talking to
Comedy Central’s head of research at the time, Chanon Cook, about
a 2012 survey she conducted, which showed that millennials viewed
humor as the number-one factor in their self-definition. “Comedy is
to this generation what music was to previous generations,” she told
me.1 “They use it to define themselves. They use it to connect with
people.” Comedy Central called them Comedy Natives.2 If you look at
social media behavior—posting funny videos on Facebook, tweeting
a joke reaction to the news of the day, lip-syncing a favorite sitcom
scene on TikTok—it seems that comedy has enmeshed itself in how
millennials and now Gen Z communicate. Cook’s analysis pointed to
what life started looking like for young people around 2010. Seinfeld
had a sense that something had been changing, but he wasn’t
exactly familiar with us comedy nerds. At one point he referred to us
with the close but not exactly right “stand-up geeks.” More than he
couldn’t comprehend who this new generation of comedy fan was,
he couldn’t appreciate his own role in our emergence. It’s hard to
say Seinfeld is the reason for modern comedy fandom, but it seems
fair to suggest the reason it looks the way it does has a lot to do
with the show’s content and popularity. I’ll explain. Let’s go back to
the beginning.
It was the summer of 1989. Gorbachev was abandoning the
Brezhnev Doctrine, Prince had everyone doing the “Batdance,” and
the team of Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David had a new show about
something. Originally called The Seinfeld Chronicles, the initial
premise was that each episode would show the day-to-day life of a
stand-up comedian and how it got turned into material.3 Though
much of that framing dropped when the show went to air,
rewatching now, it is amazing how many plots revolved around
stand-up. Jerry also periodically tells jokes, but not how a normal
sitcom character would. Meaning he knows he’s making a joke and,
because he’s a comedian, he’ll comment on how well it worked. My
favorite example of this aspect of the show is a scene from the
season 8 episode “The Checks,” with Jerry and Elaine coming out of
a drugstore:

JERRY: Hey, have you seen all these new commercials for
indigestion drugs? Pepcid AC, Tagamet HB.
ELAINE: Ugh, the whole country’s sick to their stomachs.
JERRY: Now, you know you’re supposed to take these
things before you get sick?
ELAINE: What is this, a bit?
JERRY: No.
ELAINE: ’Cause I’m not in the mood.
JERRY: We’re just talking. Is this not the greatest
marketing ploy ever? If you feel good, you’re supposed to
take one!
ELAINE: Yeah, I know that tone. This is a bit.
JERRY: They’ve opened up a whole new market.
Medication for the well.

The scene continues and Elaine gives Jerry the sort of feedback
comedians give each other, telling him to move “medication for the
well” to the start and hit “good” harder. When it aired, in 1996, it
was the first time I ever heard the term “bit.” Many of my peers and
I were being indoctrinated to care about comedy. The message of 97
percent of sitcoms is that friends are good or family is good or your
office is friends or family and thus also good. Not Seinfeld. The idea
that it was a show about nothing is misunderstood. It was not that it
wasn’t about anything, it was about the idea of nothing. It was
about nothingness. Famously, Larry David said he wanted “no
hugging, no learning.” Seinfeld hung a photo of space taken by the
Hubble Space Telescope in the writers’ room to remind the staff how
little what they were doing mattered.4 Nothing didn’t mean the
nonsense the Seinfeld four tended to focus on; it was an existential
nothing. There was one exception: Seinfeld was less Waiting for
Godot and more waiting for good joke. For the makers of the show
and the characters in the show, the one thing that mattered was
comedy.
And the show was remarkably popular. Truly, it is remarkable for a
show that specific to be watched by as many people as it was. At
the beginning of this chapter, I referenced a well-known line from
the second season of the 2019 critical supernova Fleabag (“This is a
love story”). I imagine there’s a good deal of Venn diagram overlap
among readers of this book and watchers of the second season of
that show, and yet I doubt anyone knew with 100 percent certainty
that I was copping the line. The monoculture, the time in which
everyone watched and listened to the same stuff, is so far in the
rearview that you can’t be sure with things like this. Though
American streaming numbers for Fleabag aren’t available, you can
sense that it didn’t consume mass culture the way Seinfeld did. Now,
if I said “yada yada,” it’s unlikely any readers wouldn’t know what I
was making a reference to. Over 76 million people watched the
Seinfeld finale in 1998.5 There were only 276 million people living in
the U.S. at the time, and a lot of those people were babies not
allowed to stay up that late. Over 58 million watched the freaking
clip retrospective that ran before the finale. For comparison, fewer
than 20 million people watched the Game of Thrones finale, the
biggest TV event in recent memory.6 That is significantly less than
Seinfeld’s weekly viewership. Also, it’s relevant that, given its run
from 1989 to 1998, Seinfeld was right in the sweet spot for
millennials, who were born between 1981 and 1996, making it likely
the first big show that many of the largest generation in American
history watched. Because of David’s no-learning rule, all the show
projected to its impressionable fans was that comedy is valuable.
Essentially, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David invented the comedy
podcast, or, at least, they deserve credit for generating an interest in
the basic premise of funny people sitting around talking about
comedy and their lives as comedians.
The story is not that Seinfeld premiered and yada yada comedy is
a whole thing now. (I told you you’d get it when I referenced “yada
yada.”) I don’t want to draw a straight line from Seinfeld to today,
because it was not a linear expansion. It was more of a big bang,
with the expansion spreading in 360 directions and accelerating as it
moved forward. Starting in the nineties, there were countless entry
points for comedy fandom. I was a member of the Seinfeld
generation, a term I just made up to refer to the sort of millennial
who grew up watching Seinfeld and, in turn, always knowing and
caring about what goes into a stand-up’s comedy. But you could also
call us the Simpsons generation, as I remember at age nine
watching an episode and laughing at a joke so hard that something
dislodged in my brain and I thought, Someone wrote this thing. I
wonder who? I wonder how?
We were a generation raised on a new sort of sketch-show-
veteran, blockbuster-comedy movie star, from Eddie Murphy, Bill
Murray, and Chevy Chase in the eighties, to Jim Carrey, Adam
Sandler, Ben Stiller, and Mike Myers in the nineties, to the Wayans
brothers, Will Ferrell, and Melissa McCarthy in the 2000s. We were
also the Def Comedy Jam, Martin, In Living Color, UPN, WB
generation. Or, maybe, the generation who saw prominent women in
comedy like Janeane Garofalo, Margaret Cho, and new woman-
dominated casts of Saturday Night Live. And there was RuPaul’s
emergence as the biggest drag queen the world had ever seen. Most
succinctly, you could say, we were the Comedy Central generation,
being the first to grow up with a network that, appropriately enough,
centered comedy. I was not aware of any of this at the time, I was
just a kid watching what I liked, but the accessibility of this much
comedy is part of how you get a generation of comedy nerds.
Comedy has steadily grown in cultural relevance, from vaudeville
around the turn of the twentieth century to Seinfeld toward the end
of it, but since then it feels like its growth in both scale and value
has sped up. This book focuses on comedy made from 1990 through
the early 2020s. This is the period in which millennials, and then Gen
Z, emerged as cultural consumers. Also, as will be discussed in
chapter 2, this represents the period after the comedy boom of the
eighties (when hundreds of comedy clubs opened) went bust (when
hundreds closed), and comedy puts itself on a path as an art form
and a business that would lead it to where it is today, where there
are more comedians of a greater variety performing for larger
audiences across more platforms than ever. Maybe the most drastic
stat to convey how much things have changed is this: When Seinfeld
premiered, in July 1989, no comedy act had headlined a show at the
Madison Square Garden arena; since the show ended in 1998,
eighteen acts have, at time of writing. † It’s not just that the biggest
names are bigger; comedy has built a robust middle class of
performers who might not have their own TV show but have millions
of followers on social media or a loyal fifty thousand listeners of their
podcast.
Moreover, in 2004, a survey revealed that one in five eighteen-to-
twenty-nine-year-olds got their presidential campaign news from
comedy shows.7 Ever since, comedians’ status in the sociopolitical
conversation has only been on the rise, led by Jon Stewart’s work on
The Daily Show and followed by Saturday Night Live’s impact on how
young people (especially self-identified Independents and
Republicans) exposed to Tina Fey’s impression perceived Sarah
Palin.8 By 2014, comedy was seen as so important politically that
when the Obama administration was desperate to boost Affordable
Care Act enrollment, their bright idea was to have the president
appear on Zach Galifianakis’s talk show parody, Between Two Ferns,
which featured jokes like “What is it like to be the last Black
president?” And it worked, with the Healthcare.gov site experiencing
a 40 percent boost in traffic, almost entirely made up of people who
had never visited the site before. The American socialist magazine
Jacobin would later call it “The Day Zach Galifianakis Saved
Obamacare.”9
Comedy—broadly, historically—is the art of taking serious things
not seriously. In the classroom of our culture, for a very long time,
comedians have been placed in the back, cracking jokes at
everything in front of them. Comedians were our society’s
ombudsmen, our official bullshit callers. And, as time has gone on,
comedians have done such a good job at this that it’s become
clearer and clearer that a lot of our assumptions about our society
are bullshit. As a result, the media has imbued comedians like Dave
Chappelle, Amy Schumer, most current late-night hosts, and the
entire cast and crew of Saturday Night Live with a status previously
granted only to those who claim to be telling us the truth—
journalists, politicians, and other public intellectuals. But forget
politics. Comedy is, dare I say, cool now. In 2021, the French luxury
fashion house Balenciaga chose animated characters from The
Simpsons as models for Paris Fashion Week. A year later, at New
York Fashion Week, the boutique fashion accessories brand Susan
Alexandra held its show at the Comedy Cellar, with up-and-coming
comedians performing and serving as models. That same week, the
cool-kid streetwear brand KITH used its fall lookbook to introduce its
newest model—Jerry Seinfeld. For people around my age and older,
comedy seems like a bigger deal than it ever has. For those younger,
they’ve never lived in a culture where comedy wasn’t an ever-
present, important, valued societal force. This is what culture looks
like during the second comedy boom. And there are no signs it’s
slowing down.

Something Seinfeld said that day inspired this book. Our

conversation was chugging along nicely but hit a snag when I tried
to have him discuss the nitty-gritty of his joke-writing process. “This
is my favorite thing to talk about,” he said, “but I really think they’re
going to be so bored to hear it.” The interview went on for another
thirty minutes, but this sentence played over and over again in my
head, as if a DJ had made it the hook of the panel’s dance remix.
“This,” meaning the craft of comedy, is the favorite subject of one of
the twenty or so most famous people of the last quarter century, and
yet he thinks it would bore the five hundred people who were so
interested in everything he had to say that they were able to buy
forty-dollar tickets in the minutes between when they went on sale
and when they sold out. I could tell some people in the first few
rows were disappointed, but I wasn’t going to push. I was still quite
scared of him. But, upon reflection, I realized this moment of
disconnection between Seinfeld and me captured a dichotomy that
has persisted, where no matter how much comedy grows in
popularity and societal value, there still exists a strong apprehension
about appreciating it on its own terms as an art form. This needs to
change. So, that’s what this book is: an exploration of the ways of
seeing the art of comedy. Throughout our time together, I will
embrace the extreme subjectivity around what people find funny, but
considering comedy as an art is nonnegotiable.
And I believe I’m not alone in this desire to understand comedy
better. There are fans, regardless of what Seinfeld says, who are
open, curious, and excited to understand how comedy functions as
an art form and as part of our culture. Seinfeld’s comment was
tapping into a long-held view that analyzing comedy is a fool’s
errand, one that I intend to debunk in this book. See, when Seinfeld
was growing up and coming up, jokes were not meant to be
explained. If you have to explain a joke, that means it wasn’t funny.
If you explain comedy, you’ll kill it. Which brings us to the frog. As E.
B. and Katharine S. White wrote in 1941: “Humor can be dissected,
as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are
discouraging to any but the purely scientific mind.”10 Strong premise.
Too wordy. It would be punchier if it ended with the frog death. Uh-
oh! There I go! E. B. Damned, I dissected their joke. And it is a joke,
literally, ironically enough. And like a good joke, it gave people the
vocabulary to shape and express their own opinion. The opinion
being that by analyzing a joke, you suck the joy out of it.
Before we go forward, we need to establish what a joke is,
because the word is used to describe two different, albeit related
funny phenomena. There are jokes. Like, joke-jokes. Sometimes
called street jokes. They’re the things that start with “Knock knock”
or “A priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar” or “What do you
get when you cross a _____ with a _____?” Joke-jokes are jokes
you find in joke books. They’re freestanding, authorless, utilitarian
tools to produce laughter. They have been around for millennia.
They are a bottom-up, folk-cultural product. Modern comedy’s early
history—from minstrel shows to vaudeville to burlesque to the
borscht belt and chitlin circuit ‡ —started with jokes like these, but
now when comedians say they tell jokes, they are talking about
something different.
Norm Macdonald made the distinction between joke-jokes and
comedians’ jokes clear in 2015.11 An interviewer wanted to know
how he wrote the often long, sometimes meandering jokes he would
tell on late-night shows and Howard Stern, like the legendary “moth
joke” he told on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, about a moth going
through an existential crisis who visits a podiatrist’s office (“‘Moth,
man, you’re troubled. But you should be seeing a psychiatrist. Why
on earth did you come here?’ And the moth says, ‘’Cause the light
was on.’”). Macdonald said he did not write them. No, comics don’t
write “actual” jokes. “They’re just out there,” he explained. “No
comic in the world can make up an actual joke like ‘A guy walks into
a bar and this happens.’”
He continued, “They call a comedian’s act ‘jokes,’ but they haven’t
been jokes for years.” Macdonald had a hard time explaining what
he had previously thought was obvious. He threw out the word
“observations” to describe them, but “jokes” can be anything to a
comedian. A joke can be Sarah Silverman telling her audience not to
forget God can see you masturbating, but “don’t stop. He’s almost
there.” Then she adds, “I’m just kidding. There’s no God.” A joke can
be Wanda Sykes’s examination of how it is harder being gay than
Black, in which she plays out her parents’ responses to if she had to
come out as Black (“You weren’t born Black. The Bible says, ‘Adam
and Eve,’ not ‘Adam and Mary J. Blige.’”). A joke can be Leslie Jones
acting out the time she danced so hard to impress Prince, her
ponytail flew off her head. To a comedian, a “joke” is a complete
comedic idea. And this is how the word will be used in this book.
This distinction is necessary because comedy’s jokes are carrying the
baggage of joke-jokes, including the belief that they should not be
analyzed, at least in polite society.
The thing is, the Whites weren’t talking about analyzing comedy,
as in the art form that is currently thriving, because the genre was
still in its nascency. I believe that because of the sentence that
directly preceded the dead-frog line: “Analysts have had their go at
humor and I have read some of this interpretative literature, but
without being greatly instructed.” I have also read some of this
interpretative literature and similarly found it lacking. Often, it’s
because it is oriented around joke-jokes.
Instead of summarizing the “Theories of Humor” Wikipedia page,
let me tell you a little story about Noel Meyerhof, a beloved office
cut-up, who one day is discovered entering jokes into the Multivac
supercomputer by a colleague. This is the plot of “Jokester,” a 1956
short story from Isaac Asimov, who in his free time was a famed
joke-joke freak, releasing three collections over the course of his
lifetime. When confronted, Meyerhof explains his intentions are to
figure out where jokes come from, as they seem to have no origin
and he has not been satisfied with the existing literature. “The
people who write the books are just guessing,” he argues. “Some of
them say we laugh because we feel superior to the people in the
joke. Some say it is because of a suddenly realized incongruity, or a
sudden relief from tension, or a sudden reinterpretation of events. Is
there any simple reason? Different people laugh at different jokes.
No joke is universal. Some people don’t laugh at any joke. Yet what
may be most important is that man is the only animal with a true
sense of humor; the only animal that laughs.” Fortunately for
Meyerhof, the Multivac spits out an answer: Aliens made them up!
Extraterrestrials aside, this is a decent summary of the history of
comedy philosophy that would have been available to the Whites.
You get references to the three most common theories: 1.
Superiority theory dates back to the likes of Plato and Aristotle
(though the name wouldn’t come until the twentieth century), and
argues that we laugh at others’ misfortune because it makes us feel
better about our own lot in life.12 2. Relief theory is most associated
with Sigmund Freud, who believed people laugh to release psychic
energy associated with a repressed topic.13 3. Incongruity theory is
the most contemporary of the bunch, with many great thinkers
offering their spin on the fundamental idea that we laugh at the
juxtaposition of a common/rational concept and an
uncommon/absurd one.14 Besides it being easy to think of disproving
examples, they all fail for one reason: They’re too focused on joke-
jokes. This results in these theories’ being too binary, as they are
trying to explain the relationship between setup and punch line. All
of them, in one way or another, have a before and an after. Like an
on-off switch, one goes from 0 percent laughing to 100 percent
laughing and then back to 0. I’m dubious that this is what it feels
like to experience a joke-joke, but it’s definitely not what it feels like
to experience comedy.
For my money, what it feels like to experience comedy is best
captured by play theory, the theory of comedy this book subscribes
to. Let me show you, reader, how this interpretation of comedy is
not simply about jokes, but is part of the broader human condition
born out of the evolutionary need for play. Try to think of comedy as
less of a discrete moment and more of a state of being. In scripted
movies or TV shows, it’s the story and its characters (or a premise, if
it’s a sketch) that put you in the position to laugh when funny things
happen. In stand-up, it is the energy created between the comic and
the audience. The feeling of mirth one experiences watching comedy
is similar at the most basic neurological level to the feeling one has
joking around with one’s friends and family. Similarly, as we mature,
we search for ever more sophisticated versions of laughing at a
funny face a relative makes when we’re a child. Comedians are able
to artificially create that state of play by generating the same
feelings of trust and safety that free you up to laugh most easily. But
what does this mean for jokes? Jokes are the means by which
comedians play. Joke theories will highlight the importance of
surprise in and of itself, but under play theory, surprise is important
only insomuch as surprise is fun. But it’s not essential. A pun is not
funny because the language passes through some inherently funny
linguistic calculation, but because you are literally playing with
words. For those with mathematically wired, puzzle-solving brains, it
might feel like a funny calculation, but that’s just because that’s how
they play. Free from the need to telegraph what they’re saying, as
comedians get more experienced, they understand they can get
laughs without their sentences sounding so jokey.
To best understand play theory, it helps to think where it evolved
from. Man is not the only animal that laughs. Isn’t that cute? Though
humans are the only animal with the biology to make the noise we
think of as laughter, other animals make similar repetitive noises.
Our sisters the chimpanzees do it.15 As do gorillas, orangutans, and
other primates. Elephants laugh. Rats make little giggles. It’s
possible dogs and cats laugh. Again, very cute. “Chimps,” writes
neuroscientist Robert R. Provine, “laugh most when tickled, during
rough-and-tumble play, and during chasing games.” He adds,
“Physical contact or threat of such contact is a common denominator
of chimp laughter.”16 In contrast, though adult humans’ laughter
often involves verbal communication, over the last twenty years,
researchers have argued that we are doing our version of rough-
and-tumbling. We use comedy as a way to mess around with each
other, in the same way chimps tickle each other. It’s why Darwin,
who saw comedy in a way similar to how future play theorists would,
once called humor a “tickling of the mind.”17
 In the 150 or so years since Darwin, new research has advanced
the case for play theory.18 “There is a growing consensus among
researchers that the purpose of play behavior is to sharpen the
mind’s physical, cognitive, and emotional skills,” write the cognitive
scientists Matthew M. Hurley, Daniel C. Dennett, and Reginald B.
Adams in Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the
Mind.19 They add that “laughter is a tool to facilitate nonaggressive
play.” Other researchers describe how humor, as a social
phenomenon, evolved from this use of laughter.20 To apply this to
comedy means to consider the comedian-audience relationship.
Comedy exists only when both the comedian and audience are
working together to create the state of play. “Comedy is a game, a
game that imitates life,” wrote the French philosopher Henri Bergson
in his influential 1900 book on comedy, Laughter: An Essay on the
Meaning of the Comic.21 And it is not a game that can be played
alone; as he writes, “Our laughter is always the laughter of a group.”
Again, this state of play is most naturally entered into with the
people closest to you, but the art of comedy evolved into existence
because people were willing to pay for professionals to create play
and needed to practice processing increasingly sophisticated ideas.
By analyzing comedy, by consuming and considering it, the
audience, the critic, the frog dissector is further playing with ideas.
Diving deeper into a comedian’s joke is a way to continue having fun
with it, not to take the fun out of it. So, for example, let’s play with
Jerry Seinfeld. Though Jerry Seinfeld literally released two joke
books of his work, his act is not a collection of jokes. If another
comedian read them verbatim, the result would be quite different.
People tend to think one-liner comedians have less of a persona
onstage, but it’s often the opposite. You can’t tell a Seinfeld joke
without doing an impression of him. Though Seinfeld’s form might
sound more jokey, it doesn’t mean his comedy too can’t be
considered more deeply. Take his joke about Halloween, which
became one of his classics:
 So, the first couple years I made my own costumes, which
of course sucked:
The ghost, the hobo, no good.
Then, finally, the third year, begging the parents, got the
Superman Halloween costume (not surprisingly).
Cardboard box, cellophane top, mask included.
Remember the rubber band on the back of that mask?
That was a quality item there, wasn’t it?
That was good about ten seconds before it snapped out
of that cheap little staple they put it in there with.
You go to your first house: “Trick or…” Snap!
“It broke. I don’t believe it!”
Intentionally or not, Seinfeld is using comedy (play) to give
people a space to reckon with the loss of innocence, the Lynchian
dark side of postwar suburbia, and capitalism’s broken promise. I am
not saying this is what makes the joke funny or that it was Seinfeld’s
explicit intention, but it can be argued these ideas allowed for its
resonance with audiences at the time he first wrote it in the eighties.
Not unlike a poem, you could also look more closely at the meter
and word choice. How he introduces the word “snapped,” so the
audience is primed to instantly make the connection when he uses
“snap!” in the next line. And don’t get me started about the aural
impact of ending sentences with a hard p.
Joke-jokes are an anthropological phenomenon and have largely
been researched as such, but the movement in comedy over the last
thirty-plus years, the time period we’ll be focusing on, has been to
treat comedy jokes as an art. Even if there is pushback. When we
spoke, Seinfeld captured what makes the proposition of taking
comedy seriously so difficult. “There’s absolutely no difference
between the greatest painting ever made and a joke,” he said
confidently. “But when there’s a two-drink minimum and people are
getting drunk to make the guy seem funnier, it’s not looked at that
way.” This is a book, first and foremost, about considering comedy
as an art form. It’s about appreciating comedy without the need to
get drunk. There is no two-drink minimum.

After the panel, back in the greenroom, Seinfeld was much softer
toward me than before, and he said one thing that I’ll never forget,
even though I can’t for the life of me remember the exact wording. I
have a bad memory. Moreover, I don’t really believe in memory as
an accurate document of what happened, as much as how your
brain has decided to store information based on your present
psychology. I consider the memoir portions of this book to be
speculative nonfiction. This is all to say, I can’t remember if Seinfeld
earnestly said to me, “You’re really interested in jokes” or “You really
care about jokes.” Again, it doesn’t matter which, but what is
notable to me is the relationship between how much I care about
comedy emotionally and how much I’m interested in it intellectually
—how much I love it and how much I’m fascinated by it.
From a very young age, I don’t know if I’d say I took comedy
seriously, but it was important to me. For me, comedy has been an
outlet for frustration, an escape from personal tragedy, and a salve
for the cruelties of existence. My mother passed away in 1993. I was
seven. It was like I was Sandra Bullock in Gravity, doing routine
repairs on the outside of my spaceship, when metal shards from a
blown-up satellite came flying through, cutting up the craft,
detaching my tether, leaving me flipping and flipping through space,
floating away from my ship and Earth. I exhibited obsessive-
compulsive tendencies from a young age, but the trauma of losing
my mother influenced how deep into my head I could sometimes
retreat. My family provided stability, brought me back to Earth, but I
was lucky to have an art form like comedy that was able to pull me
back when I started floating away again. Jokes offered a state I
could stay in that made life seem more manageable, with enough
pops of dopamine to keep my attention. Laughing is instinctual—it’s
without intention—and it’s uncontrollable. No matter how bad or
how nothing I felt, 1993 was also the year The Simpsons entered
heavy syndication, and I wasn’t not going to laugh when Sideshow
Bob stepped on yet another rake. Jokes were how I affirmed I was
alive.
And as I do with the things meaningful to me, I’ve thought about
it and thought about it, and I only find myself loving comedy more.
I’ve seen it live up to my level of inquiry. Later in the Whites’ piece
they make another analogy that I like better than the dead frog.
They are describing the state of humor, and after backhand-praising
radio comedians and the manufacturers of whoopee cushions, they
describe a comedy short they saw at a movie theater. In it, a man
blows a giant soap bubble and jumps in and out of it. “It was, if
anything, a rather repulsive sight,” the Whites write. “Humor is a
little like that: it won’t stand much blowing up and it won’t stand
much poking. It has a certain fragility, an evasiveness, which one
had best respect. Essentially, it is a complete mystery.”22 I get this.
When you see a magician do a trick, it would be great to just accept
you’re in the presence of a wizard. Now, I am not suggesting it’s
better to cynically look around for wires or hidden cards. I try to
instead see the magic in a well-done trick. Taking comedy seriously
does not make it less mysterious to me, it makes it more so. I know
how they do it, and yet, how do they do it?
Because of the frogs and the aversion to seriousness, comedy has
gone under-considered throughout its history, even as it has
ascended as a major cultural force. Comedians have wielded a great
deal of influence and have acquired power as a result, but there has
been little focus on how they actually do that. This is vital at a time
of booming innovation, both in terms of the ways in which
comedians are exploring the bounds of the art form and the
platforms on which they are exploring it. Though there have been
some notable comedy histories, comedy scholars I’ve spoken to feel
they’re fighting an uphill battle for legitimacy in academia. Similarly,
compared to other art forms, there have been very, very few
prominent comedy journalists and critics. One goal of this book is to
make it more likely that there are more books about comedy in the
future.
Creating a space in our culture for analyzing comedy will improve
the viewing experience. Despite dedicating my life to thinking about
comedy and cutting frogs into smaller and smaller pieces, I’ve never
stopped laughing. It’s not that it is harder to make me laugh now,
but I am more demanding. I laugh more deeply, with more of me. I
want that for everybody. I want that for comedy. Because comedy is
an audience-dependent form, an audience that understands more,
that cares more, will continue to push the art forward. The hope is
to empower comedians to be more ambitious, be it to write jokes
even more sharply, pursue more unusual comedy, or play to larger
audiences made up of people who are actually supporting them as a
specific artist and not someone just providing a service. Better
ingredients, better pizza. Better audience, better comedy.
Still, the number-one rule of this book is “Have fun.” To analyze
comedy is to play. When people learn I write about comedy for a
living, they’ll ask if I still am able to enjoy it. I enjoy it maybe more
than anyone on this planet, as I now know how to see and hear
more. This book will show you comedy through my eyes and ears in
hopes that you’ll be able to do the same. And I guarantee you will
laugh more and feel better for it or your money back! [This is not
legally binding.]
Comedy has proven, especially over the last thirty years, to have
a tremendous power to build empathy, to foster social change, to
bring people together, and to relieve societal tension, and yet
regularly, people, including comedians, push back on attempts to
take it seriously. Enough. It is serious. Suggesting otherwise inhibits
its potential growth and expanse as an art form—the potential I
hope for comedy. They’re “just jokes”? Get bent, man. Personally, I
have found jokes a salve and means of processing an at-times too
tragic world. It is through comedy that I have come to terms with
the “cosmic joke,” as the famous mystic Yogi Sadhguru puts it—
death: “If you get the joke, falling on the other side will be
wonderful.”
 2

AUDIENCE

“Have you ever tried stand-up?” is the question I get most often
from comedians. Some are being nice and are just curious to meet a
“civilian” who cares so much about comedy. However, I’d be lying
(and I’d never lie to you, baby), if I didn’t acknowledge that usually
the question is meant to challenge my credentials. Comedy is hardly
the only field in which the rebuttal to criticism is a rejection of the
idea of the critic. I’m sure the first caveperson who ever offered a
grunted opinion about a cave painting was hit over the head with a
rock by its artist. Still, the skeptical artist’s impulse is misguided
here. It is more important that the critic relates to the audience,
since that is who their work is for, especially with comedy as an
audience-dependent art form. That said, yes, I have.
After years of bothering my friend Halle, a stand-up in her own
right, with jokes and tweet drafts, she said in 2015 that I should
“just try” stand-up. Not only that, but she had the show for me—“a
leather-jacket-themed open mic.” A leather-jacket-themed open mic
means comedians were supposed to wear a leather jacket and do
the type of material Andrew Dice Clay would do if he were making
fun of Andrew Dice Clay. Let’s say I was ninth on a list of seventeen
acts. Really, I have no idea. I do remember that most people just did
regular sets wearing a leather jacket. One guy didn’t have a leather
jacket, borrowed one, and then proceeded to just talk about how
dating was weird or whatever. There is a famous photo of the
comedy writer Katie Dippold at a normal, just-drink-wine-and-watch-
a-scary-movie Halloween get-together, dressed like the Babadook
from the 2014 Australian horror film The Babadook. My leather
jacket was a Babadook costume. I only have leather jacket jokes, I
thought. They’re going to know I’m a fraud. But as I saw more and
more comedians do a medium job, it dawned on me, They have
nothing to compare me to. As far as they knew I didn’t incorrectly
come dressed like the Babadook, I am always dressed like the
Babadook. I am the Babadook.
Next thing I knew, my name was called. As I approached the
stage, I repeated to myself, Take the mic off the stand and put the
stand behind you. Take the mic off the stand and put the stand
behind you. Take the mic off the stand and put the stand behind
you. From years listening to comedy podcasts, I knew this one
action is what separated amateurs from professionals. In retrospect,
its significance was overrated. The audience wasn’t hostile. They
were giving me nothing. I was starting at a true 0. I asked if they
were ready for “some leather jacket comedy” and they said “woo,”
less as a cheer and more of a “yes.”
And then I did stand-up. That’s how I talk about it. “Did.” I
wouldn’t say I performed stand-up, but it was, undoubtedly,
technically stand-up. I said a joke out loud and the audience made a
noise that I thought was laughter. But it wasn’t laughter. It was an
acknowledgment of a joke, which is better than nothing. I realized
that because with my second-to-last joke I said the punch line and I
heard a sharp, loud noise, as if the audience was a popped balloon,
but instead of helium, it was filled with laughs. (I’m sure you might
be curious what the joke is, but I don’t want to tell you. First, the
expectations for it right now are too great. Second, it’s not not dirty
and it would be distracting. I will tell you eventually.) Then my set
was done. I sat back down with the comedians and some said,
“Good job.” I felt nothing. I was not hooked, thankfully. That night I
retired from stand-up.
By that point in my life, I had read or listened to hundreds of
comedians talk about their first time, so I knew what was supposed
to happen in this moment: Your first big laugh is like a secret door
opening and behind it is the path to your new life. There is this idea
in the general population that all comedians are sad clowns with
traumatic childhoods. Based on my experience, that’s not exactly
correct. What is, for the most part, true is that all comedians have a
compulsion to perform comedy. This is notable because, especially
starting out, performing comedy—be it improv, sketch, or especially
stand-up—is stupid hard. Multiple times a night, every night of the
week, you have to do it poorly in front of people. And you have to
do this for years before you bomb* only some of the time. If you
want to go through this long, exhausting, disenchanting journey,
then comedy must fill a deep need for you. For every comedian the
source of that need is different, be it nature or nurture, but there is
a reason almost everyone who eventually makes it describes that
first laugh as feeling like a high they were chasing.
This is at the core of the sort of codependency of the comedian-
fan relationship—you are only happy with what makes the other
person happy. And it is what makes comedy such a unique art form.
Most comedy is not only created to be performed in front of people
but is also created by being performed in front of people. All live
performers—musicians, theater actors, dancers—will say that they
feed off the energy of the crowd or even that the crowd’s energy
influences their performance, but they are all working off material
already written and/or rehearsed in private. Stand-ups will vary in
how much they put pen to paper beforehand, but generally they
write by going up onstage with an idea for an area in which a joke
might be, and then they use the audience to figure out which parts
are funny, or interesting, or both.
I’m focusing on stand-up because it is the most extreme example
of comedy’s natural selection, but the closeness of the comedian-
audience relationship is one that defines all of comedy. Improvisers
are creating whole shows based on the suggestions of the audience
and what they do or do not laugh at. Sitcoms, for almost the entirety
of their existence, were shot in front of live studio audiences for the
same effect. The process of having an audience to work off is so
important to Saturday Night Live that during the coronavirus
pandemic they got around crowd restrictions by paying people to sit
in the audience and calling them extras. Comedy directors like Paul
Feig and Judd Apatow re-create the comedian-and-live- audience
dynamic by using a ton of test screenings when editing their films.
There are obvious exceptions—like animated or single-camera
sitcoms—but still a vast majority of those are worked on by people
who come from a live comedy background. That’s because
audiences more than shape how material grows and changes: They
shape how comedians do what they do. And in doing so, over time,
it is the audience that has pushed comedy forward as an art form.

The history of stand-up is the history of where comedians performed

stand-up. As the stand-up–audience relationship evolved, so evolved
the art form and the societal perception of it. And it stands to
reason: If the job is to create a state of play, you are going to play
by the rules of the place you are performing. To capture just how
important this relationship has been, and to provide context for the
past forty years of evolution, it’s important to understand what came
before. By looking back at comedy’s history, you see how comedy
thrived or regressed as a result of who comedians were playing to
and the locations where their audiences had gathered. So, who’s
ready to run through the entire history of modern live comedy!?
[cheers] And by modern, I mean starting in early-nineteenth-century
America!!! [standing ovation]
There are a variety of comedic traditions featuring some form of
monologue, dating back millennia. In the U.S., scholars argue the
seeds of modern comedy were planted with the creation of minstrel
shows in the early 1830s. Variety shows where white people
performed in blackface, minstrel shows started as a way for white
performers to appropriate the comedy Black people developed to
process slavery and to mock their enslavers, and grew more cruel
over time in response to the rise of abolitionism.1 Minstrelsy was
designed to appeal to the twisted morality of its racist audience
members, resulting in comedy that was degrading and
dehumanizing. By the 1870s, minstrel shows, now with Black
performers in blackface, were still popular, but the public lecture
circuit, known as the lyceum movement, had also emerged with a
proto-version of stand-up comedy that was dominated by something
that more closely resembles the contemporary TED Talk. Mixed in
with these speeches were the likes of Artemus Ward and Mark Twain
—men who’d adhere to the moralist roots of those events, but with
the added of bonus of being humorous when they spoke.2
Come the twentieth century, everything went wild.
Industrialization, population explosion, and economic prosperity led
to an eruption of literacy and leisure time. People flocked to variety
shows, namely burlesque and vaudeville. Though there were
performers who did both, the style of comedy differed based on
venue and audience. Vaudeville attracted large audiences of people
looking for a family-friendly show. This meant the comedy was big,
physical, and often included a mix of music and dance. Burlesque
comedians were dirtier, edgier, and all-around more adult, as they
were sandwiched between acts featuring women wearing pasties
with the little tassels that went awoo-awoo-awoo-awoo when the
performer danced.
None of this historical comedic performance was “stand- up.”
According to the comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff’s book The
Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of
American Comedy, that term, as the legend goes (legend count #1),
comes from the mob, which ran most of the venues comedians
performed at in the 1940s.3 In between wearing fedoras and ending
sentences with “see,” these mobsters managed boxers, see. A
dependable, tough boxer was referred to as a “stand-up fighter.” A
nightclub jokester who could deliver the goods was likewise called a
“stand-up” comedian. The ability to provide a consistent service
defined this era of live comedy, from the 1930s to the 1950s. It was
joke-jokes’ last stand, meaning the last time when using stock
material was valued. Whether at nightclubs, on the chitlin circuit, or
in the borscht belt, comics had a pressure to uphold people’s
expectation of what comedy was, which was joke-jokes. Also, during
this time, comedy moved from theater seating to tables and booths,
thus perforating the fourth wall. Comedy then grew a bit more
interactive and enabled a rise in insult comedians, like Don Rickles.
The late 1950s and early 1960s—real Mrs. Maisel times— saw
perhaps the most radical change in American comedy, and (you’re
never going to believe this) it was influenced by the audience. It’s
the story of suburban migration and who was left in the cities when
all the squares got their two-car garages in Nowheresville. What
happens when the only audience to perform to is downtown hipster
jazz freak Communists? Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Nichols and
May. Playing to like-minded crowds, in coffee shops and folk venues,
allowed comedians to be more personal, conversational, and
politically radical. And since these audience members were spending
the rest of their week seeing improvisational jazz, it would make
sense they’d want that spontaneity from their comedy as well. The
proximity of hippie Greenwich Village, where much of this activity
was happening in New York, to the gay West Village is also notable,
as both Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers, despite starting stand-up ten
years apart, tell similar stories in Yael Kohen’s oral history of women
in comedy, We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy,
about being embraced for who they truly were when they found
themselves performing for a room of gay men.4 “You could work
more chicly,” Diller said about the time.5 “You could do some very
esoteric stuff.” Esoteric is, of course, relative. Audiences with
“esoteric” taste demanded it, and the comedians adjusted their acts
accordingly.
The comedy club started in the 1960s and expanded in the ’70s.
This gave comedians more time in front of audiences than any
comedian previously, and more time with a brick wall than anyone
since the loser in “The Cask of Amontillado.” As a result, comedians
were able to refine their acts. And since most of these clubs were
showcase rooms, meaning lineups of comics doing ten-to-fifteen-
minute sets, stand-ups learned how to kill, and kill quickly. Thanks to
the massive breakouts of comedians like Richard Pryor, George
Carlin, and Steve Martin, and the clubs’ proven economic viability, in
the 1980s comedy clubs spread like a virus. Worse yet, many of the
hundreds of clubs that opened were run by cynical restaurateurs
attempting to capitalize on the hot new trend. In these spaces,
stand-up was not an art form but dinner theater. “Franchise comedy
clubs created franchise comics,” Marc Maron said about that time.6
As material needed to appeal to whoever, wherever, joke-writing
reverted, becoming less personal and more generic. Easily digestible,
observational comedy ruled the day. As did sexism, homophobia,
and racism. Though plenty of comedians, like Ellen DeGeneres, were
able to break out without relying on hack† bigotry, it became the de
rigueur mode for opportunists who saw stand-up as a way to make a
quick buck. It was a time when Andrew Dice Clay was the comedian
playing the largest venues with shows George Carlin compared to
“fascist rallies.”7 This, everyone, was the original comedy boom. It
lasted about ten years. Mercifully, the product got watered down and
bad enough that audiences stopped going. In 1992, Francis
Fukuyama marked the early nineties as “The End of History,” and
many people felt that it was also the end of comedy. It wasn’t.
Then, with stand-up left for dead, two disparate movements
rewired the comedian-audience relationship for good: the opening of
Black-owned comedy clubs and the birth of alternative comedy.
Comedy fosters in-groups, but also in-groups foster comedy. If play
needs those involved to be comfortable, it makes sense that it would
be simpler to achieve the necessary security and ease when
surrounded by people who come from the same place as you, who
come out of the same situation. It is on the comedian to then
understand and harness the sensibility of these like-minded
individuals, who have joined together to become an audience. In the
1990s, this resulted in some of the most revolutionary stand-up in
decades. Queue up the Entourage theme song, reader, because I
want to take you to Los Angeles. Oh.… yeAH.
The legend goes (legend count #2): In the mid-1980s, frustrated
by work one day, the fledgling concert promoter Michael Williams
went to the Comedy Store to let off some steam.8 Looking around,
Williams realized he was the only Black person in the room and that
he hadn’t laughed once. Soon after that experience, he was
introduced to Robin Harris, a brilliant comedian who had grown
disenchanted with trying to make it at the Comedy Store, after the
club’s legendary owner and gatekeeper Mitzi Shore told him that his
act was too Black.9 Necessity gave birth to invention, and in 1985,
Williams opened the Comedy Act Theater on Crenshaw Boulevard, in
the heart of South Central L.A., with Harris the permanent master of
ceremonies.
The Comedy Act was the country’s first true Black comedy club.
There were Black stand-up comedians before 1985. Three of the
biggest comedians at the time—Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, and Eddie
Murphy—were Black. But only a select few were able to get booked
in the “mainstream” comedy clubs of the 1980s. That discrimination
created a need for what would be called Black rooms, filled with
Black audiences. In L.A., Harris—who spent years drawing crowds at
neighborhood bus stops—set the tone.10 “He changed everything,”
Dave Chappelle would later say.11 Harris would walk through the
audience and roast the shit out of everyone. No one was safe. Harris
particularly liked giving it to the droves of Black celebrities who’d
come to see him, telling Magic Johnson, “Come on down here to the
colored section, Magic.” But, in a way, everyone was safe. Where
Don Rickles would insult his audience as an outsider, Harris would do
the same as an insider. A roast might sound mean, but it’s another
way of saying “I see you,” notable in a country, and an
entertainment industry, largely committed to ignoring inner-city life.
Harris refused to leave the neighborhood, even as movie offers
started coming, including a beloved turn as Sweet Dick Willie in
Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, in which he improvised all his lines.12
He knew his act was as much for the community as it was of the
community.
In 1990, Harris died, at the age of thirty-six, before ever getting
the big break that seemed to be coming his way, but his legacy was
in place. By that time the Comedy Act had a branch in Atlanta, and it
would soon open a third club in Chicago. In Chicago, it had already
influenced the opening of the South Side club All Jokes Aside, which,
along with the Comedy Act and New York’s Uptown Comedy Club,
codified the style that became associated with Def Comedy Jam.
Running on HBO from 1992 to 1997, when the comedy boom was
supposedly over, Def Comedy Jam took the tired stand-up showcase
format and created a sensation, thanks to acts who had finally been
able to get the stage time necessary to hone their voices.
These voices spoke to an audience previously ignored by the
mainstream entertainment industry. And yet, at the time, all the
mainstream media could talk about was the words they said. Years
later, I spoke about this with Tony Woods, a comedian who, in his
first-season set, told a joke that ended with him farting on a cat that
was licking his balls while he was having sex with its owner. “Most
people couldn’t get past the profanity,” he told me, speaking about
the show generally.13 “There’s no other way to say, ‘Oh, yeah, we got
kicked the fuck out of our apartment today…’ That’s a profane
lifestyle. You can’t say, ‘We’ve been evicted.’ That’s bullshit. You can’t
just serve chicken with no spice on it, baby.” The Def Comedy Jam
audience demanded comedians talk to them about the issues they
faced, as they would discuss them with each other.
It’s notable that maybe the two best-remembered moments from
the series involve the audience. The first came in the first season, in
a set from Adele Givens, an infinitely confident comedian who
tagged ‡ her dirty jokes by saying “I’m such a lady.” She was talking
about her big lips (“All my lips are big,” one joke ends), and a
member of the audience said something to her. She went in:
 See, see, here’s the kinda motherfucker, hollering about
“blow job” and he’s wearing about a size 4.
Little ol’ feet, so you know his dick’s small.
I couldn’t give him no blow job. My big-ass lips, his little
ol’ dick: It wouldn’t work.
It would be like trying to give a whale a Tic Tac,
motherfucker.

The audience shook and jumped like a chessboard in an earthquake,

with multiple members getting up, running around, and giving each
other high fives.
The second moment came on a night when everyone was
bombing. It was a demanding audience that wanted to be
impressed, and the lineup was not fulfilling its end of the
arrangement. Out walked Bernie Mac, wearing a multicolored shirt
and pants with his own damn face spray-painted on them. You heard
murmurs and heckles when he touched the mic. He stared right
back at them: “I ain’t scared of you motherfuckers.” You can hear
the audience transform from cold to hot, shouting in laughter. Mac
steams ahead, talking about how good the women look in New York
and how much he loves sex, before waving his hand over his crotch
and informing the crowd, “I’m blessed. I’m big boneded. I’m heavy
structured. I’m hung low. If I pull my shit out, this whole room get
dark.” He tags the joke by screaming “Kick it!” and the DJ proceeds
to play a beat for him to dance to. Chess earthquake. And why
would he be scared of, you know, those motherfuckers? Mac and
Givens were both from Chicago and were able to flourish as a result
of having a regular place to perform. Some comedians say stand-up
is like a conversation, but only the comedian is talking. That was not
Givens and Mac’s experience. They heard from their audience,
creating a closeness you could feel in the comedy.
In contrast, Janeane Garofalo was given opportunities to perform
at mainstream comedy clubs when she was coming up in Boston in
the 1980s, but often begrudgingly. Club audiences and bookers
didn’t like her. If it weren’t for the insistence of other comics, she
might’ve quit. “It was all very, very male dominated,” David Cross
explained in We Killed. “If you didn’t fit into that working-class, blue-
collar, male-centric comedy mold, then whatever you did was kind of
alternative, in a sense. And for a woman to be intellectual was even
more off-putting and difficult.”14 Eventually she moved to L.A. to
work on The Ben Stiller Show and couldn’t get consistent work at
any of the clubs there, either.
Garofalo, ever a Gen X contrarian, when I interviewed her years
ago at a live event, dismissed taking credit for anything (including
the fact that she even is Gen X). And she barely acknowledges that
alternative comedy was a thing, offering some version of “It just
means performing in a place that’s an alternative to a comedy
club.”15 Garofalo hosted a show at the Big & Tall Bookstore, and
cohosted a show with Kathy Griffin at a little rented theater. There
were shows at coffee shops and laundromats. It was all very
nineties. Many of these “venues” didn’t even have PA systems, so to
someone walking by, it looked like a person talking to a group of
friends. This casual vibe continued even when these comics were in
front of cameras. In Garofalo’s iconic 1995 HBO Comedy Half Hour,
she looks at her notes and asks the audience if she has talked about
things yet. She speaks in a stream of consciousness, with punch
lines sneaking their way into what comes off as a caffeinated hang.
Garofalo expects the audience to understand exactly what she
means when she describes people by their pop culture taste, like
“Do you know who Claudia Schiffer’s favorite band is? Foreigner.” Or
take this screed:

Dave Matthews Band and Hootie and the Blowfish, I gotta

bring it up. Seem like nice guys. Seemingly very nice guys.
But never has a CD purchase spoken more volumes about
a person in their life. Hootie and Dave Matthews Band, I
know who you are. I know who you are. You’re not an evil
person. You’re not a lawbreaker. You don’t rock, as a rule.
 But when you do it’s in a very VH1 kinda way. You’re into
Hootie. And, umm, you like the show Friends, a lot. A lot.
You wish Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan could star in every
movie. Every movie!
I know I say in the first chapter that all comedians are trying to
re-create the feeling of mirth you have hanging out with your
friends, but throughout the special Garofalo really speaks to her
audience the way you would talk with your friends. It’s all rapid-fire
shared references that you don’t have to explain. Her best material
feels like inside jokes.
The origin of the definitive alternative comedy room is not unlike
that of the Comedy Act. The performance artist turned comedian
Beth Lapides was waiting to go onstage at the Comedy Store.
Watching Andrew Dice Clay’s version of nonironic-ironic sexism, she
realized there had to be another option. Soon after, she did a show
at the nonprofit feminist art and education center the Women’s
Building, and the audience loved her act. “They seemed starved for
laughter,” Lapides often recalls.16 She asked them when the last time
they laughed was. “We don’t laugh,” Lapides said they responded.
“We’re women, we’re artists, and we’re lesbians. At comedy clubs
they make fun of us.” Lapides vowed to create a show that would be
“unhomophobic, unxenophobic, unmisogynist.” She named it
UnCabaret.
Sunday nights, in a small, low-ceilinged room multiple people
have described as womblike, it was undeniable that the people
performing were doing something different. Going up with notes was
commonplace. Lapides would be in the back with a microphone
asking questions if stories stalled, which led to a more
conversational style. And the audience would be filled with friends or
people the performers would see around town, at auditions or the
local coffee shop. This resulted in material that aspired to radical
honesty. Self-loathing was commonplace, as was oversharing. Many
of the comedians were dating each other and talking about it
onstage. Sometimes at the same show! And because it was L.A.,
they were open about show business in a way that comedians were
otherwise hesitant to share. There was a fourth wall, but the
comedian and audience interacted with the mutual respect of fellow
artists. The even-footed relationship and a new sort of closeness
defined the show.
Alternative comedy and Black comedy were reactions to the
cynical heterodoxy of the eighties comedy boom. And chief among
the facets of comedy they were responding to was that relationship
to the audience. Although comedians have needed audiences for as
long as there has been comedy, it wasn’t until then that comedians
started trusting audiences and embracing their role as integral to the
show. I wouldn’t say the audience and performer were equal, but
they were both playing a part.
Black and alternative comedy got more popular and more
widespread in their second decade. There was the Kings of Comedy,
its sister the Queens of Comedy, and their alternative cousin the
Comedians of Comedy. Performers from these worlds—Chris Tucker,
Martin Lawrence, Ben Stiller, Zach Galifianakis—went on to become
major players in TV and movies. It wasn’t intentional, but these
scenes taught future generations how to be comedy fans.

In 2022, Chris Rock was introducing the Best Documentary Feature

Oscar, looking good as hell in a luscious, midnight-blue velvet
tuxedo. After a few good jokes, he told one so bad it barely even
sounded like a joke, and, in kind, the audience barely laughed. Rock
was unfazed, because Rock is unfazed by jokes not working. What
he did not expect was the husband of the joke’s target, one of the
most famous people who’s ever lived, who was about to receive the
highest honor in his field, coming onstage to give him a slap so
slappy that it instantly became referred to as the slap. On one hand,
specifically the hand that slapped, it was the weirdest thing that’s
ever happened. On the other, Rock has been confronted before. This
is because Rock has a very unique relationship to his audience. He
takes the standard comedian process of working material out in front
of a crowd and pushes it to its limit, by embracing what other
comedians try to avoid—bombing. Few comedians have ever
destroyed like Rock, and this is directly related to the fact that few
have ever had as many bad shows. That’s because it has been
proven over and over as the best way for him to figure out where
the audience is at. To examine Rock’s process is to see the stand-
up–audience dynamic pushed to its most extreme.
I’ve seen Chris Rock live three times, and every time he’s
bombed. The first time was in the summer of 2003, when I used a
fake ID to go to the Comedy Cellar. There I was, very young. How
young were you!? So young, I fulfilled my two-drink minimum with a
mudslide and a hamburger. And the host said they had a special
guest. I don’t remember him saying Chris Rock, but I remember the
feeling of seeing my favorite comedian walk to the stage and
everyone bugging out. He told us he was set to host the MTV Video
Music Awards soon and was going to test out some jokes. For a split
second, I dreamed of going on AOL Instant Messenger the next day
and telling all my classmates about my inside info and having them
all respond, “Jesse, you are very cool. We should go on a date.” But
I would continue to have no dates, as Chris Rock told a lot of so-so
jokes about subjects like Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears. I
chalked it up to a bad set. When I saw him bomb again, fourteen
years later, I knew better.
It was the winter of 2017, and I knew something was up when
Wyatt Cenac told us we had to put our phones away. Cenac was
hosting his weekly Brooklyn show, Night Train, and said if they
caught anyone filming the next act, the person would be kicked out.
We all nodded and out walked Chris Rock, wearing a puffy coat. This
was the first step in communicating this wasn’t a performance, but a
guy just stopping by. Most comedians want the crowd to settle in,
but Rock was making sure we wouldn’t, as he was suggesting he
could leave at any moment. His performance could be described as
amateurish, but ingeniously so. Rock was trying to get a sense of
whether each joke, premise, or idea worked in a vacuum, meaning
they weren’t building off the momentum of the previous joke or his
own performance. He would do things that new comedians do that
turn off audiences. Things that, in retrospect, I did the one time I
did stand-up. He spoke in a soft monotone and kept looking down. If
something did work, he would cut off the rolling laughter by
murmuring, “What else? What else?” Another cliché of a faltering
comedian. Unlike me, he was able to do this for an hour. And when
he decided he was done, he said thank you, off to go into Manhattan
to bomb some more. It’s possible that, later that week, he did shows
for old Jews in West Palm Beach, as he often did before tours. “I
figure I’m in front of these people, they’re a little older,” he told Alec
Baldwin in an interview. “If I can get them to laugh at this, when I
get in front of the Black people, they’re gonna go berserk!”17
Other than maybe Richard Pryor, there’s never been a comedian
better at using audiences to generate material than Chris Rock.
There are comedians, like Dave Chappelle, who might be better at
manipulating the audience or feeling out the audience in the
moment, but in the process of using a series of crowds as a means
of writing a special, it’s hard to say anyone has reached the same
heights. At the core of this ability is an understanding that you can
learn more from bombing than killing. Most comics know this, but
few embrace it like Rock. When I saw Rock, he was famous enough
that he could get the audience to laugh just because of his vocal
inflection. (Right now, try picturing his voice. You don’t need words;
you can imagine the cadence.) We are dogs and he is our Dr. Pavlov.
The result, however, is that he can’t get an accurate read on the
substance of his material. Formally, what Rock is doing is what I
learned from that one time I did stand-up: If you lock into the right
joke, it can open people up to be in the necessary playful state
regardless of how they felt before. Rock didn’t want to try to get on
a roll and stay in that state, however, as most comics would,
because he wanted to know which ideas were comedically
undeniable. When you multiply that by hundreds of sets, with
thousands of different people, you can get close to your material
being, as comedians call it, “bulletproof.” So, he bombs.
Bombing seemingly doesn’t affect Rock like other people. Later in
life, Rock was diagnosed with a nonverbal learning disorder (NVLD),
after a friend asked him if he’d ever gotten tested for Asperger’s.
With 70 to 80 percent of communication being nonverbal, Michael
Che captured what having an NVLD can look like on Saturday Night
Live’s first “Weekend Update” right after the slap: “Like how when
he saw an angry Will Smith charging towards him and instead of
moving out of the way, he put both his hands behind his back,
smiled, and said, ‘Uh-oh!’” An NVLD can result in black-and-white,
all-or-nothing thinking. It’s made close relationships difficult, Rock
explained in 2020, but “all of those things are really great for writing
jokes.”18 Considering he didn’t know early on, Rock’s process at that
time was not him explicitly trying to counter his NVLD. No, after
years in front of audiences, he figured out something that worked
for him, as it resulted in one of the three or four most
acclaimed/talked-about/controversial specials of all time. Here is the
story of Bring the Pain.
I take you to Chicago’s Park West Theater. It is 1993 and Rock is
headlining, at both a career high and low. After being discovered by
Eddie Murphy while working at the Comic Strip in the eighties, Rock
was on SNL by 1990 and being heralded as Murphy’s heir apparent.
However, after three disappointing seasons and the release of his
gangster rap parody movie, CB4, which he felt was not a success,
Rock found himself off the show (a mutual decision, as Rock wanted
to instead join the cast of In Living Color), with some name
recognition but no clear next step forward. Having come up in
mainstream clubs and being too big to appear on Def Comedy Jam,
it didn’t occur to Rock to watch his opener—the show’s lionized host,
Martin Lawrence. “I was in my dressing room and I heard a roar,” he
would later tell Judd Apatow.19 “I thought it was a fight or
something. So, I got up and went to the side of the stage. When I
got there I realized it wasn’t a fight, it was people laughing so hard
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
„Maar, mama, ik vind juist dat ik nu alles weten moet, voordat de
eigenlijke dag begint.… Anders zou ik er de heele dag aan denken,
en dat zou me juist ontstemmen.”

Larsen stond gewoonlijk tegen acht uur op. Het late werken maakte
dit voor hem noodzakelijk. De morgen-wandelaarsters in de tuin
hadden dus nog ruim een uur vóor zich.

„Je hebt eigenlijk gelijk, kind,” ging de oudere voort. „’t Zal mij ook
een verlichting zijn, als voor jou alles opgehelderd is.”

Ze zocht naar haar woorden. Hoe kon ze toch de vreeselijke

waarheid in de zachtste vorm, op de minst kwetsende wijze aan dat
teedere gemoed en dat jeugdige verstand meedeelen, hoe de groote
liefde en hoogachting, die zij Larsen toedroeg, en die van zijn kind,
voor hem ’t zorgvuldigst in overeenstemming houden met Didi’s
vertrouwen in haar? Liep ze niet de kans dat de schok te hevig zou
blijken te zijn? Dat vertrouwen van Larsen’s kind was haar zulk een
schat, ’t was haar zulk een heerlijke voldoening [312]dag aan dag te
ondervinden, hoe volkomen zij de plaats eener moeder innam voor ’t
aanhankelijke, liefde-behoevende jonge meisje! ’t Was haar zulk een
bron van telkens wederkeerende vreugde te zien, hoe de man die zij
liefhad en vereerde zich gelukkig voelde in haar innig-hartelijke
verstandhouding tot zijn oogappel, hoe onder de wondere werking
harer toewijding aan beiden, allengs de spoken der herinnering aan
die donkerste dagen zijns levens geweken waren! O, ze dacht met
ijzing terug aan die eerste jaren van haar huwelijksleven, toen,
ondanks al haar zorgen, de schrikbeelden uit die tijd hardnekkig
terugkwamen en hem soms dagen achtereen zijn rust benamen.
Dan sprak hij nauwelijks een woord, verwaarloosde zijn lievelings-
bezigheden, sloot zich op in zijn studeerkamer om zich over te
geven aan somber broeden.… Ze had dat alles vooruit vermoed:
haar liefde voor hem en zijn kind, haar grenzeloos medelijden
hadden de taak blijmoedig aanvaard, om beiden het geluk te doen
hervinden dat ze zoo wreed verloren hadden. Ze had oogenblikken
gekend dat ze de wanhoop nabij was, dat die taak haar te zwaar
scheen, doch haar geloof had haar telkens weer opgericht. En ze
had overwonnen: in ’t laatste jaar waren Larsen’s aanvallen van
zwaarmoedigheid niet meer teruggekomen, nadat ze zich
langzamerhand met grooter tusschenpoozen hadden vertoond.…
[313]

Nog eenmaal dacht ze terug aan al de bizonderheden van ’t

schrikkelijk treurspel, welks ontknooping nu vijf jaar geleden het
gansche land met ontzetting had vervuld, aan ’t geruchtmakende
proces, de dreigende veroordeeling, op zoo schitterende wijze
bezworen door het pleidooi van Mr. David Zomer. ’t Was een
wonderdaad van welsprekendheid geweest, dat pleidooi! O, ze
kende ’t van buiten, ieder woord. En dan wat er aan voorafging:
Larsen’s onverzettelijk, hardnekkig volharden in zijn zelf-
beschuldiging, de onvermoeide overtuigings-gave, die zijn jonge
vereerder had aangewend, om eindelijk die muur van tegenstand te
breken, hoe levendig stond dat alles haar thans weer vóor de geest!

Larsen had haar alles verteld in de tijd dat hij zich tot haar
aangetrokken begon te voelen, en zijn eerlijke inborst hem
gedwongen had tot openbaring van al wat haar geluk in de weg had
kunnen staan wanneer zij ’t later onvoorbereid vernam, en zij niet
meer terug kon. Veel was haar toen duidelijk geworden wat haar
raadselachtig voorkwam in al wat ze over de groote zaak gelezen en
gehoord had. ’t Pleidooi zelf had ze eerst na haar huwelijk gelezen. ’t
Was toen ze te Amsterdam logeerde, en de jonge advocaat haar
bezocht.… Hij had zich onmiddellijk na afloop der „cause célèbre”
daar gevestigd: ’t plan daartoe had reeds lang bij hem bestaan, doch
de vrees [314]dat zijn verdere ontmoetingen met Larsen dezen
telkens te veel aan al ’t doorleefde in die bange dagen zouden
herinneren, en op die wijze nadeelig op zijn zielsrust zouden werken,
deed hem de uitvoering van zijn voornemen verhaasten. Een
overdruk van het pleidooi had de tweede mevrouw Larsen in haar
kast liggen: ze had er de jonge advocaat om verzocht; want ze wilde
het bezitten voor haarzelve en wellicht later ook voor het jonge
meisje dat aan haar zorgen was toevertrouwd.

Allerlei tooneelen, brokstukken uit de loop dier gebeurtenissen

kwamen haar te binnen, zooals ze haar bij verschillende
gelegenheden door Larsen zelf en tijdens haar ontmoeting met
David Zomer waren verteld: diens herhaalde bezoeken aan ’t
gesticht in Den Haag, waarheen Larsen weer teruggebracht was, de
dag na het herstel uit zijn bezwijming bij de brand, zijn talentvolle,
geduldige gesprekken daar met zijn vriend gehouden, het laatste
gesprek vooral toen hij eindelijk de zege behaalde door zijn
welsprekend treffen van dat éene gevoelige punt bij Larsen: de liefde
voor zijn kind, en hij toestemming kreeg om als Larsen’s verdediger
te mogen optreden; dan de moeite die Zomer zich gaf, om bewijzen
bij elkaar te krijgen—Pietje’s „legkaart”, die gered was geworden met
de bundel goed uit haar lâtafel, waarmee ze zoo wanhopig op het
stoeppaaltje van het buurhuis [315]gezeten had in de nacht van de
brand, en Pietje’s wanhoop toen ze ’t stuk „’t lammenaardig
ongelukspapier” af moest geven, en tegen „haar mevrouw”
getuigenis moest afleggen vóor de rechter; het eerste wederzien van
vader en dochter in haar moeder’s huis, na de vrijspraak, en nog
zooveel meer.…

Wat was haar leven innig saamgeweven geweest met al die

gebeurtenissen, sinds het oogenblik dat de brand der buren angst en
ontzetting gebracht had in ’t stille gezin van de weduwe Eldring—
haar moeder! De in zichzelf gekeerde Berta, zich reeds oude vrijster
voelend op haar dertigste jaar, verzoend met een leven van
onthouding, vrome overpeinzing en obscure werkzaamheid ten
goede—armenverpleging, Zondagschool, kostelooze lessen aan
arme kinderen—was toen plotseling tot een ander leven ontwaakt:
de offervaardige, toewijdende vrouw was in de plaats getreden van
de bekrompen denkende en handelende oude juffer. Kort na zijn
ontslag uit het gesticht was Larsen een bezoek komen brengen bij
de Eldrings, en weldra was de omgang vrij gemeenzaam geworden.
Hun huwelijk was voor haar en voor hem de ontsluiting van een
nieuw leven.

Alles was zoo goed gegaan, ze had zooveel zegen gehad op haar
streven. Thans kwam deze laatste betrekkelijk kleine beproeving.

Ze had er nu en dan aan gedacht, als Didi’s [316]ontwikkeling in haar

voortgang sterker dan anders haar opmerkzaamheid trok. Niettemin
zag ze er thans tegen op, was ’t haar alsof ze een beslissende stap
in haar leven ging doen. Toch moèst het er eindelijk toe komen. Didi
werd „groot” naar lichaam en geest. ’t Argelooze, onnadenkende
kind, was een verstandig, schrander en scherpzinnig vrouwtje
geworden: ’t was beter dat ze nu van haar beste vriendin de zuivere
waarheid vernam, dan dat ze door eigen broeden over vage, vaak
onzuivere herinneringen in verband met wat ze hier of daar hoorde
of las tot een averechtsche voorstelling der feiten kwam, welke
noodlottige gevolgen voor haar hebben kon.

Didi zat vóor zich te kijken, geduldig afwachtende wat „mama”

zeggen zou, en toch met popelend hart.

„Nu?” vroeg ze na enkele minuten met allerliefste stem-interval,

zacht en streelend.

Mevrouw Larsen stond van de bank op.

„Blijf hier even zitten,” zei ze, „’t is beter dat ik je iets laat lezen, dat ik
boven bewaard heb. ’t Is zoo moeilijk je alles duidelijk en goed te
zeggen.”

En toen Didi eenigszins teleurgesteld keek, liet ze volgen:

„Je mag daarom wel vragen doen. Zooveel als je wil, hoor. Maar dat
zal misschien niet eens noodig zijn.” En ze stond op om naar ’t huis
te gaan.

De kleine gestalte der spreekster bewoog zich met [317]eigenaardige,

schijnbaar driftige pasjes en wendinkjes door de tuin. Haar
lichtblauw reform-morgenkleed dook op en verdween tusschen de
struiken. Didi’s na-turende blik omsloot haar beeld met liefde.

Binnen enkele minuten was ze terug. Ze had het stuk, het document
dat het eenig geheim uitmaakte tusschen haar en haar man: het
pleidooi van David Zomer.

„Lees dat maar ’s aandachtig, kind.”

Gretig nam het jonge meisje het geschrift aan. Mevrouw Larsen’s
hand beefde even bij ’t overreiken.

Ze zette zich weer op de bank, hield Didi om ’t middel.

Zeker tien minuten spraken beiden geen woord. De oudere der twee
keek in gedachten verdiept vóor zich, op ’t witte duinzand van ’t pad.

Toen ze even de blik opsloeg, zag ze dat het jonge meisje tranen in
de oogen had, en dat haar lippen trilden.

Nog zwegen beiden een poos. Mevrouw Larsen hervatte haar

gepeins; Didi zuchtte nu en dan, soms zwaar, om op adem te
komen, zoo gespannen was haar aandacht.
„Mama,” hoorde de eerste opeens. Didi’s stem klonk gesmoord.…
„Mama.…”

„Ja, kind, wat is er?” vroeg de ander met innige belangstelling. [318]

„Heeft.…” haar stem stokte, „iedereen.… gehoord wat hier staat?”

Mevrouw Larsen begreep dadelijk wat Didi bedoelde, toen ze even

naar de bladzijde gekeken had: ’t was dat gedeelte van ’t pleidooi
waarin de advocaat in schrille kleuren schilderde hoe Larsen ’t
slachtoffer was geweest van jarenlang bedrog van de zijde van
Paula.

„Nee, zeker niet, mijn liefje,” antwoordde mevrouw Larsen, en

streelde Didi’s wang. „Er was geen publiek bij toen ’t pleidooi
uitgesproken werd: daar was voor gezorgd. Ikzelf wist niet hoe ’t
geweest was, totdat meneer Zomer mij dat schriftuur gaf, na mijn
trouwen met je vader.”

Didi droogde de oogen, en hervatte de lezing van ’t stuk.

Toen ze na veel zuchten, en telkens ophouden om zich de zakdoek

aan de oogen te brengen, eindelijk de laatste woorden gelezen had,
legde ze de brochure haastig naast zich neer op de bank, stond op,
en verwijderde zich snel naar ’t achterdeel van de tuin.

Mevrouw Larsen volgde haar onmiddellijk, vol ongerustheid. Ze

haalde haar weldra in, en zag dat het jonge meisje ten prooi was aan
de hevigste gemoedsbeweging. Zonder te schreien had haar fijn
gezichtje zulk een vertrokken uitdrukking dat ze ervan schrok. [319]

Zelfverwijt, dat ze toegegeven had waar ze toch nog wel een dag
had kunnen wachten, overstelpte haar. Als nu Larsen eens kwam.…
Dan was ’t leed misschien niet te overzien. Ze keek op haar horloge:
twintig minuten vóor acht. ’t Beste was dat ze Didi mee naar boven
nam.

’t Meisje liet zich gewillig meetroonen, zonder een woord.

Toen Larsen, stipt als altijd, om acht uur in de ontbijtkamer kwam,

vond hij wel zijn vrouw, maar niet de jubilaris.

„Waar is Didi?” vroeg hij verwonderd nadat hij zijn vrouw gekust had.
„Moet ze al dat moois niet zien? Vrouwtje, wat heb jij je geweerd!”

Bewonderend en met echte vreugde in de oogen liet Larsen zijn blik

over de tafelversiering gaan. Er hingen ook bloemen over Didi’s
stoel.

„Zal ik ’s gaan kijken?” antwoordde mevrouw Larsen, en ze ging de

deur uit, om naar Didi’s kamer te gaan.

Toen dochter en stiefmoeder eenige oogenblikken later

binnenkwamen, en de eerste haar vader tegemoet liep, om zijn
liefkozing te ontvangen, bemerkte Larsen daarna vochtigheid aan
zijn wang.

„Hoe heb ik ’t nou met je? Huil je, kindjelief, en dat op je verjaardag?!
Malle meid!.…” [320]

„Och, vader!” riep Didi eenigszins verlegen met een lachje door haar
tranen heen. „Dat is een druppeltje water: ik heb me niet goed
afgedroogd in de badkamer. Ondertusschen feliciteer je me niet
eens! Dan zal ik ’t maar doen: ik feliciteer je wel met je jarige
dochter.”

Ze kuste hem nog eens op zijn ruig gelaat.

Haar kus was nooit zoo hartelijk geweest.
Inhoudsopgave

I. 1
II. 15
III. 24
IV. 42
V. 57
VI. 86
VII. 97
VIII. 113
IX. 128
X. 141
XI. 152
XII. 167
XIII. 178
XIV. 196
XV. 215
XVI. 223
XVII. 240
XVIII. 256
XIX. 267
XX. 286
XXI. 306
 Colofon
Beschikbaarheid

Dit eBoek is voor kosteloos gebruik door iedereen overal, met vrijwel
geen beperkingen van welke soort dan ook. U mag het kopiëren,
weggeven of hergebruiken onder de voorwaarden van de Project
Gutenberg Licentie in dit eBoek of on-line op www.gutenberg.org ↗️.

Dit eBoek is geproduceerd door het on-line gedistribueerd

correctieteam op www.pgdp.net ↗️.

Metadata

Titel: Heilige Banden

Abraham
Info
Auteur: Anthony Fokker
https://viaf.org/viaf/47819859/
(1862–1927)
Aanmaakdatum 2022-06-23
bestand: 19:15:10 UTC
Nederlands
(Spelling De
Taal:
Vries-Te
Winkel)
Oorspronkelijke
1903
uitgiftedatum:

Codering

Dit boek is weergegeven in oorspronkelijke schrijfwijze. Afgebroken

woorden aan het einde van de regel zijn stilzwijgend hersteld.
Kennelijke zetfouten in het origineel zijn verbeterd. Deze
verbeteringen zijn aangegeven in de colofon aan het einde van dit
boek.

Documentgeschiedenis

2022-06-22 Begonnen.

Verbeteringen

De volgende verbeteringen zijn aangebracht in de tekst:

Bladzijde Bron Verbetering Bewerkingsafstand

6 als als als 4
6 vrouweleventjes vrouwenleventjes 1
8 egelante elegante 2
10 lektuur lectuur 1
20, 64,
65, 84,
121, 173, [Niet in bron] ” 1
297, 297,
308
21 harstochtelijk hartstochtelijk 1
21 . ? 1
32 vleiïng vleiing 1/0
33, 65,
70, 82,
84, 116,
121, 122,
122, 125, [Niet in bron] „ 1
172, 190,
215, 236,
283, 285,
296
38, 40, advokaat advocaat 1
57, 58,
69, 93,
313, 314,
318
42 . , 2
49 onmo-lijkheid onmogelijkheid 2
52 naiever naïever 1/0
54 afgegeleden afgegleden 1
55, 116 , [Verwijderd] 1
59 stemmodulatiën stemmodulaties 2/1
60 ”.… .…” 2
62, 69 jou jouw 1
aantrekkelijksheids- aantrekkelijkheids-
73 1
kapitaal kapitaal
82 ” [Verwijderd] 1
82 niet niets 1
87 overeenigbaarheid onvereenigbaarheid 1
89 allebei allebeî 1/0
90, 201 hij hij hij 4
92 ben bent 1
93 [Niet in bron] .… 4
106 had hadt 1
119 aan aan aan 4
119 eeinge eenige 2
124 domine dominé 1/0
125 ik ik ik 3
125 te te te 3
126, 222 [Niet in bron] . 1
127, 131 vin vin’ 1
147 [Niet in bron] het 4
163, 225,
238, 238, patient patiënt 1/0
249
171 komedie-spel komediespel 1
185 onbeteekend onbeteekenend 2
189 ”, ,” 2
193 gadeslagen gadegeslagen 2
203 spelde speldde 1
210 fraaiïgheid fraaiigheid 1/0
212 [Niet in bron] a me 5
215 ? . 1
233 kopere koperen 1
234 Van [Verwijderd] 4
249 patienten patiënten 1/0
250 schifte schiftte 1
250 zelf bedwang zelfbedwang 1
250 krachts-inspanning krachtsinspanning 1
251 mede-patienten mede-patiënten 1/0
254 stem-modulaties stemmodulaties 1
waarnemings-
265 waarnemingsvermogen 1
vermogen
294 voorwandelen voortwandelen 1
295 vind’ vin’ 1
krankzinnigen-
297, 300 krankzinnigengesticht 1
gesticht
314 latafel lâtafel 1/0
319 kindje-lief kindjelief 1
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEILIGE
BANDEN: ROMAN ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions

will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.

copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright
in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and without
paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General
Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and
distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the
PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if
you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the
trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the
Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is
very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such
as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and
printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in
the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright
law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially
commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
 PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the

free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this
work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase
“Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of
the Full Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or
online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and

Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand,
agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual
property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to
abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using
and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for
obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg™
electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms
of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only

be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by
people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.
There are a few things that you can do with most Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works even without complying with the
full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There
are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg™
electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and
help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the
collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the
individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the
United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright
law in the United States and you are located in the United
States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying,
distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works
based on the work as long as all references to Project
Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will
support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting free
access to electronic works by freely sharing Project
Gutenberg™ works in compliance with the terms of this
agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name
associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms
of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with
its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it
without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also
govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most
countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside
the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to
the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying,
displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works
based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The
Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright
status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project

Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other

immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must
appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project
Gutenberg™ work (any work on which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed,
viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the

United States and most other parts of the world at no
cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may
copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the
Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or
online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the
country where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is

derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to
anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges.
If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of
paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use
of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth
in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is

posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and
distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through
1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder.
Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™
License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright
holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project

Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files
containing a part of this work or any other work associated with
Project Gutenberg™.
 1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute
this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1
with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the
Project Gutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form,
including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if
you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project
Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or
other format used in the official version posted on the official
Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at
no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a
means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project
Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™
works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or

providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works provided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the
method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The
fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty
payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on
which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your
periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked
as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information
 about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation.”

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who

notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that
s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and
discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project
Gutenberg™ works.

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of

any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in
the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90
days of receipt of the work.

• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project

Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different
terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain
permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™
trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3
below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend

considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on,
transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright
law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite
these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the
medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,”
such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt
data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other