VLVL2 and NPPF: Humor

[Tim Strzechowski]

Just a thought here:
 
One of the most striking similarities between Vineland and Pale Fire derives from each author's development of humor in his text.  For a moment, let's focus *just* on the PF "Foreward" and on VL Chapter One.

In Pale Fire, part of the humor is developed in the descriptions of the physical artifact of the manuscript itself.  Kinbote is lovingly meticulous in his description of the manuscript, but that manuscript is nothing more than a stack of index cards, bound by a rubber band, and stored in a manilla envelope.  Yet Kinbote details the way in which Shade "reserved the pink upper line for headings [...] and used the fourteen light-blue lines for writing out [...] the text of his poem."  The rubber band with which the cards are bound Kinbote "religiously" replaces after examining "their precious contents," and the stack (consisting of some dozen thinner index cards as well) all "clipped together" and replaced in its manilla envelope.

Nabokov's humor here is much more subtle (perhaps academic?) than Pynchon's in that he develops humor through the incongruity of equating minute and devoted scholarly research as well as aesthetic creation with the physical artifacts associated with common household or office use.  Shade's poem lacks the tradition of typewritten manuscript, and certainly lacks the romanticism of Kerouacian scrolls; it's *just* a stack of index cards with a rubber band. Yet the humor develops in part not only through this mildly absurd medium of composition, but also from the absurdity of the commentator's devotion to his manuscript (bordering on relic worship).

Pynchon, of course, relies on incongruities as well, but his description of Zoyd in the opening chapter of Vineland relies heavily on slapstick and farce, used in broader strokes.  Zoyd in a dress, wielding a ladies' chainsaw, standing aghast in the Log Jam with all the homoerotic and New Age undertones, establishes its humor by placing the protagonist in a farcical and shocking situation (and the use of irony too, in part, since Zoyd is attempting to "shock" the community with an act that has become so predictable as now to be "rescheduled").  But the incongruities here seem much more in-your-face, much more "Three Stooges" (though I am not dismissing Pynchon's humor as less effective, especially since the farcical incongruities in Chapter One -- man in drag, sexual suggestiveness, physical comedy, etc. -- could just as easily be found in a Shakespearean comedy -- Falstaff in Merry Wives comes immediately to mind).

In essence, there is a subtlety to the use of incongruity as a means of achieving humor in Pale Fire, a subtlety that is not achieved through the same means in Vineland.  Both writers use incongruity to achieve humor, but each writer manipulates his language and narrative circumstances differently to achieve that humor.



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