The Humorous Story an American Development.--Its Difference
from Comic and Witty Stories.
I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only
claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been almost daily
in the company of the most expert story-tellers for many years.
There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind--the
humorous. I will talk mainly about that one. The humorous story is
American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The
humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling;
the comic story and the witty story upon the matter.
The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander
around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the
comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point. The humorous
story bubbles gently along, the others burst.
The humorous story is strictly a work of art--high and delicate art--and
only an artist can tell it; but no art is necessary in telling the comic
and the witty story; anybody can do it. The art of telling a humorous
story--understand, I mean by word of mouth, not print--was created in
America, and has remained at home.
The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal
the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about
it; but the teller of the comic story tells you beforehand that it is
one of the funniest things he has ever heard, then tells it with eager
delight, and is the first person to laugh when he gets through. And
sometimes, if he has had good success, he is so glad and happy that
he will repeat the “nub” of it and glance around from face to face,
collecting applause, and then repeat it again. It is a pathetic thing to
see.
Very often, of course, the rambling and disjointed humorous story
finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it.
Then the listener must be alert, for in many cases the teller will
divert attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual and
indifferent way, with the pretence that he does not know it is a nub.
Artemus Ward used that trick a good deal; then when the belated audience
presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent surprise, as if
wondering what they had found to laugh at. Dan Setchell used it before
him, Nye and Riley and others use it to-day.
But the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub; he shouts it at
you--every time. And when he prints it, in England, France, Germany, and
Italy, he italicizes it, puts some whooping exclamation-points after
it, and sometimes explains it in a parenthesis. All of which is very
depressing, and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better
life.
Let me set down an instance of the comic method, using an anecdote which
has been popular all over the world for twelve or fifteen hundred years.
The teller tells it in this way: