Montgomery Thistlewaite’s Compleat Manual of the Humorly Arts

Being a Treatise on Those Methods, Devices, and Strategems Whereby Man May, as the Lord Wills Cause Others to Spew, in Riotous Spasms of Laughter, Fluids from the Nose and Other Orifices of the Bodie

Far be it from me to spend the last month of the first year of Red Clay Bestiary recycling old pieces but I’ve always regretted this one not being available online. It was published, see, by the inestimable Matt Herlihy in Sweet Fancy Moses—an honest to goodness no-kidding print publication, as though fresh from the scriptorium. This was 2002, you understand, back when the widespread, utter desertion of democratic principles by wide swaths of the population had just taken its first wobbly steps and Operation Enduring Freedom had only just begun to endure. A brighter time, perhaps. Or perhaps not; it doesn’t matter because this is just a silly lark suitable for reading in any moment dark or light. Anyway it was distant enough in time that my poor memory assures I have no recollection of having written it. Thus, the jokes are always fresh to me and I laugh like an ass while my wife stares archly at me, dazzled by my shameless capacity for self-amusement.

So without further doo doo I bring you, direct from the ninth floor, first shelf on the left, all the way to the back of the archives of Cambridge University’s School of Humor Management Studies, the surprise 17th Century hit, favorite of both Edmund Burke and Robert Boyle (his thigh-slappers at early Royal Society meetings were spoken of for generations), Montgomery Thistlewaite’s Compleat Manual of the Humorly Arts.

Introduction: Being the First Part of Thirty, Altogether Comprising the First Book of Jest

Gentle Reader, though you have made a great pilgrimage unto me in order that you might learn the fine arte of Comedy—which is to say the power to emancipate burbling laughter from the bowels of Mankind (to be sure, always upward toward God—down is but the path of flatulence and the blackest of sins)—though you may have traveled across barren deserts of literature, through trackless wastes of words bearing not the slightest trace of Hope, until thy tongue cleaves to the roof of thy mouth for want of jape; yea, though you have done all this in seeking the Oracle which is my life’s experience—despite all the heinous travails you may have undergone, I am borne down with the weight of the final Obstacle I must forthwith place in the path of thy noble Quest: you are, in all likelihood, a colossal Bore.

I offer this news to you not as one who knoweth you, Dearest Friend, by the haires upon your head, but as one who knows Human Nature—that clockwork mechanism which lies unseen beneath the Soul, informing our actions with the geometric precision of a flock of birds; the mathematical certainty of a school of fish. From this knowledge, and from that which tells us that mercy can be cruel, I hereby shed these rugged, snowcapped Words of Truth, upon which shall surely be broken all but the last of you, O Hearty Pilgrims. Hear them again, though your hearts may quail: you are dull-witted and monstrously tedious.

How numerous are those impoverished Spirits who, standing amidst a circle of peers, do choose to regale those too polite to turn aside or offer threat of bodily harm, with lengthy tales about the strange, flutelike whistle emitted from the nostrils of the towne blacksmith, or with meandering monologues detailing the many varied facets of ignorance recently revealed by a wife’s overweening attempt to repair a butter churn or the wheel of a wagon?

I’ll tell you how numerous—in the briefest and most succinct manner of which I am capable, with greatest terseness and directness worthy only of one who has seen the Truth and does not turn to darkness and self-delusion. I’ll tell thee: a bunch.

Are you stricken with Fear? Do you quiver in thy boots as a hearty scoop of green gelatin desert, and soil thy pants with a most foul and viscous sort of filth? Begone then, for Comedy will devour you like a bloated Italian gorging on a plate—nay, a plate of plates—of mini-cannolis. Remove thy stinking carcasse, with its attendant flies and worms and other such creatures of Nastiness from the range and vector of mine Eye. Comedy is not for you. 

Everyone else, turn to Chapter One for our first Subject, the Anatomy of the Quip.

Chapter One: The Anatomy of the Quip

Being a Consideration of Those Partes Which, Taken Together, Form a Whole and Most Mirthworthy Jest

When the goode Sir Kepler look’d upon the Universe of Comedy, with its many varied Constellations of Jocularity and Merriment, he perceived its infinite majesty as springing forth from but Seven Forms, apportioned by God unto Man as like the Seven Liberal Arts, the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Seven Sons of Joseph—seven being a mystical number of great power and meaning among those who see such things. It is suggested that the Wise Reader will commit these Forms to inscription upon the Spirit, that they might be remembered at such time when opportunity for mirthful utterance looms as a moth round a candle of tallow, for they shall inform the tongue, causing it to unleash such torrents of comical wordes as to drive passersby wild as savage beasts, rolling upon the filthy floor and gasping for breath as they are racked with tumbling laughter. 

Item the First: Being the Art of Misunderstood Relations

No man may find much quite as gilded with funnyness as the misunderstood relation, whereby the subject confuses two others betwixt which there may be a commonality of terms, though they be used for divers purposes. For example, let us postulate that the miller’s wife overhears the miller talking of the fishmonger’s wife, but alas! Into her mind creeps a specter of doubt, as she believes he is speaking of the baker’s nubile daughter: “The man o’ the house is ill,” says he, “and therewith shall I go this very eve to bone her fish.”

Item the Second: Being the Art of Unusually Substituted Items

Though it may be regarded by some as but a vain, grasping desperation in the guise of humor, the wise Comedian knows that the selection of improper items in the contemplation of some task is surely the pathway to hilarity. Consider the plight of the man who attempts to slay a wild boar with a loaf of bread. Wielding the loaf as it were a pike, the man solicits relentless peals of laughter, though he does so at grave peril. 

Item the Third: Being the Art of Stumbling Preposterously

A man who, whilst feigning a sheen of suavity, does proceed to rest a hand in a brazier of hot coals, and upon recoiling from this torment, does step squarely into a bucket, causing him to tumble down a flight of stairs while the object of his love looks on with horror—such a man may sacrifyce an opportunity for nookie, but is all the richer for the appreciation of such Comedy aficionados as might be near. 

Item the Fourth: Being the Value of the Darling Child Who Speakes Above Her Age

The small, handsome young lass of but three or four years of age, who sayeth such things as: “Not only is the bourgeois individual subject a thing of the past, it is also a myth; it never really existed in the first place; there have never been autonomous subjects of that type,” delivers unto the observer a warm sort of humor, to which the reply is often a delighted expression rather than the outright guffaw. This effect can be increased should the child be waifish, with adorable curly hair and a smudge of soot upon each porcelain cheek.

Item the Fifth: Being the Art of Speaking with an Incredibly Foul Mouth

If all else fails, the dirty word may often beckon, and, used appropriately, may well reduce an audience to a breathless, quivering state. “Do not you evince great distaste for those postern-to-postern solicitors?” one asks. “Yea,” reply you, “verily I put my leather-shod foot deep into the bunghole of one such man! And alas, brother, I have been unable this weeke since to remove all the shite!”

Note that relying on the Fifth Tenet may bring you much chagrin if brought to bear in the wrong situation. Use not this weapon of humorous design in the House of God, for surely you shall receive the wrath of uptight women, pleading for the sake of innocent children’s ears. 

Item the Sixth: Being the Unexpected Misfortune of a Small but Distasteful Animal

Should the wife of the local Nobleman come into towne with her retinue to exercise her puny, vicious poodle, you should surely recognize the true Path to Comedy in this event. Arrange to cause the poodle, forthwith, to climb upon the bowl of a catapult in search of a gobbet of meat. Whilst the foul animal gnaws at his find, cause a local drunk to accidentally set afire the triggering mechanism of said catapult. The resulting whine of the dog as it is launched over the rooftops is quite satisfying, yet the beauty of this lark lies in the aftermath, in which the distresséd Ladie paces about hooting and chastising her maidservants, who look at her sidelong and chuckle as she turns askance.

Item the Seventh: Being the Value of a Well-Placed Kick

Lo, let it be known that of all things Funnie, none is so much so as but one—the swift and solid Kick in the Crotch, ideally repeated without pause while the bearer of said Crotch does drop and groan upon the ground. All the more hilarious is that kick which is administered by a Ladie of obviously high birth, clad as is for the opera. 

Thus ends the tale of Seven Forms.

Thanks once more for reading; please like, subscribe, comment, boogie, expectorate, prevaricate, and/or multitask as you see fit. My endless prattling about the big surprise that’s coming finally has a deadline: August 31—just a few days short of one year since the first Red Clay Bestiary was lifted from the printing press. Expect much sentimentality.