Week 31. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels. 1726.
Week 32. Joseph Heller, Catch-22. 1961.
Week 33. John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces. 1980.
Week 34. P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters. 1938.
I had intended to write a post focused solely on satire, but the thing didn’t seem to gel into a coherent series the way reading four books by a single author did earlier this year with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Part of the problem, obviously, is that the theme is less clear than tracing a single author’s oeuvre, which tends to draw on common ideas throughout. Another difficulty was the choice of books. Really only two—Gulliver’s Travels and Catch-22—could be considered pure satire, which lend themselves to an easy recap of what was being satirized and if that method is effective. The other two are more humorous fiction—certainly delightful in their own way (Wodehouse was and remains my favorite author) but harder to draw any deeper insights from.
So while this series didn’t coalesce as cleanly as before, it remained an imminently enjoyable month of reading with some outstanding writing, deeply memorable characters, and clever social commentary.
The Forerunner
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) is rightfully regarding as the father of modern satire. An Irishman and devout Anglican, he turned his attention to questions of English-Irish relations; religion; British imperialism; freedom of speech and press; and the nobility, select politicians, and a host of others in-between. Not surprisingly, he was the frequent subject of attacks from those who were the recipients of his biting rhetoric, including being brought up on charges of sedition (the judge found him not guilty) and accused by his political enemies of insanity. As a result, Swift often wrote under a pseudonym and had to rely on publisher friends to quietly print and promulgate his writings.
Such was the case with Gulliver’s Travels, ostensibly the true account of Captain Lemuel Gulliver concerning his various travels around the world. First released in 1726, it was an immediate and unmitigated success, doubling as both a parody of the then-popular travel books and as a satire of relevant political and social issues. In the book, Gulliver recounts his four visits to heretofore unknown lands. In order, these are: Lilliput, inhabited by people all less than six inches tall (roughly one-twelfth the size of a normal man); Brobdingnag, a land of giants where everyone is 72 feet tall (or twelve times the size of a normal man); Laputa, a flying island where brilliant minds work on problems of math and science but to no practical end; and finally to the land of the Houyhnhnms, a race of horses who are more civilized and enlightened than men, and who capture and domesticate human-like creatures (called yahoos) as their servants. The tale is easily readable—Swift would read his essays to his servants to make sure the writing was clear and accessible—though I had to rely on the footnotes to pick up some of the political and historical references. And there are many. The book is part satire of European government, part anti-Whig pamphlet (Swift was a Tory), part theological essay, and part philosophical treatise addressing such questions as whether mankind is basically good or bad and the role of reason and science in the modern world.
The humor lies primarily in Gulliver, a fervent defender of the British realm, instructing with great earnestness the peoples of each land about the customs of England. For example, there is a passage when a Houyhnhnm is expressing disbelief at how many men are killed in a war, to which Gulliver replies:
“I could not forbear shaking my head and smiling a little at his ignorance. And, being no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carbines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea-fights; ships sunk with a thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side; dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion… And to set forth the valor of my own dear countrymen, I assured him, that I had seen them blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship, and beheld the dead bodies drop down in pieces from the clouds, to the great diversion of all the spectators.”
While Gulliver is clearly attempting to defend his kingdom, it’s equally apparent that Swift finds such defenses wanting, and the brutality of war is contrasted sharply with the civilized Houyhnhnms.
Gulliver’s Travels opened the door for some of Swift’s most vociferous critics; it was, after all, the age of the Enlightenment, when faith in man’s inherent goodness and inevitable progress was at its peak. Swift’s attacks on science (the citizens of Laputa are experimenting with a host of silly studies that Swift literally took from the annals of the British Royal Society) and his position on the limits of reason and the fallibility of man were not taken lightly. But what makes Gulliver’s Travels so enduring is it achieves the rare success of being immediately relevant to the social climate of its times while applicable to future generations. Reading it in 2013, I find much to value in Swift’s criticisms: not as the cynical view of humanity that Swift was criticized for, but rather as a cautionary tale that man would be wise to consider the limitations of our never-ending quest for perfection.
The Modern Classic
If one can make a positive case that Gulliver’s Travels ends on an upswing, this is much harder to do with Catch-22. Released in 1961, the book became an instant bestseller in a country trying to come to grips with the totality of the destruction of World War II. Its legacy continued to grow among those skeptical of America’s evolving status toward global superpower and economic juggernaut, especially as we flexed our military muscles in Korea and Vietnam. As such, Catch-22, besides introducing a new word into the lexicon, became the definitive satire of modern war, American power, and capitalism.
While I take issue with some of Joseph Heller’s opinions, there is no denying the writing and plot structure are truly superb. The protagonist is one Captain Yossarian, an Air Force bomber stationed in Italy near the end of the war. The book opens to find Yossarian in the hospital faking an unknown ailment. His stated goal and chief motivating action is the preservation of his own life, and as a result he has refused to fly any more combat missions—the number of which a bomber must fly to be discharged from duty being perpetually increasing. The colonels and generals understand Yossian’s position: a man would be insane to want to fly more dangerous combat missions under such circumstances. But there is a catch: while a man can be excused from flying missions if he’s declared insane, by stating he doesn’t want to fly more missions he is demonstrating his sanity and thus must continue to fly them. Or, as Heller describes it:
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.”
The remainder of the book is full of equally clever phrases and comic situations, often when the conversation flows in an unexpected way. For example: “‘From now on [Yossarian said] I’m thinking only of me.’ Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: ‘But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way.’ ‘Then,’ said Yossarian, ‘I’d certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn’t I?’”
Or again: “There were many officers’ clubs that Yossarian had not helped build, but he was proudest of the one on Pianosa. It was a sturdy and complex monument to his powers of determination. Yossarian never went there to help until it was finished; then he went there often, so pleased was he with the large, fine, rambling shingled building. It was a truly splendid structure, and Yossarian throbbed with a might sense of accomplishment each time he gazed at it and reflected that none of the work that had gone into it was his.”
So good. And yet it is all undergirded by the dark realties of war and an almost nihilistic view of the world. The war drags on. One by one, Yossarian’s friends in his squadron are killed. There is a long, stirring chapter toward the end of the book, “The Eternal City,” when a broken Yossarian wonders slowly through the streets of Rome at night, stricken by the poverty, violence, and destruction he encounters. One of Heller’s primary literary devices is to juxtapose an otherwise comic scene with an abrupt and violent transition; I was once laughing at a passage in which a few men in the squadron are clowning around on the beach when one of the characters is suddenly killed by a low-flying plane. It’s Heller’s stark reminder of the brutality and futility of war. Elsewhere, Yossarian’s superiors continue to make asinine decisions, and are usually promoted as a result. The head of the squadron’s mess hall, Milo Minderbinder, becomes a rabid capitalist, buying and selling commodities worldwide and expanding his global empire, often at the expense of his friends and country; he goes so far as to actually attack his own squadron because the price the Germans offered was right.
Naturally, in Heller’s telling, the idiotic army commanders and the Milo’s of the world are triumphant. It’s too simplistic of a worldview, but the lesson is real: sometimes you can feel like the only sane one in a crazy world. Sometimes that world can be a cruel and unforgiving place, full of arbitrary injustices and seemingly pointless tragedy. I do not believe that this is all the world is made of, by any means. But then again, I didn’t fight in World War II. These are things worth being reminded of.
A Modern Day Don Quixote
Gulliver’s Travels and Catch-22 satirized British politics and modern warfare. Their message was apparent, and their device effective. Satire allows a writer to marry humor with a serious point; often, it is the stark contrast that allows it to be so effective. A Confederacy of Dunces and The Code of the Woosters were less explicitly satirical in that there wasn’t a single issue or person they set out to mock, and yet both were instructive in using hilarity as a vehicle for social commentary.
The protagonist in A Confederacy of Dunces is Ignatius J. Reilly, described in everything I subsequently read about the book as a “modern day Don Quixote” which doesn’t mean that much to me since I’ve never read Don Quixote. But it seems to be commenting on Ignatius’ eccentricity and his comedic but ultimately futile journey to change the world around him. He is hard to take seriously: 30-years-old, possessor of a multiple college degrees and smart in an intellectual way (he often quotes medieval philosopher Boethius), he is abysmally lazy, scorning work so he can pursue the contemplative life. This forces him to live with his mother (to whom he is invariably condescending) in a crumbling house in one of New Orleans’ poorer neighborhoods. He is hugely overweight and dressed like a slob, mustached and equipped with a green hunter’s cap with earflaps and a large jacket; see, e.g., here. Forced to find a job, the book’s plot is driven by Ignatius’ encounters with his various employers, his feisty and tumultuous relationship with his intellectual foil (a militant Jewish feminist named Myrna Minkoff), and the intermingling lives of the book’s various actors.
To understand A Confederacy of Dunces is first to understand how it came to being. The author, John Kennedy Toole, was a native of New Orleans who studied English at Columbia and wrote two books while living at his parents’ house after military service in Puerto Rico. After seeing A Confederacy of Dunces rejected from multiple publishers, and considering his life a failure, the 31-year-old Toole committed suicide in 1969. It was only through the persistent efforts of his mother, who finally attracted the attention of highly-regarded Southern author Walker Percy and solicited his help in securing publication, that the book came to be. It went on to receive the Pulitzer in 1980 for its humorous plot and faithful representation of New Orleans culture and dialects. It is a humor book clouded with the tragic fate of its author.
And that’s sort of how I read it—often quite funny, but also a bit…not tragic, but grotesque perhaps, which somewhat dampened its appeal. Call it my inherently Protestant work ethic or disciplined upbringing, but from the get-go I couldn’t take Ignatius seriously, despite the fact that he’s a purely fictional character and written to poke fun at a variety of ideas and viewpoints around him. It might be trivial, but the fact that I found Gulliver and Yossarian more relatable (despite also being fictitious) made their books’ messages more palatable.
The Waning English Aristocracy
In Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh describes the fall of the English aristocracy in poignant terms—an outdated way of life, a family splitting apart, a time of war, a country home in decay. P.G. Wodehouse also discusses the changing tides in the first half of the twentieth century, but does so in wholly opposite fashion: through bumbling English aristocrats and the “crises” that interrupt their otherwise carefree lives.
I love Wodehouse. His blissful worlds, lively characters, wonderfully funny stories, tightly written prose, and clever narratives have been a source of joy and comfort for several years now. Amazingly prolific, Wodehouse spent almost the entirety of his life writing, churning out over 96 books and short stories plus contributing to an array of plays and musicals. When asked about his career as a writer, he remarked in characteristic fashion, “I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t remember what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.” In the preface to one of his books, he refers to a critic: “A certain critic—for such men, I regret to say, do exist—made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained ‘all the old Wodehouse characters under different names.’ He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have out-generalled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.” Brilliant.
The Code of the Woosters is the third full-length novel to feature the most famous Wodehouse characters, Bertie Wooster, the blundering aristocrat, and Jeeves, his all-knowing valet. Both are the kinds of characters that are so rich in writing but would be impossible to depict on film (though Laurie and Frye do an admirable job). Bertie is a weird mix of intelligence (as a narrator for all the stories, he is immensely funny) and stupidity; a lifelong bachelor with an aversion to both marriage and work; a bit of a clown yet likable. Jeeves is the source of all sagacity and knowledge, perfectly dignified at all times (“There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, ‘Do trousers matter?’” a harried Bertie remarks. “The mood will pass, sir” Jeeves responds). Wodehouse surrounds them with an equally memorable supporting cast.
Like most Jeeves and Wooster stories, this one follows a similar formula: Jeeves wants something from Bertie (in this case, to go on a cruise); Bertie refuses; Bertie gets into trouble attempting to solve an outlandish problem (in this case, trying to steal a milk creamer shaped like a cow that is the object of his uncle’s desire while also trying to fix a broken engagement between an old college pal and his fiancée); Jeeves comes to the rescue; Bertie acquiesces to Jeeves’ original desire. This relatively simple construct enables Wodehouse to fill the pages with an ever-changing plot, vivid prose, and humorous imagery.
There’s an element of both truth and myth to the Wodehousian world. On the one hand, it really did exist, at least in part, between the world wars. There really were butlers, lords in castles, spats, elite all-male London social clubs, and idle English gentleman, even if they have been replaced with an aristocracy built on merit and wealth, not birth, swept away in a tide of social equality post-World War II. On the other hand, Wodehouse’s stories are so pleasant as to lose any basis of reality. If you like your literature to talk about the grit and dirt of real life, turn elsewhere. As Evelyn Waugh said, a world where “there has been no fall of Man… [whose] characters have never tasted the forbidden fruit.” Maybe, perhaps unintentionally, a world that also gives a glimpse of the kind of world that will exist in a future Eden.
Writing Humor
Satire, and humor writing in general, is inordinately difficult to do. So much of comedy is situational—a good voice impression, an inside joke. Or it relies on physical cues—facial expressions, intonation, the build-up to a punch line, the twinkle in the eye once it’s delivered. Writing loses all of that. You have to recreate the characters, arrange the dialogue, and structure the plot to create the comedic situation. Swift, Heller, Toole, and Wodehouse were all gifted writers, and there’s a temptation to think that with gifted writing—especially the breezy, almost effortless nature of Heller or a Wodehouse story—that it comes effortlessly. That good writers just have a natural feel for humor that makes writing such stories easy.
Certainly the above are all talented. But that masks the inordinate amount of work that goes into their craft. It took Heller nine years—nine years—to write Catch-22. Wodehouse, despite the absurdity of his characters and their worlds, was in person a bit of an absentminded introvert who followed a fairly safe routine throughout most of his life. His writing was highly organized, to the point where he would pin up pages of his stories on his wall and move each page up or down depending on how satisfied he was with it; once all pages made it to the top of the wall, the story was complete. In the Paris Review interview linked above, Wodehouse recounts his writing patterns: a 7:30am start; writing upwards of 2,000 words a day (it’s down to 1,000 at the time of the interview—although, to be fair, he was 91 years old); 7 days a week. “Before I start a book,” he says, “I’ve usually got four hundred pages of notes.”
In other words, a lifelong, tireless work ethic to produce what looks like natural prose. If there is one major takeaway from the books I’ve read this year, and from reading about the authors who wrote them, it’s the toil and effort of good writing—in humor and satire no less than any other genre.
Take and Read 
