What makes a funny narrative?
There is a great deal of charm in Jeremiah's voice, and my guess is this charm is not unrelated to the author. Where does it come from?
I would call it a sense of humor topped up with observation. I began to properly see the funny part of life the night I stopped taking myself so seriously. My first drink, which came later in my life than it should have, was the trigger. I loosened up and let the locked-in self out. I made the kind of comments I’d never made before and heard people laughing. Not at me but with me. But more than that I began to listen. I began to pick up the often hilarious ways people spoke and how they sometimes talked over one another and still managed to know exactly what it was the other person had been saying.
And then when I sat down to write it all down I discovered properly for the first time that humor could be a means to an end. I realized that to be funny I didn’t have to tell jokes – all I had to do was remember some of the quirky, droll and diverting things I’d heard people say in shops, in pubs and in the street. If it fits use it, I thought. And I used it. I also found that remembering came easy to me. And I knew I had things to ask about. The question was, how would I get readers to read on? And how would I get them to listen? I mean really listen. Why not try making them smile? I thought. So more and more I did my damnedest to get behind readers’ guards by being funny.
I had plenty to ask them about but one of the biggest things was the elephant in the room. You know... in offices, in beds, in centres of power, in rooms filled with mostly men who think nothing of destroying the poor and the planet. Oh... there are bound to be many readers who have thought more about these things than I have.
(-from an interview with Jason Howell)
Colm Herron is the author of four novels and numerous essays and articles. He hails from Derry, Northern Ireland, and his newest novel The Wake was released this November.
