Humor — It’s A Guy Thing

As anyone who edits a book for a writer knows, writers are absurdly possessive of their work. Being both a writer and an editor this is a thing I know from both directions. I pity anyone who tries to edit me. When you are working on something the natural thing to do is to pass it out to friends and people you trust to get feedback. This can be a tricky business because, on the one hand, if they really are your friends, they want to be supportive but, on the other hand, if there is any resentment there, this may be an opportunity to let you have it. I’ve experienced both.

One thing I’ve learned though, is that men are a very different from women. Duh. This is not a universal truism. I appreciate it when women readers comment favorably on passages that go into detail about the mechanics of a situation, or how something works, or on the rougher, rawer parts of a story. And I absolutely love it when a male reader tells me he loved the romantic parts. When I was first working on my short story “My Last Romance”, I gave the manuscript to a female friend to read she liked it and gave me good feedback. A few weeks later I saw her husband and he told me she let him read it and he just loved it. He said he read it three times and still thinks about it. This stunned me because it is a very romantic story and I honestly didn’t think it would appeal to men.

However, where men and women seem to differ greatly is when it comes to humor. I do not understand male humor — not at all. When I was little I just had my two brothers, Jack and Wayne. My sisters didn’t come along until a good deal later. Jack and Wayne and I used to watch the same cartoons and television programs and read the same comic books and things that would send them into gales of laughter were totally lost on me. To this day Wayne can watch old episodes of F Troop and howl with laughter. I do not get it. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the Three Stooges. I don’t think they are funny, I never did think they were funny and I probably never will. Most of the guys I know, even now in their fifties still split a gut at old Stooges episodes. When I was working at Enron there was a group of guys (who all seemed to be from Pittsburgh for some reason) who had a veritable Cult of the Stooges. It’s a guy thing.

The reason I’m thinking about this is because now that Mark’s book is out and people are reading it and giving feedback I must humbly confess that I was wrong about a few things. As editor there were several parts of the book I didn’t like, thought were stupid, and wanted to take out. Mark refused. We bickered but, it’s his book (his damn book, on some days) and he prevailed. The parts I thought were dumb stayed in. Now that folks are reading the book I am getting another lesson in how male humor is different from female humor.

I won’t go into detail but the first place where I am seeing this is in a chapter called “Rats: The Art of The Off-hand Rifle Shot”. It is a pretty hilarious chapter about a summer he spent as the official rat-killer for a fish-packing plant when he was 12. It’s a funny chapter but toward the end it veers off into slapstick comedy with a bunch of “wise guys” shooting up the men’s room in the plant. I thought it went overboard but I didn’t object too strenuously. But the part that I hated the most was toward the end of the book when he has a sequence about being nearly run over by a container ship from a country called Moronia and the “Morons” on board. I thought the whole thing was utterly stupid and I begged him to cut it. He refused.

Guess which part the guys I have talked to so far love? Yup. The Morons.

So, I have a plea for guys like John Grey with all their Mars-Venus bull-pucky. Don’t try to explain men’s romantic style for us, give us a clue about their humor. It makes no sense to me and, to paraphrase an old Pennsylvania Dutch saying, “Kissin don’t last, laughin’ do.”

Thanks for reading.