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Multitudinous Jokes
In a Malfunctioning Anthology
A collection of high-concept comedy from writer James Thomas has
hits and misses in equal numbers
“Why the Long Joke?” by James Thomas, being published March 22 by
St. Martin’s Press, is a dense collection of one liners and short
humor pieces, but an uneven one.
The book starts strong with material that one can easily imagine
being delivered by Zach Galifianakis or Jack Handey (in the vein of
his 1980s Saturday Night Live “Deep Thoughts” segments). Oddly
enough, however, there are some lines or pieces, as the book goes
on, that could be called “corny dad humor,” and really not worthy of
a collection that promises, as it gets started, to have an
alternative and offbeat style to its humor.
Thomas’ work ends up being baffling, overall, especially after a
very strong and solid start in the first 50 pages or so, which are
packed with one-liner gems like this: “I’d like to teach the world
to sing, but I just know a bunch of people wouldn’t turn up for
rehearsal,” and this: “I passed my driving test because I was going
too fast and missed the turn.”
Thomas also has good concept pieces toward the beginning of the
book, like “Video Game Sale,” which has title after title of used
videogames that never really existed like “Thom Yorke Winter
Olympics,” issued in 1993 for the Atari G1000000, “Flower Pressing
With Willem Dafoe” for the Sega Bunion and “Flaunting Your Stamps”
for the Amstrad Cubicle. To find this funny, though, you must have a
deep understanding of pop culture (and videogame) aesthetics, so
Thomas is working on a silly and sophisticated wavelength all once.
He does this with more one-liners, also, such as this succinct
parody of “Snakes on a Plane”: “I have had it with these
multitudinous snakes on this malfunctioning plane!”
The same mind that comes up with these items and more also produces
a lot of misfires, however. A recurring piece called “Letter From
Saint Paul to the Venusians” (in three parts) appears to be some
sort of Biblical parody but doesn’t make sense to a casual reader.
You see a hit and a miss on the same page, later in Thomas’ book
that sprang from the same impulse: “The Beatles will never forget
that time when my band played on top of The Beatles on top of a
building” (that’s the miss), followed by “The flimsiest book I ever
read was a pauperback hovel.” (even to like this one, you’ve got to
take an extra improvisational leap). This illustrates the thin line
between Thomas’ successes and failures in “Why The Long Joke?”
It’s difficult to categorize this book – its publisher bills it as
“puns and word play,” but there is more going on here, since there
is some high-concept comedy in Thomas’ work, which includes an index
that itself is a complex set of jokes. Over 200 pages of this type
of material has to be a challenge to produce, but retaining every
idea, as Thomas and the publisher do here, keeps this book from
reaching greater heights.
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© 2005-2018 Michael Shashoua