Letter #148: Comedy and Rage

L Omega L

My son.

I always like to keep track of the trajectory of our conversation so our readers can follow our train of thought in the midst of their own busy lives. We began with your essay on the coming change in the social imaginary. For centuries, based on a materialist misreading of science, elites declared that “smart people don’t believe in God.” But now, as traced in your book Light of the Mind, Light of the World, science has revealed itself to be inextricably linked to a Biblical description of reality.

It is no accident then that we are now talking about comedy. Because living in a world of elites spouting the idiot corollaries of unbelief is, let’s face it, kind of hilarious. Hilarious, that is, when it is not massively destructive to unborn children and born children being mutilated by neurotic adults, neurotic adults mutilating themselves, minorities, majorities, human rights, and a whole host of other realities and blessings whose essential worth, it turns out, can only be perceived through the lens of faith.

Which links us to another issue we’ve been discussing: the problem of joy. Because, often, there is an unfortunate link between comedy and rage.

I know something about this. My father was a comedian. It is no mystery to me why comedians speak of their craft in violent terms. I killed them tonight or I died out there. In my tweens, I was a great admirer of the massively talented comic Bill Cosby. As an adult, I worked with one of the executives on The Bill Cosby Show (this was before the rape revelations). I asked him eagerly, “What was Cosby like?” The executive shrugged and answered: “He was a comedian. He was angry.” Of course.

I won’t indulge in cheap psychologizing. It’s a bad habit generally, and one you must avoid if you want to write truly excellent novels (like this one). But I will point out that, at some level, comedy is simply a clear observation of life, but with the suffering removed. It’s uproariously funny for elites to declare that men can become women — until the scalpels come out. Then it’s an atrocity.

But there’s a point to setting suffering aside in order to laugh. Because it’s all funny really. The husband who abandons a family for a woman. The actress who abandons morality for fame. The politician who abandons integrity for power. Everyone who tries to buy the world at the price of his soul. Which is, at some point, everyone.

What makes all this immiserating malfeasance comedic is simply this: We know we were meant to be better. If we weren’t made in the image of God, there would be no joke at all. Only power, cruelty and tears.

If we have faith enough to hope that what was lost in us can be found again, then we can laugh without anger. Which is, I think, a holy thing. Even the key to rejoicing.

Yer loving,

Dad