This is Leslie VonHolten from the High Plains of Kansas with another Radio Reader’s Book Byte.
Isn’t creativity an interesting element of being human? Such a mystery—where does it come from, and how does it manifest? I’ve found myself grateful for the various ways creative thinking appears in our lives. This functioning civilization, such as it is, is built on a rich and diverse array of creative approaches. The arts of course—literature, theater, music, painting, all of it—but also the creative thinkers in medicine, at the auto mechanic, in public town halls. Wastewater management! Stand-up comedy! Aerospace engineering! It’s a marvel.
These were my thoughts when reading What’s So Funny by David Sipress. Memoir and expression can take so many approaches, even when we limit ourselves to thinking only about creativity in book form. Some lives, and memoirs, are creative in themselves—I think of Alexandra Fuller, whose whole life is creativity come alive: In her debut Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, she tells story after story of growing up in Rhodesia, which is today Zimbabwe, and she tells it in a rich prose with descriptions that made me see the world in new ways.
Sipress’s life, however, is less singular. His memories are nice but not spectacular—I felt I had read this growing-up-in-New York in the 1950s story a few times over. But Sipress excels—his creativity sparkles—with his comics, which are fortunately added throughout the book. A long-time New Yorker cartoonist, Sipress’s comics are simple, single-pane vignettes that do so much: They depict regular folks like ourselves, folks who often survive strange days in the hopes of understanding and usually share one cutting and incisive line to sum it up.
For example: A couple in their living room—a common setting for Sipress—and the husband says, “I know that change is a normal part of life, but I prefer the other parts.” Who doesn’t relate to that? I certainly do, but I never thought to phrase it in that way. When change is coming, usually the other parts of life are easy for me to forget, or at least feel like they are in a faraway land I barely remember.
Another one: The setting is a medieval torture chamber, and two men in executioners’ hoods stand waiting for the poor sap being brought in by a soldier. One whispers to the other, “Don’t forget to call it a ‘procedure’—makes it less scary.” I laughed out loud. Like me, Sipress has picked up on the language of a doctor’s office, a place of often of painful and bizarre—you could say creative—treatments, a place of disconnection between words and feelings.
This, to me, is the spark of creative approach that strikes me with awe. Whereas one person may interpret daily frustrations through other mediums—say, a podcast, or a short film—Sipress takes the exact same material, adds one single sketchy image, and can condense it into one incisive line of dialogue. And this simple act can reach across miles and generations, from a New York Boomer to a Kansas Gen Xer, and make her laugh and see the connections we have to one another. Isn’t that marvelous?
This has been Leslie VonHolten for Radio Readers. Join us this season in considering books that make us laugh. We could all use it right now. Find out more at HPPR.org, or like us on Facebook.
