James Thurber: On humor (The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 2)
James Thurber
Some thoughts on humor from one of America's great wits, James Thurber:
With humor you have to look out for traps. You're likely to be very gleeful with what you've first put down, and you think it's fine, very funny. One reason you go over and over it is to make the piece sound less as if you were having a lot of fun with it yourself. You try to play it down. In fact, if there's such a thing as a New Yorker style, that would be it -- playing it down.
And:
[S]omeone once wrote a definition of the difference between English and American humor. I wish I could remember his name. I thought his definition very good. He said that the English treat the commonplace as if it were remarkable and the Americans treat the remarkable as if it were commonplace. I believe that's true of humorous writing. Years ago we did a parody of Punch in which Benchley did a short piece depicting a wife bursting into a room and shouting: "The primroses are in bloom!" -- treating the commonplace as remarkable, you see. In "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" I tried to treat the remarkable as commonplace.
