Alan Zweibel (The Other Shulman) has beat out Kinky Friedman (Texas Hold ‘Em) and Bill Scheft (Time Won’t Let Me) to win the Thurber Prize.
The results aren’t on the Thurber House site yet, though, so here’s the Washington Post article.
Writing humor has got to be the toughest kind of writing there is. If an author writes serious literary fiction and readers don’t understand it, the readers are just as likely to wonder what’s wrong with them (”Am I missing something?”) as they are to wonder what’s wrong with the author (”Why does he confound longwindedness with profundity?”). But if an alleged comedy doesn’t make readers laugh, readers never question their own sense of humor. They just think the writer isn’t funny. A response to a joke is immediate and inarguable–reflex, not reason. You can’t puzzle through something and decide it’s funny later. Well, you can, but you’re not likely to laugh out loud once you do.
November 8th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Poor Kinky. Not only did he lose the Thurber, but, last night he failed in his gubernatorial bid in Texas. I’m hopeful that he will now return to writing his novels. Either that, or, perhaps, he’ll reunite the Texas Jewboys and reignite his career in country music.