When I was young, I was angry, cynical and possessed of a tragic world view. Life was cruel and people were fools.
As I grew older, though, I realized that most people are angry and cynical and possessed of a tragic world view, and so I was faced with something of a pessimist’s conundrum: if A) people were fools, and B) people tended to be angry and cynical, then C) how could I be angry and cynical without being a fool as well? As George Carlin said, “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.” It follows, then, that if large groups of people are doing something, it’s probably stupid (check out the Best Seller lists, or box-office hits). Even misery. Misery began to seem easy to me - lazy, dull, obvious, no matter how much the miseries patted themselves on the back for being so insightful and wise. I determined, instead, to laugh – a Vonnegutian laugh, a Beckettian laugh, a Kafkaian laugh – a laugh that doesn’t deny the abyss, it mocks it. The highest laugh, as Beckett put it, the risus puris, the laugh that laughs at that which isn’t funny.
—Shalom Auslander
—from The Not-Sad Story About the Very Sad Thing [archive]