I am well into my latest "slow read" — Charles Dickens' "Dombey and Son," with 600 pages behind me and 300 to go. And I shall enjoy every one of those 300. The book is delightful.
Like so much of Dickens, "Dombey and Son" is about poverty, corruption, child neglect, greed and other dark themes. But it is funny! The dire scenes — such as when Mr. Dombey wishes that his daughter had died instead of his son — are tempered by hilarious scenes, such as when Captain Cuttle is trapped at home because his landlady confiscated his "glazed hat" and he can't imagine going outside without it.
The comic characters in this book aren't clowns; they are full-fledged people, with sensitivities and emotions (Captain Cuttle is a saint), but their appearance lightens the mood and makes me laugh.
Laughing creates a bond between reader and author; there's a confidence that we will find the same things funny. It helps us tolerate the sadness — little Paul Dombey's death, or the tense scenes between Mr. Dombey and his second wife. (And wow, what a marriage.)
Lack of humor can keep me from reading books that I know to be unrelentingly sad or depressing. But make me laugh and I will endure any amount of pain for the story.
Many great authors understand this. In a 2017 interview with James McBride, after "The Good Lord Bird" won the National Book Award, I asked him why he wrote a funny book about slavery and the Civil War.
"It needs that lightness in order to breathe," he told me. "Otherwise, it becomes one of those horribly depressing books. I think sometimes when I walk through bookstores that America must want to be depressed. There are a lot of good trees wasted on some of these books."
McBride — who won this year's Thurber Prize for American Humor — said that humor was a natural way that his family dealt with impoverishment and racism when they were growing up.
"I just don't see the point in sitting around hollering the blues over things you have no control over," he said. "If you don't have humor, you're not going to make it."
The books of Louise Erdrich, too, deal with serious subjects, but she makes sure to give her books the light and air that humor brings.
"It's the hardest thing, writing humor into a book," she told me in a 2016 interview. "But it's also essential. I just don't feel like I've got a book unless there's something funny in it."
When she was working on "LaRose," she wrote herself a note: "PROBLEM. BIG PROBLEM. THERE IS NO HUMOR WHATSOEVER IN THIS MANUSCRIPT." (This was not the case with the finished book.)
And Minneapolis writer Charles Baxter, finalist for a National Book Award and winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story, told the Star Tribune in 2008 that he sees humor as a necessary counterpoint to drama.
"I have always felt that darkness becomes even darker when there's some humor or wit or comedy associated with it. Humor is always breaking out in my work. I can never stay serious for very long."
The world isn't all one way. There's dark and there's light. Elizabeth McCracken, in her devastating memoir "An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination," about losing her baby, punctuated the book with black humor — something she said is proof there is a God.
Laughter helps us keep going. In life, and in books.
Laurie Hertzel is the Star Tribune's senior editor for books. @StribBooks.
