This month I point out the comic craft of John Irving's novels, specifically something he practices known as "the running gag," which, by the way, he artistically borrowed from the likes of the Marx Brothers. (Harpo Marx loved the running sight gag, so running gags can be visual as well as linguistic, but I'll stick to the latter here.)
I think it's worth taking a look at how Irving makes use of running jokes in his novels.
What are running jokes or gags? In their simplest form they're Rodney Dangerfield whining, "I don't get no respect;" Joan Rivers asking, "Can we talk?" and Henny Youngman saying, "Take my wife, please."
Notice the role the running gag plays in branding and in unifying those comedians' acts. I think we know them by their running gags and their unifying "tag lines."
Likewise, Irving's running gags or what I call recurring wisdom serve to thematically unify Irving's novels, at least the ones I've read. They play a central role in Irving's entire approach to writing. His comic tone and his recurring jokes have the same purpose; they can also be entertaining in their own right.
In Irving's Prayer for Owen Meany my favorite running joke has to do with a dog named Sagamore that can first be found in the novel's opening pages, and then in various forms throughout the rest of the novel.
Irving's narrator Johnny Wheelwright states that his "hometown" of Gravesend, New Hampshire, "was purchased from "Indian sagamores" and then relates, "In New England, the Indian chiefs and higher ups were called sagamores, although by the time I was a boy the only sagamore I knew was a neighbor's dog, a male Labrador retriever, named Sagamore (not, I think, for his Indian ancestry, but because of his owner's ignorance). Sagamore's owner, our neighbor, Mr. Fish, always told me that his dog was named for a lake where he spent his summers swimming 'when I was in my youth.' Poor Mr. Fish: He didn't know that the lake was named after Indian chiefs and higher-ups—and that naming a stupid Labrador retriever "Sagamore" was certain to cause some unholy offence. As we shall see, it did. But Americans are not great historians, and so, for years—educated by my neighbor, I thought that sagamore was an Indian word for lake. The canine Sagamore was killed by a diaper truck, and I now believe that the gods of those troubled waters of that much-abused lake were responsible."
Something about being run over by a diaper truck (the comic specificity of it, the fact that it has to do with babies along with offended Indian spirits) is quite funny to me. But Irving doubles-down on his comic bet, adding, "It would have been a better story, I think, if Mr. Fish had been killed by the diaper truck—but every study of the gods, of everyone's gods, is a revelation of vengeance toward the innocent." Irving fans know that's a familiar refrain of John Irving's.
And that is why I believe the innocent dog had to be killed by a diaper truck. Babies and innocence go together. That's what makes it so funny.
A few pages later Irving plays the gag all over again, adding more "facts" that make it funnier: "The only sagamore to be given official burial in our town was Mr. Fish's black Labrador retriever, run over by a diaper truck on Front Street and buried with the solemn attendance of some neighborhood children in my grandmother's rose garden."
On succeeding pages, we find Irving replaying the same recurring joke:
In reference to a community theater production where a part in a play "…was played by our neighbor, Mr. Fish. Owen and I knew that he was still in mourning over the untimely death of Sagamore; the horror of the diaper truck disaster…"
"…Sagamore before his appointment with the diaper truck, woke up Mr. Fish…"
Those are only a few references; all told we are treated to a tremendous number linking Mr. Fish with his poor, deceased dog, Sagamore. In the process, with Irving cracking the same running gag, we learn all about Mr. Fish and his talents or lack thereof as an actor in the community theater. When, much later, Mr. Fish plays a role in a Christmas pageant where Owen Meany plays the "Christ child" we've had so many references to Mr. Fish and his dog, we know exactly who he is. He comes off as a comic if not a sad, minor character, which in my opinion is quite an achievement for any writer to pull off. But it's a direct result of Irving's "running-joke" method of writing fiction.
In The Cider House Rules I'm not sure you'll find a recurring joke, exactly. Rather, the entire book's ethic as well the summation of Homer Wells' values are summed up by the phrase: "Be of use" to others. It's the novel's, if you will, "principal commandment" repeated over and over again and, therefore, inculcated deeply in Homer's—and the reader's—consciousness.
When it became clear to Dr. Larch, the St. Cloud's orphanage's director, that Homer belonged to St. Clouds, the only requirement Larch places on Homer, if he decides to stay is, "Be of use."
When Homer was "placed" with a number of potential orphan parents, "Dr. Larch told him, 'I expect you to be of use.' He was nothing if not of use. His sense of usefulness appears to predate Dr. Larch's instructions."Some other examples: "Of use, he felt, was all an orphan was born to be."
"By the time a boy is a teen-ager, he should be of use."
When Homer finds a pregnant woman who is about to give birth inside the orphanage, "The pregnant woman began to cry. "Be of use," she said, as if she'd learned to repeat the pigtails of sentences from listening to Homer.
When Homer springs into action: "Look at that," she whispered. "You want to be of use?"
"Right," said Homer Wells.
"You want to be of use?" the woman asked him, crying gently now.
"Yes. Be of use," he said.
"Sleep right here," the woman told him. He pretended to sleep with his face against the noisy boulder, where she held him snug."
When Fuzzy Stone, an orphan boy whose lungs are dysfunctional passes on, Wilber Larch wrote to the board of trustees, 'We are put on this earth to be of use,' Wilber Larch wrote to the board of trustees."
When Homer assists Dr. Larch in performing an abortion for the first time: "I want to be of use," Homer began, but Dr. Larch wouldn't listen. "Then you are not permitted to hide," Larch said. "You are not permitted to look away."
Indeed, the concept of being of use cuts through Irving's entire novel. The actual "Cider House Rules" (there are nine actual rules and another page of informal rules) all revolve taking responsibility for one's actions, or "being of use."
Although I slow down for these recurring jokes and wisdom statements as if they were speed bumps, most readers, even careful readers, speed up for them, their eyes reading at least ten miles-an-hour over the posted speed limit, most likely because they're finding Irvings' novels to be so entertaining.
Perhaps the next time you read a John Irving novel, you could consider just once driving below the speed limit. You might enjoy the result.
