Humor in biographies

This interview is an attempt to understand biographies, genres, as well as the nationalities of writers whose works cause a smile on their face. Most often - sad. The early years of many of them you will not envy, for example, Art Bugchwald grew up in a children's shelter, Sasha Black - escaped from the house and poverted. Can a rich and healthy person become a satirist, or for this genre, well, you just need to be poor and sick?

Photo by Valery Plotnikova. Among my friends there are several natural humorists. Not in the sense that they are laughter, but in the fact that they look at the world with good eyes. They see its shortcomings, the shortcomings of a person as a species. Without pointing on politics, on social things. There are also happy cases such as Jerome Clapping Jerome - such mentally stable people who have fun notes humorous around us.

And out of nothing. And this is a wonderful, sunny literature. Satire is an acute form of the disease. It includes bilia, reality scores, aggravated relations with the outside world. This, in fact, is the satirist and differs from the humorist. A rare case of sanguine temperament. And he possessed a cheerful, joyful attitude to life. The Bolsheviks had to try very hard in order to extract from this tool "a dozen knives in the back of the revolution." But Sasha Black is a born satirist.

Bile, sharp. Another nerve. This, of course, is nature. Hemingway said: the main school for the writer is an unhappy childhood. Until a certain age, everyone writes poetry about dawn, sunsets and unrequited love. And then we need a reason for speech. The stronger the conflict with the outside world, the worse for man and better for the writer. An unstable sense of humor, books that parents slipped.

I went through the youthful period of versification, when at the exit - the fifth derivative of Pasternak or Mandelstam. All this passed, there was no reason for speech. And is there a specific Jewish style of humor? I don't know if it is to refute. In the sense that intonation features, of course, exist. And there are traditions. The tradition of the book as such.

Jews are tormented by education, Jewish children are tormented by culture. We can say that the number of joking Jews is proportionally larger than the number of joking Russians, because humor is among national virtues. I do not mean religious families, although it had the honor to write a preface to the collection of ancient Jewish humor. These are amazing, funny MESSE.

But if we talk about secular Jews, a sense of humor enters their gentleman's set. Therefore, many are trying to be witty. And then - the scatter of talent is the same as that of other nations. One Zhvanetsky will have 10-15 joking Jews, which are scary to look at. You will kill you to guess who owns some intricate of style. And Zhvanetsky, by the way, does not. In terms of form, he has very simple moves, the sentences are shorter.

Just a genius differs from all others in that his speech and letter are completely biological in nature. Plus Odessa origin. Zhvanetsky and Ilf were born in neighboring courtyards at the Privoz, with a gap of three decades. Landman's pushing, Victor Shenderovich's preface. Satirical intonation is one of the colors on the palette. How Markes prompted Macondo, and Faulkner - Yoknapatofu.

In terms of the genre, this is, of course, humor. Not in the sense that a comedian is an unfinished satirist, it is simply a more philosophical, balanced view of the world. There were almost no real writers without a wonderful sense of humor. My favorite example: in Anna Karenina there are two brilliant reprisals. Steve "... loved his newspaper like a cigar after dinner, for a light fog that she produced in his head." This is dashed with a stone face - Tolstoy does not dance, does not wink, does not insist that he was joking, and you must laugh ...

And the second reprise - the character accompanied by Vronsky, wanted, if you remember, to find something specificly Russian in Russia. And he found: “In essence, of all Russian pleasures, the prince of French actresses, a ballet dancer and champagne with a white seal liked it most of all!” Can a comedian claim a serious, thoughtful attitude to his texts? Why joke about it?

Meanwhile, it is irony that humor allow something edible from the broth cube. Irony is very effective in semantic quality. The ideal option is that you yourself do not have time to understand anything! In order for a dialogue, the plot is turning ... And then let others understand how it is and where. The genre is felt, the intonation is felt and sometimes changes several times in the process of writing.

But if there is no impulse, there will be no hair color, no nose shape, nothing. Every evening, people go on stage and guaranteed to have amused the audience. How do you feel about this "quick cooking genre"? For me, a stand -up is a distant genre, like KVN. Because to joke at speed, to take the obligation to joke is very dangerous. A joke is a child of freedom, the best jokes are born in a feast themselves.

One said, the second picked up, the fifth turned the other side, and suddenly everyone laughs.Although 15 seconds ago no one was going to joke. The alkalis falls into the water and begins to hiss and spray. A joke is a reaction of intelligence to life. Remember the name of the newspaper comedian from the "Twelve Chairs"? No need to exhaust yourself. At the same time, I relate to people who joke at the appointed time.

For example, to the Israeli humorous magazine "Beser". I myself - at work on NTV - I know that this is horror: by noon of Wednesday, you can please write a funny program for seven and a half pages, for eleven minutes of ether.

And nowhere to go, the program is already in the grid. Sometimes you get into intonation, and you, as a skier, carry you on the slope, do not have to do anything, just turn the skis. And sometimes you drag the text on yourself, like a stalled car. If we, of course, are talking now not about the advice of Ayatall or the Party, but about internal restrictions. Each person determines them for himself.

The satire is turned to strong. It is necessary to criticize the strong, and not dance on the bones of the weak. I remember well how the "dolls" began. We tried to write, remove pilot issues, and from the authorities there was no consent to the Yeltsin doll. I convinced the owner of the program that it was impossible to joke over Chernomyrdin, Gaidar and Gerashchenko when there was no Yeltsin.

It is indecent to joke over the second and fifth face when you are not joking over the first! Then there was a funny moment: the puppet Yeltsin was already, but Korzhakov had not yet been agreed. You can joke over the president, but you can’t. If a person is a genius, like Zhvanetsky, can a genius envy? Can I envy Leonardo da Vinci? There are several colleagues whose style and a sense of funny which I admire and with pleasure admit that it is stronger than mine.

For example, Zhenya Shestakov is very uneven, but sparkling high in higher points. In today's poetry there is Vadim Zhuk ... But I have no envy. Language is a huge universe, and there is a place for everyone.