R.K. Narayan said, ”You become a writer by writing. It is a yoga.” I thought of this recently after catching up with two old friends.
John is on the West coast. He is a few years older than me and the big brother I never had. He is a retired college professor, a one-time candidate for Congress (many moons ago), a literary and music critic, a patriot and a Mensch. But most of all he is a writer.
He writes every day.
We were bound, also many moons ago, by a love of politics and particularly admiration for one man, Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy. Our politics has diverged some, but we still share that initial admiration, and a world view informed by it. And now our bond is enduring friendship — a bond that politics, thank God, cannot destroy.
Gary is on the East Coast. We are roughly the same age and lost touch for a few years, due to my moving away from New England and the busy lives we both lead. He is a psychologist in private practice; a public office holder and servant; and a musician. He, too, is a Mensch. He, too, is a writer.
Gary makes his living in other ways, as Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams did. But he has always been compelled to write. Writers cannot not write.
Words on pages (the right ones) yoke these two men as brethren though they have never met and do not write the same kind of stuff. Both can write because they can think and do write because they are unafraid to think. Like the yogi (or the composer, the weightlifter, the painter, the chef) the writer must put in the time. He must practice: See, record, make, refine. Repeat.
I noticed another unifying bond in my two friends: wit. Sense of humor and good humor.
In both conversations we laughed a lot, though some very serious things — family, health, last things, and the health of the nation were touched upon. (John says we still have a country, but maybe not a nation.)
Laughter is a gift. But the predisposition to laugh, a yoga. Laughter — not so much jokes as the ability to see the “great big joke,” in Robert Frost’s phrase — takes discipline and practice.
Indeed, writing and laughter are almost mental martial arts. For the martial arts are not just about self-defense, though they are that, but mental strength, sanity, health.
I have read that St. Philip Neri was, in addition to a mystic, a man of great humor and cheerfulness. Cheer, like prayer, is work. Others have said that this was part of his Italian nature.
My friend Joe is Italian. He doesn’t tell jokes, but his views are ever wry and to be in his company is to laugh a lot. Is this because he is Italian or because he is Joe? Who knows? But he has the yoga of laughter.
And that helps to connect.
Pope John XXIII — Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, the third of thirteen children, born of sharecroppers in Bergamo, Italy — was, like Philip Neri, as cheerful as he was holy. I see something similar in Pope Francis (Argentinian but his father was Italian) — a certain glint and orneriness. And an ability to connect. I noted his demeanor meeting with Bill Clinton the other day. The pope wasn’t judging Old Bill, he was enjoying him.
Wit can be a weapon. William F. Buckley used it that way. But wit also set Buckley apart from all other commentators on the right. He liked people (even liberals) and he loved life — wine, sailing, ideas, the competition of ideas, and any great one-liner he could summon.
So, too, Ronald Reagan. The dude was sunny. Can you think of a conservative politician before, during or after his time of whom this could be said?
Are there funny liberals or leftists? Not many. John F. Kennedy was both witty and cheerful. But George McGovern? Bernie Sanders? Liz Warren? Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom are light hearted like a root canal, or a hangover with a sunburn.
Gene McCarthy was funny. He once said a fellow senator “would get lost in a stubble field.” He remarked that the choice of Humphrey against Nixon was like “a choice between vulgarity and obscenity.” He described the exclusive care home where he spent his own final days as “a cruise ship on the River Styx.”
Though I heard the line when he said it and have repeated it often, it still makes me laugh.
There is zero humor in American politics today and precious little genuine humor in American life. We have become glum. More like the robots we create and ape than the Italians or Greeks. We need the balm of well chosen words and high spirits.
Keith C. Burris is the former editor, vice president and editorial director of Block Newspapers: burriscolumn@gmail.com. His previous article was “Searching for mere decency.”
First Published: July 17, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
