Analysis Of Steve Almond's Funny Is The New Deep

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Steve Almond’s “Funny is the New Deep” talks of the role that comedy has in our current society, and most certainly, it plays a huge role here. Namely, through what Almond [Aristotle?] calls the “comic impulse”, we as a people can speak of topics that would otherwise make many of uncomfortable. Almond deems the comic impulse as the most surefire way to keep heavy situations from becoming too foreboding. The comic impulse itself stems from our ability and unconscious need to defend and thus contend with the feeling of tragedy. As such, instead of rather forcing out humor, he implies that humor is something that is not consciously forced out from an author, but instead is more of a subconscious entity, coming out on its own. Almond emphasizes …show more content…

Notably, he lists off the following texts: Don Quixote, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Tristan Shandy, Huck Finn, Lucky Jim, Catcher in the Rye, and lastly Infinite Jest. He does iterate on the first two texts, and describes them as being very exhibitory of the comic impulse. Don Quixote exhibited the feeling of disappointment, and Dante’s Divine Comedy arose from the author’s feelings after being exiled from Florence. If not you as some individual, certainly many others found theses texts to be sufficiently humorous. One could attribute this to the fact that their respective author’s channeled their feelings that were rooted in tragedy, just as Almond …show more content…

Deciphering what the comic impulse means to us is a positive step that may bring a number of outcomes. Perhaps it may produce more writers who are capable of making us laugh – a very welcome addition, given this current population’s slog through their respective careers. The comic impulse is, according to Almond, a human defense mechanism. I like to think that he’s right. The effects of the comic impulse can be seen by looking at history – a very significant example being Charlie Chaplin in the early/mid-1900s – and one could presume that further effects could still be had through recognition of the comic

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