Читать книгу Sombrero Fallout - Richard Brautigan - Страница 25

HUMOR

The other two women didn’t like him.

They hadn’t read his books. That made a big difference in meeting him. He was not a good-looking man. He had an attractive but very erratic personality. He allowed his moods to dominate him and they were very changeable. Sometimes he would talk too much and at other times he wouldn’t talk at all. He always talked too much when he drank. When he wasn’t drinking he was very shy and formal around people and it was hard to get to know him. Some people thought that he was very charming and others thought that he was a total asshole. The truth lay somewhere in between and it was very close to the halfway mark.

He had a national reputation as a humorist which was very funny in itself because when you met him one of the first things you noticed about him was that he had no sense of humor.

Whenever other people were laughing at something, he usually looked puzzled. Sometimes very intelligent people thought this was very funny in itself and got a second laugh after the first which would always make him look more puzzled and then he would feel very uncomfortable. He was very perceptive but that was one of the things in life that he could never figure out. It never dawned on him that people were laughing at him because he had no sense of humor. He thought that he was a very funny fellow because the books he wrote were funny. He didn’t know that around other people he often looked puzzled when they were laughing. Intellectually he was able to dismiss this by thinking that other people were laughing at an in-joke.

Not having a sense of humor was one of the main character weaknesses that he possessed. He would have enjoyed life a little more if he had been able to laugh at it.

Oh, yes: another interesting thing: When he was writing things that later on people would praise as some of the best humor of the century, he didn’t laugh when he wrote them. He didn’t even smile.

The other two women didn’t like him.

Good for them.

Too bad for the Japanese woman.

She liked him.