by Peter Abrahams
Confession: If it’s bad then I’m real bad. I’m not talking about the rueful kind of laughter that comes when you read over a passage that you thought was pretty swell during the writing and now realize is absolute trash. I’m talking about being in the middle of a scene and from out of nowhere comes something that makes you laugh in shameless delight. Does that make you an out-and-out megalomaniac, explaining why you have no friends? Are you a colossus of self-delusion? Or does it mean you’re doing OK?
Let’s turn to Mel Brooks for an answer. In the recent documentary The 99 Year Old Man, he says repeatedly that making people laugh was the sum total of his goal. He himself is great at keeping a straight face but that straight face is hiding laughter inside. You can see it in his eyes. And if you go to YouTube and watch outtakes from Young Frankenstein you can witness Gene Wilder and company bursting into uncontrollable laughter in the middle of scenes. They can’t help it. What they’re doing is just too funny. They’re actors and audience in those moments.
Same! Although I’m not on a Hollywood soundstage with Teri Garr and Marty Feldman, but all alone in my office. Fiction writers are like garment workers passing material through a shaping machine. The machine is their technique. The material is whatever their imagination comes up with. That’s where the fun begins. The material has to advance the story—especially important in crime fiction—but while it’s doing that, it can offer up surprises. This is all happening in your own mind, of course, but sometimes it feels like the source is another mind.
I love when that happens! And I never ignore these offerings. Words like inspiration and creativity make me uncomfortable, so let’s go with magic. Writing is hard work—remember high school or college and those dreaded 1500-word essays? For a professional, every day is like that. The magical jolts from out of the blue make it all worthwhile. They’re not always funny. They can be scary or heartbreaking. They often make you push things a little farther than you’d planned. But funny is best. You’re the entertainer and the entertained at the same time.
My Chet and Bernie mysteries have the same narrative format as the Sherlock Holmes books where the detective’s sidekick tells the story in the first person. Bernie is the detective. Chet is the sidekick. He’s a dog, specifically a K-9 school dropout. Yes, a dog, but not a talking dog. He’s as canine as I can make him. The other mind I just mentioned? That’s him. Here, he and Bernie are in search of a missing cat who’s an internet sensation in CAT ON A HOT TIN WOOF, the latest in the series (which can be read in any order):
“Let’s start by letting Chet get a whiff of something of Miss Kitty’s,” Bernie said.
“How about the pillow?” said Evelyn.
“Perfect.” Bernie picked up the pillow and held it in front of me. This was about learning Missy Kitty’s scent? We were swimming in a sea of it. Was it possible they weren’t smelling it at all? You had to feel sorry for humans sometimes. What were nose jobs, by the way? Many humans of my acquaintance—Leda, for example—had had nose jobs but it never seemed to improve their smelling ability. What was the point? I pulled back, perhaps a bit stiffly but perfectly polite.
The whole nose job part, plus the “stiffly but perfectly polite” sign-off came wholly from out of the blue. I was just a stenographer. A laughing one. Laughing out loud all by myself in my office, maybe looking unhinged to any observer, of which, happily, there are none.
Whatever the hell this is, it’s been with me from an early age. My mother, who taught me most of what I know about writing, died young, before I became a writer. Not long before he died my dad—who lived a long, healthy life—said, “Did I ever tell you about the day your mom decided you might be a writer?” “No, Dad, what are we waiting for?”
Here’s the story. PreK. We go for a walk every day. On this particular day it was raining so the walk was indoors. But we were supposed to pretend we were outdoors. For example, the teacher would say, “Stop sign ahead,” and we would all clomp to a stop. So we’re walking and walking in the classroom and she says, “Kids! Here’s a puddle.” All the kids walk around this “puddle” except for me. I go straight through.
Teacher: “Petey, what about the puddle?”
Petey: “I’ve got boots on.”
When mom came to pick me up the teacher told her this story. That’s the day my dad was talking about. My mom knew in a flash what she had on her hands: an attention-seeking smartass trouble-maker. In other words, the foundational DNA of any successful litterateur. Maybe it should be inscribed on my gravestone. “I’ve got boots on.” And there you go. When I began this paragraph I had no idea the gravestone thing was coming. Ha! I’ve done it again.
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