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Alors On Danse: Regarding humor



(10/10)


The Ultimate Deal is filled with love. But the novel often is a dark and lonely book. That was deliberate.


I am going to let you in on a little secret. The novel starts happy and stupid, that's the bait.


In Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, a book I read after finishing The Ultimate Deal, one of the problems of the human martian is that he cannot laugh, but

(SPOILERS):


SPOILERS

he starts laughing when a monkey beats up another monkey in the zoo; the second monkey runs away and beats up a third monkey. Then Mike, the protagonist, starts laughing hysterically and says:

QUOTE

"I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much . . . because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting."

There are some controversial ideas in the book, but Heinlein is pretty controversial. Despite that, I really liked the laughing quote.


My view is that humor horror carry similar genes, but that has been analyzed by more competent people than me. For instance, Stephen King points out that laughter and fear are well connected since almost always they are the only two animal sounds we make in our movies.


That is why The Ultimate Deal often turns dark. To appreciate the light, we need to compare it to the horrifying, the unjust, we need to feel the alien within the marrow of our bones. We need to be uncomfortable.


And afterwards, like Albert Camus, to laugh at the absurd. To disempower the absurd. To rebel against the absurd.


There is hope for humanity because there is one expression which is universal between cultures.


The smile


Sorry, lost the plot again. I should be promoting my book, and now I'm developing an undercooked philosophy about humour.


The Ultimate Deal often turns dark and lonely. But I hope that up to now you've realized I love jokes, no matter how stupid they are.


So if you want to find out if The Ultimate Deal is one big infinite jest or a merciless tragedy, you'll have to read it.


You can do so on Kindle.




Post-Scriptum:

This post is regarding humor. So let's not take ourselves too seriously, I'm linking to a lighter version of Alors on Danse:


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