Getting Serious About Humor: Hyperbole, the Risky Literary Device

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 "I have a nagging fear that children's literature suffers from a slightly higher crud percentage than literature as a whole...maybe more like 94.7 percent of kids' books are crud." Mac Barnett, National Ambassador for Young People's Literature in Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children

If you are unfamiliar with what I think someone called crudgate earlier this month, congratulations! While you missed out on some serious discussions of how the above quote passed around on social media offended writers some of whom feared its impact on children's literature, you also missed out on seeing the following types of personal responses directed toward the author who wrote it: 

• I never cared for the guy.
• He's a snob. (Unclear why. Maybe because he namedrops people like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and George Saunders in his book?)
• What a dick. (I saw more than one dick-related comment.)
• It's mainly white women defending him. 
• He is not part of our community.  (I saw a number of community-type comments and couldn't help reading the word "community" as "club." Now I will always wonder how a community is different from a club.)
• He should resign. He should be impeached. 
• Asshole.
• His publisher should pull his book. (The person who said this on an email digest also said she discussed with a librarian having a copy of Make Believe pulled from circulation. The librarian had to point out that that would be censorship.)

This was all coming very soon after Make Believe, a short book made up of three rambling, somewhat didactic essays romanticizing children and children's literature, was released in this country. Many of the people making these comments said they hadn't read it. Many said they wouldn't read it. 

In a statement to School Library Journal, Barnett said the following: 

"Thank you for the opportunity to respond. First of all, I want to acknowledge the passage I wrote is hurtful, especially to people who work hard making books for kids. I understand why people are upset and feel betrayed. In trying to make a point, I got hyperbolic and glib. I was wrong. I'm truly sorry."

Spoiler alert: Many people did not accept that apology and the controversy raged on. It is still raging on. People may write books about this someday. I would watch the movie.

But you know what? In all that was said about this issue, I didn't see anything about hyperbole, even though it comes up in Barnett's apology and is the literary device that got this ball rolling. So let's fix that. 

Let's talk hyperbole. 

Definition

Definitions are a clichéd addition to an essay, but here we go, anyway.

Hyperbole--The use of exaggeration, which the author does not expect to be believed, to create an effect, often involving humor. Gauthier Law of Hyperbole

When hyperbole is used for comedy, it is related to the incongruity theory of humor, which states that the clash of unrelated ideas is funny. What is exaggerated clashes with something, if only what it is exaggerating. Aristotle is supposed to have recognized incongruity as a type of humor. Corollary to the Gauthier Law of Hyperbole

I mention Aristotle in the corollary not to namedrop, since I haven't read him, myself, but to point out that I'm not making this crud up. Aristotle did. Blame him.

Personal Experience

Yes, personal experience is another cliché of essays these days, but that's not stopping me.

Back before 2008, when I still had a nice little mid-list, middle grade author thing going, a Booklist reviewer said of my book, A Year with Butch and Spike, "Gauthier demonstrates a real talent here for humorous hyperbole and episodic classroom comedy."

They made hyperbole sound like a good thing. At least, I thought so at the time.

Maybe thirty years later, I wrote a very hyperbolic piece called What We All Want to Say to That One Out-of-Touch Grandfather at the Playground that was published at Frazzled, a parent humor site on the Medium platform. The humor was developed around the idea that older men spent much of their adult lives in work situations that did not prepare them for the rigors of taking their grandchildren to the playground. Among the personal responses directed toward me in response to it:

• I was a bigoted anti-male feminist and should mind my "f***ing business." I believe this was the first comment I got.
• I was a sanctimonious shit sack.
• I sounded like an ass.
• I was smug, dumb, superior. 

It went on for days!

Hyperbole is risky. 

Barnett Also Has a History with Hyperbole

I've seen Mac Barnett described on BlueSky by fans of Make Believe as being funny or at least wry, which is like funny but tends to be more of an attitude. It's a form of humor that applies a twist to something for a subtle, comic effect. Having now read a few of his picture books and a middle grade novel he co-wrote with Jory John (I hadn't heard of Barnett before all this started), I would place him in the wry category.

The picture books were lost on me, but I am not a picture book person and can't address them in any meaningful way. Or at all. The middle grade novel, however, The Terrible Two, is definitely hyperbolic, filled with stuff about kids pulling over-the-top and unbelievable pranks. Reviewers found it funny and it was successful enough to lead to a sequel.

At that point, Barnett may have thought, like me in my middle-grade writer days, that hyperbole is a good thing.

The Major Problem with Hyperbole

Hyperbole is a form of situational humor. It is not your classic one-liner, which, by the way, would probably work very well as a pull quote. Instead, hyperbole comes out of a situation. You have to understand the situation--what is being exaggerated--to understand the exaggeration.

Sometimes what is being exaggerated will be understood by the audience because of the audience members' cultural knowledge. For instance, in The Terrible Two Barnett and Jory could assume their audience would understand the hyperbole behind an elementary school principal finding his car on the steps in front of the school, because child readers know that kids don't drive and wouldn't be able to get a car up steps, if they could. (The authors explain how it was done at the end of the story.)

But sometimes the exaggeration used with hyperbole requires a lot more build-up, which was the case with "I have a nagging fear that children's literature suffers from a slightly higher crud percentage than literature as a whole...maybe more like 94.7 percent of kids' books are crud." That line got a lot of build-up in the book, but not in the pull quote. What's more, not only does the pull quote not include the build-up, it eliminated a section that would have tipped readers off that there was missing build-up.

What Barnett actually said was not

"I have a nagging fear that children's literature suffers from a slightly higher crud percentage than literature as a whole...maybe more like 94.7 percent of kids' books are crud."

but 

"I have a nagging fear that children's literature suffers from a slightly higher crud percentage than literature as a whole. So I now offer Barnett's Addendum to Sturgeon's Law: Maybe more like 94.7 percent of kids' books are crud."

This is still not funny as a pull quote. Readers still won't get the hyperbole Barnett was trying for. But they would have realized something was going on here. If they hadn't heard of it, they would have wondered what the hell is Sturgeon's Law?

What the Hell is Sturgeon's Law?

Anyone who read Make Believe would have had access to the page before the one the pull quote appears on. On it was an account of how science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon dealt with complaints about the quality of his genre back in the 1950s. Among the complaints? "...ninety percent of sf is crud." Sturgeon's response, "Ninety percent of everything is crud." 

That became Sturgeon's Law. It is so well-known in some circles that you can find it on memes and t-shirts. Usually on t-shirts "crud" is replaced with "crap."

After addressing Sturgeon's Law, Barnett begins his very next paragraph with a transitional sentence. "It's tempting, when explaining the abundance of bad kids' books, to just shout "Sturgeon's Law!" and move on." 

And then he goes on to what became the now infamous pull quote.

A Sort-of-Joke That Didn't Land

Some people who knew Barnett was referring to Sturgeon's Law questioned where Sturgeon got his ninety percent figure when he said "Ninety percent of everything is crud." Where's his evidence? I can't speak for the man, of course, but my wild guess is he was using hyperbole. 

Other readers wondered why, if Barnett was referring to Sturgeon's Law, he said ninety-four percent of children's lit is crud when Sturgeon said only ninety percent of everything is crud. Upping the number looks like hyperbole to me. More exaggeration. If ninety percent of everything is crud is funny, ninety-four percent will be even funnier!

Does knowing the build-up for this hyperbole now make this quote a knee-slapper? No. The best this was ever going to be was wry. It appears in an essay that argues that "lots of children's books are bad..." and ends with "...we'd better do our best to make some good kids' books." The twist on Sturgeon's Law may have been an attempt to lighten that message. Instead, it made it worse.

Hyperbole is Risky

Both Barnett and I had better luck using hyperbole in writing for children than for adults. Does that mean that children enjoy hyperbole and adults don't? Or do the adults who control every aspect of what children read (see Barnett on this) believe they do, so it gets into children's books and is well received  by the adults who review them no matter what kids think of it? 

Unlike child readers, adults do control every aspect of what we read. Additionally, we get to respond to what we read in a more direct way, on social media and in comments. As noted above, not all adults responded well to our use of hyperbole in writing for them.

For me, that didn't matter a whole lot. The main purpose of a humor piece is to be a humor piece. If there is some underlying idea being conveyed, it’s secondary to the humor, it supports the humor. Readers don't spend a lot of time on humor, whether they like it or not. "Ha-ha" or "boo," and then they move on.

For Barnett, his use of hyperbole mattered. The main purpose of an expository or persuasive essay is to explain or persuade, to make a point, as Barnett said himself in his apology, and not to be funny. If there’s humor, it’s secondary to the point, it supports the point. In an essay, everything needs to support the point.

I, myself, dropped the line "And they say serious literary criticism is dead!" in this essay that I originally used after the list of types of comments I saw Barnett receiving. I decided it didn't support what I wanted to be a meditation on hyperbole. The literary criticism line was about how we address those we don't agree with, and that's a totally different thing. Stay on task, Gail! 

Whether or not Barnett should have used Sturgeon's Law in his essay depends on what he was trying to do with it, how it supported the point he was trying to make. If he'd dropped it before publication, his argument that "lots of children's books are bad" might not have raised the same kind of ire that "94.7 percent of kids' books are crud" did. 

It probably wouldn't have made as attention-grabbing a pull-quote, either. 

Seeking Time: A Sort of Hiatus for Original Content

I'll be cutting back on blogging for probably the next six weeks while I help out a couple of family members. I have two blog posts in progress that I want to finish up and publish, because they are somewhat timely, and this cut back may lead to a Seeking Time post this summer, because what doesn't lead to a Seeking Time post? 

For the immediate future, though, I want to use what work time I have for nonblogging activity.

Looking forward to beginning here again.

The Reading History Project: What Are We Doing for Mother's Day? Mothers as Activists!

Mother's Day, in my humble opinion, can be fun if you have young children. Otherwise:

1. It's an opportunity for a lot of marketing.
2. It causes stress for moms over whether or not their kids will remember to observe the day for them and stress for kids, adult ones, anyway, over what they should do to observe it for mom.
3. It's a grieving time for many people who have lost their mothers or are in the process of doing so.
4. It's one more reminder for mothers who have lost children of what is gone from their lives. 

For some people, Mother's Day doesn't have a lot to recommend it.

The History of Mother's Day

Yesterday historian Heather Cox Richardson tipped her readers off to the fact that the originators of Mother's Day were interested in something else. She's supported by The History of Mother's Day: From Global Peace to Greeting Cards at The Smithsonian American Women's History Museum.

In 1870, Julia Ward Howe, responding to the American Civil War that had ended just a few years earlier and the Franco-Prussian War that was then being fought in Europe, tried to create an annual Mother's Day for peace. In the early twentieth century Anna Jarvis was successful in creating Mother's Day to honor her mother, Ann Jarvis, who just happened to have been involved with a mid-nineteenth century public health movement. She organized Mother's Work Days to, among other hygiene-related activities, collect trash. 

Mother's Day came out of reform movements.

Bringing Mother's Day Back to Activism?

Though a number of states allowed women to vote in local school elections in the nineteenth century, they couldn't vote on the national level. They had to find a different way to have a voice and did so by becoming involved with reform movements, the most prominent being abolition, suffrage, and temperance. 

I'm sort of over Mother's Day, myself. I feel it's a young woman's game. But this idea of Mother's Day and reform or activism brings a whole new level of interest for me. 

From now on, I actually will be thinking about doing something for Mother's Day. It may not be with any kids, though.

 

Seeking Time: The Unit System

Very early in my seeking time journey someone told me about an article in Poets & Writers by author Ellen Sussman in which she described something she called the unit system. 

She said she worked for 45 minutes of an hour, then spent 15minutes doing something that wasn't work-related. Then she'd go back to work for another 45 minutes. And repeat. The benefits, she said, were: 

1. During the 45 minutes that she worked, it was easier to stay on task when she knew she'd have a break in another X minutes
2. During those 15 minutes that she wasn't working, her "unconscious thought" could often continue working on a writing problem, which was helpful when she went back to work.

She had some science to support this work, research related to graduate students managing time for writing. 

Again, all you did was work for 45 minutes, break for 15 and then begin writing again for another 45 minutes. Later I would realize I am a minimalist. I love how minimal this work method is.

Like the Unit System

Over the years, I kept stumbling upon articles supporting working in what might be described as sprints or short units of time, like Sussman's plan.

• A study suggested recognizing "that you have a finite attentional window––and structure your workflow to be congruent with that capacity. This speaks to how we’ve talked about how work is a series of sprints––and to be our most productive and most creative, we need to unplug throughout our workdays." 
• Tony Scwartz recommends working in 90-minute blocks because at the end of ninety minutes, "we reach the limits of our capacity to work at the highest level." Then we need to renew. At his blog, Schwartz referred to the work pattern he suggests--90 minutes of work, followed by a break--as "mental intervals." Like the unit system but different.
• The fairly well-known Pomodoro Technique recommends working in 25-minute units of time, taking a 5-minute break, then going back to work for 25 minutes. Like 45-minutes but different.

All the above involve simple strategies. 

The Value of Small Units of Time 

For years I used the unit system daily. I will admit, the 45-minutes on, 15-minutes off system has failed for me the last few years. I still embrace small work periods, though, even without following a work, break, work, break pattern, for two reasons.

First, the idea that we should work in 90-minute, 45-minute, or even 25-minute units means we have accepted that we can do something in small amounts of time. We don't need to have a summer to write. We don't need a formal retreat, a three-day weekend, a day.  

In The Heartbreaking Ingenuity of the Mother-Writer at Literary Hub Olivia Campbell quotes author Alison Stine:  

"You can't be precious about writing if you have kids. You can't be fastidious or fussy. You can't always write at the cool coffee shop. I applied for a NEA grant at Burger King: They had free wifi and an indoor children's playground...I wrote my most recent novel draft during my son's remote school Zoom meetings. My first novel, Road Out Of Water, I wrote at the local skatepark, where my son belonged to the skate club."

Stine recognized that she could adapt small units of time to use for writing. It's not unusual to read of mothers who write working like this.

Additionally, psychologist Kelly McGonigal has talked about the what-the-hell-effect, in which people give up on a project because they feel bad about their lack of success with it. As in "It's 2:30, and I haven't written yet. The day is shot. What the hell. I'll try again tomorrow." With the unit system, we don't have to feel bad about ourselves for not starting work yet, because we realize at 2:30 we have two and a half hours before dinner to work. Or we have an hour before the kids get home. Even a half an hour can be helpful.  

I like the psychological impact of the unit system. It isn't just a way of managing time. It's a way of thinking about it. The thinking aspect becomes part of our view of ourselves and how we work.

That's the part that's kept me using it and maybe even kept me writing.

 

Friday Done List May 8

 A good week. At least, it feels like a good week.

Goal 1. Write And Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor 

• Truly worked on a humor piece.
• Finished a blog post that is going to become an essay.
• Worked on an essay for a project.
• Took a workshop on literary submissions in preparation for submitting a new short story.
• Finished reading an excellent history book for The Reading History Project.
• Started reading another history book for The Reading History Project.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Published a blog post. Will publish another this weekend.
• Promoted said blog post. 
• Spent way too much time reading on social media about Mac Barnett, whom I hadn't heard of this time last week.

Goal 3. Submit Book-length Work to Agents and Editors 

• Received a rejection. Rejection means you're working!

The Story Behind the Story: Minimum Word Counts

Frontier Myth vs. Frontier Reality was published this weekend at Books Are Our Superpower after a request for editing because the publication has an 800-word minimum for its essays. I believe the essay I sent was originally in the low 600s or 700s. It's up over 900 words now.

As far as short nonfiction is concerned, I've become a bit of a minimalist writer. I like the traditional essay in which writers begin with a thesis statement and describe the support they'll be discussing for it later on. 

My impression is that the Medium platform, itself, favors longer writing. (You may not be able to read all that article. You'll have to trust me.) Up over a thousand words and more, which, actually, isn't outrageously long. However, a lot of medium writers are new to writing, and they may not be that knowledgeable about how to put an essay together. They take their time getting to the point and the more words they use, the longer they take. 

I'm also a minimalist reader. I like writers to get to the point sooner rather than later.

The point I'm getting to here, is that in spite of my being a minimalist writer, I feel the revision I did because the publication asked for more words was better than what I originally sent them. Why is that, Gail? Well, in order to add words, I:

• Added details that supported the point of one of the paragraphs.
• Included a thread relating to "our history" that wasn't originally there.

I felt both those changes enhanced the essay. So what I'll try to do in the future is consider whether I've gone so short on the word count that I haven't included important material

Friday Done List May 1

I read an article about a woman who tracked every hour she spent writing for six months. What she found out was that a lot of the time she wasn't writing, she was doing writing-related activities. My first response was, Oh, no, I am never tracking my writing. That is asking for misery. But now I'm thinking, wait. There is a lot of writing adjacent work that writers need to do. No judgement!

Goal 1. Write And Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor 

• An essay submission I'd made last week came back requesting edits. Essentially, it was too short. So I did a rewrite that increased the word count. I think the essay was actually better afterward.
• The essay above has been approved for publication.
• I finished two blog posts that I plan to revise to submit as essays.
• I set up some files for the essays I plan to write from blog posts.
• I took a workshop yesterday that wasn't what I was expecting. However, I came away with some thoughts regarding the short story I recently finished and made a couple of changes to it today.
• I did just the tiniest bit of work on some humor pieces.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• I published a blog post last Saturday, which I also promoted.
• I wrote and published another blog post, which I also promoted.
• Read an article about AI and another about marketing books, for what good that will do me.

Goal 4. Begin Some Writing on the 19th Century Novel Idea

• Made some notes on this.