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PARTISAN REVIEW
ning. Correspondingly , the press is constructed and read according
to the principles of reversed order. Freedom is turned into slavery,
as if it were the most natural thing, peace becomes war, and poverty
is transformed into wealth.
On this broad base, the joke is created .
It
is like the forecast
regarding life under communism. Everyone will have a private heli–
copter and a television set. On television you will see that people are
buying flour in Tula, a provincial Russian town . You will get into
your helicopter and go to Tula for flour . . . .
It
is axiomatic that the joke's most important part is its unex–
pected crowning ending, which begins the actual process of composi–
tion , proceeding from the end back to the beginning. In this respect ,
communism, as the ideal tailpiece of world history , offers many pos–
sibilities . Following common logic , one can start at the end and go
back to the beginning- from the ideal, fantastic goal to its crude
transformation into contemporary reality.
Jokes arise at the point where the everyday intersects with the
supernatural, the trivial with the incredible, the near and familiar
with the distant and foreign. The zone of total alienation is not fertile
ground for the joke, nor is too much proximity, nor is the narrator's
identification with the hero of the story. Perhaps this can help ex–
plain the peculiar character of joking hyperbole: the hyperbolization
of the small and petty. Modeled on school physics problems, all the
jolly riddles about defining "super-noise," "super-greed ," "super–
impudence," "super-induction," and so on, fall into this category.
Another example is the competition among nations about which is
the most inventive in such areas as deftness, boldness, durability,
feminine charm, hunger, dreadful suffering, for that matter, in
anything. The competition is usually won by a Jew - a Jew is eating
a bowl of compote with a fly in it; he eats the fruit and sells the fly to
a Chinese or a Russian ; he wins first prize at the International
Hunger Competition, having painted an emaciated buttocks with its
crucial aperture tightly covered by a cobweb. In these examples , a
petty topic or object has been represented in its supernatural aspect,
without ceasing to be petty.
Correspondingly, certain kinds of characters and classes of peo–
ple have become heroes and stereotypes of the jokes . They occupy a
special position, although it is close to ours .
It
is simultaneously high
and low, different from our own position, and includes our sense of
self both as primordial "self" and the imaginary "other ." This paradox–
ical relationship is the source of a large series ofjokes about generals,
drunkards, crazy people, Jews, mothers-in-law, women cheating on
