At 09:35 AM 10/28/98 -0500, Matthew Uzzle wrote:
>Why are there so many conservative, sanctimonious individuals out there?
>
>Of course you should rent the video so that you can judge for yourself the
>similarities between Pryor and Twain.  Having seen many of Pryor videos and
>being very familiar with Twain, I fall short when trying to pinpoint
>similarities.  Judged on each of their respective merits, both were genius
>in their day and both are quite funny.
>
>

Well, "conservative" and "sanctimonious" are not necessarily synonymous, and
second, even if they were, the point you are making seems irrelevant to me
since the discussion was whether the kind of raunchy "humor" practised by
(say) Pryor is on the level with real humor, and moreover, even approaches
Twain's literary and comic genius.

In short, it has nothing to do with daintiness, but rather with quality.
Being raunchy or dirty, or striking political attitudes in one's putative
humor, does not entail that one is funny, or even ever will be.

I also think that conservativism and a certain degree of "sanctity" ended up
helping Twain's humor, so that he avoided for the most part writing too much
of that silly and sophomoric kind of *1601* comedy.

Regarding your second point, it's nice to hear someone remark on the lack of
similarity between Twain's humor and Pryor's, and that each should be judged
on their respective merits.  Which naturally leads to the question at issue
on this somewhat unresponsive list.  Given the incongruity between Twain and
Pryor, why was Pryor given the MARK TWAIN prize?  (A Rabelais prize would
seem more appropriate, for instance.)

I'm with those who think a MARK TWAIN prize should be awarded to those
humorists who can span both the arena of stand-up comedy and also the arena
of literary comedy -- with emphasis on the latter.  A prize geared more to
stand up comedy makes it look as though Twain were just a funny man, a
clown, a jester, a mere joker, and not a literary artist first and foremost.

Sincerely,

Vern
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