Humor for Healing

by

Lauren Roberts

Anne Michael, in her “Seasoned Lightly” column this week, writes about her need for certain kinds of books when feeling drowned by waves of news-reported traumas that crush her spirit. I know how she feels, though I do not own a television (and haven’t for more than 18 years) nor do I listen to radio news. And I usually skim or even skip over the hard news section of the New York Times.

It’s not because I am uninterested, but because I am too affected by pain, rage, hate, war, murder, political sleaze, business crapola and general sordidness to dwell in it by reading, hearing or seeing it on a daily basis. To me, it’s a poison I choose not to self-administer because I know that if I allow myself to become emotionally involved in things about which I can do nothing that all I gain is a guaranteed path to my own helpless rage and pain. So after many years of political and social work in the larger arenas (and repeatedly thinking this time we will make a difference), I have learned to live by the motto: Think Globally, Act Locally. In other words, I change what I can where I live and don’t worry about the rest.

I can’t change the illiteracy rates in the U.S., but I have taught a woman to read through my library’s Adult Literacy program. I cannot protect all animals from abuse and homelessness, but I do work with cat rescue organizations in my town (and have adopted three formerly homeless ones). I cannot stop worldwide rape and domestic violence, but I can support the local Rape Crisis Center and Shelter for Abused Women. What I have changed is my focus from worldwide to local, and I now make a real difference.

Sometimes, though, even that small portion of suffering can, in combination with work and other difficulties, leave me feeling depressed. The past couple of weeks have been  like that. So, like Anne, I have turned to certain books for emotional renewal.

Which books they are varies, depends on my mood. But they are always previously read ones. I need the comfort of familiarity rather than the surprise of discovery. So I seek out the literary equivalent of a grilled cheese sandwich, a familiar and soothing treat.

Van Gogh is my favorite artist so sometimes I choose a book where I can immerse myself in his powerful art, reminding myself beauty can be birthed in personal agony. I also find renewal in collections of images of that brilliant photographer of Parisian nights, Brassai, who merges dark and light so carefully that it acts as a metaphor for how I should direct my own life. Perhaps the most healing of image-based books are those with fantastic astronomical images. Paging through them, savoring nebulas and galaxy clusters and comets and red giants and supernovas and cosmic winds is like grasping hold of some enchanted place where I can dwell for a while.

I find peace in these books that take me into other places and times and spaces, into beauty and serenity and things larger than me. But I also gravitate toward adventure books such as Into Thin Air, the oddly endearing Antarctica on a Plate or even the slightly whiny but amusing A Walk in the Woods. These restore my spirit and commitment because they came out of personal challenges, and their stories offer a kind of “been there” spirit.

This time, though, I am feel a need for nothing more challenging than easygoing nonfiction stories such as  those found in Smell It Like It Is, The Latest Wrinkle, 1-800-Am-I-Nuts? and Stiff Upper Lip.

You’ve probably never heard of these books, but they are worth searching out if you enjoy homespun humor. With the exception of The Latest Wrinkle they are out of print. What appeals to me about them is that they are relatively short books with even shorter pieces that detail pieces of daily life in amusing, intriguing and sometimes poignant ways. Considering that human life is, for the most part, made up of these elements the books are perhaps more reflective of reality than *important* books. They speak to me as a friend would, in simple I-know-what-you-are-feeling terms.

Now bear in mind that I am not placing simple above important, either. Good readers are and should be dedicated to learning, exploring and challenging themselves in their choices. Yet there are times when even the most erudite reader needs a drink of literary tap water. For me—and maybe for you—these can fulfill that thirst.

Smell It Like It Is (Fithian Press) is a collection of the columns Kathryn McKenzie Nichols wrote for The Dispatch, the daily paper for the town of Gilroy, California, otherwise known as the garlic capital of the world. It’s a charming slice-of-life book, each column a look at a part of what made up life in that aromatic corner of the world between 1987 and 1991.

Nichols is fairly typical of small-town newspaper columnists, her writing a bit rough around the edges but with a strong dose of neighborliness. “One of the best things about being a columnist,” she writes, “. . . is it gives you a great excuse to be nosy. Anything you’re intrigued by is fair game for investigation.” She’s right, and it makes for appealing reading even if you’re nowhere near her town.

In “Where Garlic Gets Its Start,” she details for the benefit of those who smell it daily but have never investigated its processing details just what happens to the stinking rose after it is picked. In “Never Trust a Yuppie in a Cowboy Hat,” Nichols provides a hilarious insider’s view of the annual Garlic Festival, and in another, she tells of her search for the rumored garlic swimming pool.

Her interests span more than garlic, however. She writes of one person’s life in the aftermath of an earthquake; of the odd quiet of a soon-to-be-opened outlet center; of the frustration of trying to use an ATM at the local fast food place; of a man whose collection of celebrity knickknacks rivals his knowledge of celebrity trivia. She interviews a writer going blind; memorializes a country store that is losing customers to its mega-mall competitors; rides in and writes about a pink Cadillac limo; her alternating love-hate affair with computers; a timeshare-from-hell presentation she and her husband were sucked into attending; a local stretch of road informally and rather gruesomely known as Blood Alley; and a surprisingly touching piece entitled “Tiny Tim Takes a Bow.” If this sounds like a good distraction to you, AddALL currently has 14 copies ranging in price from $1.57 to a ridiculous $40.94.

The Latest Wrinkle (Manifest Publications; $9.95) is also a collection of small town newspaper columns by author and publisher Virginia Cornell. “I remember the exact moment when I gave up, and admitted to being a SENIOR,” begins the first essay. It happened at a McDonald’s when the cashier looked at her, then pointed to a sign noting that “Senior Coffee” was 25 cents. “For just a second,” she wrote, “I pondered the fact that I was merely 59. Would she demand an ID?”

Cornell is originally from Kansas, lived in Colorado and then in Carpinteria, California. She raised three children, earned a doctorate, ran a ski lodge, owned a weekly newspaper, raised cherimoyas and avocados on a ranch, owned cats and dogs, started a successful publishing company, and survived a divorce, remarriage and widowhood. Many of these life experiences form the nucleus of her columns—happy, sad, funny, painful.

Do any of you remember when shopping used to be something for which you dressed up and went downtown? Cornell does, and in “Sometimes a great notion,” she reminisces about her childhood trips with her mother to department stores for sewing supplies. A humorous piece on cleaning out closets turns into a poignant memorial to her deceased mother and a friend who was killed. She moves (as life does) from the odd sensation of pollinating cherimoya blossoms to her husband’s curmudgeonly ways to her worst moment as a parent to an absolutely hilarious piece on flannel.

The underlying theme that runs through this book comes out when Cornell notes: “You can laugh or  you can cry when things don’t go as planned. Some where along the road, everybody comes to the same fork in the same road. You decide to steer toward Tragedy or Comedy . . . I choose to go right on laughing . . .” This book is like one of those boxes you open on Christmas morning, thinking you know what it’s about and while it’s okay, it’s not what you really wanted. Then you find out you are wrong. It’s exactly what you needed.

1-800-Am-I-Nuts? And Other True Tales of the Nineties is one of two books published by humorist Margo Kaufman before she died of breast cancer at age 46 in 2000. A former columnist for the Los Angeles Times and Pug Talk magazine, her work also appeared in the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, USA Today and many other publications.

As with the previously mentioned books, this one is a compilation of zany explorations of daily life occurrences. Kaufman possessed in abundance the ability to rip the craziness out of the mundane and make it funny. In “Finding Love Among the Ruins,” a piece on living with a slob, she remembered her then-boyfriend living amid “stacks of yellowing newspapers, piles of sporting goods, and eighteen days’ worth of dirty laundry . . . by our fifth date, I found myself cleaning in self-defense, afraid of what might come out of the kitchen sink in the middle of the night.”

She roamed over an unusually wide landscape of topics, often stopping to simultaneously praise, admire and make fun. In “Money, Honey,” she noted how she and Duke had moved from vastly different financial values—“My mother’s motto was ‘The best is none too good’. Duke’s father taught him he would go to hell if he paid retail.”—to the point where they “no longer go to war over sums under twenty-five dollars.” Their differences are the basis for much of what she wrote about: travel, the wedding, grocery shopping, home improvement, friendships, communication, illness.  

“In my next life,” she wrote, “I want to be perfect. I want to be the kind of woman who can wear a white sweater to a power lunch without spilling soy sauce. Who has only good hair days. Who has never walked into an important presentation trailing a train of toilet paper from her shoe. In this life, no matter how hard I try, I look, well, lived-in.” Well, maybe she did. But in my opinion, it’s a good thing since perfect women rarely have the kind of experiences worth writing about. AddALL has 14 copies of this book ranging in price from $2.98 to $11.95.

Stiff Upper Lip: Life Among the Diplomats by famous novelist Lawrence Durrell, is different from the other books in that it is older (1958) with a humor so dry it’s a wonder the pages don’t crack. It pokes fun at upper British class mannerisms, language and customs. I had never heard of it before I stumbled across it at a nonprofit book sale many years ago. The cover illustration made me laugh out loud so I opened it to find one of the funniest satires I’ve come across. The fact that it is nearly half a century old—and therefore quaint as well as amusing—is a plus.

Esprit de Corps was the first book about the hazards of diplomatic life after the sun set on the British Empire. I haven’t read that, but I don’t think you need to do so in order to enjoy Stiff Upper Lip, its follow-up. (It does help, though, to have some knowledge of upper class “Britishisms” even if only through BBC presentations on PBS.)

In wonderfully formal language that lends a sense of ridiculousness, Durrell writes of experiences and situations that lend themselves to tongue-in-cheek spoofing. In “If Garlic be the Food of Love . . .” he writes about “table decorations which made that otherwise fairly festive board look like an illustration from the Jungle Books. One could hardly carry a fork to one’s mouth without biting off a piece of fern by mistake.”

And when an attaché makes the mistake of including garlic in some of the dishes for the most important diplomatic event of the year, the resulting lecture is a masterpiece of barely controlled but perfectly spoken anger. In part it reads: “Surely you know that to feed a Naval Attaché garlic is like stoking a coke furnace with dead rats? You did not know, I suppose, that he was due to lecture to the Sea Wolves on Temperance and Self-Denial at sea? He created a very poor impression in a very short time. The wretch now fears court-martial . . . [and] I was expected to read the Lesson at a Memorial Service in the British Baptist Chapel which is notoriously cramped and ill-ventilated. How did you think I felt when I saw the first two rows of the congregation swaying like ripened wheat in an east wind? How do you think I felt when it came to my turn to embrace the hapless widow? She was breathing as if she had slipped her fan belt.” How far we have come from such wonderfully eloquent rage to the uninspired obscenities of today.

I really do recommend this if you have sufficient knowledge of the era and class to appreciate the sophisticated lampooning. AddALL showed 27 titles ranging in price from $11.50 to $45.

None of these books would ever stir the soul of the Pulitzer Prize committee or win a Nobel Literary Prize. Yet what they have in common is a single shelf on the bookshelf in the hallway outside my bathroom. That, and the ability to refresh my perspective and my energy when the world threatens to drown me in its flood of tears.


Almost since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines have reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, 750 bookmarks and nearly 1,000 books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it