Fred's Book Club: Kind to be Cruel.

Good day, book lovers, and welcome to another Hump Day edition of the Humpback Writers, the book feature with the stupid Wednesday-related name. The writers probably don't have actual humps, but back in the early days of his career, today's writer probably would have pretended he did for physical comedy purposes. 

Throw your mind back to September 9, 1979. Now look on the New York Times best-seller list. What do you see? 

That is correct -- the first book by the world's hottest comedian, Steve Martin. I got this copy years later at the Strand in Manhattan, because one of my best friends was obsessed with it and I got curious. More about that later. 

Cruel Shoes is a collection of very short pieces, some fiction, some observational gags, some drawings, all joined to the amazing absurdist comedy that Martin had perfected over years of standup. It's nothing like most other comedian best-sellers (Alan King's Help! I'm a Prisoner in a Chinese Bakery; Jerry Seinfeld's SeinLanguage; Ray Romano's Everything and a Kite; and so on). It has more in common with John Lennon's free-form books In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works. But it's a lot funnier. It began life in 1977 as a small, limited edition book, but was reissued with a lot more material by Putnam in 1979. The 750 copies from that limited run are rather valuable now. 

Most comedians work with straight jokes; a few can work in weird, far-out stuff like Andy Kaufman. But Martin is the only one I know of who could do both at once, and shift gears rapidly. It's seen in this book; you follow along and think you're getting a sophisticated vibe, and suddenly there's a pratfall-level joke that's all the funnier because you expected something more esoteric. 

It's a hard book to quote because it is so awfully short, and I don't want to get in trouble for running whole pieces. But here are a few slices: 

The introduction:

You are walking down a country road. It is a quiet afternoon. You look up and far, far down the road you see someone walking toward you. You are surprised to have noticed someone so far away. But you keep walking, expecting nothing more than a friendly nod as you pass. He gets closer. You see he has bright orange hair. He is closer -- a white satin suit spotted with colored dots. Closer -- a painted white face and red lips. You and he are fifty yards apart. You, and a full-fledged clown holding a bicycle horn are twenty yards apart. You approach on the lonely country road. You nod. He honks and passes. 

 From "Turds":

The Turds never became accepted in this country because of their name. The Turds, or people from Turdsmania, were people of healthy stock. They were tall, with long, straight hair; the men robust, the women bold and beautiful. The first Turds arrived on these shores in fifteen eighty-nine, one year after the defeat of the Spanish Armada. They were unjustly blamed for the defeat of the Spanish Fleet when a Spanish admiral remarked, "No wonder we lost, we had a bunch of turds managing our cannons!" 

From the title story, "Cruel Shoes:"

Anna knew she had to have some new shoes today, and Carlo had helped her try on every pair in the store. Carlo spoke wearily, "Well, that's every pair of shoes in the place."

"Oh, you must have one more pair..."

"No, not one more pair.... Well, we have the cruel shoes, but no one would want..."

Anna interrupted, "Oh yes, let me see the cruel shoes!"

Spoiler alert: They are cruel, those shoes.

Martin followed this book with Pure Drivel in 1998, almost twenty years later, so he didn't exactly jam the shelves with comedic books after the success of Cruel Shoes. He has also written some novels, a kids' book, three plays and a musical, and of course screenplays galore (does anyone still say "galore"? In seventies mode here). But Cruel Shoes is the one that always stays with me. 

My friend, the obsessed one, says half-seriously that there's a lot of points to meditate on in Cruel Shoes. He finds many passages to be like a koan, a paradoxical or non sequitur-like statement to meditate upon for enlightenment. Like this from "What to Say When the Ducks Show Up":

Many people won't know what to say when the ducks show up, but I will. Maybe I'll say, "Oh ducks, oh ducks, oh ducks," or just "ducks wonderful ducks!" 

Or "The Vengeful Curtain Rod":

The story of the vengeful curtain rod is an exciting and dramatic tale told by the people who only say "hup hup" on the east coast of Borneo. The real facts are vague and misty, but the legend of the vengeful curtain rod as told by the people who only say "hup hup" goes like this:

"Hup hup hup hup hup hup hup hup hup hup hup."

I think my friend may have a point. Or, he may not be quite right. 

As someone who has worked in books for decades, I have to say the acknowledgments to this volume are the very best I have ever read. 

Yakkity yak yak yak yakkity yak yakkity yakkity yak yak yak yak yakkity yak yak yak yakkity.

Earlier this year, Martin wrote and starred in an animated version of the title story. I have not seen it yet. Does it have the depths of wonder and spirit that this book does? 

The only proper answer to that question is: Hup hup hup hup. Yakkity yak yak.