Mr. Warner is the editor of McSweeney's Internet Tendency and the co-author, with Kevin Guilfoile, of the best-seller My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook by George W. Bush. His work has been published in McSweeney's quarterly journal, Modern Humorist, Salon.com, and Zoetrope, among others. He is also the author of Fondling Your Muse: Infallible Advice from a Published Author to the Writerly Aspirant. We thought he might also have some infallible wisdom on the subject of humor:

You are the Editor of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency as well as the author of several books, and supposedly a funny guy. Can you tell us a little bit about your job and experiences?

You’ll need to stop me when you’ve had enough since this is quite a tale. Where you say “job,” I say, “jobs,” since in addition to editing McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and writing my own books, I oversee a new humor imprint, TOW Books, that’s being released through F+W Publications, and in my spare time teach in the English Department at Clemson University.

As to experiences, my education is in English and creative writing, with undergraduate (U. of Illinois) and graduate degrees (an MFA from McNeese St. University) divided by a couple of years of work that are hardly worth mentioning (except to the judge overseeing my probation).

Post graduate school I went to work for a marketing research firm in Chicago (my home city) where I worked diligently helping our clients figure out how to sell more stuff. This was actually quite interesting work, and during that time I also published my first book (My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook of George W. Bush, co-authored with Kevin Guilfoile) and began to have some success writing on a freelance basis for various spots, but I always considered writing to be something I was very much going to do on the side, somewhere between hobby and second job.

But when my wife wanted to go back for additional training to specialize in her field (exotic dancing veterinary medicine), we left Chicago so she could do her internship and residency. At that time, I made a decision to get back into teaching, which I had done in graduate school, first for a year back at the U. of Illinois and then three years at Virginia Tech. Right before the start of my second year at VT, Dave Eggers asked me if I wanted to help out with the McSweeney’s website. At around the same time I signed a deal for my second book (Fondling Your Muse: Infallible Advice from a Published Author to the Writerly Aspirant) and the idea that I might actually be able to carve out some kind of career as a writer/editor began to seem possible.

Once my wife had completed her training in the intricate arts of the pole dance residency, she took a job in South Carolina. The logical thing seemed to go with her since we share a lot of stuff, so I hooked on with the job at Clemson and now keep trying to nudge the writing forward, bit by bit, while enjoying teaching more than I ever thought I could or would.

How important is it to make people laugh in your own work?

With editing the website, it’s actually the whole thing, the utmost importance. I often imagine our readership in their offices, or classroom, or wherever wanting some kind of quick break or relief and trusting that we’re able to provide that relief.

In teaching, I think it’s even more important. One of the subjects I teach is the decidedly un-hilarious Technical Writing, a required class for any student with a scientific or technical major and one they generally dread, but really will benefit from when they begin their professional lives. I do my best to lighten things up without compromising the instruction, and in my experience it helps in getting them to buy in to the drier material, which in turn makes it easier for them to learn. At least that’s what the student feedback tells me. I was burned in effigy on campus only twice last semester.

Humor has a tough crowd in terms of book sales. What advice would you offer to aspiring humorists who aren’t getting laughs (or dollars)?

I think you’re right about this, but my hope is that this is a changing trend. The above-mentioned imprint is my own rather small effort to try to prove this. My gut and my experience tell me that there’s a very healthy (if not blockbuster-level) audience for smart humor that gives credit to the audience for some level of intelligence. If you look at the success of something like The Daily Show, or even Borat, you see things that are, above all, culturally engaged -- the more you know about the world, the richer your appreciation of them is. However, I think if you look at much of what’s published in the humor section, you see books by already famous funny people, or dashed-off “product” meant to capitalize on a trend that is just not very good beyond the cover and concept.

Through McSweeney’s we collected two anthologies of humor that did sufficiently well in terms of sales to have our publisher (Vintage) invite us back for a third effort. Fondling Your Muse did well enough for F+W that they’re game to take a shot at publishing more humor books (albeit on a small scale).

There are market forces in all media that through no fault of individuals tend to dumb down the end result, so it’s not a mystery as to why audiences don’t flock in droves to humor books that have fallen prey to this phenomenon. But there are enough exceptions to the rule to encourage me. In addition to the previously mentioned personal examples, John Hodgman (he of The Daily Show and the Mac V. PC ads) wrote an unclassifiable, weird, hilarious book (The Areas of My Expertise) that did tremendously well because the book is a reflection of one brilliant mind working at the top of its powers. It’s not a mystery as to why people responded to the work. It’s a credit to John and his publisher that they didn’t try to spin it into something easily packaged for the sake of a marketing plan. I think the publishing industry in general looks at the success of some books and the failure of others as a mystery and humor is treated no differently.

That said, I think publishing humor can be decidedly less mysterious than other categories. The first and most important question for me, is, “does it make me laugh?” If it makes me laugh, it stands to make other people laugh. It’s not going to make every last person laugh, but this is actually a good thing since all humor depends on people who “get it” and those who don’t. This makes the people who do “get it” even more passionate about their enjoyment of the work. If the people who like it tell other people about it and they fall in love, now we’ve got a shot at some success.

So I think the advice for writers of humor is the same for writers of anything. Write it as best you can and trust it. If it’s not making you laugh, it won’t make others laugh either.

How do sites like McSweeney’s Internet Tendency encourage people in the literary field to lighten up?

I like to think that the site signals to people that writing humor can be taken as seriously as anything else and that there are outlets where they can have that work seen by audiences. (We’re certainly not alone in this trend.) I know for me that when I was a reader of the site long before I started doing the editing job that it gave me a kind of permission to be playful. In graduate school I used to write very earnest, Raymond Carver-style short stories that were very very bad because as much as I liked Carver, his aesthetic just wasn’t mine. Once I realized there were places like McSweeney’s that might publish less (overtly) serious types of writing, it really freed me up to give a shot at exploring that voice. It just so happens that that voice came more naturally to me as a writer. My hope is that the site continues to do that for others.

Do you ever wake up and feel like you don’t have any “funny bones” left?

As I get older, I wake up and feel all my bones, though they’re more creaky than funny. Editing the website and now the imprint is actually a really good recipe for recharging the funny bone. Often I don’t feel like I have anything funny to say, but invariably if I read something that makes me laugh, I get encouraged to try. This happened very recently. I’m working on a book that’s due Aug. 1st and had been feeling a bit burned out and unhappy with what I was writing. At around the same time I saw the advance copies for the first two books for the imprint and started reading them. I hadn’t seen them for three or four months, so I was distant enough from the editing work to be surprised by them again and I found myself laughing really hard. The quality of the work that these other writers (Jason Roeder and Sarah Walker) had produced encouraged me to dig a little deeper with the material I was working on and things began to flow again.

Do you feel that comedy and humor in literature is doomed to, in the words of Rodney Dangerfield, “get no respect?”*

I think it cuts both ways. On the one hand there’s a sentiment that funny books are “only” about laughter, which is somehow cheap, but I also think that if you ask around, most writers will admit that it can be pretty tough to write a funny book, particularly if you’re talking about literature that is also funny. I think these tend to get less respect from the critical academy, but if you talk to readers, they’ll often list books that make generous use of humor as among their favorites.

Finally, what’s your favorite joke to tell?

This is embarrassing since I don’t actually know a single joke and have never been able to tell one. It’s some sort of mental block. The only jokes I can remember are the ones told to me be a six-year-old budding stand-up comedian who was one of my day campers at the summer job I held while I was in college. He had that little kid – I don’t have any teeth yet – lisp, and had recently learned the art of the knock-knock joke (sort of). At lunch I’d beg him to tell them to me. Here’s one I remember:

Camper: Knock-knock.
Me: Who’s there?
Camper: Orange.
Me: Orange who?
Camper: (long pause)
Me: Orange who?
Camper: (continued pause during which he grows fascinated in a ladybug crawling on a blade of grass and then sucks on his juicebox straw and eats a bite of sandwich)
Me: Come on, orange who?
Camper (smiling) I like oranges.

Thanks again to Mr. Warner for humoring us, erm, talking to us about humor. You can check out the website he edits at http://www.mcsweeneys.net/.

*Question based on quote mentioned by Mr. Salditt, who suggested we focus on humor for this month’s newsletter.

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