Are Writers Clowns?

Have you been to a poetry reading or fiction reading lately? It strikes me that writers feel a strange compulsion to be stand-up comedians. Why this incredible pressure to make the audience laugh? For me, it cheapens the writing. Like comedians, writers now make quirky observations about everyday life. A colleague told me the other day that he had the chance to see a writer, and about the reading/writer, he said, "He was a riot!" I'm not sure how I'm supposed to think about that. Is that our goal as writers -- to be a riot?

Why not read the serious stuff? Why not read the stuff that gets at the human condition? Why not read the stuff that might make them cry -- not tears of laughter, but the kind of tears that that whithered, rich hag in Fahrenheit 451 cried after hearing "Dover Beach"?

Maybe the answer is that we fear the audience. We want their acceptance so badly that we go for the lowest common denominator and make them laugh. We doubt our right to be in front of them reading our words, so we cover everything up with some guffaws. We read the funny stuff. They laugh. Will we do it so much that audience expects it -- and only it?

Or, maybe worse, we don't have any serious stuff to read. We got zany, we got odd, we got funny, we got fringe -- but we don't have the goods, and so if we keep them laughing, maybe they won't notice.