I am expecting an online magazine to publish an interview I did with author Maud Casey. In the meantime, here is an excerpt.
Yang: Though it’s often used to mask a sadness, there is a wonderful sense of humor in your fiction. It also ranges in style and tone. In Drastic, it can be simply offbeat and amusing, similar to what see from Eudora Welty or Anne Tyler, who populate their fiction with quirky characters. At other times, your fiction can be silly, satirical or poignant. In The Shape of Things to Come, the humor is more sad. Where does your sense of humor come from? Is humor usually sad, and is its source sadness–or something else, like exasperation?
Casey: I’m thrilled to hear you find my writing funny. My humor has occasionally been mistaken for bitterness–I won’t name any names, but let’s just say that a particular anonymous review of Shape referred to it as a “bitter, little novel.” Still planning on getting a tee-shirt made that says “bitter, little novelist.”
I’m not sure where my humor comes from, though I see it as a form of resilience in the face of sadness. One of Lorrie Moore’s characters says at one point, “Life is sad. Here is someone.” Or something, a banana peel? My favorite kind of humor doesn’t mask sadness so much as embrace it. Life is sad, but there’s beauty and, often, hilarity to be found in its sadness. The great philosopher Mel Brooks once said, “Comedy is when you get eaten by a lion. Tragedy is when I cut myself shaving.” Humor requires a little distance from great sadness, so it can be a kind of relief. It’s a relief, but it’s also deeply, inextricably related to and entwined with sadness.
Eight Diagrams 