The New York Times came out with a big story in the spring of 2005 saying flatly that The Joke Is Dead. Naturally, this got my attention right away. And then, like a lot of what you read in newspapers, the big story petered out down around the third paragraph. It turned out that the reporter had talked to a few stand-up comedians and they do not tell jokes in their acts. From this slight evidence, the reporter naturally reasoned that nobody in America knows any knock-knock jokes and men aren’t walking into bars and lightbulbs aren’t getting changed and priests don’t hang out with rabbis.
For all that the Times may know about the Middle East, the Times is not authoritative when it comes to humor. You will notice this from reading it. Looking to the Times for an assessment of American humor is like asking George W. Bush to review dance. In fact, people tell jokes just as much as they ever did, and maybe more, and the Internet speeds the absorption of new jokes into the word-of-mouth joke culture. Janet Jackson had her blouse fall open accidentally and her breast fall out at the Super Bowl halftime show and in a couple days the e-mails were flying: “Did you hear that Janet Jackson was pulled over by the L.A.P.D.? Yeah, her right headlight was out.” A week after the President confessed to canoodling with the intern, someone said to me, “They had a Presidents’ Day Sale at Macy’s and all men’s pants were half off.”
You go along thinking you’ve heard every knock-knock joke in Christendom and then along comes
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Eskimo Christians who?
Eskimo Christians, and I’ll tell you no lies.
The Eskimo Christian knock-knock does not displace the Sam and Janet knock-knock in your affections or the Olive or the Amos, but you add it to your hard drive and from now on, if the dinner-table conversation should ever veer toward the Inuit people, you now have something interesting to offer.
Likewise, after years of men walking into the bar, and termites (“Is the bar tender here?”) and horses and cheeseburgers and drunks of all sorts,
A dog walks into the bar and says, “Hey, my name is Bob and I’m a talking dog. Isn’t that something? Ever heard a talking dog before? Not one as smart as me, I’ll bet. How about a drink for a talking dog? ”And the bartender says, “Sure, the toilet is right down the hall.”
What’s dead is the practical joke. The tipping of outhouses, the use of whoopee cushions and dribble glasses, the placement of a Holstein cow in your uncle Earl’s bedroom. Those boyish pranks seem to have ended back in the Fifties somehow, at least among grown men. But the telling of jokes is a durable feature of small talk in America.
In the Chatterbox Cafe in Lake Wobegon, if you are new in town, the odd guy who married the farmer’s daughter, you might sit with the group of gentlemen telling jokes and then, when the opportunity presents itself, you offer a joke and if it’s new and you tell it well and don’t flounder around in the setup but tell it cleanly and simply with not too much topspin, remembering this is Minnesota and we like it dry, and if you tell it gracefully, not overselling the joke, you’ll be welcome here. No need for a résumé or testimonials. If you can tell a joke, you’re okay.
Jokes are democratic. Telling one right has nothing to do with having money or being educated. It’s a knack, like hammering a nail straight. Anyone can learn it, and it’s useful in many situations. You can go through life and never need math or physics but the ability to tell a joke is often handy. Jokes are good for your health. At the Chatterbox, nobody says, “I don’t know why, I just can’t remember jokes,” or “People sure don’t tell as many jokes as they used to, do they,” people simply sit and drink coffee and as the conversation hops around in a surrealistic way from hunting to dogs and cats, and then to elephants and Alzheimer’s and old age, sex, Lutherans, someone leans back and says, “I read in the paper the other day that the nursing homes are giving out Viagra.” And someone says, “Oh really?” “Yeah, they’re giving it to the old guys to keep ’em from rolling out of bed.” Your clothes may be disheveled and your life in chaos, you may be of the wrong religion and be hopeless when it comes to politics, you may walk around with the New York Times tucked under your arm, but if you can tell a joke well, you’ll be okay.
—GARRISON KEILLOR