Might We Finally Forgive Farce, the Forsaken Genre?

My two published novels and their work-in-progress sequel may feel confident they'll win recognition some day, but this doesn't do their creator much good. By the time their adopted once venerable genre struggles back from exile to its rightful place in the commercial canon he will long have drifted to the predictable unpredictability of mystery and crime fiction. It might even come to pass that by then his name will appear, in the service of accuracy, with the modifier “the late”.

Too late to bask in the glow these three novels could have earned, being in the redeeming vanguard of a genre that's fallen shamefully over the years, devolving from the respectability of Chaucer and Shakespeare into a shabby cudgel of disparagement.

“What a farce!” The disgust curls its lip at the target, which could be anything from a tasteless hamburger to a government to life itself: “There are times,” said Mark Twain, “when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.”

I suppose the word's loss of dignity, from theatrical form to curse, can be blamed on the lower status of comedy in plays such as “The Canterbury Tales” and “The Comedy of Errors”compared with something more sophisticated, such as satire and parody.

V. S. Pritchett, British writer and critic, put it this way: “The difference between farce and humor in literature is, I suppose, that farce strums louder and louder on one string, while humor varies its note, changes its key, grows and spreads and deepens until it may indeed reach tragic depths.”

Warner Bros. cartoon producer and director Chuck (Charles Martin) Jones made the distinction more charitably and literally. “Comedy is unusual people in real situations; farce is real people in unusual situations.”

I prefer the Jones definition because of its greater clarity. I wrote the first two novels thinking they were political/social satire. My thinking hasn't changed, yet from a marketing point of view I've come to see the word “satire” as a tad pretentious. And this overthinking has birthed a sniggle of doubt that my work passes muster with the conventional interpretation of just what a bonafide satire must be.

Better to play it safe, then, whether or not this doubt bears merit, and notch down the hype and thus the expectations of potential readers.

Ah, expectations. Therein lies the rub.

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