I am well into my latest "slow read" — Charles Dickens' "Dombey and Son," with 600 pages behind me and 300 to go. And I shall enjoy every one of those 300. The book is delightful.
Like so much of Dickens, "Dombey and Son" is about poverty, corruption, child neglect, greed and other dark themes. But it is funny! The dire scenes — such as when Mr. Dombey wishes that his daughter had died instead of his son — are tempered by hilarious scenes, such as when Captain Cuttle is trapped at home because his landlady confiscated his "glazed hat" and he can't imagine going outside without it.
The comic characters in this book aren't clowns; they are full-fledged people, with sensitivities and emotions (Captain Cuttle is a saint), but their appearance lightens the mood and makes me laugh.
Laughing creates a bond between reader and author; there's a confidence that we will find the same things funny. It helps us tolerate the sadness — little Paul Dombey's death, or the tense scenes between Mr. Dombey and his second wife. (And wow, what a marriage.)
Lack of humor can keep me from reading books that I know to be unrelentingly sad or depressing. But make me laugh and I will endure any amount of pain for the story.
Many great authors understand this. In a 2017 interview with James McBride, after "The Good Lord Bird" won the National Book Award, I asked him why he wrote a funny book about slavery and the Civil War.
"It needs that lightness in order to breathe," he told me. "Otherwise, it becomes one of those horribly depressing books. I think sometimes when I walk through bookstores that America must want to be depressed. There are a lot of good trees wasted on some of these books."
McBride — who won this year's Thurber Prize for American Humor — said that humor was a natural way that his family dealt with impoverishment and racism when they were growing up.
