A Laugh in the Dark...Too

About my Novel: A Laugh in the Dark

Find My Novel Here...

Aberrant behavior is often repressed and rarely encouraged in our world. In fact, it is feared and oft-times persecuted. It takes many forms: Colorful, Eccentric...Off, you know Uncle Oliver, he’s slightly, you know: Off. No doubt one could go on, too many to list here. Needless to say you can count many triumphs and catalysts of change in this dynamic. Lots of good and lots of bad and yes, lots of evil.

Unchecked or unharnessed properly, Aberrant Behavior -- though at times relative to, as much as it is succinct to, any given set of parameters - can be dangerous. In my novel: A Laugh in the Dark, I have chosen the arena of comedy, fame and high stakes entertainment as a platform to present this unchecked, misconstrued and sometimes misanthropic behavior's affect on creativity, cultural politics and our society's inherent ersatz media based belief system.

I make no claim to being without my moments of unbridled human interaction or being immune to my characters’ less dangerous behaviors in my own life and career, after all, they are my creation one must embrace those darker aspects of our being to understand theirs; and give thanks to a higher power that we have not done as much damage to our lives and the lives of others as the purveyors of dysfunction trapped within the boundaries of my fictional narrative.

A Laugh in the Dark...

No industry on Earth has more murky yet rigid boundaries as "Show Business", whose minions are many but whose shared beneficence is sparse. The talk of success in this arena is often of sacrifice and hard work and it can pay off lucratively but it always seems to come with a high price. For when a human being, rife with billions of years of linear visceral development, tinged with the idea of a spatially resplendent spirituality, chooses to express the inherent irony of it all for gaggles of strangers in hopes that they get it all: Money, Fame and Redemption, a seductive yet dangerous dynamic can be created.

Anger, regret and frustration are as common in Comedy as in many other professions, and the tragic results that can be incurred are often buffeted by the glamour and allure of the Art Form. And that is the main thrust of A Laugh in the Dark: What constitutes the most incipient subversion of this Art Form? Murder.

A False Hierarchy...

There is a formula in the Comedy world: Time + Distance = Funny. It carries over from loading dock to boardroom, the events of the day digested properly, conversed, condensed at times given the proper time and distance become humor. Those few that have the gift to be concise interpreters, who have the myriad of presence, who have fallen into that mysterious cradle (abyss?) of being in the right place at the right time, become scions and leaders in an industry that thrives on this illusion of scarcity.

Yes, an Illusion of Structure. a Gilded Ascendancy.

If the mere, say 1000 performers of the last 75 years, who were or are considered funny who "made it”, constituted the entire singularity of creativity and humor on the planet, it would be a disservice to the veracity and dignity of the human race to stand by that fact.

The fact that the Humor Industry at its highest levels subsists in the enclaves of ascendancy that are nearly impossible for the ordinary man or woman on the street to endure, fosters a sense of entitlement and privilege that is fueled both by the Very Poor who are inured to hardship and rejection and the Very Elite - (see: The Harvard Crimson’s Influence:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_H...) - who live above it or the Very Lucky.

The Very Poor and the Very Elite have much in common in that they both disdain Money the lack of and the glut of which is a common denominator. So they clog the pipeline, endure the wait for stage time, coddle the attentions of fickle Agents and Managers alike. They become the Sturm und Drang of a comedy/entertainment culture -- at times a log jam of Attention Deficit disorder.

But Ahhhhhh The Very Lucky

The Very Lucky, such as my "protagonist" Stan Mahoney can be considered a combination Elite/Poor , He was inadvertently connected, as it was his Brother who traveled in the Harvard Comedy/Literary Bünde who Grandfathered in his Ethos, Logos and Pathos. Yet, he was a natural talent who would be funny and charming and very cool no matter what profession he went into, he fell into comedy by default and when we meet him in our story, he so wishes to Fall-Out.

Is Stan Mahoney worthy of his dominance within the comic culture? Is he more or less valid and yes, Funny because he endured without the dues paying, the politics? Or is he simply cut from the cloth of equally funny, piquant observers throughout the land in a cluster of professions and predilections that will never be heard from, ever, on such a level as Louis CK or Conan O'Brien. Did all this “Eat” at him, this idea of not belonging, that what came easy was not earned ...is he willing to toy and experiment with it?

Should the Naturally Funny be rewarded -- those who are not an Act, but are the walking, talking embodiment of Organic Humor? Even the seeming dregs of our society can be included in this seeming conundrum. The most dangerous and feared of all our human fellows: The Serial Killer.

My "Anti-Protagonist" Jason Steltzer -- a protracted symbol of the irony and frustration trapped within the politics of creativity -- is a charming, disarming Naturally Funny... Killer. How he ascends onto a Saturday Night Live-type show with the prank-ish help of Stan Mahoney and the havoc that incurs is the gist of my novel: A Laugh in the Dark.

Joe Dinki - Somewhere in NY, 2016