Laughter: the Best Medicine
by Kimberley Allen McNamara
“Laughter is the best medicine.” You’ve heard this before but do you know its origin? And more importantly does it work? While using laughter as medicine is attributed to Henri de Mondeville, a surgeon in the 1300s, it is journalist Norman Cousins who actually employed laughter to off-set his pain. Cousins used laughter as part of a recovery regime of his own making for his condition of ankylosing spondylitis. "I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep," Cousins wrote in his 1979 book Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient.
With this in mind, and the specter of 2020 still looming large, I offer you this list of possible books to procure for yourself or for a loved one now or in the New Year. Think of it this way: it can’t hurt. I also encourage you to get them from your local Indie bookstore or if ordering online shop bookshop.org to find and support an Indie bookstore.
From NPR (a reader composed list from 2019), We did it for the LOLs : 100 Favorite Funny Books compiled by Petra Mayer. The list is broken down by Memoir, Essays, Comic/Cartoon, Novel, Non-fiction, Fantasy and SciFi, YA, Poetry, the Classics, Short Stories and Deep Thoughts. The last category is from the SNL (Saturday Night Live) Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey “little nuggets of absurdity.”
For Short Stories consider: Texts from Jane Eyre by Daniel Mallory Ortberg,
From the Classics there is: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons or Jeeves and Wooster by P.G. Wodehouse (Hugh Laurie of House fame starred in the tv adaptation)
As for the Young Adult and Mid-Grade section: Angus, Thongs and Full-frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison and Sideways Stories from the Wayside School by Louis Sachar.
Poetry: Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein.
Non-fiction: The New Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten and Lawrence Bush and How to Weep in Public by Jacqueline Novak.
If Fantasy or SciFi is your thing, there are funny books to be had: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis and The Tough Guide to FantasyLand by Dianne Wynn Jones.
For Novels try: The Wangs vs the World by Jade Chang, Bridget Jones’ Diary by Helen Fielding (you may have seen the movie, try the novel that started it), or My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyikan Braithwaite.
For Comics and Cartoons: Trust No Aunty by Maria Qamar or Hyperbole and A Half by Allie Brosh.
For Essays: I Can’t Date Jesus by Michael Arcenaux or You Can’t Touch My Hair by Phoebe Robinson
For Memoir there’s: Let's Pretend that Never Happened by Jenny Lawson, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, Bossy Pants by Tina Fey.
All of these books are funny, poignant, and at times dark. But laughter helps us navigate the difficult and the ridiculous.
According to Psychiatric Times “It has been suggested that humor differs from other cognitive based emotional regulation strategies in that it doesn’t deny the negative experience, but helps to construe it as less threatening.2 Being able to laugh at traumatic events in our lives doesn’t cause us to ignore them, but prepares us to endure them through playfulness and a changed prism of perception of life’s challenges.”
The list will give you books and laughs to consider. If you didn’t read them when they were current, read them now and enjoy old laughs anew. They will, after all, be new to you.
Although some of my favorite laugh-out-louds did not appear on this list I’d like to recommend:
Everything Changes and How to Talk to a Widower.by Jonathan Tropper who you may recognize as the author of This is Where I Leave You (which was made into a movie). I’ve read all three and listened to Everything and Widower. They are entertaining and made me laugh even if some of the antics may be dubbed schoolboy/frat boyish. There are some poignant moments, moments of keen observation and moments of absurdity in each. Tropper never lets you forget to enjoy life, because it's the only one you get and life is too short. Laughs along the way make life better.
2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas by Marie-Helen Bertino occurs on Christmas Eve’s eve (December 23rd). It begins at 6 am and ends the following morning at - you’ve got it, 2 AM at (yes, you’ve got this too) the Cat’s Pajamas, which is Philadelphia’s 2nd best Jazz club. Bertino takes the reader through the day of a neighborhood off of 9th Street using an omniscient narrator. The narrator is quite the comic with twisted asides that prevent you from feeling sorry for the main character Madeline Altimari, a 9 year old motherless girl. I read it and then I listened to it (drives to NYC during COVID to drop off or pick up child number 2 at Pratt affords one a great deal of listening time). Read by Angela Goethals it is equally as enchanting. What I found so mesmerizing was that it is set in Philly in the present but has throw-back sayings where you think it could be in a different time. It could be the early 60s or 80s or present day. There’s a jazz club, there are women who dance with snakes, there’s lots of music lingo and the clock is Christmas eve's eve.There’s magical realism and the gritty truth. The rotating point of view worked well because of how Bertino structured the chapter excerpts by time as in 7:33 am, 12:05 pm etc....Although she did use the same simile four times as thought of by different characters, I am betting it was to underscore how people are similar in thought but don’t realize it.
Laughter can save us from ourselves. It can heal. It can give us hope and it can enhance our lives. So pick up a laugh today. Laughter is the best medicine, indeed.
