The Hardest Writing Of All?

 Many writers would agree that one of the most difficult kinds of writing is that which makes the reader cry. To pull such emotion out of a reader with nothing but words on paper or on a screen requires a type of alchemy that is difficult to quantify or describe. Difficult-to-impossible to teach as well.

Is there any type of writing even harder to pull off? I would say that making people laugh is even more difficult. I know many writers agree with me on this, too.

The subject comes to mind because I've been reading Mark Twain's Roughing It. (I've read many Twain novels and short stories over the years, but never got around to Roughing It.)

Roughing It is his auto-biographical story (albeit very exaggerated - Twain-style) of when he headed west from Missouri in 1861. He rode the stagecoach for weeks to get to Nevada and other points west.

Twain has a somewhat peculiar - and very effective - way to write funny. Over and over I've been laughing out loud. I've tried to quantify just what makes his technique so effective. It's impossible to adequately describe. A combination of sarcasm and exaggeration and put-down, things we'd call snark today. He also has a way of making a deprecating comment about the very point he's making. Another technique he's mastered is surprise.

Take this passage from the section when he's describing just how spectacular is Lake Tahoe.

'Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mymmy to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator. I do not mean the oldest and driest mummies, of course, but the fresher ones.'

Two sentences as beautiful to a writer as the lake he's writing about. While the first sentence is fun and imaginative, it is the second that carries the punch. It supplies the surprise that drives the best humor. One could imagine other writers coming up with the first sentence or something nearly like it. But only Twain could come up with that second sentence. A thing of beauty, that, and a near guarantee of generating a laugh.

If you decide to read Roughing It, be forewarned that the racism toward Native Americans is horrible. Even with the expectation that 19th century writing is going to be repugnant, it will still grate. 

But if you can get past that, the story is informative and intriguing. And very funny.

I recommend the 'Mark Twain 100th anniversary collection' version of Roughing It published by Seawolf Press. It has hundreds of interesting and humorous illustrations