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(tape rewinding)

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(bluegrass music)

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- [Garrison] There was a man
sitting on his front porch

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and the pastor came by
and they sat and talked

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about theology for a little while.

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And the pastor asked the man

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if he believed in infant baptism.

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And the man said "Believe in it, hell,

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"I've seen it done."

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(audience laughing)

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A humorist has to, has to, has to what?

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What was I about to say?

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(laughter)

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I was distracted, if everyone
would just be perfectly still

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I'm sure I...

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(laughing)

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- When did you decide to
become a writer, and why?

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- I grew up in a fundamentalist
Protestant family

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that stressed that we
were a select people,

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and so we were to avoid
contact with others

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who did not share our faith.

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We were isolated.

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And, perhaps, growing up in this world,

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first of all, one has a
reverence for the word,

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and for language, God spoke to us through

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the word, and in our family
this was the King James Bible.

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It also, I think, gave books, fiction,

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great power, because they were proscribed.

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We were not to touch them,
and my family was shocked

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when I came home with
a volume of Hemingway

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when I was a boy, and I wanted to read it.

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So there was a price to be paid for

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being interested in
fiction and in writing.

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Pushing my family away.

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Books and authors became my family.

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It's a decision however
that continually seems

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temporary, that you're never quite sure

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you've made it absolutely.

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I'm only 52, so I made a
sort of tentative chice

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that has lasted this
long, but, I could still

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fall back on retail sales.

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(laughing)

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- Being considered a humorist,
are you constantly aware

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that it's time to come up with something

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as clever as you've just described,

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or to be comic in some way?

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- I think that you're only
obliged to be a humorist

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from maybe the age of
18 until you turn 30.

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Past the age of 30, I don't think

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there's any obligation
to be clever at all.

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After that, you, I think, are supposed to

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settle down, be a good person,

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raise your children, and
be good to your friends

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which you may not have been
when you were very clever.

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And try to atone for your cleverness.

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Humor has to surprise us,

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otherwise it isn't funny, and,

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it's a death knell for a writer

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to be labeled a humorist,
because then of course,

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it's not a surprise anymore,
it's what's expected of him.

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And when you come to
expect humor of people,

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you will never get it.

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Looking for it, demanding
it, expecting it,

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what you do is to kill off every joke

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you ever come across.

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Humor in writing needs to come in

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under cover of darkness and be disguised.

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It has to surprise people.

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You don't want to get that sort of

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badoing, badoing, badoing sound

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in your writing, that boing,

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that gives you away.

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Humor is not about problems with

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airline luggage handlers, it's
about our lives in America.

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And it's about the ends of our lives,

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it's about everything
that happens after that

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and everything that happened before.

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- [George] Well you
paint this lovely picture

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of the piece going up and then

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immediately appearing in the magazine,

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I was wondering if sometimes,
at the New Yorker they say,

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"Well you know this is
not quite up to snuff."

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Or however they would put it.

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- [Garrison] Well, you see though,

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when the New Yorker turned down work,

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they turned it down in such an elaborately

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gentlemanly way, making
apologies for their own

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shortsightedness, and undoubtedly

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it was their fault, but
somehow, for some reason,

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this fell short of the
remarkably high standard

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that you, by your own work
have set for yourself.

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(laughing)

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They had a way of rejecting
my work that made me

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feel sorry for them somehow.

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(laughing)

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(tape rewinding)