Waiting for Guffman by Christopher Lee and Eugene Levy, authors of the mirthful Best in Show https://notesaboutfilms.blogspot.com/2021/02/88-out-100-for-best-in-show.html and other miracles - 10 out of 10

 

Waiting for Guffman by Christopher Lee and Eugene Levy, authors of the mirthful Best in Show https://notesaboutfilms.blogspot.com/2021/02/88-out-100-for-best-in-show.html and other miracles

10 out of 10

 

 

Humor is an essential element of happiness and listed on the Martin Seligman Character Strengths list http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/07/character-strengths-and-weaknesses.html under Transcendence, along with appreciation for excellence and beauty, hope, spirituality, gratitude…there are Temperance, Courage, Wisdom, Justice and Humanity categories to explore if you are interested

 

Indeed, I am concentrating more on humor, as I move along and try to select the best films, books and generally masterpieces that I try to engage with, eliminating as much as possible crime - though I am in the process of reading The Friends of Eddie Coyle, and of course, we have possibly the best chef d’oeuvre of the genre Crime and Punishment http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/06/crime-and-punishment-by-fyodor.html and others like it – together with works on War, Science Fiction, without too much emphasis on Love

Love is the essential element of Positivity (the crowning ingredient, where amusement – you see, there it is again – interest, awe, inspiration, hope, gratitude [yes, gratitude is massive, paramount, august] pride, serenity and joy contribute to the optimum formula) as explained by Barbara Fredrickson http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/05/positivity-by-barbara-fredrickson-life.html in her classic.

 

Why not enjoy jest while indulging in what could be wondrous, miraculous literature, such as you can find in more than twenty books by the King of Comedy Sir Kingsley Amis, starting with Lucky Jim http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/03/lucky-jim-by-kingsley-amis-author-of.html included on the TIME 100 list of Best 100 Novels and read for the second time just a few days ago…it is somehow on YouTube…

Or this could be a confusion, maybe I am thinking of The Old Devils http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-old-devils-by-kingsley-amis-97-out.html which is definitely (Lord Copper) there on the video channel, and it won The Booker Prize for the Magister Ludi, who joked on the matter by saying he had ‘previously thought of the Booker as a rather trivial, showbiz sort of caper, but now considered it a very serious, reliable indication of literary merit’ or words to that effect

 

It is argued that Kingsley Amis dominates the Laughing Glasperlenspiel in the second half of the last century (while there are detractors to this position, I for one admire the magician) and Evelyn Waugh was the best in jest and comedy in the first part, with chefs d’oeuvre like Vile Bodies http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/12/vile-bodies-by-evelyn-waugh-10-out-of-10.html or Decline and Fall, Scoop

 

The latter has launched ‘up to a point, Lord Copper’ and other quotes, characters have become famous…Kingsley Amis uses references, such as the mistakes one can make ‘in the manner of a visitor who asks a banal question, only to find that the tribe chief takes that as a demand to jump his wife (or one of those spouses)’ this is in no way a quote, but it is easy to find it, better still, read Scoop, The Loved One, or one of the other about ten books included on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list, maybe Black Mischief http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/05/black-mischief-by-evelyn-waugh-10-out.html

It may have been Memoirs http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/12/memoirs-by-kingsley-amis-author-of-take.html that I found somebody who had known Evelyn Waugh saying he was an unlikable little man, snobbish to the point where he was adulatory to the aristocrats, entertained the person, until he found she lost her title or something similar…we do read in Intellectuals by Paul Johnson that luminaries, Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, Henrik Ibsen, Jean-Jacques Rousseau have been great thinkers, authors, brilliant minds, but on a personal level, they could hell to live, or have a relationship with…

 

http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/02/bright-lights-big-city-by-jay-mcinerney.html Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney is another example of Humor at its best, with a capital letter, offering not just jest, but also a marvelous story, told with ‘you’ as the main character, indeed, instead of ‘he, she, or they’ did this or that, we have you, and it evidently enhances the connection with the narrative and the hero, you become the protagonist and then you find it easier to enter the fictional lives ‘“The person who doesn't read lives only one life…The reader lives 5,000…Reading is immortality backwards” ― Umberto Eco said it and it is much easier to jump into these universes, if there is hilarity involved

If we need to say a few words about Waiting for Guffman http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/12/one-of-best-100-comedies-waiting-for.html then it has to be said that this is a fabulous parody, it looks at the shortcomings of rural America (which is embracing Trump and similar goonies like Marjorie, with all hands and soul) we have sophistication, along with easy laughs, simplistic attitudes that are lambasted, but also a take on so much more – there are tiny figures that reference the classic My Dinner with Andre http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/10/my-dinner-with-herve-written-and.html - and the film is august

 

Let us just mention another Magnum opus that is both exhilarating and hilarious – Towards The End of The Morning http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/10/towards-end-of-morning-by-michael-frayn.html by Michael Frayn where you take a joy ride and then the truth of what Malcolm Bradbury has said becomes clear ‘Fiction’s people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its (fiction’s)  actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world

http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html