Jon Winokur is the author of twenty books on a subjects from advice to Zen. He finds the world’s funniest, wisest, and sarcastic quotes and publishes them in books. Trust me when I tell you that this is harder than it sounds. He’s a one-man Wikipedia of wisdom and sarcasm.
I first learned about him when I read The Portable Curmudgeon.
A few years later I truly “arrived” when he included a quote of mine in The Rich Are Different (“They think home banking is when a banker comes to your home.”).
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Question: What would you say to someone who complains that my subtitle, “Blogger. N. Someone with nothing to say writing for someone with nothing to do,” is insulting, arrogant, blah blah blah?
Answer: Did Ambrose Bierce insult his readers? Your subtitle immediately sets the tone and separates your blog from the 90% of all other blogs that take themselves way too seriously, so I’d tell him or her to lighten up. The ultimate expression of respect is to tell it like it is, or at least as you honestly see it.
[Guy: The Devil’s Dictionary
by Ambrose Bierce is required reading for anyone who abhors stupidity and hypocrisy. You can also get it online here (thanks James Shewmaker for letting me know).]
Your subtitle is a very Biercian formulation. It’s reminiscent of Frank Zappa’s definition of rock journalism as “people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk for people who can’t read.” The literary critic Lionel Trilling said it best: “Immature artists imitate, mature artists steal.” But I would never accuse you of being an immature artist.
Question: Do you consider yourself funny or are you a connoisseur of funniness?
Answer: Calling yourself funny is like calling yourself a curmudgeon: You’re funny when someone else says you’re funny. I won’t even accept “connoisseur,” though I like to think I have a sense of humor.
Question: What makes a person funny?
Answer: Funny people have a heightened sense of the absurd. They take life seriously, but not literally. They’re sometimes described as “twisted,” but it’s just the opposite: they’re the sane ones in an insane world. Funny people are also aware of the music of humor. They instinctively know that the stress and number of beats has to be just right and that a superfluous syllable can kill a laugh, whether written or spoken. That’s why copy editors are hazardous to humor manuscripts. They care about being grammatically correct, not funny.
Question: Are people born funny or made funny?
Answer: A sense of humor runs in families, whether as a result of nature or nurture or both. That’s why comedians often cite a funny parent or sibling as a major influence.
On the other hand, some people are congenitally humorless. They go through life not getting the joke. It’s one of the great divides between human beings, and it’s hard for one to get along with the other, as I can attest from personal experience: There was this very attractive, very intelligent woman. One night over dinner I mentioned a funny bit from “The Simpsons.” She didn’t respond, so I asked her if she’d seen the show. “I don’t watch cartoons,” she said, so I refused to sleep with her.
Question: How hard can it be to find some quotes and put them together in a book?
Answer: It’s so easy it ought to be illegal. I can’t believe I’ve been getting away with it for 20 years.
Question: What are the mechanics of finding these quotes?
Answer: They pop out of books, newspapers, magazines, web sites, even blogs. I also quote from newscasts, talk shows, and movies. I sharpen the focus when I’m researching a particular book, but the process is the same: Read and listen until the quotable quotes come along.
Question: Has the Internet with sites like Quotationspage.com made your life easier?
Answer: Those sites are okay for corroboration, but I don’t use them as primary sources. Quotationspage.com seems to be one of the better ones. I generally don’t like to recycle quotations. I try to be the first quoter of a bon mot, so I look for unusual quotes from unexpected sources that haven’t been collected elsewhere.
But the “standards” are impossible to leave out: classic quotes from Shakespeare, Voltaire, George Bernard Shaw, Mark Twain, H.L Mencken, and Ambrose Bierce, who wrote, a century ago, “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.”
Question: Can one actually gain wisdom from reading quotes or are they “just” one liners?
Answer: Quotations can be a great source of wisdom. They stimulate thought, suggest connections, and console you with the knowledge that you’re not alone—but then, I have a short attention span. In fact, I consider myself a short-attention-span pioneer, and I’m encouraged that technology has shrunk attention spans even further since I began doing these books. The quotation just might turn out to be the literary form of the 21st century. Either that or the text message.
Question: How do you pick a topic for a book?
Answer: Out of ignorance and curiosity: I’m attracted to interesting subjects that I don’t know much about. I certainly don’t try to guess what people want to read. I write books that I want to read. I’m fascinated by curmudgeons [The Portable Curmudgeon, The Traveling Curmudgeon] and Zen [Zen to Go]. I did a book about boredom [Ennui to Go] because I’m susceptible to it and wondered if it was just me. I learned something about the craft of writing from Advice to Writers and Writers on Writing.
I compiled a Frenglish dictionary [Je Ne Sais What?] because I don’t speak French and could never find definitions in standard French dictionaries for phrases like esprit de l’escalier (“wit of the staircase”—a witty remark thought of too late) and monstre sacré (“sacred monster”—a performer whose celebrity is heightened by his or her eccentricities). I still use that book as a reference. A publisher paid me to write a book for myself! I told you it’s a racket.
Question: Is there any hope for the French?
Answer: The French will always be the French. That’s both the bad news and the good news. What the British entertainer Ivor Novello said over 50 years ago is still true: “There’s something Vichy about the French.”
Question: Is there any hope for Republicans?
Answer: Not only is there no hope for Republicans, there’s no hope for the Republic until we reform campaign finance. You can quote me on that.
Question: What are you working on now?
Answer: The Big Curmudgeon, an omnibus edition of previous curmudgeon books plus new material, and The Big Book of Irony, a small-format hardcover in which I try to share my delight in the many facets of irony and clear up some misconceptions, because irony is widely misunderstood.
It drives me crazy when people say “ironic” when they mean “coincidental.” The classic example is Morissettian Irony, which I define in the book as “irony based on a misapprehension of irony, i.e., no irony at all.” It’s named for the pop singer Alanis Morissette, whose hit single, “Ironic” mislabels coincidence and inconvenience as irony.
In the song, situations purporting to be ironic are merely sad, random, or annoying (“It’s a traffic jam when you’re already late/It’s a no-smoking sign on your cigarette break”). In other words, “Ironic” is an un-ironic song about irony. Which, of course, is ironic in itself. But wait, there’s more, a “bonus irony” if you will: “Ironic” has been cited as an example of how Americans don’t get irony, despite the fact that Alanis Morissette is Canadian!
Question: What are your favorite quotes on these subjects?
Answer:
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Writing
My favorite statement about writing isn’t from a great novelist or poet, but from Edwin Schlossberg, the artist and designer who’s married to Caroline Kennedy. He once wrote that the skill of writing is “to create a context in which other people can think.” That’s the best definition I’ve ever read. I think. [Advice to Writers]
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Boredom
“Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.”—John Berryman [Ennui to Go]
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Dogs
“The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.”—Andy Rooney [Mondo Canine]
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Marriage
“I got married the second time in the way that, when a murder is committed, crackpots turn up at the police station to confess the crime.”—Delmore Schwartz [The Portable Curmudgeon]
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Northern California vs. Southern California
“Northern Californians are to Southern Californians what German Jews are to Russian Jews.”—Howard Ogden [The War Between the State]
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Irony
Two favorites, though they contradict each other:“The armor of irony is a little ugly, it’s difficult to lug around, and it makes it hard to hug one another. But maybe irony is, in the end, better than abs of steel.”—Veronica Rueckert [The Big Book of Irony, (January, 2007)]
“When you’re younger, you think a little irony is all you need. You think it’ll get you to the grave, but it won’t. Loss always seeps through. You do need to deal with it.”—Douglas Coupland [The Big Book of Irony, (January, 2007)]
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Love
“When you’re in love it’s the most glorious two-and-a-half days of your life.”—Richard Lewis [A Curmudgeon’s Garden of Love]
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Advice
“No one wants advice—only corroboration.”—John Steinbeck [Friendly Advice]
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Neurosis
“Neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them. My mother cleans them.”—Rita Rudner [Encyclopedia Neurotica]
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Golf
“A wonderful game…if you don’t care.”—Gary McCord [How to Win at Golf Without Actually Playing Well]
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The Rich
“To turn $100 into $110 is work. To turn $100 million into $110 million is inevitable.”—Edgar Bronfman [The Rich Are Different]
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Travel
“Avoid all airplane travel except by privately owned jets operated for the benefit of America’s twenty-five most indispensable CEOs.”—Russell Baker [The Traveling Curmudgeon]
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Zen
“The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.”—Robert Pirsig [Zen to Go]
To heighten your sense of the absurd, click here.
I just bought your book, The Art of the Start, and read nearly all of it the first night. It was exactly what I was looking for, a straight forward, no nonsense approach to starting a business. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Nic
Iowa City, IA
““Ironic” has been cited as an example of how Americans don’t get irony, despite the fact that Alanis Morissette is Canadian!”
I find this quote ironic since Canda is in (North) America, and thus she is just as much of an American as someone from the US, or Brazil for that matter.
What’s your problem with french people ?
It’s not criticism, it’s unjustified, and thus gratuitous, aggression.
What makes you feel the right to insult french people and promote such kind of behaviour in public conferences and public spaces as your blog ?
If you want to spit at a community and promote hate against it, provide at least a justification to behave so.
Evangelist ? What an arrogant bozo you make !
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I wrote: ” Is there any hope for the French?”
You call this an insult? An insult is one someone calls you a arrogant bozo in his blog. :-)
Guy
Interestiong Interview with Jon Winokur on Quotations
In Toastmasters, we are often taught when to use quotations in our presentations, how and when to use them, to correctly site your sources etc. Well, here is quite an interesting interview on Guy Kawasaki’s site with Jon Winokur somebody
“I wrote: ” Is there any hope for the French?”
You call this an insult? An insult is one someone calls you a arrogant bozo in his blog. :-)
Guy”
Well, but you certainly opened the door by saying it in such a manner that it can only be said as a “gentleman insult”. Asking if there is hope is like admitting there’s something wrong with the french.
I’m with “chmike” on that one, I do not understand why you said that.
Hi Guy…I like this one. Jon is right, too many people take themselves and blogging too seriously (guilty as charged,though changing). My husband and I were talking about this last night and he hit the nail on the head: blogging is like streaking. It’s exhilarating and fun and even a little silly. How can you take someone running naked in public seriously? You also don’t have to look them in the eye as they stare gapping mouthed at your nakedness. And besides, what’s wrong with being naked? So good on you for putting yourself out there and seeing what the world has to say. And as Bett Midler once said (I think) “Joke them if they can’t take a @#&*!” I like that one!
Oh, and Hmmmm? Canadians are different from Americans and Brazilians. Not better, not worse, just different, and that’s okay. I’ve never met someone from the Great U.S.of A. who has corrected a foreigner by saying “I’m a NORTH American.” It just doesn’t happen. I’m Canadian and proud of it. A friend of mine is Brazilian, and proud of it. You’re American and proud of it. So let’s leave it at that.
There is a huge difference between my insult and yours. I have justified mine.
There where zillion’s of other really funny citations one could give as examples. Why did you pick the one that contributes mobbing french people ?
Is it just a coincidence that in your “art of start” video you used the “sorry for the french accent” insulting joke ?
Again, what’s your problem with french people ?
Maybe you have some reason for hating french people, but let me remind you that no one has the monopole of beeing good or beeing bad. So diabolizing a whole community or glorifying another is just plain wrong behaviour.
Although there are many things in what you said or in your behaviour I dislike, there are also many things that you said and wrote that I like and even find usefull for me. Can it be different when it comes to french people ?
PS: I owe you respect for publishing my comment. It would have been easy to discard it.
chmike: shut it, you cheese eating surrender monkey.
Lighten up.
I wander as well what Jon would say about the subtitle of my blog: “True joy is a serious thing”.
About the French stuff.
I think there is something very rude to let someone say that “what the British entertainer Ivor Novello said over 50 years ago is still true: “There’s something Vichy about the French.””
Does anybody really understand the meaning of that? How rude it is?
It is like saying that There’s something Nazi about the German, or There’s something like Native American Exterminator in the Americans.
Is there a point?
jeez, there are a LOT of people in this world who just need to lighten the “F” up.
and you can quote me on that!
Liberals = French, French = Liberals
What’s the difference, just a pond in between.
FYI, many Republicans have an excellent sense of humor. You may not see it that often because all of their best jokes are Democrat jokes, and they are too polite to say them in from of you ;)
Nicole:
You seem to have misunderstood my comment. What I meant is that America is a continent (or two if you will). My point was that people from the US tend to refer to themselves as americans, which they certainly are. However, america and the united states are not the same thing.
In the interview he suggested that Morrisette was not american since she’s canadian. Which is just as much a part of “america” as the US.
In other words, my opinion is that Candians, Brazilians, Mexicans etc. are just as much american as people from the US.
Oh, and I’m not american, in any sense of the word.
Thank you. I almost found the comments section more entertaining (but just barely) than the main text of the interview. I found it wonderfully absurd and ironic
By the way, for those francophone readers who didn’t quite catch it, Vichy is a pun for “fishy.” And you helped prove his point nicely.
:)
I am glad people enjoy the comments. If this can drag attention to the promoted book, then fine. It was not my intention to draw any shadow on it.
As an attempt to lighten up, here is a quotation of a french humorist who also like to pinch with absurdity ;-)
“The ennemi is stupid, he thinks we are the ennemi, but it’s him.” Pierre Desproge.
Well – there you have it – the French are not funny to top it all off. You sure he is a humorist?! Maybe you meant mortician.
Irony Supplement
Guy Kawasaki has all the fun. He gets in on the ground floor at Apple, launches a couple of wildly successful tech companies, starts a wildly successful angel investor service, writes a few wildly successful books. Now he gets to
To Schlossberg’s quote on Writing, the German romantic poet Novalis (1772-1801) said: “A book has two authors, the writer and the reader.”
Guy Kawasaki interviews Jon Winokur
Venture capitalist and business blogger Guy Kawasaki has an entertaining 10-question interview with Jon Winokur. Jon is the author of The Portable Curmudgeon, one of the first quotation books I ever purchased.
10 Questions with Jon Winokur: How to He…
I was happily reading through the interview until I landed on the segment when Jon Winokur implies that people who dislike animation are humorless. This bothers me as someone with a great deal of antipathy toward animation. I will not watch anything animated unless it comes from Brad Bird/Pixar, and that’s only because I feel as though I’m watching moving art.
I don’t think you should be forced into liking animation in order to be considered humorous, nor should it be a requirement insofar as having an appreciation of humor. I mean, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton were not animated. Nor were the Marx Brothers, nor the screwball comedies of the ’40s or Mel Brooks films or the Monty Python oeuvre. (Though Graham Chapman creaed little animated intros/outros, it didn’t have the feel of traditional animation and as such functions for me as yet another exception to the rule.)
I am fairly tired of seeing people participating in the general cult of “The Simpsons”, so for someone who purports to be a “curmudgeon”, i.e. someone with independent thought and a healthy dose of skepticism, it is indeed ironic that he too can fall into the trap of being a follower, a converted evangelist in the Grand Church of the Simpsons.
But aside from that, everything else was peachy.