[this blog] Interview: John Warner

(This is the first in a series of interviews on [this blog] with unique and talented comedy writers, artists, and performers. It was conducted via e-mail in June 2006 and has been edited only slightly for clarity.)

John Warner knows comedy writing, and he has some serious chops to prove it. As a writer of comedy, fiction, and non-fiction, Warner has written dozens of pieces for publications ranging from Salon to Public Scrutiny to The Modern Humorist. He's also the co-author of the Washington Post #1 Paperback Bestseller My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook of George W. Bush and author of the hilarious writing "guide" Fondling Your Muse: Infallible Advice from a Published Author to the Writerly Aspirant. That not enough for you? He also teaches at Clemson University is editor the popular humor website McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

Needless to say, when John Warner talks comedy, one would be wise to listen. Thankfully, when one asks about comedy, Warner is kind enough to listen back, and he took the time to answer a few of my questions for the first [this blog will be titled when inspiration strikes me] interview.


Jake Christie: How did you get started in humor writing?

John Warner: I started as a writer of very dull and earnest short stories in the Raymond Carver mode, a writer whose work I admired to distraction. I went so far as to get both an undergraduate and an MFA degree in creative writing while continuing to write perhaps more adventurous and occasionally funny, but still very “serious” short stories because I thought that was how writing was “supposed to be.” Ultimately, I started writing “funny” things just as a break from my own narrow-minded sense of what “serious” writers do. I was flailing around in a poetry workshop in graduate school and finally decided to write a “funny” poem because light verse tends to get a break from heavy scrutiny. It turned out okay, and I realized that in the course of just trying to entertain I was actually expressing all the things that I was trying to say while doing my best to be “serious.” (Never one for waste, I later turned the poem into a short story.)

While I was coming to the realization that writing humor was just part of my natural voice, opportunities for publishing humor became available via the Internet, first at a spot like McSweeney’s, and then with the late, but loved Modern Humorist. Humor became one of the several things I spent my time writing, and over the years, I’ve devoted more and more time to it.


JC: You co-wrote My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook of George W. Bush with Kevin Guilfoile. How did that book come about? Was it cathartic to knock one of the most powerful people in the world down a few pegs?

JW: That came about through some work Kevin and I did for Modern Humorist during the 2000 Republican convention where we did a diary of George W. Bush in the style of a 2nd grader. During the post-balloting legal wrangling, Crown (the publisher who already had a deal with Modern Humorist for an unspecified book) proposed that we do a book from that President as grade-schooler perspective. (We upgraded him to a 4th grader for the book.) The deal was in place before the Supreme Court ruling, so once they came down in favor of Bush, we had eighteen days to pull it together.

At the time we were writing it, despite having voted for the other guy and having generally liberal sympathies, I don’t remember feeling that much enmity for George W. Bush, and mostly I was psyched to be publishing a book. I felt as though Gore got robbed, but in truth, the stakes of the decision felt fairly low. We were at peace, the economy was thriving, I was getting paid for writing a book done primarily in colored pencil, everything was good.

It’s sort of amazing how thoroughly everything got screwed up.


JC: What do you think it is that makes the field of politics so inherently funny, or humor such an effective way of dealing with it?

JW: The nature of politics dictates that at some point, all politicians will do something that makes them look hypocritical or foolish, and hypocrites are just about the juiciest target you can imagine when it comes to writing humor because they do all the work for you. (Stephen Colbert is able to be funny doing an imitation of Bill O’Reilly, as opposed to a parody, because O’Reilly is already so close to self-parody.)

Six years ago, John McCain giving the commencement speech at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University seemed about as likely as Barbara Bush being on the cover of Maxim for their special First Ladies Swimsuit Issue, yet, there he was because he feels like he has to make nice to the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party.

Something is funny because it strikes the audience as being “true.” That laughter is reflexive, involuntary, impossible to fake, so it’s easy (and fun) to create political humor because so much of politics seems to revolve around obscuring the truth. All you have to do to be funny is find that truth and hold it up against the lie.

I’m a big fan of The Daily Show and like a lot of people feel that it’s the most honest disseminator of news around today. Here’s an example of what I mean from a recent show.

Jon Stewart was interviewing William Bennett, the former drug czar, and author of the Book of Virtues, who also admitted to losing 8 million dollars playing the slots in Vegas. He is a hypocrite of the highest order who makes a living blowing seemingly high-minded smoke about “values” and “morals.” Stewart exposed the ridiculousness and bigotry of Bennett’s position on gay marriage in about 30 seconds:

Stewart: So why not encourage gay people to join in that family arrangement if that is what provides stability to a society?
Bennett: Well I think if gay... gay people are already members of families...
Stewart: (almost spitting out his drink) What?
Bennett: They're sons and they're daughters--
Stewart: So that's where the buck stops, that's the gay ceiling.
Bennett: Look, it's a debate about whether you think marriage is between a man and a women.
Stewart: I disagree, I think it's a debate about whether you think gay people are part of the human condition or just a random fetish.

Jon Stewart isn’t even making a joke here, yet the exchange is incredibly funny simply because he’s expressing truth in the face of its inverse.


JC: Fondling Your Muse is probably, and I am not exaggerating, the most important writing book ever written. It contains all the advice anyone could ever need to write the next bestseller. What possessed you to share this information with the aspiring masses?

JW: You’ve heard the old saying, “write what you know,” but I prefer its lesser known cousin, “write about stuff you can just pull out of your ass, “ which was the case with Fondling Your Muse.

Kind of like My First Presidentiary, the book was something of an accident. I’d done a couple of writing advice parodies and published them online and an editor at Writer’s Digest Books (Jane Friedman) thought they might make a good book. Once they caved in to my outrageous contract demands (three tons of salted cod delivered to my mountain compound), I agreed with her.

That you’re calling it the most important book of writing advice ever written doesn’t speak well of the genre in general, I’m afraid.


JC: There's a large section in Fondling Your Muse devoted to dealing with Amazon reviews by those pesky -- but necessary -- "readers." Do you ever cruise Amazon and check out your reviews?

JW: I’m not joking when I say that I check my Amazon page at least once a day, though at this point, the reviews have stopped and I’m only looking at the sales ranking. It is an absolutely irresistible urge that I’m certain just about every published author gives in to. I’m just glad I’ve only done a couple of books because that means I check their rankings in just a minute or two. Someone like John Updike or Joyce Carol Oates must take a good hour to access all their pages.


JC: I'm assuming that McSweeney's Internet Tendency came after the McSweeney's Quarterly. How did it come about? Why claim that chunk of space on the internet instead of the sales rack?

JW: Actually, they were started at just about the same time by Dave Eggers. The site archives reach back to 1998. They were both completely and totally his brainchildren, and my relationship with the site up until July 2003 (when I started doing the editing) was as fan and occasional contributor. I imagine he started both just to give an outlet to writing and voices that weren’t being heard, but that he thought some people might enjoy and I think the success of all of the different publications he’s helped launch speak to the soundness of that instinct.

The Internet is really an ideal medium for disseminating humor because it’s easy to be timely and it’s easy to build audience through word-of-mouth links. Print is just a much more expensive and tougher proposition. That said, I’d love to see more quality humor see print and I am actively trying to make this happen.


JC: There's a lot of bad, unfunny writing on the internet, but McSweeney's Internet Tendency consistently has funny and well-written pieces. How many submissions do you get? †What's the level of quality for most of them?

JW: Combining all the various sections of the site (lists, open letters, sestinas, reviews of new food, etc…) we probably receive between 400-500 submissions a week. I used to read all of them myself, but now have a stable of four trusted lieutenants who have domain over particular sections of the site.

The submissions that aren’t concerned with the girth of my penis or urging me to send $3000 to a the widow of the former president of Nigeria are, by and large, quite good and I often pass on things that I’m not surprised to see published at other humor-oriented sites like The Morning News or Yankee Pot Roast. (They probably experience the same thing, seeing me publish things they’ve passed on.) On occasion, I’ll read these pieces on other sites and kick myself for not snapping them up when I had the chance.

By far the most common reason for rejecting something is that the piece just isn’t the kind of thing we publish. We get many short short story submissions, (understandable, given that the quarterly concentrates on that area), but we just don’t publish short stories, so while I often enjoy reading them, I can’t publish them. We also don’t publish humorous essays or anecdotes, so again, many good ones cross my inbox, but none of them get published.

There are, of course, pieces that just don’t work and 90% of the time they’re due to one of two reasons. One, they’re an attempt to imitate something we’ve published already, essentially picking out a target and trying to hit it, rather than letting a piece develop naturally. (This is most prevalent in the list submissions.) Or two, a good idea that was not well-executed. A funny premise is half the battle, but it’s only half. The writers who consistently place stuff on the site (Wendy Molyneux, John Moe, Teddy Wayne, Kate Hahn, Jim Stallard…I could name more, just look at the archives for the people who turn up multiple times) are the ones who are most obsessive about working their pieces over until they are extremely polished. On their work I have to do very little if any editing.


JC: One of the great things about McSweeney's Internet Tendency is that you'll read submissions from anyone, not just established or represented writers. Do you think the lack of entry routes into mainstream publishing for new writers is detrimental to writing as a form?

JW: One of the things I enjoy most about the site is discovering people who are totally unknown and unpublished and then seeing them go on to bigger and better things, which is why we’ll always be open to submissions from everyone.

I actually think the lack of entry routes into mainstream publishing is a boon to writing, as long as writers start to abandon the notion that success is defined as getting published in mainstream publications. There are more ways of attracting an audience for your work than ever before and the talented and diligent are able to take advantage of them to draw attention to their work, and ultimately see monetary rewards. Lots of people (including me) who were first published on McSweeney’s or sites like it have gone on to publish books or see success in more traditionally commercial venues.

The one thing all writers should desire most is readers and the Internet makes it easier than ever to attract those readers. Once you have readers, the lords of commerce will be more than happy to publish you in mainstream ways.

This guy, Maddox, is a great example. He’s just some dude in Utah with a website that parlayed his readership into not only a book deal, but some time as the #1 seller on Amazon before the book was even released.

I repeat, he lives in Utah.


JC: Are you working on any other projects now, besides editing the Internet Tendency?

JW: Many many projects going on, almost too many to name. Come September, Vintage is releasing the second book of humorous things culled from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. This time it is a book of lists, called, not coincidentally, Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney’s Book of Lists.

About the same time, I’ll have my third book published, my second work of political humor, Encyclopedia Brown and the Mysterious Presidency of George W. Bush. As the title indicates, it’s a parody of the old Encyclopedia Brown books I treasured as a kid, with all of the mysteries revolving around the years of the Bush presidency.

Next to lastly, I’m overseeing a new humor “imprint” for F+W Publications, which is the parent company of Writer’s Digest Books (who published Fondling Your Muse). The Encyclopedia Brown book will be the first title with two more (by other authors) to be published in 2007. Slowly, I am taking over the entire world of humorous publishing.

Lastly, I’m spending the summer learning the tango in case I ever become famous and get invited on Dancing with the Stars. I don’t want to look like Master P out there.


JC: Finally: What do you think is the funniest thing in the world?

JW: This.


A big thanks again to John for answering my questions. For more information about John, visit the Fondling Your Muse website. To read more pieces by him, visit this page.