A Comedy of Pretzels

By J.J. Boskin

When tradition twists with popular culture and lands on “people’s oral humor,” idealistic Reuben Lamberth finds himself in a mess. He is a young, progressive, inspired scholar teaching at a prestigious northeastern university, but his other unique self has another foot planted secretly in the world of standup comedy as Josh Sandburg. His stage name is a composite of ‘joshing’ and the renowned American poet Carl Sandburg.

Neither his fully tenured professor wife Byrra who is enmeshed in a cabal of women’s faculty; his tough minor gangster-hood father Solly; his staid sociology chairperson and conventional colleagues; nor his tyrannical University President Jeremiah Brittle have any idea that he performs in comedy clubs as Josh Sandburg.

Should he be outed, there is considerable doubt that he will be upgraded to the coveted position of tenure, and his marriage may suffer as well. Reuben wonders, Is it worth giving up academia and taking a flyer in the world of comedy culture? The finale in this novel reveals tantalizing internecine connections that land squarely the realm of people’s oral humor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Aug 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886932195

J.J. Boskin

  J. J. Boskin is an emeritus professor of American Social & Ethnic History at Boston University. Overall, his focus has been on the origins of slavery, racial stigmatizing, urban revolts, people’s humor and tipping points in history. His works include Seasons of Rebellion: Protest and Radicalism in Recent America (Co-author & Editor, 1972); Urban Racial Violence in the Twentieth Century (Author & Editor, 1969, 1976); Into Slavery: Racial Decisions in the Virginia Colony (1977); Sambo: The Rise and Demise of an American Jester (1986); Rebellious Laughter: People’s Humor in American Culture (1997); The Humor Prism in Twentieth Century America (Author & Editor, 1997). His most recent book is Corporal Boskin’s Cold Cold War: A Comical Journey (2011), a narrative of his U.S. Army role as the Historian of a top secret, scientific expeditionary outfit posted in northern Greenland during the Korean War.

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About the Author

J. J. Boskin is an emeritus professor of American Social & Ethnic History at Boston University. Overall, his focus has been on the origins of slavery, racial stigmatizing, urban revolts, people’s humor and tipping points in history.

His works include Seasons of Rebellion: Protest and Radicalism in Recent America (Co-author & Editor, 1972); Urban Racial Violence in the Twentieth Century (Author & Editor, 1969, 1976); Into Slavery: Racial Decisions in the Virginia Colony (1977); Sambo: The Rise and Demise of an American Jester (1986); Rebellious Laughter: People’s Humor in American Culture (1997); The Humor Prism in Twentieth Century America (Author & Editor, 1997). His most recent book is Corporal Boskin’s Cold Cold War: A Comical Journey (2011), a narrative of his U.S. Army role as the Historian of a top secret, scientific expeditionary outfit posted in northern Greenland during the Korean War.

Dedication

For

~Charlene~

Joyously entwined in the stream of time…

Copyright Information ©

J. J. Boskin 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Boskin, J. J.

A Comedy of Pretzels

ISBN 9798886932164 (Paperback)

ISBN 9798886932171 (Hardback)

ISBN 9798886932195 (ePub e-book)

ISBN 9798886932188 (Audiobook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023908753

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

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Acknowledgment

Friends… a family of friends… have elevated and enveloped in the quirkiness of whatever I have done or thought, do or think. In this rooted way, a wit once noted, God gives us relatives – but thank God we can choose our friends.

And here I am extremely blessed, this novel being no exception, springing from everyday coming and going, doing mundane things or celebrating high moments, or zigzagging thoughtfully in ideas and events, or laughing through the ironies, or what the hell just plain schmoozing with them.

And then more with three joyful daughters, Julie, Lori, Deborah, who entwine spontaneously, investing my days with loving embrace always.

And more recently, a surprise of sudden uplift, a literary editor, Catherine Parnell of Birch Bark Press, who with intent, insight and generative knowledge has overseen my novella, Roommates: 3 1/2 Scenarios, and this novel with marvelous sensitivity and particular care in viewing its content and humor.

Of all this to have come my way at this stage, I further bow to the humor gods who often got me to laugh as I struggled to make sense of my space and place on this unusual and contradictory planet. No more need to be said, except that I realized many things would happen – but this way? Who knew!

JJB

A Note on Peoples’ Humor

The nub of this comedic novel is that peoples’ humor is spontaneously expressed and configured, offered in private spaces, alternately elevated and hammered out, and occurs among every class, gender, ethnicity and race. It is a cultural form that sprouts from deep within the historical soil and mirrors all dimensions of American society. There are peoples’ jokes and joke cycles for every season and subject, from the personal to prejudicial to desire to anguish to political to social to religious, and on. Jokes are laconic stories expressing wider scenarios. And it all came into play in the earliest Colonization in the Seventeenth Century and continues to the Present, infused by the constant influx of disparate groups that populate American society.

Although it is an oral form that swiftly dissipates, at the same time it often makes its way into print media: Farmer’s Almanacs, popular magazines, professional newsletters, folklore collections, unwashed wall and stall graffiti, mimeograph and Xerox dispatches, and now the broad Internet. Without doubt, this type of outpouring humor leaves a cultural residue and fits perfectly into what the historian Carl Becker once termed the climate of opinion of every generation.

And it is a genre of humor that I have been collecting and collating and interpreting over many decades. These comedic-sized bits, riffs and stories have come to me via all sources imaginable in the cultural grapevine: Friends and students, strangers in locker rooms, talkative bar drinkers, anonymous office flyers, happenstance traveling companions, in barbershop chairs, and lately through the Web. During this lengthy period I also made my way into public bathrooms to read the graffiti hastily scribbled in the stalls; read the fading printing on fences and brick walls; and have even written to the New York Times requesting mimeograph humor from corporate offices.

In the beginning, I personally went to both male and female locations until a late-night cleaning woman at the university where I taught spotted me on my knees copying down women’s writings. She led out a shriek, I swiftly fled, whereby then hiring female students to do the task.

I pen all this not just to make the case for the novel’s unique brand of plot humor but also as a disclaimer. None but none of the humor offered in the standup routines came to me with names attached. Otherwise being the demanding historian that I definitely am, I would have gladly stated its source. Should any of the material in the novel have come from you, I deeply apologize for not giving attribution. Please let me know of this oversight and I’ll make a correction in the novel’s second printing.

This latter statement is of course the ultimate optimism, but at this stage I’m not ruling out anything comical. And neither should any of you.

JJB

Standup Scenarios

Cambridge, MA: People’s Stage

Lawrence, KS: Signs and Signs

Los Angeles, CA: Political Tripping

Twin Cities, Mpls: Good News/Bad News

Reuben’s University: Women’s Jubilant Riff

Chapter One

Swirling Time

New England, 1985

"Always pandemonium—damnit—always," complained Byrra, sprinting down the hall to the small bedroom. Swooping in, she swiftly dressed her three-year-old son, Miles.

Reuben, she yelled into the bathroom, have you finished dressing Isabel yet? Hearing nothing but water and gargling, she peered into her daughter’s room. Seven-year-old Isabel had her dress at least over her head, one sock on, the other caught in a struggle with the pinky. "Isabel, get moving downstairs for breakfast, now! And don’t forget your backpack."

Reuben threw the towel over the shower rack and dashed into his daughter’s bedroom. Isabel now had one shoe on, her foot rocking back and forth, her other foot still immobile with a sock dangling between the small toes.

Woes on toes, o’toes’s woes, Reuben sing-songed. Why can’t nature be wise? Make toes all the same size!

Isabel didn’t say a word.

O.K. Isabel, he said sternly but with a smile, where’s your other shoe?

She shrugged.

Peering under the bed, he shoved aside a book and assorted toys until he found it. Grabbing her backpack, they trotted hand-in-hand downstairs to the breakfast nook.

Byrra was drinking coffee with one hand while feeding Miles dry cereal with the other. It was a balancing act that she didn’t mind, secretly gratified with the few remaining remnants of his dependence. It was she who’d named him after her favorite jazz musician, Miles Davis, a rare act of rebellion against her strict upbringing. In her father’s house, only classical music was permitted.

From the moment he was conscious of the world about him, Miles assumed he was not safe without a hat, so he wore one all day. He wore a different hat at night. If it came off during sleep, an arm would automatically swoop it back on. Sometimes, when he felt the world wasn’t making any sense at all, he wore two hats at once.

The bus will be here in fifteen minutes, Byrra exclaimed crossly. There’s not much time to go over schedules.

I’m sorry. The conference went later than it was supposed to so my clock’s way off this morning.

You know, Reuben, this is getting to be a bad habit these days. I know your work is thorny, but you’ve simply got to turn down some of these conference invitations.

Reuben shifted topics. Tell me who I pick up this afternoon after my last class.

You get Miles at daycare. I’ll fetch Isabel at the bus stop after the departmental meeting.

Sure thing.

Twenty-minutes later, the house was empty.

The Glass Eye Is Watching You!

Reuben found a parking space several blocks away from his office. No easy feat on any day. He had a campus parking permit, but as one of his colleagues had noted with a sneer, It’s a hunting license, period.

Zigzagging along the college pathways, Reuben sucked in the autumn tang and tried hard not to think about the voluminous papers piled on his desk. On seasonal cue, the haunting lines from Autumn Leaves floated through his head, stirred by the voice of his nubile teenage girlfriend who’d sang it in a whispery voice before he’d left for college.

Reuben was perturbed that at this relatively young age, he might be labeled a nostalgia addict, but that was the least of his predicaments. Playing it over and over, the song stayed with him all the way to his office.

He and Byrra worked at the same small, demanding, prestigious university. Driven by her passion to create an academic duo whose combined fields would create a fresh way of looking at global issues, Byrra had negotiated a spot for Reuben in the Department of History when the university wooed her as a full professor in the highly-touted GIA Research Center. She was on the trajectory as a seminal figure in evolutionary biology. Reuben was way down on the academic rung, an assistant professor pushing his tenure year, busting his ass, as they all do, at this level. Only part of him really wanted to make it in academia, the other goad was to give Byrra what she desired.

Reuben had arrived on campus early to put the final touches on the remaining essay of his tenure review, a solid defense of past research and assurance of intellectual growth. Ordinarily, this would not have posed a problem. Universities were on the cutting edge of ethnicity and multiculturalism, a legacy of the fiery ’sixties and early ’seventies, and Reuben’s work on social change and alienation movements had attracted considerable attention, but this place couldn’t have been lousier for his career.

This university was the fiefdom of President Jeremiah Brittle, an unusual mixture of particles. He was not your typical university president, nor was he your ordinary human being. An early childhood accident had blinded his right eye. Growing up in a small Texas town, he’d suffered the taunts of children, and laughter of adults, for the dark patch he wore over his eye. At barely five-foot-three inches tall, he’d looked like a miniature pirate.

Hypersensitive to ridicule and filled with raging currents, Brittle was driven to return the favor. Over the years, he’d polished it into an art form; and then an ingenious physical modification proved a matchless weapon. A glass eye replaced the patch. Shock, Brittle often told Gerald Fawnling, his vice president, who’d been audaciously anointed to the position despite his lack of a Ph.D., the best way to impale them.

To make his opponents uncomfortable in conversation or debate, Brittle would tap-tap-tap his glass eye, slowly at first, then with a brisk motion remove it from the socket. Pointing it directly at the startled figure, he would intone The glass eye is watching you! A tight grin would extend across his chiseled face, and although this never failed to have its desired effect, it sometimes produced more than he bargained for, as some poor student or faculty member retched on his shoes.

From the beginning of his reign, Brittle managed with shrewd mental sinews, plus this peculiar physiognomy, to purge his enemies at every level of the university. Like a powerful medieval lord who held sway over large tracts of land filled with toiling administration workers and academic professors, he’d survey his manor from his office-castle daily. From there he thundered pronouncements on matters ranging from the tiny to the cosmic, from the pruning of campus trees to scholarly issues. Brimming with fireplace fury, he reached into every miniscule segment of the campus, eliminating spotty opposition and brazenly extending his turf.

Possessing an insatiable edifice complex, he doubled the size of the institution and attracted national recognition. A master of public relations, he convinced the outside world that were it not for him, the institution would have gone belly-up. It was a total fabrication, of course, because it had enjoyed considerable status and endowment, and was already in the process of sizeable innovations before his arrival.

Reuben made the mistake—his first and unfortunately not his last—of pointedly telling a conservative colleague that Brittle’s actions were tantamount to Lord Acton’s famous dictum: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. He then likened him as a late nineteenth-century Robber Baron, a kind of the ruthless corporate capitalists.

Brittle had brazenly stated that unlike other university presidents, he would not depart a pauper. True to his word, he set about amassing a cool fortune, becoming the first of the modern academic CEOs and a model for others who copied his techniques. After a few fierce battles, he accomplished what most university presidents only dream of: a genuflecting board of trustees, a faculty shorn of political maneuverability, and a corporate salary replete with hidden benefits. A colleague had aptly labeled him the road-rage president.

However, what really got Brittle raging was the multicultural assault on the white, male canon of Western European studies. They shall not pass, Brittle and Fawnling had proclaimed in apocalyptic unison. The two cohorts-in-power did everything they could to impede the creation of programs that focused on minorities whether blacks, women, Hispanics, or gender. Women in particular unnerved Brittle. Testifying in a court trial, he referred to the Department of English, which consisted of five women out of several dozen male faculty members, as a damned matriarchy.

Nor did Brittle and Fawnling support the appointment or promotion of any faculty member who was politically left or had engaged in labor union activities. Rather than coming straight out in their opposition, though, they skirted legal challenges through the ingenious strategy of allowing decisions and appointments to languish on the vine until they simply withered away. And if that ploy didn’t work, they simply ridiculed the intrinsic worth of individual scholarship.

It would not be off the mark to state that Brittle not only disliked the present direction of intellectual change, he detested every aspect of it: the very change that had drawn Reuben in. Whereas Reuben embraced cultural diversity and gender studies, and identified the patterns of alienation, Brittle and his administration loathed them. He fired fusillades against every new methodology that coursed its way into university curriculums. Reuben’s second faux pas was to publicly label these actions as academic atrocities.

Trained as a philosopher, Brittle offered harmonic clichés about the virtues of cooperation and intellectual jousting. One day, however, exasperated by some faculty protest, he’d finally blurted out, A university is not a democracy!

Cheap Wood!

Solly was jolted by his heart screaming at him. After telephoning his son-the-doctor, Solly had then driven the twenty-odd miles to his son’s hospital. Rushed right into the emergency room, the cardiac specialist couldn’t give any assurance of recovery.

The call to Reuben came in mid-afternoon. I have bad news, said his brother, a voice mingled with foreboding. Pop suffered a massive heart attack. It doesn’t look like he’ll make it through the night. Can you call Herb and come to the hospital as quickly as possible?

Reuben was shaken. A common heart attack? It seemed inconceivable that this most powerful of men could have prosaic heart failure. Over the years, he had half-expected his father to be done in by some violent act or other, but this way? As Solly himself would often intone, "noway!"

Reuben phoned Herb and arranged to meet him at the airport not far from the hospital. After renting a car, they drove in cumbrous silence. Wheeling into the emergency parking area, they dashed to Solly’s room.

Their doctor-brother and wife were sitting in chairs at the foot of the bed. Rising to hug, both looked stiff and pale.

He probably won’t make it to morning, Reuben’s sister-in-law whispered through a shiver.

What Reuben saw was a sight he could never have imagined. The crumpled figure of his father lay in a fetal position, an oxygen mask over his face. Tubes were running from machines into different parts of his sedated body. The vigorous, defying, wisecracking, hustling, gallows-spouting man that Reuben had grown up with was down for the count, his eyes shut, his breathing uneven.

Dad, said his doctor-son, gently touching his leg. Nothing stirred. He tried again, this time more forcibly. Reuben and Herb are here…

A huge haahhh emerged from beneath the mask. Solly opened his eyes, turned slightly, stared around the room and then began to pull himself up sideways. He got halfway onto the pillow, jerking up his elbows, grunting inaudibly, then he pushed away his son’s hands that tried to help him.

Solly’s glare was fierce as he shook his head back and forth on the pillow. He remained in that position, his breathing uneven rumbles, a scene so unnatural that no one knew what to say. Suddenly pulling a hand from beneath the covers, and with a flourish yanking off his oxygen mask, Solly was now in command of his body. An arced smile crossed his face.

Dream Street, he said shakily.

"Dream, what?" asked his doctor-son, figuring Solly was hallucinating.

Yeah… Dream Street… he whispered to himself. Yeah, sure… Runyon…

Then without missing a beat, heart or otherwise, Solly slowly began reciting a passage from a Damon Runyon story, his most beloved of writers. It was a halting, unsteady, raspy but insistent cadence:

In this street you see burlesque dolls, and hoofers, and guys who write songs, and saxophone players, and newsboys, and newspaper scribes, and taxi drivers, and blind guys, and midgets, and blondes with Pomeranian pooches, and French poodles, and guys with whiskers, and night-club entertainers, and I do not know what all else.

He stopped for a moment, opening his mouth wide for air to pour in. A water glass was thrust toward a fisted hand, which he contemptuously took, and then went on:

And all these characters are interesting to look at, and some of them are very interesting to talk to, although if you listen to several I know long enough, you may get the idea that they are somewhat daffy…

Pausing, peering straight up at the antiseptic ceiling, he gurgled the final line:

…especially the horse players.

Only the ceiling fan broke the silence of their astonishment. Looking around, Solly raised an arm and pointed his index finger toward the ceiling.

Daffy. Oh yeah. Daffy.

What Pop? What’s Daffy? asked Reuben, his mouth totally dry.

Water.

His brother gave Solly a glass with a curved straw.

Wood, Solly said coughing, continuing to point up.

Puzzled, they all looked up.

Wood, Solly repeated, then added more forcefully, "cheap—yeah—yeah—cheap wood."

What’s that? asked his youngest son. "What? The ceiling is cheap wood? Really?"

Solly’s voice softened. No-no, you-hear-me, he said determinedly, "cheap wood."

They shot glances at each other.

Moving his index finger in a semi-circle around the room, Solly said in a slow, stern tone, "Not the ceiling, dopes. If I find out you got me an expensive coffin, I swear—I swear—I’ll come back. I mean that. Hear me? Cheap wood!"

Solly was finished.

Fumbling around for the oxygen mask, he put it over his face. Turning his head sideways into the pillow, he fell back to sleep.

Not wanting to, they all burst out laughing. In his inimitable way, Solly had again, as he always had, controlled the scenario.

That was just astonishing, Reuben exclaimed as they walked out into the hospital corridor. I always knew that parents were supposed to teach how us to live—I never realized they’re also supposed to show how to die. Pop did just that.

Still, he had kept them at a distance.

Reuben intuitively knew his own comic muse had moved up a sizeable notch. Gallows humor had reigned.

Reuben’s Quandary: Out Josh?

Miles whooped when he saw his father. The open-space classroom was strewn with small round desks and tiny chairs and cradled the crazy aroma of crayons and glue fused with peanut butter. Other parents were already getting their kids into jackets and rolling up thin scrolls of artistic fun.

Miles wore his favorite hat. Taking Reuben’s hand, he led his father over to the corkboard. Mine, he pointed to an indecipherable, swirling drawing. He looked up at Reuben proudly.

Hey, that’s good, Miles, I like it. Can you tell me about it?

Miles was too young to take offense. Well, there’s the sun, there’s the sky and there’s the birds in the trees, like the birds on our street.

Right, said Reuben, we sure do have many different birds on our street. And they’re different colors just like you drew them. That’s a really full picture, Miles.

But Miles was also too young to take credit for something he didn’t think of and said curtly, The teacher said we should make them all in colors.

Oh, said Reuben, I still like it.

They got home before Byrra and Isabel. Reuben picked up the mail off the floor and gave Miles some juice and cookies before sending him to play