when Dagny thinks of the opposite ways in which Francisco and Jim laugh: “Francisco seemed to laugh at things because he saw something much greater. Jim laughed as if he wanted to let nothing remain great.”
In this context, you can see why one of Ellsworth Toohey’s most evil lines in The Fountainhead is his advice that “we must be able to laugh at everything, particularly at ourselves.” The fact that one hears that line so often is the worst symptom of our nonvalue age. When that line is repeated too often in a society, it is a sign of the collapse of all values.
Observe modem magazines when they do profiles on celebrities whom they support or agree with: they always do it in a snide manner of laughing at the very people they are glamorizing. This style was once reserved for enemies; the press would do a ridiculing article only on someone they disagreed with or wanted to denounce. Today, it is the accepted style for those whom they want to glorify. That is a devastating sign of the policy that says: “Permit nothing to have value.”
To say that one does not take something seriously means: “Never mind, it’s not important, it doesn’t matter one way or another.” You can say that only about the things you do not value. If you take nothing seriously, it means that you have no values. If you have no values, then the first value, the base of all the others—namely, your life—has no value for you.
Let me give a few examples of the two types of humor.
Jean Kerr, the author of Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, is a benevolent humorist. She is allegedly complaining about the hard lot of a mother and the difficulty of coping with children. For instance, when her children eat the daisies, that is supposed to be a great evil on their part. But is that in fact what she is saying? No; she is really conveying the adventurousness and imagination of her children—their high spirits, which she has such a “hard” time controlling. At one point, when she describes how impossible it is to talk to one of her boys who is very literal-minded, I fell in love with that boy. She tells him to throw all of his clothes into the washing machine, and their conversation then goes something like the following. He says: “All my clothes?” She says: “Yes.” “My shoes, too?” “Well, no, not your shoes.” “All right, but I’ll put in the belt.” What comes across from their dialogue is an extremely intelligent, rational child. What Jean Kerr is actually laughing at is the kind of mother who would really consider this bad or difficult. She is negating the difficulty of the situation, and she is glorifying the good qualities of her children.
O. Henry is a benevolent humorist, as is Oscar Wilde in many of his plays, particularly The Importance of Being Earnest. Cyrano de Bergerac contains a lot of comedy, all of it aimed at destroying the pretentious or the cowardly. Cyrano laughs at villains, not at values or heroes.
Ernst Lubitsch was the only screen director famous for romantic comedies. Ninotchka, the Greta Garbo picture he directed, is a good example: it is comedy, but also high romance. What is laughed at is the sordid, undesirable aspects of life—and what comes across by means of the humor is the glamour, the romance, and the positive aspects.
In the benevolent type of humor, something good is always involved, as in Ninotchka, where the hero and heroine are quite glamorous. They are not funny—some of their adventures are; or they are acting humorously toward certain things, but not in a way that undercuts their own dignity, value, or self-esteem.
On the other hand, Swift is a humorist of a dubious kind. I read Gulliver’s Travels so long ago that I remember little of it, but I do remember that it is a satire against something—which does not project what the author is for. He satirizes all kinds of social weaknesses, but upholds nothing.
In a more modern style, Dorothy Parker laughs in a nasty, bitter way. She is regarded as a sensitive writer, yet manages to deal humorously with the most heartbreaking subjects possible, like lonely old maids or ugly, undesired women.
Humor as the exclusive ingredient of a story is a dubious form of writing. While some people have acquired great skill at it, such humor is philosophically empty because it is merely destruction in the name of