Joke # 39

Do you know joke # 39? You probably know a version of it, perhaps set in a logician’s convention. Here’s the version from pp. 71-72 of The Tidewater Tales, by John Barth. Kathy is telling it to her husband, Peter.

&nbsp

Once upon a time, a new prison guard named Fred was assigned to guard a cell block of long-term convicts near Bellafonte, Pennsylvania. The first day on the job, he noticed that the convicts often spoke in numbers. Twenty-three, one of them said, and the others nodded knowingly. Somebody down the line said That reminds me of Forty-nine, and they shrugged. A third one asked with a kind of chuckle How about Seven Ninteen? But nobody cracked a smile.

Well, Fred got suspicious, so he asked an old trusty What’s going on? We’re just telling jokes to pass the time, the old trusty explained; but we’ve been together so long that we know one another’s stories by heart. So a long time ago we gave each joke a number, the way musicians in a dance band number their tunes. I mean their numbers. Instead of saying In this set let’s do “Smoke Gets in your Eyes” and then “Stardust” and then “One O’Clock Jump,” all your bandleader has to say is Set up Forty-two, Ninety-seven, and One Oh Eight. In the same way, if I want to tell for example the joke about the rabbi and the priest who both survived the car crash, all I have to do is say Two Sixty-one, and everybody in this block knows which joke I’m telling. Saves time.

The new guard Fred wondered why people doing time would want to save time, but he says Show me once. The old trusty hollers Two Sixty-One, and sure enough, all the cons on the block smile and nod their heads.

How come nobody ever laughs? the new guard wants to know. The old trusty shrugs and says We’ve heard ’em all before.

Peter chuckles. That’s good Kath. You tell a good story.

Complains Kathy Jesus, Peter. I haven’t finished it yet. I’m just coming to the punch line.

Sorry. I thought that was the punch line.

Says K, who picks up expressions here and there, Oy gevalt. The punch line is when the new guard decides to give it a try, so he hollers Thirty-nine, and everybody in the cell block breaks up, including the old trusty. Now, this new guard Fred happens to know he’s no good at telling stories, see, so he asks the old trusty how come his number was such a winner? When the old trusty can get his breath from laughing and wipe his eyes, he says We never heard that before.

&nbsp

So the thing that makes this a particularly John Barth scene is that the characters Kathy and Peter (who are, clearly, standing in for the author and his wife, having conspicuously similar life stories) are discussing story-telling. Kathy is telling Peter to tell her a story; Peter, a writer, is blocked. Actually, this bit in the novel is where Kathy and Peter are telling the story of how Kathy convinced Peter to write a story about Kathy and Peter, or rather a couple quite like them, and how the woman in that story gets her husband to tell her a story, which ultimately is the novel The Tidewater Tales. That is, John Barth is writing a story about Peter and Kathy (the characters, based on Mr. Barth and his wife), who are collaborating on a story about two unnamed characters based on themselves (that is, on Peter and Kathy, who are themselves based on Mr. Barth and his wife), who tell each other a joke about telling jokes, the joke in the joke being joke Thirty-nine (that is, the joke about the numbered jokes), which people who number their jokes (in the joke in the story in the story in the story) have never heard before.

At this point, Gentle Reader, if you have decided you don’t like John Barth’s books, then you are correct, and you don’t. If, on the other hand, you are intrigued, then give him a try.

As another help to the person is wondering whether to invest time in The Tidewater Tales, the first chapter is given the title Katherine Sherritt Sagamore, 39 Years Old and 8� Months Pregnant, Becalmed in our Engineless Small Sailboat at the End of a Sticky June Chesapeake Afternoon amid Every Sign of Thunderstorms Approaching from across the Bay, and Speaking as She Sometimes Does in Verse, Sets Her Husband a Task. There you are. I’ve saved you the trouble of opening the book to the first chapter, getting all annoyed, and putting it back on the shelf. Or else I’ve given you a reason to read the other six hundred and fifty pages. Of which I’ve so far, in more than two weeks, read fewer than ninety. Another warning: this (and the others I’ve read) are not so much page-turners as page-turn-backers, where I find myself flipping back to the bit a dozen pages or go to which this bit refers.

                           ,
-Vardibidian.