Grotesque Humor in Lorrie Moore’s "You're Ugly, Too"

By Wided Sassi Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences Kairouan-Tunisia

w.sassi@laposte.net

The grotesque is one of the few elusive concepts that resist canonization. Despite

numerous attempts to capture its essence, the nature of the grotesque remains widely

unfathomable. Originally used to refer to a decorative style in sculpture, painting, and

architecture characterized by formal distortions of the natural to the point of absurdity, ugliness,

or caricature, the term has acquired new meanings with its introduction into the literary realm.

“Where previously seen as merely the principle of disharmony run wild”, the present tendency is

to view the grotesque as a” fundamentally ambivalent thing, as a violent clash of opposites, and

hence, in some of its forms at least, as an appropriate expression of the problematical nature of

existence” (Russel, 212). In this sense, the grotesque can be seen as the merging of the “comedy

and sadness, wisecracks and poignancy” (Casey, 3). American short story writer Lorrie Moore

(b-1957) is one of the few writers who have this rare ability to “take tragic, disturbing, or

generally heavy situations (or a mix of all three) and bring them to life not only through startling

metaphors, dialogue, and description, but also through witty, satirical humor and brilliant

wordplay” to use critic Elissa Schappell’s words. Through a humorous yet decidedly morbid

tenor, Moore, in her works, renders the most unsettling and dramatic of cotemporary existence.

Her fiction unravels the astounding portraits of the unhinged, the marginalized and the lost

(Falfoul, 295). Wretchedness, trauma and death unfold with a rather burlesque levity as she “tries

to register the way we, here in America, live” (2008). "You're Ugly, Too" (1989), testifies to

Moore’s droll irony and cynical edge as “the voice of the generation”. Acclaimed for its

unflinching humor and cutting sarcasm, the narrative tackles “the wrenching incompatibility of

[a woman’s] professional and artistic expression with the familial commitments” (Moore, 2004,

16). Zoe Hendricks, a history teacher who ends up inflicted with cancer and living alone in “one

of those Illinois towns with the funny names of Paris, Oblong, Normal”. Interestingly though, the

more agonized Professor Hendricks is, the likelier she is to make her pain a subject of joke.

Humor actually pervades the story and arises even in the most unexpected situations.

Zoe’s life seems to be a "big fat joke”. The title of the narrative, "You're Ugly, Too", is Zoe’s

favorite joke which she likes to throw at anyone within listening distance. It is about a doctor

who tells his terminally ill patient asking for a second opinion "You're ugly, too." In class, Zoe

sings “Getting to Know You” and relentlessly cracks jokes with utter disregard for her audience.

She is writing a book on humor by the title Hearing the One About: Uses of Humor in the

American Presidency. She is single and unable to bear children yet she doesn’t flinch to make

fun of it. With a sarcastic bite, she wonders “I’m not married? Oh my God,” “I forgot to get

married.” The only men Zoe seems to truly care for are the postman and the taxi driver who

offers her cut rates for her rides to and from the airport. Zoe doesn’t run short of witty comments

even when she is in pain. "Ultrasound," Zoe said jokingly to the technician who put the cold jelly

on her bare stomach. "Does that sound like a really great stereo system or what?" When telling a

friend about the tests she had to go through , she comments "I've had sonograms. I've had

mammograms. Next week I'm going in for a candygram." The last scene of the story is yet again

another example of Zoe’s comic spirit gone wild. She was having a discussion with Earl, a recent

divorcé who vainly tried to enchant her all along the Halloween party, when she, in a rather

unexpected twist, shoves him from behind as he was leaning on the railing of the twentieth floor

balcony. To comfort the horrified guy "Just kidding," Hendricks says, "I was just kidding."

Yet, however sinister and dismissive Zoe’s biting comments might sound, they hide, deep

inside, a tormented woman entrenched between a strife to be given a voice and a deep desire to

establish communication bridges. The running gags and jokes she relentlessly tells act as a shield

protecting her from hurt. Zoe wears the mask of the witty and funny to avoid facing her

distressed reality and maintain sanity against all odds. Mark Twain once noted “Everything

human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow.” His comments

perfectly apply to Zoe’s case. Single and leading a “love-free life”, Zoe simply doesn’t fit in her

environment. She is physically and emotionally displaced. She barely has any interaction with

her sister, coworkers, and men. She hides the fact that she was dying from her sister. The dean

had only hired her to avoid a sex-discrimination law suit against the school board. Her students

fail to understand her “gently layered and sophisticated” irony and insisted on calling it

“sarcasm”. They find her jokes obnoxiously unpleasant and can hardly catch their punch lines.

Once one of her students asked “What is your perfume?”, “ Room freshener”, she replied. “”She

smiled, but he looked at her, unnerved”. Just as her students failed to see her “crusty” yet “”

brittle and pointed” edge, so did the men she dated. All three men seemed to care less about her

un/femininity; eventually however “she came to realize that all men, deep down, wanted Heidi.

Heidi with cleavage. Heidi with outfits.” After such a realization, Zoe ,disenchanted with love,

vowed to direct her love to a more worthy “entity”: her house. "I'm seeing my house.” She

confides.” I'm tending to it when it wets, when it cries, when it throws up."

Zoe’s world revolves around death. Her favorite color is black. She buys a new house, but she

never furnishes it. “She had bought several plain pine chests to use as love seats or boot boxes,

but they came to look to her more and more like children's coffins, so she returned them”. The

same thing happened with an oriental rug she bought but then had to return because she was

almost convinced that the Chinese inscription on it was "Bruce Springsteen”. Furnishing and

unfurnishing, preparing and shedding, like a womb”, this is what Zoe’s life was all about. In the

Halloween party, she chose the costume of death. Even when she seems enjoying herself

watching a movie, the title is Death.

Sarcastically, the more painful the situation is the likelier Zoe is to make a joke out of it. Her

“ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It

insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such

traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure"(Freud ). Humor is her defense

mechanism against her alienation and marginalization: an alienation which intensifies in

solitude. Zoe doesn’t recognize the reflection she sees on the little baroque mirror in the entry.

“Sometimes she looked puffier and plainer than she remembered. Sometimes shifty and dark.

Most times she just looked vague”. Vague is indeed an interesting adjective to describe oneself.

Underlying the seemingly careless eccentric and tough woman lies a very vulnerable person.

Zoe, like many of Moore’s characters uses humor as a strategy to survive the absurdity of

urban and maintain sanity. In fact, presenting the serious with a certain grotesque levity is an

overarching technique in Moore’s works. The comic effect is produced by a deliberate

disproportion between the style and sentiment (Jonson). In “How to Be an Other Woman”,

Charlene finds out that she is not her lover’s only mistress. Her disenchantment with love is

rendered in a hilariously tragic statement: “when you were six you thought mistress meant to put

your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it can mean many things, but

essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet.” Similarly, Olena in “Community Life”

is a lonely woman striving“ for a place in a ‘community’ from which she feels physically,

emotionally, or creatively exiled” (Weekes 118). Sadly though, she comes to the realization that

her name was nothing but an anagram of the word “alone,” reinforcing, thereby, the role of the

outcast she has been assigned by the hegemonic culture. As we, readers, laugh at incongruity

between the language and the situation, we relate to the protagonists’ sorrows and distress.

Humor in Moore’s works is not necessarily nor always light-hearted, amusing, and laughter-

arousing. Most often, it is rather ludicrous and heavily dark.

Humor, as it turns out, is not only a defense mechanism, but more importantly a subversive tool,

a form of counter hegemonic discourse that seeks “to smash everything, to shatter the framework

of institutions, to blow up the law, to break up the ‘truth’ with laughter” (Cixoux, 258). Through

her witty comments and droll irony, Zoe refuses to submit to the ideals of mainstream culture.  

Zoe exemplifies the postmodern individual with its contradictions and ”multiple truths”. As a

person, she can not be simply reduced to an either or binary opposition of good and evil .There

seems to be “fifty shades of Zoe”. Zoe is vigorously fragile, hilariously tragic, and terminally

alive. Zoe creates her own world, with a separate value system. For instance, she holds her own

truth of femininity. She refuses to be downgraded to a "Heidi", a woman who would "lug goat

milk up the hills and not think twice" and who would never complain. Zoe is a “career woman”

who hardly pays attention to her looks, certainly cares less about other people’s opinions about

her. In doing so, she enlists in the battle against norms and cultural shackles. Zoe sees “decent

feminine actions and reactions ”as “absurd, farcical and alien in a fundamentally comic way”.

Through laughing at those cultural values, Moore debunks their irrationality and forwards a

harsh critique to the American culture. In its most radical function, humor in Moore’s work seeks

de-construction of shared values.

Through a wickedly funny yet extremely poignant rendering, Lorrie Moore probes the pleasures

and pains of twenty first century individuals. Zoe Hendricks is an example of a lonely woman

vainly trying to ascertain her own version of the “truth”. Humor is her survival strategy against

the odds of modernity and her self-empowerment tactic whereby she debunks the absurdity of

codes of actions and reactions.

References

Boudidah Falfoul, Nadia. “Humoring the Context, Contextualizing Humor in the Short Fiction of Lorrie Moore”. International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies. Vol. 2, No. 3 December,2015, pp.223-304.

Casey, John. “Eloquent Solitudes: The Short Stories of Lorrie Moore Address Life’s Essential Loneliness.” Chicago Tribune. May 20, 1990 14:3

Cixous, Hélène.“The Laugh of the Medusa.” Signs, Vol. 1, No. 4 Summer, 1976, pp. 875-893.

Johnson, Samuel. The Works of Samuel Johnson: The lives of the English poets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1987.

Kelly, Alison. Understanding Lorrie Moore. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2009.

Moore, Lorrie. Self-Help. New York: Warner Books, 1985.

-------------------Birds of America. New York: Knopf, 1998.

Russell, Emily. Reading Embodied Citizenship: Disability, Narrative, and the Body Politic. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2011.

Schappell, Elisabeth.Intro. 3 X 33: Short Fiction by 33 Writers by Mark Winegardner . Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2004.

Weekes, Karen “Identity in the Short Story Cycles of Lorrie Moore” Journal of the Short Story in English. Autumn, 2002 p. 109-122.