The Wit’s Guide to Disaster

Or, the illimitable juiciness of things

“Birth, n. The first and direst of all disasters.”
— Ambrose Bierce

All disasters are just problems of perspective. My man Pieter Bruegel the Elder (or perhaps one of his acolytes) figured that out circa 1560 in the above painting Landscape With the Fall of Icarus, a total banger of the Dutch Renaissance in which the boy who flew too close to the sun drowns obscurely in the bottom right corner of the canvas. 

It’s famous mostly because W.H. Auden wrote a slam-dunk ekphrasis on it called Musee des Beaux Arts, absolutely nailing 

how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure.

Our failures are always important to us, as Icarus glugs to himself here. As for other people’s disasters, well, you know, the plough isn’t going to push itself.

“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”
— Mel Brooks

And yet the disaster movie has been a staple of cinema since the beginning. Does that speak to our empathy as a species? Or perhaps just our love of seeing things blow up real good? Of course it’s the latter, as Susan Sontag wrote, as these films are “a sampling of the inadequacy of most people's response to the unassimilable terrors that infect their consciousness.”

Give us “a symphony of screams, weird electronic signals, the noisiest military hardware going,” but take the advice of Roland Emmerich, director of Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012: “Stay away from people getting killed Because it’s something… that I don’t think people like very much.” We’re not monsters, we insist loudly, raising our voices to be heard above the aforementioned symphonic screams.

“The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.”
— Oscar Wilde

Does the term “disaster artist” refer to someone who makes art from disaster or whose art is a disaster? The ambiguity is wonderful, which is why it made such a good title for the book and the movie about Tommy Wiseau, the auteur behind the notoriously inept film The Room. Does Bruegel qualify as a disaster artist? How about Auden, then? And did you know William Carlos Williams put down his plums (your plums) to write his own poem about Bruegel’s Icarus, 30 years after Auden? It’s not as good as Michael Hamburger’s later poem about the same painting, which boldly presents the sheep’s perspective of “the essential, illimitable juiciness of things.”

 “There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.”
— Boris Johnson

The word disaster means bad stars, and therein lies the appeal. Some celestial body decided to reach down and mess with us. It’s out of our hands! So the term natural disaster is redundant, but does the catastrophic weather unleashed by climate change qualify? The geologists recently voted against calling our age the Anthropocene, so maybe not? Good fodder for debate on the life rafts!

“When disasters come at the same time, they compete with each other.”
— Naguib Mahfouz

It’s worth taking comfort in itty bitty disasters. Here’s one I think about a lot, from Craig Brown’s terrific book 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, from one of Her Royal Highness’s contemporaries: “She never knew whether she was meant to be posh or to be matey, and so she swung between the two, and it was a disaster.”

As bad as an asteroid destroying the earth? It depends on where you’re standing.

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Paying Subscriber Perquisites!

For my paying subscribers (C$30/yr!) this week, one good piece of art that came out of that Unprecedented Disaster we all just lived through but would prefer to never again mention.

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For my founding subscribers ($C80/yr!), here’s April’s Riposte Card! You should already be in possession of three prints thereof, but if you’d still like to get some to helpfully discourage budding writers in your life, do subscribe today!

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Quote Vote

“My face looks like a wedding cake left out in the rain.”
— W.H. Auden

I rarely know which of these topics will lead to an inspired jaunt through historical quippery and which will result in a tear-soaked keyboard of woe. Do you know? If so, please tell me!

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If this was Issue No. 249 of Get Wit Quick — and I am reliably informed that it was — then next week is our semiquincentennial. I’ll order the bunting shortly. Maybe bundt cake, too. As the discoverers of insulin remind us, bunting is best. My book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting was an inequally notable Canadian achievement. Tap the ❤️ below to stave off/on disaster.