The Wit’s Guide to Simplicity

Or, reductively delicious

William of Occam’s Shave Club

Are the simplest jokes the best jokes? Norm Macdonald thought so, sometimes. He maintained that the truth was its own best punchline, like saying that Julia Roberts divorced Lyle Lovett because she realized that she was Julia Roberts and he was Lyle Lovett. (Though perhaps that’s also why they should have stayed together.) It’s inspiring to think of the Late Great Canadian as a Zen monk of comedy, continually subtracting the unnecessary until he found the sound of one hand clapping, wearing a joy buzzer.

“Here’s a good rule of thumb:
Too clever is dumb.”
— Ogden Nash

But then you read Based on a True Story, Macdonald’s meta-fictional memoir, and you realize that he was just as happy to work on all the levels at once. Simplicity only takes you so far.

“Seek simplicity, and distrust it.”
— A.N. Whitehead

Here’s the thing about Occam’s Razor: It applies very well to actual razors. The philosophical principle that “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity” was popularized by the medieval English friar Willam of Ockham, whose own name was occamed down to Occam.

The line explains why the 2004 Onion op-ed titled “Fuck Everything, We’re Doing Five Blades,” ostensibly written at the height of the razor wars by James M. Kilts, CEO and president of The Gillette Company, remains a classic. It also explains why, a few years later, startups like Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club were able to give Gillette a run for their money. And it might also explain Gillette’s new line of pubic hair trimmers, which are now marketed very matter-of-factly as razors for your pubic hair. One imagines that euphemisms like manscaping were confusing large segments of the target market. It’s definitely simpler, but maybe in the Idiocracy meaning of the word.

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”
— Henry Thomas Buckle

“That famous quote about how ‘great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people’ is discussing people.”
— A Shower Thought from danger cat

In the annals of simplicity, few products can compare to the launch of People magazine in 1974. Enough with events and ideas! People want to read about people! Hence, People! As Tim Wu writes in The Attention Merchants, the concept was widely ridiculed. As founding editor Richard Stolley explained: “There is nothing abstract about the name. People is what we are all about.” And it did gangbusters at the newsstand, quickly becoming the most profitable magazine in the world. The secret to picking cover stars was simple: 80% of Americans had to know them, they had to want to know more about them, and then they had to slot into this brutally simple formula:

Young is better than old.
Pretty is better than ugly.
Rich is better than poor.
TV is better than music.
Music is better than movies.
Movies are better than sports.
And anything is better than politics.

Reductive, yes, but wrong?

“If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.”
— Emerson M. Pugh

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They pulled the mail truck over the mountain!

Finally, the Canada Post strike is over, which means I can send the November and December Riposte Cards to my lovely paid subscribers. It also means this is the moment to upgrade your subscription so I can add you to my mailing frenzy! Yes, I got the Donald Sutherland stamps but sorry, they’re only for Canadians.

The beautiful portrait of Werner Herzog on December’s card has major New York Review of Books vibes. It’s drawn by Silas Kaufman, an Alberta illustrator and frontrunner for Most Interesting Man in Calgary. He’s illustrated Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophicus Logicus Tractatus, has a whole series of Old Skater portraits, and please check out his amazing answer to the final question below:

What’s your go-to item in a well-stocked stationery store?
A Platinum fountain Carbon #ec45e4 or if that's not available (and it likely won't be) a bottle of Black Take - Sumi Iroshizuku ink.

Where do you go for inspiration and/or information?
Mad magazine’s usual gang of idiots, David Levine, Roz Chast, Joe Ciardiello, Jack Unruh, the city streets, thrift stores, cinema, books, boxing gyms, skate shops, my family and friends.

Is there one joke, witticism, or aphorism you live by?
It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

What’s the best thing to put on toast?
Fromager d’Affinois Le Campagner

What work are you most proud of, and how can people support it?
All the hundreds of portraits I drew of inmates in youth prison that they then sent home to their families. In Canada you can’t have your picture taken in jail, so for some families the only image they could get of their child serving a prison sentence was a drawing. I should clarify that for 13 years I was a relief teacher at a local prison where I honed my portrait drawing skills. I had a rule: If you were working in class I’d draw you while you worked. This kept the class somewhat peaceful and the kids appreciated the drawing. If you want to support this, sign up to volunteer at a local public school if you can. I do it twice a week under my former principal from the youth prison.

Also! Don’t forget! If you upgrade your subscription you get both a digital and analog version of the Witty Remarks for Every Occasion Card, guaranteed to fit in most wallets and potentially save you from awkward exchanges at holiday parties.

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Quote Vote

“The pursuit of truth is just a polite name for the intellectual’s favorite pastime of substituting simple and therefore false abstractions for the living complexities of reality.”
— Aldous Huxley

Maybe the greatest of great minds don’t discuss anything. Is that possible?

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That was Get Wit Quick No. 285, which aimed to be short enough to retain interest but long enough to cover the important parts. Some would say it’s therefore like a miniskirt, but I could never bring myself to use that metaphor in polite company. It is evocative, though! Simply stated, this newsletter grew out of my book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting. Tapping the ❤️ below is a simple thing you can do and that I’ll see, but beyond that it’s unclear what greater purpose it serves.