Can you have beauty without ugliness? Can you have light without darkness? Can you have ketchup without mustard? On meatloaf, yes — but it isn’t pretty.
“Ugliness is in a way superior to beauty because it lasts longer.”
— Serge Gainsbourg
Toronto, the city I live in, is not beautiful. There are certainly spots, like that one part of College Street where the streetcars curve around old-fashioned lamp posts, that qualify if you squint. But as I like to say, Berlin is also an ugly city. True, they have the convenient excuse of Stalinism whereas we’ve merely suffered through a hundred years of peace, prosperity, and short-sighted urban planning. But still: It’s not about the infrastructure; it’s the people!
“It’s nothing to be born ugly. Sensibly, the ugly woman comes to terms with her ugliness and exploits it as a grace of nature.”
— Colette
And what makes a person ugly? The answer is obvious: Yellow teeth. That’s why everyone gets veneers now and looks great. In the new issue of Harper’s (really the most interesting magazine out there), Barrett Swanson attends the annual festival of the World Association of Ugly People in Piobbico, Italy. The Club dei Brutti dates back to the 1870s and counts 30,000 members around the globe. As the headline promises — Regarding The Pain of Uggos — the article makes the most of an excellent premise. My first key takeaway: If you proudly say that you are ugly, people will likely disagree. As the author’s friend notes, “I haven’t actually seen an ugly person yet. I mean it’s easy to embrace this ethos if you’re a well-complected Adonis.”
“Beauty is only skin deep, but ugliness goes clean to the bone.”
— Dorothy Parker
And the second conclusion, the one that makes this an ideal subject for a newsletter about wit: If you affably embrace your decrepitude, you exude bonhomie, which in itself is attractive. As Swanson writes of the uggos, “it may well be that their peals of silvery laughter are indisputable evidence of their true communal achievement—of establishing a complex and nuanced internal self apart from their appearance.” Which echoes Nora Ephron’s famous line from Heartburn:
Vera said: ‘Why do you feel you have to turn everything into a story?’
So I told her why:
Because if I tell the story, I control the version.
Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me.
Because if I tell the story, it doesn’t hurt as much.
Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.
And like wit, ugliness is a question of timing. Wait long enough and we’re all ugly. Some of us just have first-mover advantage.
“I was so ugly when I was born, the doctors slapped my mother.”
— Henny Youngman
In his published diary with the ugly title A Year with Swollen Appendices, the musician Brian Eno proposed what has come to be called Ugliness Theory. In his words: “Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit — all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided.” Which suggests that em dashes and not-this-but-that will soon signify the cutting edge of modern fiction! Until we get there, next week?
Approximately each month, my paid subscribers and I exchange some of the best things we’ve read, seen, heard, and experienced in a special issue called Get Wit Picks. This week, I want to congratulate my witty newsletter pal Myq Kaplan! The standup comedian and frequent GWQ commenter created a simple and effective format to share his jokes on social media, and for his efforts he got a nice little writeup in The New York Times. You should definitely subscribe to his newsletter here! Some of my fave Myqisms:
Get Wit Quick No. 385 was pretty from afar but far from pretty. The French term jolie-laide, literally ugly-pretty, describes unconventional beauty but is sadly not actually used in France or Quebec. Laissez le pain of uggos rouler! The hideous mascot of this newsletter is Magnus the magpie, named after the magician from the Deptford Trilogy. The title font is Vulf Sans, the official typeface of the band Vulfpeck. The inferior-for-now and still free AI replicant is at getwitquicker.replit.app. The book was Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting. Free inner glowups to all who tap the ❤️ below.
Philosophical question: is the World’s Ugliest Dog ugly?
Excellent piece Benjamin