I’ve never encountered a truly great piece of narrative- whether it be Dickens or The Wire or Shakespeare or whatever that isn’t at times really funny.
Relentless seriousness is the preserve of the overcompensating middle-brow while both the truly high and the truly low are not afraid to have a laugh about what fools these mortals be.
Great piece, Lincoln, might have to dust off the old Sopranos DVD box set there.
Great essay. You are right that these errors are not only funny, but make dialogue distinctive and realistic. And no show has approached the breadth of tone of The Sopranos (Succession is a great example, and possibly the closest... Gilligan's shows have great balance, but they don't have that explosive, anything goes sense of life you mentioned -- they are much more streamlined.)
If you haven't already, check out Talking Sopranos podcast! It's great. Did a rewatch a few years ago and neither that nor the Sopranos Sessions book were around. A lot more scraping about to find extra material. There was No Fuckin Ziti, a podcast by two regular scmhmos that was fun to listen to, but it didn't provide much info I didn't already know.
Anyway, thanks for a great piece. David Chase really is a genius and made a show that may be unsurpassable in its greatness (Zeitz and Sepinwall say Simpsons 1 and Sopranos 2, but it's really pineapples and oranges...)
For me, The Sopranos is one of the funniest shows ever — so many memorable examples of great non-malaprop-dependent lines, but my favorite is when stoned Christopher killed Adrianna’s dog by obliviously sitting on it and when she came home and freaked out he said, “She must have crawled underneath for warmth.”
And for anyone who hasn’t seen it, BoJack Horseman is brilliant, so darkly funny and simultaneously tragic. Teenage girl at rehab: “My dad totally overreacted when he found me not breathing.”
So many other great shows, but these are my two favorites for that mix of tone you’re talking about.
Very interesting article. The part about malaproprisms in literature made me think of Don Quijote, which is full of them. Their purpose is wider than the purely comic one, though. There is an old article by Leo Spitzer where he incorporates these mistakes in speech into a wider theory of "linguistic relativism" in Quijote. I found this theory quite interesting, it's worth looking into.
So much fun. I have been a student of malapropisms ever since college where I played Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan’s brilliant comedy of manners, The Rivals!
Before David Chase wrote for The Sopranos he wrote many episodes of The Rockford Files. In one episode his buffoonish character hopes "a tragedy can be diverted". The same character also refuses to deny his apparent good luck by claiming "As they say, you don't look inside the Trojan Horse".
This article was a fun read. I noticed this, though: "...an error is intentional on the part of the writer, but in POSE if I type 'it was the pineapple of success' a reader might easily think it was a typo that got missed IT proofs." I wonder if those typos were meant to be cheeky and ironic. If so, I thought that was a subtly creative and unusual touch. And if not, I thought it still added some unintentional meaning. Especially the "pose" instead of "prose" one since that seems like a true malapropism.
In one of P.G Wodehouse stories he has Bertie refer to someone as being ‘ as rich as creosote’.
I love these play on words...fabulous!
You might like Anne Garreta's 'In Concrete,' translated by Emma Ramadan. Lots of fun. "A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enema."
https://www.europenowjournal.org/2021/04/01/in-concrete-by-anne-f-garreta/
I’ve never encountered a truly great piece of narrative- whether it be Dickens or The Wire or Shakespeare or whatever that isn’t at times really funny.
Relentless seriousness is the preserve of the overcompensating middle-brow while both the truly high and the truly low are not afraid to have a laugh about what fools these mortals be.
Great piece, Lincoln, might have to dust off the old Sopranos DVD box set there.
Salut!
Great essay. You are right that these errors are not only funny, but make dialogue distinctive and realistic. And no show has approached the breadth of tone of The Sopranos (Succession is a great example, and possibly the closest... Gilligan's shows have great balance, but they don't have that explosive, anything goes sense of life you mentioned -- they are much more streamlined.)
If you haven't already, check out Talking Sopranos podcast! It's great. Did a rewatch a few years ago and neither that nor the Sopranos Sessions book were around. A lot more scraping about to find extra material. There was No Fuckin Ziti, a podcast by two regular scmhmos that was fun to listen to, but it didn't provide much info I didn't already know.
Anyway, thanks for a great piece. David Chase really is a genius and made a show that may be unsurpassable in its greatness (Zeitz and Sepinwall say Simpsons 1 and Sopranos 2, but it's really pineapples and oranges...)
We have never stopped laughing about Tony's "penisary contact with her Volvo."
For me, The Sopranos is one of the funniest shows ever — so many memorable examples of great non-malaprop-dependent lines, but my favorite is when stoned Christopher killed Adrianna’s dog by obliviously sitting on it and when she came home and freaked out he said, “She must have crawled underneath for warmth.”
And for anyone who hasn’t seen it, BoJack Horseman is brilliant, so darkly funny and simultaneously tragic. Teenage girl at rehab: “My dad totally overreacted when he found me not breathing.”
So many other great shows, but these are my two favorites for that mix of tone you’re talking about.
"The Reverend Rodney King Jr said, "Can't we all just get along?"
I too am rewatching the Sopranos. It gives one the opportunity to experience, truly experience, the outstanding acting and writing.
Very interesting article. The part about malaproprisms in literature made me think of Don Quijote, which is full of them. Their purpose is wider than the purely comic one, though. There is an old article by Leo Spitzer where he incorporates these mistakes in speech into a wider theory of "linguistic relativism" in Quijote. I found this theory quite interesting, it's worth looking into.
Favorite Christopher line, "I'm the hair apparent!" 🤣🤣🤣
So much fun. I have been a student of malapropisms ever since college where I played Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan’s brilliant comedy of manners, The Rivals!
"Meanwhile, back at the ranch, grandma was beating off the Indians." How many Western movies and books is that in.
Before David Chase wrote for The Sopranos he wrote many episodes of The Rockford Files. In one episode his buffoonish character hopes "a tragedy can be diverted". The same character also refuses to deny his apparent good luck by claiming "As they say, you don't look inside the Trojan Horse".
This article was a fun read. I noticed this, though: "...an error is intentional on the part of the writer, but in POSE if I type 'it was the pineapple of success' a reader might easily think it was a typo that got missed IT proofs." I wonder if those typos were meant to be cheeky and ironic. If so, I thought that was a subtly creative and unusual touch. And if not, I thought it still added some unintentional meaning. Especially the "pose" instead of "prose" one since that seems like a true malapropism.
Identify this line: “Look at the stems on Blondie.”
Google video captions are also a rich source of comic error. As in "My daughter is taking a course to become a Monster story teacher." (Montessori)