ECU Humor Fest Recounts Humor in North Carolina Literature
Last week, Mendenhall Student center hosted the first annual ECU Humor Fest. From November 1-3, over 40 panelists from 5 countries spoke about the various guises found in all forms of humor. One panel in particular was The Old Mirth State: Humor in North Carolina Literature.
The event was sponsored by the NC Literary Review and included three panelists from various backgrounds. After an introduction by Tim Radzicki, a student at ECU, the panelists spoke about humorous aspects found in three different North Carolina based stories they had chosen to discuss. Each speaker was well versed and educated in their material and presented their stories with comfort and ease.
The first speaker was John Childrey from Florida Atlantic University. Childrey quoted Robert Ruark’s “The Old Man’s Boy,” a story about a little boy and his relationship with his grandfather.
The humor discussed from the story was primarily nostalgia based, referencing going fishing, farming, and eating supper around the dinner table. It was clear that Childrey identified greatly with the boy in the story, which gave his presentation a realistic feel, convincing the audience that was indeed “better to die laughing.”
The second panelist, William M. Teem from Chattanooga State University, spoke about Ron Rash’s short fiction “The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth.” The story was about three individuals from a small town recounting how they used humor to deal with life’s crises.
The first person lost his wife to another man, lost money due to his failing possum farm, and a experienced a disastrous high school reunion. These crises nearly drove him to suicide, but as he was about to jump off of a bridge, the humor and absurdity of his life gave him hope and he was a changed man.
The second person in the story was a woman trying to gain respect in the small town as a carpenter. It took watching her divorced husband, also a carpenter, experience public humiliation to give her courage and better her self esteem, thus improving her life.
The last individual’s story was more of an “uneasy embarrassment.” Forced to drive his father’s old Cadillac all through high school, he used all of his college money to buy a brand new BMW. Ten years later, he ended up buying a Cadillac almost identical to his father’s model.
The last panelist to speak was Ellen Summer Brake, a young Native American woman from Western Carolina University. Brake spoke about the old stories told by Cherokee women and the importance of nature and agriculture in their humor.
One example was using animals and plants as an educational tool for children. Also, the use of animals in sayings and proverbs was prominent, such as “birds fly in a V by instinct, not emotional attachment.”
Brake’s interpretation of humor added a diverse, multi-cultural aspect to the panel because Native American humor is not often discussed as a part of North Carolina literature.
The panel ended by welcoming questions from the audience. All the panelists were more than happy to answer any questions asked.
Each of the three panelists were great representations of how the study of humor could be presented and left the audience was a broader view of the humor found in North Carolina literature.
Filed under: HumorFest Reports