Incongruity and Comicality in Woody Allen’s prose

Adir de Oliveira Fonseca Junior

Universidade Federal de São Paulo
Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas
Departamento de Letras
Guarulhos, SP, Brasil
adirofjunior@hotmail.com
http://lattes.cnpq.br/8815001253173312

ABSTRACT: This paper aims at presenting a brief analysis on two prose

compositions by Woody Allen. My main purpose is to focus on the elements of
incongruity and nonsense observed throughout the texts, regarding them as typical
procedures of the comic genre, and particularly of Woody Allen’s prose. For this
intent, I selected the pieces “The Whore of Mensa” and “The Early Essays”, both
taken from Allen’s collection Without Feathers (1975).
KEY-WORDS: Woody Allen; “The Whore of Mensa”; “The Early Essays”;
incongruity; comicality

RESUMO: Este trabalho tem por objetivo apresentar uma breve análise de duas
composições em prosa de Woody Allen. Meu principal propósito é focar nos
elementos de incongruência e nonsense observados nos textos, considerando-
os como procedimentos típicos do gênero cômico, e particularmente da prosa de
Woody Allen. Para tal fim, eu selecionei os títulos “The Whore of Mensa” [A Puta
com Ph.D] e “The Early Essays” [Os Primeiros Ensaios], ambos extraídos da coleção
Without Feathers [Sem Plumas] (1975), de Allen.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Woody Allen; “The Whore of Mensa”; “The Early Essays”;
incongruência; comicidade

Before being widely recognized for his versatile work on the movie screens,
Woody Allen (born Allen Stewart Königsberg, Brooklyn, New York, 1935) started
his career as a comedy writer in the 1950s, penning jokes and scripts for the radio
and television, and also publishing several books of short humor pieces. Then, in
the early 1960’s, persuaded by his agents, Allen began to perform monologues of
his own authorship as a stand-up comedian, which, after a few years, gained him
an invitation to write the script for “What’s New Pussycat?”, a feature film in which
he would also act. In effect, the comic persona that Woody Allen has developed
during his activity on stage – an insecure, intellectual and neurotic character –
would be present in many of his films and texts. As a writer, Allen’s short pieces
were published in some of the most prominent organs of the North American press
– particularly in The New Yorker Magazine –, and then they were collected and
edited, together with some of his plays, in books such as Getting Even (1971),
Without Feathers (1975), Side Effects (1980) and Mere Anarchy (2007). Although
he went to the University of New York, Allen has never finished college.
 Without Feathers (1975) is notably one of Woody Allen’s best-known literary
work. The collection is composed of eighteen texts, including the plays “Death” and
“God”, and pieces written in varied formats (some of them, for instance, parody
and transgress the established conventions of the essay, of the documental and of
the epistolary genres). The mentioned title is seemingly a cunning and controversial
comment on Emily Dickinson’s famous quote “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers”,
which Allen uses as epigraph for the book. As a matter of fact, Without Feathers
extensively delivers Allen’s hopeless and neurotic sense typical of his comic
persona. Among the most commented and appreciated stories of the book, we may
first cite “The Whore of Mensa”.
“The Whore of Mensa” (originally published in The New Yorker, in 1974) is
a humorous short story about young, beautiful and intellectual ‘prostitutes’ who,
instead of engaging in sexual intercourse, are rather called up to have intellectual
discussions with their clients. The story opens with Word Babcock – “a quivering
pat of butter” (ALLEN, 1991, p. 51) – entering the office of private detective
Kaiser Lupowitz – the narrator of the story – and asking him for help for a peculiar
situation. Mr. Babcock says that he, as an intellectual man, sometimes feels
lonely, and all he wants is to have a smart conversation with a learned woman,
which Flossie – “a madam, with a master's in comparative lit.” (Ibid., p. 52) –
can easily arrange for him. The problem is that Word is married, and now Flossie
is blackmailing him: if he does not pay her ten thousand dollars, she will report
to Carla, Word’s wife, everything he has been doing in the past six months, i.e.,
having intellectual intercourse with other women. Finally, Kaiser accepts the case.
He gives a call to Flossie and asks her to set him up with a girl who could talk about
Melville:

"I'd like to discuss Melville."

"Moby Dick or the shorter novels?"
"What's the difference?"
"The price. That's all. Symbolism's extra."
"What'll it run me?"
"Fifty, maybe a hundred for Moby Dick. You want a comparative discussion –
Melville and Hawthorne? That could be arranged for a hundred."
"The dough's fine," I told her and gave her the number of a room at the
Plaza.
"You want a blonde or a brunette?"
"Surprise me," I said, and hung up. (ALLEN, 1991, p. 53)

One hour later, Sherry, the girl sent by Flossie to Kaiser, arrives at the hotel. When
Sherry is about to leave and after their having discussed literature, the detective
pretends that he wants to have a ‘party’ with two girls explaining Noam Chomsky to
him. Sherry falls into his trap, and Kaiser finally reveals that he is a cop: “I´m fuzz,
sugar, and discussing Melville for money is an 802. You can do time.” (Ibid., p. 55)
Then, the girl, desperately crying, is forced to conduct Kaiser to Flossie.
According to Sherry, Flossie manages her illegal business in the back of the
Hunter College Book Store. Kaiser goes there, and behind a secret wall of books, he
finds many young and beautiful women reading. Suddenly, someone surprises the
detective with a gun. It is Flossie (who is actually a man with a woman’s voice, due
to an unsuccessful plastic surgery). Rapidly, the detective makes a move and grabs
the gun from Flossie. The police arrive and arrest the ‘madam’. Later that night
Kaiser looks up Gloria, an old account of his who had graduated cum laude – “The
difference was she majored in physical education.” (Ibid., p. 57)
As many of the short stories included in Without Feathers, the plot and
the language of “The Whore of Mensa” are notably structured on incongruent
and nonsensical elements. The very fact that the ‘prostitutes’ alluded in the text
are not exactly ‘common prostitutes’, but are rather women paid for engaging in
philosophic and literary discussions with ‘intellectually unsatisfied’ men, already
puts the reader in confront with a ‘strange’ and ‘unusual’ reality. Besides, not only
the plot but also the dialogues, the atypical associations, linguistic choices and
especially the images evoked throughout the whole piece result in this inventive,
uncommon and extremely comic narration. In fact, as Isabel Ermida (2011, p.
351) shows, “the semantic organisation of [Woody Allen’s] texts, based on a
combination of script oppositeness and overlap, is blended with a proficient use of
stylistic devices which signal, and enhance, comic incongruity.” Although Ermida is
specifically considering Allen’s Mere Anarchy (2007), this general assumption can
be also applied to many of the pieces included in Without Feathers.
According to Ermida (2011, p. 340), most theories of linguistic humour
acknowledge that incongruity is the key to comic effect. By incongruity, Ermida
refers to “a discrepancy between two meanings which overlap, and corresponding
surprise” that “establishes the humorous nature of an utterance.” Yet, in rhetorical
terms, we could even establish an association between the comic incongruity
and the conception of trope, traditionally understood “as the figure created by
dislodging of a term from its old sense and its previous usage and by transferring
a new, improper, or ‘strange’ sense and usage.” (CONTE, 1986, p. 23) Hence,
when I suggest that Allen makes use of incongruity as a mechanism to produce
comicality, I am trying to argue that the comic effects obtained through his texts
are fundamentally related to the overlap, or rather to the dislodging of a known and
conventional situation, sign or image into an unusual frame, as it may be attested
in the following example:
 “Well, I heard of this young girl. Eighteen years old. A Yassar student.
For a price, she´ll come over and discuss any subject – Proust, Yeats,
anthropology. Exchange of ideas. You see what I´m driving at?”
“Not exactly.”
“I mean, my wife is great, don´t get me wrong. But she won´t discuss
Pound with me. Or Eliot. I didn´t know that when I married her. See, I need
a woman who´s mentally stimulating, Kaiser. And I´m willing to pay for it.
I don´t want an involvement – I want a quick intellectual experience, then I
want the girl to leave. Christ, Kaiser, I´m a happily married man.” (ALLEN,
1991, p. 52)

In the excerpt above, taken from the first pages of “The Whore of Mensa”,
Word is confessing to the detective, in a very dramatic way, the reason why he has
been engaging with one of Flossie’s girls. Considering that the customary argument
culturally expected from a married man for calling up a prostitute would be related
to affective and sexual problems concerning his relationship with his wife, the
unusual arguments used by Word to justify his ‘infidelity’ – his need of “a woman
who´s mentally stimulating” and of “a quick intellectual experience” – immediately
establishes a conflict between expectation and surprise. From this conflict, then,
emerge incongruence, nonsense, and ultimately comicality. This same conflict may
be clearly seen in other significant passages, such as when Kaiser mentions that
the police were already suspecting something involving a group of ‘intellectual
prostitutes’, or when the detective visits their ‘brothel’:

Red flocked wallpaper and a Victorian décor set the tone. Pale, nervous
girls with black-rimmed glasses and blunt-cut hair lolled around on sofas,
riffling Penguin Classics provocatively. A blonde with a big smile winked at
me, nodded toward a room upstairs, and said, “Wallace Stevens, eh?” But
it wasn't just intellectual experiences. They were peddling emotional ones,
too. For fifty bucks, I learned, you could “relate without getting close.” For
a hundred, a girl would lend you her Bartók records, have dinner, and then
let you watch while she had an anxiety attack. For one-fifty, you could listen
to FM radio with twins. For three bills, you got the works: A thin Jewish
brunette would pretend to pick you up at the Museum of Modern Art, let you
read her master's, get you involved in a screaming quarrel at Elaine's over
Freud's conception of women, and then fake a suicide of your choosing - the
perfect evening, for some guys. Nice racket. Great town, New York. (ALLEN,
1991, p. 56-57)

Here, too, the cultural expectation is frustrated by an exceptional picture;

after all, in a regular context, the conception of what a brothel is would certainly
not involve girls reading Penguin Classics, nor a situation in which a Jewish
brunette starts a date picking up someone at the Museum and ends with a fake
suicide would be considered a probable erotic fantasy.
 Actually, in making use of deviations from what is normatively expected by
the reader in terms of social, cultural and linguistic conventions, Allen is employing
a comic formula already remarked by the Ancient Greek and Latin theorists.
Aristotle, for instance, states in his Rhetoric (3.11) that:

“Novelties of expression” arise when there is an element of surprise, and

(...) the thing turns out contrary to what we were expecting, like the jokes
found in comic writers, produced by deceptive alterations in words, and by
unexpected words in verse, where the listener anticipates one thing and
hears another. (ARISTOTLE apud ERMIDA, 2011, p. 340)

And also Cicero in his De Oratore (II, LXIII.255) claims that “when we are
expecting to hear a particular phrase, and something different is uttered (...) our
own mistake even makes us laugh ourselves.” (Apud ibid.)
As we could see from a few examples, there is a great profusion of
incongruent dialogues and situations which make up the basis of Allen’s “The Whore
of Mensa”. Moreover, this procedure is not only manifested in the content, but also
in the structure of the narrative. Considering that the plot of “The Whore of Mensa”
is centered on detective Kaiser and on his attempt to solve a particular case, we
could finally state that Allen’s story maintains a close bond with the detective fiction
genre, characteristic of authors such as Edgar Allan Poe or Arthur Conan Doyle.
Once again, however, Allen employs the conventional elements of that fictional
genre – the figure of the detective, the ‘victim’, a difficult problem to solve, a ‘risky
investigation’, the solution of the case – only for the sake of parodying them, for
the circumstances related to Kaiser’s case are motivated by a peculiar and pathetic
reason, which in the end, instead of inspiring tension and creating suspense, as it
could be expected in a detective story, turns out comic. In order to better examine
how the parody of genre functions as a literary procedure in Allen’s prose, we
could also make an account of another literary piece included in the book Without
Feathers, the one which is entitled “The Early Essays”.
As its title already suggests, “The Early Essays” (first published in The New
Yorker, in 1973 – one year before the publication of “The Whore of Mensa”) is a
piece which consists of the supposed early essays written by Woody Allen. Thus,
since it is composed of concise texts written in the format of essays, this particular
piece, unlike “The Whore of Mensa”, is not regulated by a plot or by a narrative
unity, but instead it depicts a number of pseudo-reflections concerning a variety of
themes, as may be attested in the indication forged at the opening of the text:
 Following are a few of the early essays of Woody Allen. There are no late
essays, because he ran out of observations. Perhaps as Allen grows older
he will understand more of life and will set it down, and then retire to his
bedroom and remain there indefinitely. Like the essays of Bacon, Allen’s
are brief and full of practical wisdom, although space does not permit the
inclusion of his most profound statement, “Looking at the Bright Side.”
(ALLEN, 1991, p. 61, author’s emphasis)

In the introductory note quoted above, Allen presents the reader with
the genre of his piece, and he establishes a connection between his following
compositions and the famous essays by Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626). Indeed, the
excerpt above, which is apparently written in a formal and informative language,
one which could be used, for example, by the fictional editor of these essays, is
pervaded by irony – another procedure characteristic of Allen’s style. This element,
which could be probably noticed even by one who might not be very familiar
with Woody Allen’s works, already alerts the reader to the fact that these alleged
essays cannot be taken ‘seriously’, or as authentic pieces which convey a personal
opinion or reflection of the author himself. Nonetheless, if in this short introduction,
the comic element is not particularly evident for a less attentive reader, in the
subsequent paragraphs the comicality will be manifest in a more perceptible
manner, as we will see.
As already remarked above, “The Early Essays” is a piece which
encompasses short texts in the format of essays. These so-called essays are
respectively entitled “On Seeing a Tree in Summer”, “On Youth and Age”, “On
Frugality”, “On Love” and “On Tripping Through a Copse and Picking Violets”. In
fact, these titles, at least in appearance, follow the typical naming of a traditional
essay, which is usually made up of an allusion to a generic topic and is introduced,
in English, by the preposition on or of, like those of Bacon, for instance: “Of Truth”,
“Of Death”, “Of Revenge”, or even “Of Love” and “Of Youth and Age” . At a first
glance, this detail, in addition to the introductory note quoted above, corroborates
the intended affiliation between Allen’s and Bacon’s essays. From those mentioned
titles, however, the first and especially the last one may call our attention to
the ‘unusualness’ of the topic alluded, inasmuch as the other three titles apparently
recall philosophic or moral issues more suitable for the conventional essays.
Due to their complex and abundant associations based on nonsense, it is
worthless to try to summarize each of Woody Allen’s essays; actually, even the
titles give only a fair impression of the content dealt in the texts, serving more as a
pretense to build up incongruent pieces than as trustworthy descriptions of them.
Nevertheless, in spite of its lack of a plot or of a linear argument, each one of the
essays has peculiar characteristics that could be pointed out here.
In “On Seeing a Tree in Summer”, Allen starts making a praise to the aspect
of a tree in summer, which he considers one of the most remarkable wonders of
nature – “with the possible exception of a moose singing ‘Embraceable You’ in
spats.” (ALLEN, 1991, p. 61) What follows is a sequence of incongruent associations
and digressions which rise from that initial topic; furthermore, as if in a sort of a
stream of consciousness, the essayist presents a series of thoughts which have
little or nothing to do with trees in summer, in such a manner that, at the end of
the essay, Allen is disserting about a lumberjack, a dwarf and Roman numerals:

Once a lumberjack was about to chop down a tree, when he noticed a heart
carved on it, with two names inside. Putting away his axe, he sawed down
the tree instead. The point of that story escapes me, although six months
later the lumberjack was fined for teaching a dwarf Roman numerals.
(ALLEN, 1991, p. 62)

Thoroughly contradicting the reader’s expectations concerning the

conventional purposes of an essay – and particularly those characteristic of
a ‘humanistic essay’, which frequently renders a moral example or an admonition
towards the reader, as attested in Bacon’s or in Montaigne’s compositions on the
genre –, Allen’s essay “On Seeing a Tree in Summer” completely neglects the need
of any ‘moral of the story’ and it lacks a systematic discussion about a specific
subject. In fact, as a parody, Allen’s first essay has no focus at all – a peculiarity
that in normal circumstances would put into question its very classification as an
essay, traditionally understood as a “prose composition with a focused subject of
discussion.” (Gale’s Glossary of Terms)
“On Youth and Age”, by its turn, is by no means alike Bacon’s “Of Youth
and Age”, as it could be imagined at a first moment. While in the latter the author
expounds the most prominent characteristics of the young and of the aged men,
at the same time that he provides historical examples of notable figures and
consequently elaborates an admonition towards virtue, Allen, on the contrary,
mocks the traditional topics or clichés commonly alluded in a reflection about
maturity, age and life. Moreover, in “On Youth and Age”, it is noteworthy that Allen
first introduces a stereotyped formula, such as “the true test of maturity is not how
old a person is but…”, “each time of life has its appropriate rewards, whereas…”
or “the best thing to do is behave in a manner befitting one’s age”, and then
he completely deviates from its original connotation and installs an unexpected
conclusion, as if he were inverting the primary functions related to the employment
of these well-known maxims.

The true test of maturity is not how old a person is but how he reacts to
awakening in the midtown area in his shorts. (…) The thing to remember is
that each time of life has its appropriate rewards, whereas when you’re dead
it’s hard to find the light switch. The chief problem about death, incidentally,
is the fear that there may be no afterlife – a depressing thought, particularly
for those who have bothered to shave. (…)
In short, the best thing to do is behave in a manner befitting one’s age. If
you are sixteen or under, try not to go bald. On the other hand, if you are
over eighty, it is extremely good form to shuffle down the street clutching a
brown paper bag and muttering, “The Kaiser will steal my string.” (ALLEN,
1991, p. 62)

This same procedure may be seen in the subsequent essays as well.

In “On Frugality” the essayist begins talking about the importance of saving money
– “As one goes through life, it is extremely important to conserve founds, and one
should never spend money on anything foolish …” –, a type of statement that is
thoroughly disseminated in popular wisdom; but then the examples Allen uses to
illustrate this opinion are unpredictable, for it is likely to assume that people who
would generally utter this kind of thought would not immediately call up these
examples: “… like pear nectar or a solid-gold hat.” (Ibid., p. 63) After that, Allen
makes a more striking deviation when, through his comic persona’s voice, he starts
saying that “Money is not everything” – another commonplace largely professed in
Western popular culture – but, having said that, he installs a paradigm by affirming
“but it is better than having one’s health,” (Ibid.) insofar as, at least in accordance
with the moral standards propagated in Western society, health is considered to be
a greater or a preferable value in comparison with money. Further, the argument
Allen uses to corroborate this opinion is highly unexpected and it seems totally
random, which again produces the effect of incongruence and of comicality in the
reader: “After all, one cannot go into a butcher shop and tell the butcher: ‘Look at
my suntan, and besides I never catch colds,’ and expect him to hand over any
merchandise.” (Ibid.) Then, however, the fictitious essayist accepts that money
cannot “buy happiness,” and he illustrates this by alluding to Aesop’s fable on the
ant and the grasshopper, which is largely acknowledged to be a story that provides
a moral lesson about the virtues of hard work, but he naturally makes an odd
intervention in its original ending:

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons. Not that it
can buy happiness. Take the case of the ant and the grasshopper: The
grasshopper played all summer, while the ant worked and saved. When
winter came, the grasshopper had nothing, but the ant complained of chest
 pains. Life is hard for insects. And don’t think mice are having any fun,
either. The point is, we all need a nest egg to fall back on, but not while
wearing a good suit. (ALLEN, 1991, p. 63)

Taking this same procedure ahead, in the following essay “On Love”
Allen also makes use of the major premises which form the basis of some
commonplaces, now related to love, and again he subverts their expected
conclusions, as may be attested right in the beginning of the text: “Is it better to
be the lover or the loved one? Neither, if your cholesterol is over six hundred;”
(Ibid.) or in the third paragraph: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Should the
beholder have poor eyesight, he can ask the nearest person which girls look good.”
(Ibid., p. 64) In a sense, perhaps, it is possible to say that Allen’s comic persona
is acting like a sophist here, since he initially makes use of valid or effective
arguments, that is, arguments symbolically recognized as truths, or as accepted
opinions or beliefs shared by the members of a certain circle of culture; then he
concatenates them in a logical structure; and, finally, he ‘deceives’ the reader by
inducing what we could call a ‘false’ demonstration or conclusion. This analogy is
yet useful if we think of all the incongruent elements, not only in terms of language
but also of images and situations which we have analyzed in both Allen’s “The
Whore of Mensa” and “The Early Essays”. This technique seemingly attends to
comic purposes in Allen’s works, insofar as the reader is presupposed to recognize
these deviations as incongruent.
The last piece which constitutes Allen’s “The Early Essays” may be
considered the most curious one, both in terms of topic and literary treatment.
More than the others, “On Tripping Through a Copse and Picking Violets” is
considerably dissociated from the canonical essay genre, and the topic itself,
already given in the title, rapidly institutes an estrangement, because, contrarily to
the others – maybe with the exception of the first essay, “On Seeing a Tree in
Summer” – it does not depict, in theory, an issue proper or expected to be dealt
with in a traditional essay. Thus, the first questions we could formulate as readers
are: What do violets and copses have to do with an essay? What kind of reflection
may be developed based on that unusual topic? By doing this, the intrinsic
incongruent and nonsensical aspect of this particular essay is made evident right
from the start. On the first line of the text, as if the essayist were replying to an
objective question made by another person, and without making any introduction
to the topic but going straight to his exposition, he remarks: “This is no fun at all,
and I would recommend almost any other activity.” (Ibid., p. 64) Then, after giving
some suggestions of better activities, such as visiting a sick friend or reading a
book in a tub, Allen’s persona categorically affirms that “Anything is better than
turning up a copse with one of those vacuous smiles and accumulating flowers in a
basket,” so he emphatically recommends to call the florist instead – “That way, if
an electrical storm comes up or a beehive is chanced upon, it will be the florist who
is rushed to Mount Sinai.” (Ibid.) Yet, at the end of the text, the mordacious
essayist makes it clear that he is not “insensitive to the joys of nature,” although
he has come to the conclusion “that for sheer fun it is hard to beat forty-eight
hours at Foam Rubber City during the high holidays. But that is another story.”
(Ibid., p. 65)
As we could see, in “The Early Essays” Allen basically recurs to the same
strategies he uses in the composition of “The Whore of Mensa” in order to achieve
comicality. In comparing the two pieces, however, what seems to stand out is the
fact that, because of the different genres involved in their respective structures –
one being a fictional narrative with a linear and central plot; the other, a collection
of comic essays –, in the “Early Essays” the procedure of incongruity is in general
better noticed in the linguistic associations and in the semantic connections
made up along the whole piece, while in “The Whore of Mensa” what seems to
be more effective in terms of comicality is the association of divergent images,
unconventional situations, dialogues, and the progression of the story itself.
Anyhow, it is important to emphasize that if, on the one hand, Allen
makes a prolific use of those deviations, establishing an unusual and sometimes
even an absurd setting, on the other hand, the author still provides a verisimilar
and coherent framework. This ultimately means that even if the two pieces are full
of incongruent and nonsensical elements – i.e., full of elements which somehow
diverge from the expected norm culturally and socially instituted, and because of
that they cause an initial estrangement –, the reader never questions the
authenticity or, better saying, the verisimilitude of Allen’s compositions. In fact, the
realistic space set up right at the opening of “The Whore of Mensa”, and which is
carried out till the end of the story, permits the introduction of incongruent
and ‘strange’ elements without the overall configuration of the narrative being
altered or corrupted by them. By doing so, Allen sets up unusual events inside a
consistent frame, in such a way that the reader, though at first surprised, is even
induced to consider those incongruities as probable and not totally impossible to
happen in the ‘real world’. To the same extent, “The Early Essays”, in spite of their
innumerous divergences from the norm and of the essayist’s mocking interventions
spread along the pieces, still respect, though almost in a scarce way (as if the
author were actually pushing the limits of the genre to the extreme), some capital
rules and conventions in order to maintain a necessary bond between these comic
pieces and the essay genre. Hence, we noticed the traditional pattern followed in
the naming of the essays (the same adopted by reputable essayists as Bacon or
Montaigne), the use of the first person singular (a feature characteristic of the
essay, due to the personal tone generally acknowledged to this type of
composition), and the constant allusion to commonplaces related to morality, to
say some of the most prominent elements observed in the surface of Allen’s forged
essays. What is more striking in this is that, by respecting those elementary
precepts of the essay genre, Allen makes the contradiction between form and
content even more evident, which once again gives rise to the incongruent effect
and, by consequence, to the comicality expected from Allen’s characteristic
production.

Concluding remarks
In this paper, I have suggested that incongruence, as a literary procedure,
plays an important function as a mechanism responsible to engender comicality in
Woody Allen’s prose. In fact, as I have briefly pointed out, this type of practice is
regarded by linguists of humour, and was already acknowledged by some authors
from Antiquity, as a characteristic procedure of comedy. In “The Whore of Mensa”,
for instance, Allen’s use of incongruity could be attested in the uncommon events
and descriptions recalled throughout the whole story – the ‘intellectual prostitutes’,
the nature of their illegal business, Word’s ‘intellectual infidelity’ to his wife: these
are some of the unexpected elements with which the reader is confronted in the
course of the short story, which are not supposed to have parallel in the external
reality. In “The Early Essays”, in its turn, the incongruent effect could be obtained
especially by the contrast between form and content instituted in the pieces, since
Allen’s persona at first suggests reflections upon ‘philosophic’ topics, but then he
completely frustrates this premise by giving random examples and subverting the
expected ‘moral of the story’. Actually, here, incongruity emerges along with other
comic strategies, such as parody, irony and acid humour.
Nonetheless, based on my observations on “The Whore of Mensa” and on
“The Early Essays”, I have argued that the incongruities or the unusual elements
present in Allen’s compositions do not interfere with their respective overall
configurations, nor do they obliterate some necessary criteria to their compilation,
both in terms of the genre and of verisimilitude – the latter being more relevant to
the writing of a short story, as in the case of “The Whore of Mensa”. This, however,
cannot be seen as a restrictive factor or a limitation, but rather as a literary choice
through which the potential of the incongruities becomes even more effective in
terms of comicality, insofar as the rupture with the norm turns out more significant
on the surface of the text.

Notes