As the narrator of Kristen Arnett’s new novel, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One, points out late in the book: “There’s immense power in absurdism.” And while the language of absurdism is generally easy to access, it’s much harder to fully master it in a way where the pointed humor of the situation or the storytelling doesn’t fully veer us into nihilism and hopelessness.
When I read Arnett’s debut novel Mostly Dead Things upon its release in 2019, what struck me hardest about her work is her ability to skirt just along the edges of grief with an unassailable absurdist sense of humor. In her 2021 follow-up, With Teeth, that sharp-edged comedic timing came back not to examine the grief that follows a death but the agony of living a life that is radically different from what was planned and expected. Page after page, Arnett’s work is a reminder of something we often shy away from: What is the point of experiencing all of the pains of the human condition if we can’t, at some point, get a good laugh in about it? Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One not only continues this interrogation but also feels like a natural extension to the conversations she began in her first two novels, with the added bonus of ruminations on the power of creating art in hostile, capitalist society and of building community where you are.
The novel is told in first-person narration by Cherry Hendricks, a 28-year-old lesbian living in Orlando, Florida and doing her best to turn her love of clowning into a profitable, full-time job. Her clown alter-ego, Bunko, is a wannabe rodeo clown whose fear of horses keeps him from being able to perform at the rodeo, so instead, he performs at kids’ parties and other events around the city. Already a very funny set up — along with the absolutely wild opening scene where Cherry as Bunko is caught having sex with the mother of one the kids she’s performing for by the kid’s father in their home bathroom — the relationship between Cherry and her Bunko persona becomes even more revelatory as you continue reading. Like Bunko, Cherry’s trying to fend off some fears, too: her fear of fully confronting the death of her older brother Dwight, of always being “less than” in her mother’s eyes, of being stuck at her dead-end retail job, and, most crucially, of not succeeding as an artist in the medium she loves so much.
We watch as Cherry struggles to figure out how to pursue clowning more sustainably and hangs out with her best friend Darcy at the aquarium supply store they both work at and in various DIY queer spaces in the city. In order to make the process of doing what she loves a little easier, she attempts to enlist the mentorship of Margot the Magnificent — a gorgeous, older magician and local Orlando celebrity of sorts who has been able to turn her art into her entire career — through hooking up with and becoming somewhat unseriously romantically involved with her. Margot is interested in Cherry, also, but the specter of grief hangs around them both as they try to navigate their nuanced affection for one another — Margot is freshly separated from her partner, Portia. As the story progresses, Arnett keeps you wondering if Cherry’s ambition and her desire to keep creating art that helps make people laugh will win out or if the pressure of trying to make it work will force her to give it all up.
Although the story alone is enough to keep anyone interested, what is truly remarkable about Arnett’s work here is the way she weaves in reflections on the artistic value of comedy, the uses of sorrow when it comes to constructing jokes, and what it feels like for a performer to be fully engaged with their audience and the work they’re doing. These investigations pop up in the most unexpected places in the narrative, further exemplifying Cherry’s claim that “In order to perfect my art, I must let it swallow me whole. […] I lose myself. That’s the price I pay for art.”
One chapter starts with an intriguing explanation on how to categorize events or circumstances as “FUNNY” or “NOT FUNNY” and Arnett writes, “The selection process is more complicated than you might think. A person’s best ideas and their worst ideas live in their head simultaneously. […] Those ideas can sit there for years, all mixed together, waiting for someone to eject them into the world. When you finally put in that quarter and turn the dial, out comes something, but you can’t guarantee it’s going to be a good idea or even a smart one.” Later, Arnett writes, “It’s no big surprise that pain fuels humor. […] No matter how original an act might seem, all jokes inevitably stem from a painful source, the flotsam of our lives lifted from the world around us and collaged together to make something new.”
Arnett goes even further in her examination of the power of humor and absurdity in our lives. In a moment of elegantly written self-reflection narrated as Cherry is driving through the serene wilderness of Central Florida, Arnett reminds us of the singular importance of the role comedy and being able to laugh at the most mundane or absurd things we witness plays in our lives:
“What’s funny to a bird, I wonder, as several crows lift from a slender pine, lighting in perfect symmetry along a nearby electric wire. It dips beneath the combined weight, looking like a blackened grin with rotted black birds for teeth. Birds chattering to themselves about the car speeding past, flying faster than anything. In that moment, I’m outside myself completely. I’m the essence of something much bigger, joyful and wholly alive, and when I laugh — as loud as I want — there’s the clown inside overflowing with glee. Because I’m my own audience, first and foremost. Shouldn’t all things funny start out with a joke that’s just for me?”
This moment feels particularly poignant as the novel is coming to an end. Combined with the last few pages of the novel, it feels as if Arnett is nudging us artists to remember why we began doing whatever work we do in the first place. Sure, like clowning, all art is about engaging with others and being in conversation with the people who witness it. But as Cherry realizes later in the novel, we are the ones who get to begin those conversations and, most often, we’re beginning them in service to the parts of us that need them the most.
By the end of the novel, there is no denying that Arnett fully engulfs us in Cherry’s ongoing considerations about the art of clowning without losing the emotional core of the story. Cherry might be trying to explain the deep sense of power and pleasure she experiences by doing her art out in the world, but we never forget she’s also trying to reconcile those feelings with being able survive — and pay bills and do more of her art —- from one day to the next. Arnett’s preternatural ability to construct narratives that gracefully and successfully remind us of the everyday absurdities of our humanity without fully condemning the way we wade through the muck of those absurdities is especially highlighted throughout the narrative. Cherry might be a clown by trade, but she’s not foolish — there is a world where she can practice her art without worrying about the material repercussions of doing that. It’s never her fault that we don’t live in it.
Wowowowo I have never in my life cared about clowns but this review was beautiful and I can’t wait to read this book!