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Cover of the book 'Wit and Assurance' by Zachary Shatzer, featuring the subtitle 'Reviewing the Jests of 18th Century Humorist Joe Miller.' The design has a dark background with white text.

Whenever I’m on the lookout for books to read, and a new title by Zachary Shatzer comes to my notice, I pause, stroke my mustache, and say in the voice of an English bobby, “‘ere now, wot’s all this then?”

In this case, “all this” is an annotated review of an 18th century joke book allegedly by an actor named Joe Miller, although actually it seems to have been compiled by a man named John Mottley, writing under the pseudonym of Elijah Jenkins. Are you confused yet? Just wait.

18th century humor is not always like modern humor. Sometimes, of course, it is. There are patterns in the human experience which are universal, and some of the jests do indeed strike chords of hilarity which echo down all the ages.

But other times, it’s hard, to be quite blunt, to know what the hell Miller (or Mottley or Jenkins or whoever) is talking about. Sometimes, Mr. Shatzer’s commentary is able to shed light on the matter. Other times, he is as baffled as the rest of us.

Fortunately, Shatzer is one of the funniest writers currently going, and so his commentary on each of the 247 jests is enjoyable in its own right, even when the joke he is commenting on is incomprehensible. Maybe especially when the joke he is commenting on is incomprehensible.

And every now and again, one of the jests is actually relatable and funny, and suddenly, the gulf between us and the 18th century is bridged, and we understand the people of the past were people, not merely names in history books, and that they laughed at absurdities just as we do. There’s nothing like shared laughter for helping to relate to someone else.

If nothing else, this book is a good window into Shatzer’s process. When his future biographers are trying to describe what made this great 21st-century humorist tick, they will no doubt turn to this volume for insight into Shatzer’s philosophy of comedy. To paraphrase a film review I once read, “Joe Miller’s wit is almost enough, because Zachary Shatzer’s wit is more than enough.”

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I had never heard of Nelson DeMille until recently, but apparently he was quite popular in his time. His time, alas, is over, but his books live on, including this short story, which is about a bookstore owner crushed to death by a fallen bookcase. An accident? The protagonist of the story, detective John Corey, is not so sure, and sets about unraveling the tangled web of events surrounding the bookstore owner’s demise, complete with a running sarcastic commentary on the cast of characters who seem to be involved, from the youthful shop clerk to the bookstore owner’s wife.

It’s an amusing story, though fairly predictable, which, when you consider the length and limited number of characters, might be inevitable. There’s only so much of a mystery you can have when the possibilities are so limited. Still, that’s not a bad thing. It would be worse if he had dragged it out to full novel length by throwing in extraneous material. Nobody wants that.

At the same time… it’s also not ground-breaking. Not that it needs to be. It’s just that, I can think of plenty of indie authors who have written things that are just as good or better. Yet, DeMille could get traditionally published and they could not. It’s not DeMille’s fault. Nil nisi bonum, after all. It’s just one of those frustrating mysteries in the world of publishing. These are the kinds of mysteries that just can’t be resolved with snappy, sarcastic one-liners. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Forgive me if this all seems a bit negative. Perhaps it’s my own failing, as I ponder the future of writing and feel a sense of looming disaster. But all in all, it’s a decent story if you want a quick diversion and some funny lines.

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AI is inescapable. At least as a topic of discussion. Which, if you believe in the idea of AI super-intelligence as a memetic mind virus from the future, means it has already won. But I digress. The subject of today’s review is a short story by my friend and fellow author, Richard Pastore, which you can read for free in its entirety on his blog.

Of course, one of the difficulties of reviewing short stories is that it’s too easy to accidentally give away the whole thing by describing it. I find it’s best to instead give a general “flavor” of it rather than to describe specific plot points. For this one, that’s a pretty easy task: it’s like a modern-day Twilight Zone episode on the theme of AI. As I said to Richard in the comments, I heard the closing paragraph in the voice of Rod Serling.

The story balances Swiftian satirical humor and science-fiction quite well, and serves as a good cautionary tale for where society seems to be going. Of course, there have been no shortage of cautionary tales over the years, some of them by Mr. Serling himself. So far, they haven’t worked. It’s a classic Torment Nexus situation. Or a “Berlin Cabaret” situation, for the old-timers.

And yet, all the same, fiction is one of the ways we process the world we live in. If the world becomes dystopian, can we really help it if our fiction does as well? Which way does the causality run?

All these are interesting questions to ponder, and that’s exactly what this sort of experimental sci-fi story is designed to do. Set the gears turning, as they say. So, what are you waiting for? Go read it. No, don’t have AI summarize it for you; just read it.

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Movie poster for 'Sweet Liberty' featuring Alan Alda in a historical outfit, playfully holding a hat, beside a motorcycle, with Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Caine's names also displayed.

Let me begin with one of my trademark non-sequitur intros: my mother recently complained to me that she made the mistake of clicking a news article on her MSN homepage about Meghan Markle. And as a result, she sees multiple articles every day about Meghan Markle, because the algorithm thinks she’s interested in the activities and opinions of the Duchess of Sussex, which is not the case. (Yes, I know I could tell her to clear the cache, but frankly it’s fun to hear her rant about it.)

I bring this up because here at Ruined Chapel, we follow the opposite logic of the internet algorithm. Here, we believe in delivering our readers the offbeat and the esoteric; things that they had not expressed an interest in, because they did not know they existed. So when I threw the floor open to my audience to ask whether I should review Sweet Liberty or another, more famous picture, and I received replies to the effect that no one had heard of this film, the choice was easy for me. 

Sweet Liberty is a comedy about a history professor named Michael Burgess (Alan Alda) who has written a book called… Sweet Liberty, set during the American Revolution. And he’s achieved what so many authors dream of: Hollywood is making a movie of it! Even more improbably, they’re making it in the town where he lives, so he gets a front row seat to watching his book evolve from page to screen.

Unfortunately, this evolution means it changes from the carefully-researched, historically-grounded story he wrote to a slapstick sex comedy set during the Revolutionary War. Being a good student of history, Burgess is appalled to see the liberties the film takes, including a thorough revision of the character of Banastre Tarleton, transforming “Bloody Ban” into a romantic rogue, played by a charming English actor, Elliott James. (Himself played by a charming English actor, Michael Caine.)

Meanwhile, Dr. Burgess’s personal life is also on the rocks. After an argument, he and his girlfriend (Lise Hilboldt) decide to “take a break” from one another, and his aging mother (Lillian Gish) keeps pestering him to reunite her with an old friend of hers, even though such a reunion is for, multiple reasons, quite problematic.

The one good thing to come out of it all is when Dr. Burgess meets the lead actress in the film, Faith Healy. (Michelle Pfeiffer) She is the very image of the heroine of his book, as if the woman he has carefully studied from the 18th-century has stepped into his world. Naturally, he is attracted to her—but is he attracted to the actress, or the character she is playing?

The movie juggles Burgess’s outrage at the historical inaccuracy, his relationship turmoil, and the antics of the film’s cast and crew—particularly Elliott, whom Caine plays with an infectiously devil-may-care attitude—with only moderate success. All of the story elements are funny, but none of them get enough screen time to fully develop. As it is, it feels more like a loose series of sketches built around a concept.

The most interesting part is the subplot with Burgess’s mother, which at first felt like it was part of a different movie altogether, but ultimately proves to contain the core theme of the film. Burgess is faced with a choice of whether to tell his ailing parent the truth, as is his natural inclination, or to tell her something that will make her happy, as his girlfriend urges.

Which is better: the hard reality, or a comforting fairy-tale? This is a choice everyone, but perhaps especially a historian such as Burgess, must grapple with. As the filming of his book carries on, Burgess becomes increasingly desperate to have something historically accurate happen, finally leading the re-enactors performing the Battle of Cowpens, and insisting that the battle be depicted in accordance with historical accounts in a climactic and fittingly rebellious act of defiance to the show-biz crowd. 

The film is funny, but could have been much funnier. It has an interesting theme, but it could have explored it better. It feels overall like a really good idea, with so-so execution.

Still, the cast seems like they’re having a good time. Michael Caine’s scenes in particular are an absolute hoot, even one involving a trip to an amusement park that has nothing to do with the plot, but which seems like an excuse to act silly, which Caine does with relish. Also, it’s a rare thing to hear anybody reference Banastre Tarleton nowadays, so I applaud the movie for making him the focus of Burgess’s book, instead of the low-hanging fruit like Washington or somebody.

It’s a fun, feel-good movie, and anyone who loves history, particularly the American Revolution, is likely to enjoy it. I certainly know what it’s like to watch a historical movie and find myself slack-jawed with horror at the inaccuracies, so I could relate to Burgess on that level. It would be a good movie to watch while cooking the hot dogs and waiting for the fireworks to begin.