Beware of Common Sense - In Praise of the Ridiculous by Orlando Bartro
It’s a common criticism of stories—whether found in books, plays, or movies—that something “wouldn’t have happened that way.”
Such a criticism implies an expectation about the way the world “must work.”
It’s only common sense!
Of course, sense isn’t very common.
And worse, what has been called “common sense” has at various times supported genocide and war.
Common sense, says Nabokov, will have, at one time or another, sent any one of us to a gulag.
And indeed, what’s common sense today isn’t the same as what was common sense yesterday.
And the future’s common sense will be different yet again.
People feel safe in crowds, and any thought inside the safety of something labelled “common sense” is comfortable.
Who doesn’t want to be comfortable?
So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that some readers of Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days object to Passepartout never telling Mr. Fogg that Fix is an inspector.
How ridiculous!
How could Passepartout fail to warn Fogg?
“Such a thing would never happen!”—it’s a commonsensical objection.
But Around the World in Eighty Days is a ridiculous comedy.
Its premise is absurd.
Fogg bets that he’ll go around the world in eighty days or lose his foggy fortune.
A foolish bet!
“Such a thing would never happen!”
But the reader goes on this foolish tour, merely because of the foolishness of it.
And when Passepartout repeatedly fails to warn Fogg, the failure is forgivable, not only because the ridiculous omission is apt for a ridiculous book, but because ridiculous behavior is common in the world.
And therefore, the ridiculousness of Around the World in Eighty Days is—actually—realistic.
The world contains many good-hearted Passepartouts too dumb or blind or negligent to warn Fogg about the inspector.
And furthermore, Passepartout fulfills the promise of his name (which means “master key”): his omission to warn Fogg is the master key that unlocks the ridiculous plot.
* Orlando Bartro is the author of Toward Two Words, a comical and surreal novel about a man who finds yet another woman he never knew, available at Amazon. He is currently writing two new novels.