Fight for Your Long Loud Laughs

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: we need to laugh more. Atheists need to laugh more. Pantheists need to laugh more. Muslims need to laugh more. Jews need to laugh more. Democrats need to laugh more. Republicans need to laugh more. And us Christians perhaps need to laugh loudest and longest of all. And not just laugh at others (I confess, my wife and I love watching Epic Fall compilations and Newsreel Bloopers on YouTube) but learn to laugh at ourselves. I encourage you to go right now into the bathroom, lock the door, strip naked, and take a good long look at yourself in a mirror. Perhaps you will want to weep. But come on, laugh instead!

Yes, us Christians can be such a dour bunch. But consider this: we believe that Christ died and rose from the dead, did a great big peekaboo at Peter and the other disciples who ran away, and then just when they thought, “hurray, surely now we’ll be rewarded for being such (sometimes) faithful followers of the risen Lord when he now restores the Kingdom of Israel,” he literally disappeared into the clouds, leaving his disciples staring up into the sky, scratching their heads, wondering “now what?” The reader who doesn’t see the immense humor in that simply doesn’t understand comedy.

Because we need to laugh, I am ever so grateful when I stumble across a book that makes me laugh long and loud. Daniel Taylor’s series of Jon Motes Mysteries did that for me a year and a half ago. Cervantes kept me in stitches with Don Quixote last Christmas season. Then Thomas Pynchon and Alexander Theroux’s revelry and mockery of twentieth-century America had me cracking up over the summer. And more recently Dostoevsky had me guffawing with Demons, perhaps his darkest, yet funniest novel.

But none of these great novelists had me laughing as loud and as long as Alex Kudera recently did with his wonderful, zany, downright side-splitting novel Fight For Your Long Day. Just ask my wife. She had to sit next to me, head down and looking the other way, as I cracked up over the novel during a commercial flight.

So what is Fight For Your Long Day about? Simply put, it follows the exploits and foibles of one Cyrus Duffleman, adjunct English teacher extraordinaire, during his “long day” lecturing and tutoring and security guarding in the City of Brotherly Love. And who is Cyrus Duffleman? Think Ignatius Reilly meets the Underground Man meets Ivan Denisovich meets your fat, bachelor uncle. Cyrus Duffleman is both the Everyman and the No Man. Failure at love, failure at graduate studies, failure, basically, at life. One of the last of the breed of White Straight Males vying for a coveted English professorship at any university or college—yes sir, any university or college would do. But he’s shut out, forced to exist, or trying to exist (would you call this existing?) teaching non-tenure-track adjunct courses for a measly pittance, no benefits, and no guarantee of being re-hired next term to teach America’s not-so-finest youths and not-so-very-youthful-anymore folks at various colleges, universities, and tech schools across Philadelphia. Is Cyrus a sign of America’s meritocracy working? Or a sign of its living lie? Perhaps Cyrus should give it up and become a garbage collector. Heck, he’d make more money, maybe even become part of a union.

But the trouble with Cyrus is he really does like the books. No, no, loves the books. One of the last of the book lovers who loves the books for the stories contained within their covers, not for the book’s subtext, or intertextuality, or sexuality (can a book have its own sexuality?). So Cyrus can’t give up his adjunct teaching gigs—even if it requires him, on his long day, to teach at three different institutions, tutor disengaged students mid-day, and then finish up with a security guard gig at the fancy university in town. Sure, he’s able to spend his guard time perusing the local stacks at the university bookstore and library, creeping out young ladies, and using the john, but still that’s a long day for anyone. But give it up? Even if most of his course load is teaching business writing to disinterested first years content to become cogs in the American industrial-military-capitalist machine? No way he’d give it up, especially when once a week he’s able to teach a real literature seminar at a real university. So what if he had to forge his PhD documents to get the gig? What qualified applicant would work for such lousy pay and lack of health insurance? And anyways, wasn’t America the land of the fakers and the home of the frauds? Or was that the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Ok, so you get the general picture of things. Is the Duff for everyone? Perhaps not. Fair trigger warning here. If you’re Black, Brown, White, Yellow, Orange, Green or any other color, you’ll be offended. If you’re a woman, you’ll be offended. If you’re a man, you’ll be offended. If you’re a Republican, you’ll be offended. If you’re a Democrat, you’ll be offended. If you live in Philadelphia, you’ll be offended. And if you’re a college or university administrator, you’ll definitely be offended. But get over yourself. Laugh at yourself a little. Look in the mirror. We take ourselves so seriously. I take myself so seriously. And sometimes we just need a little romp, a little adventure, a little wake up call to reality. To what’s important. And Cyrus Duffleman helps us do that.

So who is Cyrus Duffleman? This morning, I read Numbers 22:21-38. If you can’t laugh at Numbers 22:21-38, well, my friend, I don’t think you know how to laugh. It tells the wonderful story of Balaam and his ass. Think of Cyrus as America’s ass. As all our ass. But even an ass can be a prophet. Can show us our foibles. Our hard-headedness. Most importantly, our hard-heartedness.

Frans Hals, Young Man and Woman in an Inn, 1623, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

For all his foibles and inadequacies, Cyrus Duffleman never loses his soul. Never becomes hard-hearted. While this tale is funny and worthy of being read simply to laugh out loud, it ultimately does have a deeper “message.” The world is broken, and we can’t fix it. People are broken, and we can’t fix them. But we can offer mercy. Can offer a bit of human kindness. Can offer a listening ear to the loopy homeless woman who thinks she’s a former B-movie star (or perhaps she really is?). Or visit in the hospital the student who had a psychotic breakdown in class earlier in the day. Or buy a cup of coffee (or at least promise to buy a cup) for the bum on the street corner you know by name. Or give the last change in your pocket to the drug-addled adopted teen in the bookstore. Or, after your long day, your very, very long day, when all you want to do is go to bed and forget for just a couple of hours that you have to wake up the next morning to do it all again, you can instead meet up past midnight with another student, a former army guy, who is clearly in crisis. Why? Because we’re all in this together. And we’re all in need of a little love. And though we can’t fix one another, we can lend a hand. Walk beside. Be, in very small ways, Jesus to others.

So read this book. Support an adjunct. Get ready to laugh. Get ready to scratch your head at points and wonder why did I listen to that dude online who told me to read this book? And maybe, just maybe, be ready to have your heart touched and become a better person. Can literature really do that? The Duff thinks so, and that’s good enough for me.  

Jeffrey Wald writes from the Twin Cities.