Everything is Funnier with a British Accent

Some time in the past year, when I was still attending school in the bustling metropolis known as Houston, Texas, before the icy fingers of adulthood came silently through my bedside window to pull me from the relative comfort of my graduate student bed (mattress on the floor) and deposit me unceremoniously into that void known in some circles as a "transition period," but which may be more accurately described as "unemployment," I checked a book out of the library. A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell, volume one. I began to read it, but found that it did not keep my interest. It was long-winded, meandering, and about as British as bangers and mash. For the few months until graduation, it did little but hold down the corner of my new rug nearest to the mattress on the floor. Then came graduation, along with a laundry list of things to do during the week before the big day, which included, but was not limited to: laundry, cleaning, passing the remaining required classes, packing all of my belongings, seeing those last things I would always wish I had seen, saying goodbye, reflecting on two amazingly fast years, wondering about all that could have been, and, somewhere in there, returning books to the library. In the chaos, I forgot about Anthony Powell.

Three months later (three days ago), about when the weight of living once again in the house where I spent my formative years started to really be felt, I found the same book on my parents' bookshelf. For some reason, it once again appealed to me as it had before I had begun to read it, and I decided to give it another try. This is how I made my most recent profound discovery, which I have related to you in the title of this entry. As an example, or perhaps an illuminating exercise for you readers, consider the following passage, taken from A Buyer's Market, the second book of the first volume or "movement" of this massive work (there are four "movements," each one containing three books, for a grand total of approximately ten gajillion pages). Read it once normally, as you would read any book. Go.

"She turned to the sideboard that stood by our table, upon which plates, dishes, decanters, and bottles had been placed out of the way before removal. Among this residue stood an enormous sugar castor topped with a heavy silver nozzle. Barbara must suddenly have conceived the idea of sprinkling a few grains of this sugar over Widmerpool, as if in literal application of her theory that he 'needed sweetening,' because she picked up this receptacle and shook it over him. For some reason, perhaps because it was so full, no sugar at first sprayed out. Barbara now tipped the castor so that it was poised vertically over Widmerpool's head, holding it there like the sword of Damocles above the tyrant. However, unlike the merely minatory quiescence of that normally inactive weapon, a state of dispensation was not in this case maintained, and suddenly, without the slightest warning, the massive silver apex of the castor dropped from its base, as if severed by the slash of some invisible machinery, and crashed heavily to the floor: the sugar pouring out on to Widmerpool's head in a dense and overwhelming cascade.

"More from surprise than because she wished additionally to torment him, Barbara did not remove her hand before the whole contents of the vessel - which voided itself in an instant of time - had descended upon his head and shoulders, covering him with sugar more completely than might have been thought possible in so brief a space. Widmerpool's rather sparse hair had been liberally greased with a dressing - the sweetish smell of which I remembered as somewhat disagreeable when applied in France - this lubricant retaining the grains of sugar, which, as they adhered thickly to his skull, gave him the appearance of having turned white with shock at a single stroke; which, judging by what could be seen of his expression, he might very well in reality have done underneath the glittering incrustations that enveloped his head and shoulders. He had writhed sideways to avoid the downpour, and a cataract of sugar had entered the space between neck and collar; yet another jet streaming between eyes and spectacles."

Okay. Kind of boring, right? I mean, maybe funny if you're there, but the description is so long and detailed that you lose interest almost immediately.

Now comes the fun part. Go back and read the passage again, but this time, read it as if you have a thick British accent, and are reading it aloud. Read it aloud, if you like (and if you are alone). If your British accent is terrible, then imagine it is being read by John Cleese or someone of that ilk. Go ahead, do it now. I'll wait.

Results? Hilarious! Suddenly, a boring description of a humorous event becomes unbelievably funny. And why? All you did was read it in a funny accent. Well, it turns out that the entire book works like this. If you read it like any book, it's boring and you lose interest. If you read it as if it is being read aloud, in a ridiculous British accent, everything is funny. I think this might be because the book is written mostly in those sarcastic, aloof tones that one associates with high-brow British humor (no, wait, "humour"). This particular episode with the sugar castor came at the end of about ninety pages of build-up, and is without rival the funniest moment of the book up to that point. So it's a lot of material to push your way through, and with little reward, but, mercifully, if you stick to the accent, it becomes much more fun and interesting.

This was, incidentally, not the only discovery I made about A Dance to the Music of Time upon picking it up again. I also discovered that the contents of the first volume, though written from the perspective of a young British aristocrat in the '20s or '30s, speak fairly directly to my present situation. A former student, with few job prospects, ventures out into the real world and finds it not as inhospitable as he would have thought. Transition periods, wherever they occur, always seem much shorter once they are over than they did at the time. Familiar faces, often completely unexpected ones (such as our hapless Widmerpool), pop out of the crowd repeatedly and at every turn. And, once in a while, something hysterically funny happens. It is difficult, while caught in the limbo between school and a job, wanting both to return to the former and, at the same time, to fast-forward to the latter, to appreciate the big picture, that these things do work themselves out with time. Maybe Anthony Powell can help me to relax and enjoy this transition period.

Or maybe I just enjoy reading aloud in a ridiculous accent.