Jonathan Swift

JONATHAN SWIFT

Once Jonathan Swift auditioned for a stand-up comedy gig.
He thought he’d do his “Houyhnhnm” routine. That ought to have some appeal.
“Have ya got social comment chops, Johnny-boy?” he was asked after being signaled to the audition stage and introducing himself. “Ya don’t mind me callin’ ya ‘Johnny-boy,’ doya, Johnny-boy?” the voice continued from the darkness out front. “Anyways, that’s what we want. Laugh-till-ya-wet-yerself social comment one-liners.”
Jonathan Swift wasn’t sure he had anything like “laugh-till-ya-wet-yerself social comment one-liners” to offer. When he’d been working up his routine, he thought it would be enough to do an extended impression of a noble Houyhnhnm trying to explain a conflicted Yahoo and audiences would naturally find the contrast both amusing and instructive.
But things began to go wrong almost from the start of the audition. Not that the impression of a talking horse was faulty. The neighing voice was pitch-perfect. While the air of bemusement in a Houyhnhnm’s account of such deep revulsion felt by a Yahoo towards others of its own kind that it was driven to distance itself from them through hatred, disgust, and contempt demonstrated powers of satiric caricature not often seen. Writing all his own stuff, Jonathan Swift had been confident every nuance of its multi-layered indictment would come out in the delivery.
The problem was that nobody sitting out in the dark seemed to catch on. One or two laughs greeted the first sound from the make-believe Houyhnhnm’s mouth, yet what was being said met with silence, then forced coughing, and finally the muffled sound of exiting feet.
Though the lights weren’t particularly bright, Jonathan Swift could soon feel himself sweating profusely and his mouth turning dry. His hands, meant to suggest the graceful workings of a hoof at one moment and a Yahoo’s claw-like grasping for everything in sight the next, had gone clammy and numb. A nervous tic set his chin atremble, and holding a posture of reason and civility on the one hand or belligerent dimwittedness on the other became increasingly difficult to manage. Just when he wasn’t sure he could carry on much longer, the mike was mercifully cut off, leaving him to brace himself for the worst.
“I’m afraid ya just ain’t got what it takes for stand-up these days, Johnny-Boy,” the voice from the dark curtly put it. “First of all, what’s with this church garb of yours? You wanna bum out the whole room in a heartbeat? And the horse schtick just doesn’t cut it. Try slouchin’ ’round the stage more, maybe jump up and down or pull faces for a laugh, or scream at the audience every ten seconds or so. And if ya can’t come up with anythin’ better than what ya showed us today, shout some obscenities instead and grab your crotch or somethin’. Ya know, knockout stuff like that.”
After a long silence, Jonathan Swift finally replied, “I think I understand now. You want the full Yahoo instead, do you?”