Kurt Vonnegut, The Art of Fiction No. 64

The Paris Review: Was your sister funny, too?

Kurt Vonnegut: Oh, yes. There was an odd cruel streak to her sense of humor, though, which didn’t fit in with the rest of her character somehow. She thought it was terribly funny whenever anybody fell down. One time she saw a woman come out of a streetcar horizontally, and she laughed for weeks after that.

TPR: Horizontally?

KV: Yes. This woman must have caught her heels somehow. Anyway, the streetcar door opened, and my sister happened to be watching from the sidewalk, and then she saw this woman come out horizontally—as straight as a board, face down, and about two feet off the ground.

TPR: Slapstick?

KV: Sure. We loved Laurel and Hardy. You know what one of the funniest things is that can happen in a film?

TPR: No.

KV: To have somebody walk through what looks like a shallow little puddle, but which is actually six feet deep. I remember a movie where Cary Grant was loping across lawns at night. He came to a low hedge, which he cleared ever so gracefully, only there was a twenty-foot drop on the other side. But the thing my sister and I loved best was when somebody in a movie would tell everybody off, and then make a grand exit into the coat closet. He had to come out again, of course, all tangled in coat hangers and scarves.

Kurt Vonnegut, The Art of Fiction No. 64 / Interviewed by David Hayman, David Michaelis, George Plimpton, Richard Rhodes / The Paris Review