Humor in "Money"

We stood in the hot sandy bucket of the street, watching First Avenue’s wall of death. …You know, the minute we got there, the studs in my back had started to tickle, to rustle hatefully.  Maybe it would be smart to let a medic in on this – there might be dirt in those wounds.  Or maybe I could guts it out with penicillin, from my personal supply.  In California, how much are backs?  A night spent gummed to the plane’s polyester would give me the fully story either way.  Home.  Go home.  (134)

This passage is funny, first and foremost, because we understand John Self.  We are familiar with his perception of New York – its nuances, aesthetics, wonders and difficulties – and the way he relates to and interacts with these elements.  Therefore, when he refers to the “hot sandy bucket” streets and First Avenue’s “wall of death,” we know it is meant as humorous and nothing else.  If this were the first line of a story, a reader would likely understand the tone as ominous and frightful, but we know Self to be very sarcastic and dramatic.  The “wall of death” is not something he is actually afraid of, but his melodramatic way of relating to the Manhattan landscape. 

This moment also exemplifies one of the elements of humor in Humor in Rhetoric.  Amis is “cheating the expectations of the audience through clever use of language” when he refers to First Avenue in such a way.  I have encountered many descriptions of New York, but never have the streets been described as “hot sandy bucket[s]” or as “wall[s] of death.”  These descriptions may not necessarily be funny independently, but they inform the subsequent sentences.  In other words, they inform the reader on how to read the paragraph.

Thus, when Self describes his back injuries as containing “dirt in [the] wounds,” and when he considers going to LA to get a back transplant, we know that he is not being entirely serious.  He is, perhaps, “dispel[ing] [a] more serious emotion.”  We see here that Self is trying to cope with both the pain and fear of his wounds through humor.  He can’t take anything serious seriously, and in a self-deprecating way, this is funny for the reader. 

            Furthermore, a night spent “gummed to the plane’s polyester” is another moment that surprises the reader.  Being stuck in an airplane seat has been described a million different ways, but I have never encountered it in this way.  “Gummed” is not only a funny and dramatic word, but it is consistent with the diction of the story.  Gum feels to me like a very urban phenomenon: not only is it something people chew, but we encounter it on the streets, under chairs, and in all sorts of places only found in urban contexts.  It is consistent with the kind of subversive, transgressive life that Self leads in "Money."