Every man in his humour

Since the 17th century, a ‘humourist’ has been a witty person, and especially someone skilled in literary comedy. In 1871, the Athenaeum said that Swift had been ‘an inimitable humourist’. But in modern usage the term seems to describe a specifically American job title: someone who specialises in writing short prose pieces whose only purpose is to be funny. The current king of humourists is David Sedaris, and his books are essentially scripts for his sell-out reading tours. But is he funny? On a line-by-line basis, he sure can be. He helps push someone’s broken-down car, ‘and remembered after the first few yards what a complete pain in the ass it is to help someone in need’. He watches a reality TV show in which people write letters to their addicted loved ones: ‘The authors of the letters often cry, perhaps because what they’ve written is so poorly constructed.’ He comes over as rather like Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm, hilariously and inexhaustibly intolerant of the tiny outrages that other people constantly perpetrate.