Joke-Telling in Lorrie Moore’s “You’re Ugly, Too”

People tell jokes to attract attention or deflect it, to express a point of view, to connect, to offend, or in the hope of shared laughter. Some people (disclosure: me) tell jokes to themselves, rehearsing for an audience or attempting to keep problems at bay. Other people are so scared of blowing a punchline that they never tell jokes. There are even people who don’t like hearing jokes. They’re afraid that they won’t get it; or that the joke teller will screw up, embarrassing both of them; or that the joke will be offensive, leading to an unwelcome understanding of who the teller really is.

In other words, joke-telling is a short, risky interaction between people and sometimes part of an emotionally laden internal process. Sounds like the raw material of fiction. A joke can do many things in a story or novel: build character, advance the plot, engage a reader’s emotions, echo themes, mask exposition so it doesn’t feel like exposition. Here we’ll look at two of these uses—character and plot—in Lorrie Moore’s “You’re Ugly, Too.”

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