`A Frivolity Which Is Innocent'

Computer troubles render today’s original post inaccessible, and contingency disallows a substantial replacement. More importantly, I’ve had time to fulfill my paternal obligations and introduce my younger sons to the Three Stooges. The event feels momentous, a handing off of the comedic torch. In first grade we were assigned to make a clock face on a paper plate and set the construction paper hands to our favorite time of day. We showed the class our finished clocks, and they guessed why the time we chose was important. My hour was 5:30, and classmates guessed that was dinner time. No, that’s when Captain Penny, a television host in Cleveland, played a Three Stooges comedy, preferably from the pre-Shemp era. My kids, like all thoughtful children, already prize the sublime Curly over his mediocre successor. Auden writes in The Dyer’s Hand:

“A frivolity which is innocent, because unaware that anything serious exists, can be charming, and a frivolity which, precisely because it is aware of what is serious, refuses to take seriously that which is not serious, can be profound.”