April Fools’ Day in many countries is a day to play pranks on one another. Here in the U.S., nearly 20 percent of families have a tradition of playing jokes on that day, fooling each other into believing one thing when the truth is another. April Fools’ is all about pranks, jokes, illusions, and fun.
When given the task of writing about the intersection of April Fools’ and literature, I thought it might be fun finding where pranks, jokes, and literature become the center of the Venn diagram. Looking around Edgartown Books, I immediately went to our Classics section. And literature did not disappoint, though not all the pranks were fun.
At the end of the Trojan War, the Greeks pranked Troy with a gift of a horse, filled with soldiers who, in the dead of night, slipped out, opened the gates, and sacked the city.
In “The Odyssey” (soon to be released as a film directed by Christopher Nolan), Ulysses and his men are trapped (and a few eaten) by a one-eyed Cyclops. After getting the Cyclops drunk, Ulysses plunges a stake into his eye, blinding him. The Cyclops demands to know who has done this, and Ulysses answers, “Nobody.” When neighbors come to find out what the screaming is about, the Cyclops tells them “Nobody” is hurting him, so they go away. Ulysses and his men escape by hiding under the giant’s sheep as they are released the next morning.
Shakespeare was a master of using trickery in his stories. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is like one long April Fools’ joke, with lovers misdirected, identities confused, magic bending reality.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story for the New York Sun about a balloon that crossed the Atlantic in 75 hours, carrying eight men from England to South Carolina. So believable was the story in its details, the Sun offices were swarmed by people demanding copies of the paper. People wanted to believe a balloon, with a newly invented propeller, had made the transatlantic journey.
Not long after, the Sun retracted the story — but not before it influenced Jules Verne, with quiet nods to the story showing up in some of his later works, like “Around the World in 80 Days.”
Mark Twain gives us one of the great tricksters of all time in Tom Sawyer, who convinces his friends to pay him for whitewashing Aunt Polly’s fence by making the job seem like the most important, fun thing one could be doing.
April Fools’ Day embodies the spirit of theatrical farce, a type of comedy relying on highly improbable situations, exaggerated characters, and frantic pacing to generate humor. My favorite is Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” in which two young men pretend to be named Ernest in order to woo two young women who will only marry someone named Ernest. There is much confusion and misunderstanding, exaggerated characters, and nudging at the foolishness of humans.
In 1969, “Naked Came the Stranger” was written by two dozen journalists at Newsday who deliberately set out to write the worst, most salacious book they could, to prove bad smut, properly marketed, would be a bestseller. They were right.
George Plimpton, a founder of the Paris Review, pranked the sports world in 1985 in an article in Sports Illustrated about Sidd Finch, a mysterious baseball pitcher who could throw a 168-mile-per-hour fastball as a result of his studying meditation in Tibet. Plimpton wrote the story seriously, with made-up facts, observations, and staged photos. Only later did people realize there was no Sidd Finch, and that they had been fooled by a master of the word game.
In the Harry Potter books, twin brothers Fred and George Weasley, with their joke shop, Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, provide an antidote to the rigidity of Hogwarts and the Ministry, using polyjuice to trick people into thinking they are someone other than themselves.
April Fools’ Day highlights an essential element of literature: the pleasure of being fooled. We like it. It’s part of our human fiber.
The intersection of April Fools’ Day and literature shows the power of storytelling. Clever stories are at the heart of April Fools’ Day jokes, and clever storytelling is at the heart of literature, often playing with our human tendency to believe what we want to believe.
The spirit of April Fools’ Day may be best summed up by Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” when he says, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
Mathew Tombers is the manager of Edgartown Books.