Review by Mack Hassler
“A doctor gave his patient six months to live, but he couldn’t
pay his bill, so he gave him another six months.”
— Henny Youngman, comic (1906-1998)
Recent Yooper writers of humor that I have reviewed may or may not know Henny Youngman’s one-liners, but I do believe they represent a “school” of women comics that influence one another. Together they have a cultural influence on the tone of what writers might work at in our efforts to produce a genuine literature of the UP. Sharon Brunner, in fact, comments on her conscious effort to soften the harshness of the bugs attacking in late June and July and the heavy winter weather. (p.7). She reviews books on this site, as I do, and always has something good to say about her fellow writers of humor—many of them women. Many were trained as journalists. She mentions Sharon Kennedy who is also based in the Eastern UP who went from columns to book writing about the amusing elements of UP life in her SideRoad Kids series. Brunner wrote a rave review of Off The Hook Too! Nancy Besonen’s second volume of columns from The L’Anse Sentinel in Baraga County. Besonen’s friend Terri Martin does the same type of work as does Audrey Fick in The Constipated Elephant, who lives in the Eastern UP. Humor does not come only from the Eastern counties. One of the first stories I reviewed was a multi-volume epic with the characters all ants To Build A Tunnel by Debbie Frontiera, who lives all summer in Copper Country. Her mock epic, I thought, was effective. We do small work. But we aim toward a higher form of expression. Both hunting and fishing are key pastimes in our region with vast spaces and extreme seasons. I think I have these good-humored does in my sights and if I can focus and adjust my sights on Brunner I can bag one as a valid cultural influence, or to switch the metaphor if I wiggle the lure a bit I can land her. So this book is representative of U.P. humor writing.
Her essays have been around for several years. This is the third printing of Lake Superior in the Moonlight. Brunner is very generous in talking about her sources. Her main purpose is just to get into print funny ideas about Yoopers—a lot of garbled speech habits like “dis” and “dat” as well as a lot about “pasties” and about people who live below “da Bridge” as “trolls.” She admits at the start that she freely uses “funny quotes, and excerpts from other sources” (p 9). As I study the book, I see that she does have Youngman-like one-liners. Hers are attributed to “Larry the Cable Guy” in her third Appendix. My favorite chapter, in fact, on fly fishing was actually written by a friend of her and her husband who died in 2023. Jim Couling conducted a Twilight Walking Tour of Sault Ste. Marie on the American side and helped her with a good chapter of her own called “The Ghosts of St Mary.” In other words, I am impressed with how generous and open Brunner is in talking about where her material comes from. She is just interested in the funny stuff about Yoopers. The chapter by Couling is titled “Whar Do Ya Mean Ya Can’t Catchum” and is about calming a fish down with a homemade lure—a fine print of a Large Mouth Bass follows on p 126.
I think that short narrative and its graphic is worth the price of the book. And as I say, Brunner is a very generous and candid bookmaker. She loves the UP, and she knows that humor helps us love it. It is a kind of “motherly” book. She thanks her husband Don. Most of the other women that I mention in my first paragraph here have the support of a spouse. Besonen whose work I know pretty well thanks her husband whose name is also Don. The good-humored women, such as are portrayed in Lake Superior in the Moonlight, help us live our rough lives. The men push the snow around and dress the deer. This is inbred to our literature and our lives in the UP.
Lake Superior in the Moonlight: Yooper Tales, by Sharon Brunner (Freedom Eagles Press, Sault Ste Marie, MI, Third Printing, 2024) 174 pages, $14,99 pbk.
