Pun Punch

It begins to rain and Timothy Findley at the end of the title story in The Ark in the Garden (edited by Alberto Manguel) turns the reader's mind to the moral of the story with a twist on the popular saying ("No news is good news") and given that the fictional protagonist is Noah it is fitting that the pun takes an animal nature.

No gnus is bad gnus. In other words, if you want to survive today — you had best get on the right list.

Like the gnus, Noah and the Mrs. didn't in this story make it on the right list and are barred from boarding.

Speaking of boats... "A Canadian is someone who knows how to have sex in a canoe." Pierre Berton. Also exists in these polite (and so Canadian) variants:

A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe.

A true Canadian is someone who can make love in a canoe without tipping it.

Findley visited the Noah material at greater length in his novel Not Wanted on the Voyage where the surname of the couple (Dr. Noah Noyes and Mrs. Noyes) produces a bilingual pun since the French "noyés" translates as "the drowned". Indeed, the story just drips with satire and reversals.

Back to Burton's bon mot, of the Canadians that confess to sex in a canoe, how many did it while the canoe was still on land?

And so for day 1304
09.07.2010