Deadly Funny: How John Diamond Used Humor to Tackle the Taboo Subjects of Cancer and Dying

Abstract

This chapter will examine how humor is employed defensively by writers who are processing/performing trauma and how they mediate the crisis to a reading public by using wit as a coping strategy. It will largely focus on John Diamond’s C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too (1998), which draws on his journalism columns, and look at the ways in which he uses humor during a health crisis and what consolation, if any, this offers him and his readers. It is, indeed, amazing that he can still be ‘funny’/witty when his tongue has been surgically removed and his prognosis is terminal. The chapter will show how Diamond uses humor in writing about traditionally taboo and uncomfortable topics that do not typically sell papers – such as life-threatening illness and pending death.