SOURCE: Heller, Terry. “Notes on Technique in Black Humor.” In Black Humor: Critical Essays, edited by Alan R. Pratt, pp. 197-214. New York, N.Y.: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1993.

In the following essay, originally published in 1980, Heller writes about the techniques and literary devices used by writers of black humor.

While critical discussion of Black Humor has produced considerable insight into the attitudes of contemporary writers and the sources of those attitudes in contemporary cultures, there has been relatively little attention to the technical devices which make Black Humor possible. The technique of Black Humor poses special problems because it involves an apparent attempt to mix responses that would seem unmixable. For example:

Black Humor is a tone in drama and fiction which is simultaneously frightening or threatening and farcical or amusing. It exists as it reverberates within the reader or spectator. … The violent combination of opposing extremes unsettles...