Just recently, I was watching an old episode of the Simpsons on tv called “Krusty Gets Kancelled.” The episode features a ventriloquist’s doll named “Gabbo” that competes for airtime with Krusty the Clown. Desperate for an audience, Krusty eventually uses a ventriloquist doll of his own that erratically falls apart on his lap. Just before the doll breaks and the few children in his audience scream, Krusty asks the doll the following question:

“Why is a Raven Like a Writing Desk?”

Normally, a question like that would seem inocuous, but that question is precisely why the Simpsons is so incredible. I’ll explain.

In Lewis Carroll’s book, “Alice In Wonderland,” the title character finds herself at a tea party with the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse. In completely random fashion, a nonsequitur, the Mad Hatter asks Alice, “why is a raven like a writing desk?” The conversation ensues:

“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
“No, I give it up,” Alice replied. “What’s the answer?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter.
“Nor I,” said the March Hare.
Alice sighed wearily. “I think you might do something better with the time,” she said, “than wasting it in asking riddles that have no answers.”

And so we leave the tea party without ever having solved the riddle. Carroll, in fact, never meant for the riddle to have a solution. It was a joke. However, he was bombarded with mail from readers who demanded a solution, with many having tried to provide their own answer to the riddle. In Martin Gardner’s “The Annotated Alice,” he lists a brief summary of the phenomenon and cites a few possible solutions:

“Because Poe wrote on both”
“Because there is a B in both and an N in neither”

Other answers have also been attempted:
“Because they both come with inky quills”

The point is that the riddle has no solution, and yet, despite that, it has gained notoriety among fans of “Alice in Wonderland.”

So I return to the topic of the Simpsons and how the writers (especially in the early years, seasons 3 – 9) managed the juxtaposition of overt, cartoonish, slapstick humor with insightful, intelligent allusion. Writing humor is very difficult, let alone writing good humor. Couple that with an overwhelming subtlety of references to pop culture, and you could spend hours and hours discussing the brilliance of a single moment in a single episode.

(image source: die-simpsons.de, logoi.com)