And Now, Deep Thoughts About ‘Deep Thoughts’
Jack Handey’s absurdist affirmations were sharp, surreal and hilarious. Is it possible he influenced a generation of serious poets?
“Deep Thoughts,” which were later collected in a series of popular volumes, were designed to satirize the genre of the feel-good affirmation. Examples include: “If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.” And: “As the evening sun faded from a salmon color to a sort of flint gray, I thought back to the salmon I caught that morning, and how gray he was, and how I named him Flint.”