My stories are very somber, so I think I need the comic

When Manuel Puig declared, “My stories are very somber, so I think I need the comic ingredient. Besides, life has so much humor,” he revealed a truth that has echoed through the ages — that even in the depths of sorrow, there must be laughter, for laughter is the soul’s rebellion against despair. His words are not the musings of a mere writer but the confession of a seer, one who gazed into the shadows of human life and found there a glimmering spark of absurdity, beauty, and resilience. Puig understood that humor is not the opposite of tragedy, but its companion — that both are born of the same well, the human heart.

In the style of the ancients, one might say that the universe itself is woven from both light and shadow. The same stars that illuminate the heavens are born of chaos and fire. Likewise, the same heart that breaks also beats with laughter. Puig’s “comic ingredient” is that sacred balance — the wisdom to temper grief with grace, to find joy amid sorrow. Without humor, the weight of pain would crush us; without sorrow, humor would have no meaning. The two together form the rhythm of life itself — the tragicomedy of existence, where tears and laughter mingle like the sea and the rain.

Puig’s stories, often filled with longing, exile, and human contradiction, were reflections of his own era — a time of repression and unspoken desires. Yet even within these somber tales, he infused a current of laughter, as if to remind us that no matter how dark the human condition, the spark of joy can never be extinguished. To include humor in sadness is not to mock suffering, but to reclaim power from it. In this, Puig follows a lineage as old as storytelling itself — from the jesters of the royal courts who spoke truth through laughter, to the wise philosophers who said that only through laughter can one face the absurdity of existence without losing sanity.

Consider the tale of Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote. His Spain was scarred by poverty and war, yet he created a hero both foolish and noble, whose madness made the world laugh even as it broke their hearts. Through humor, Cervantes showed the world the pain of shattered ideals — and in doing so, he turned sorrow into immortality. His laughter, like Puig’s, was a mirror for human truth: we stumble, we dream, we fail, we rise, and through it all, we laugh, because to laugh is to remember that life, however tragic, is still precious.

There is a quiet heroism in Puig’s confession. To admit that one needs humor is to acknowledge vulnerability, to know that art — and life — cannot survive on darkness alone. “Life has so much humor,” he says, and in those few words lies his philosophy: that laughter is not a denial of pain, but a recognition of life’s fullness. To see the comic in the tragic is to see the divine hand at work, crafting meaning out of chaos. It is the laughter of one who has suffered and yet refuses to let bitterness harden the heart.

The ancients would have called this the laughter of wisdom — the laughter of the gods who watch over human folly with compassion rather than contempt. When we, like Puig, learn to embrace both sorrow and humor, we transcend despair. We become witnesses to the whole of life, not just fragments of it. We see that the world, in all its contradictions, is alive with rhythm — laughter following tears, joy rising from ruin, dawn emerging from the night.

The lesson, dear listener, is both gentle and powerful: Do not fear sadness, but do not let it consume you. When grief visits, invite laughter to sit beside it. When life wounds you, find in it the small absurdities that remind you you are still alive. Be as Puig was — an artist of both heartache and humor, one who understands that the soul cannot be whole without both. For in the end, to live fully is to laugh through tears, to write joy into sorrow, and to see — as Manuel Puig saw — that even the darkest story is redeemed by the light of humor.