I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.

Reading Birds of America by Lorrie Moore (who published A Gate at the Stairs in 2009) has got me thinking about puns. Her characters produce them obsessively, in their heads and at each other during fights, for comic effect, aggressively, but most often for no particular reason. The puns give the usually somber stories another dimension. The characters' idle punning makes them seem distant from each other, bored with their relationships. Their lack of focus and digression from the narrative direction given to them actually deepens the themes of the stories. In the puns, secret links are uncovered, and tragedies are handled in the light, blank zone of language.

You're only average, he said meanly.

I like a good sled dog, she said huskily.

This hot dog's awful, she said frankly.

I have to go to the hardware store, he said wrenchingly.