ABSTRACT

Much more fundamental is that the first version of the chainsaw tale is longer and more discursive and repetitive whereas the second is a well-made joke with a familiar ethnic script, the deliberate creation of suspense and a sudden but indirect resolution of the joke through a skillfully constructed punch line. Such stories are entertaining and yet stupid. They are told by particularly well-known named individuals and although clearly absurd, they purport to be true, with the narrator deliberately bringing his relatives into the story, so that they could be potential witnesses to the truth of his tale. The inhabitants of a local Newfoundland community can be even more ambivalent about the qualities demonstrated by their own particular tall-tale teller as in the case of the French-speaking neighbors of the French Newfoundlander Albert Ding-Dong Simon. From the detailed study provided by Gerald Thomas, it is clear that M. Ding-Dong had problems holding fast to reality.