Editing Shaggy dog story

{{Short description|Story with long setup and no payoff}}
{{About|the joke|the television program|Shaggy Dog Story (TV)}}
{{Infobox literary genre
| name              = Shaggy-dog story
| image             = 
| imagesize         = 
| caption           = 
| alt               = 
| stylistic_origins = 
| cultural_origins  = 
| features          = Extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents and terminated by an anticlimax
| popularity        = 
| formats           = 
| authors           = <!-- can also use person1-person5-->
| subgenrelist      = 
| subgenres         = <!-- can also use subs1-subs4-->
| relatedgenres     = <!-- can also use related1-related5-->
| base#             = <!-- upto 5 -->
| pub#              = <!-- upto 5 -->
| title#            = <!-- upto 5 -->
| series#           = <!-- upto 5 -->
| regional_scenes   = 
| local_scenes      = 
| other_topics      = 
}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2014}}

In its original sense, a '''shaggy-dog story''' or '''yarn''' is an extremely long-winded [[anecdote]] characterized by extensive narration of typically [[non sequitur (literary device)|irrelevant incidents]] and terminated by an [[anticlimax (narrative)|anticlimax]]. In other words, it is a long story that is intended to be amusing and that has an intentionally silly or meaningless ending.<ref>{{Cite web | title=shaggy-dog story Meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary | url=https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/shaggy-dog-story | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150911085801/http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/shaggy-dog-story | access-date=2025-01-05 | archive-date=2015-09-11}}</ref>

Shaggy-dog stories play upon the audience's preconceptions of joke-telling. The audience listens to the story with certain expectations, which are either simply not met or met in some entirely unexpected manner.<ref name=Cohen>{{cite book |title=Jokes |page=8 |first=Ted |last=Cohen |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=0-226-11230-6 |year=1999}}</ref> A lengthy shaggy-dog story derives its humour from the fact that the joke-teller held the attention of the listeners for a long time (such jokes can take five minutes or more to tell) for no reason at all, as the long-awaited resolution is essentially meaningless, with the joke as a whole playing upon people's search for [[meaning (philosophy)|meaning]].<ref>{{cite book |title=How to be funny: an extremely silly guidebook |year=1978 |author=Jovial Bob Stine |publisher= Dutton |isbn=0-525-32410-0}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{cite journal |last=Todd |first=Jane Marie |date=1992 |title=Balzac's Shaggy Dog Story| url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1770857 |journal=Comparative Literature |volume=44 |issue=3 |pages=268–279 |doi=10.2307/1770857 |jstor=1770857 |issn=0010-4124}}</ref> The nature of their delivery is reflected in the [[English language|English]] [[idiom]] ''[[wiktionary:spin a yarn|spin a yarn]]'', by way of [[analogy]] with the production of [[yarn]].

As a comic device, the shaggy-dog story is related to unintentional long-windedness, and the two are sometimes both referred to in the same way. While a shaggy-dog story is a comic exaggeration of the real life experience, it is also deliberately constructed to play off an audience who are expecting a comedic payoff and uses that expectation to subvert expectations and create comedy in unexpected ways. In such kind of humorous story, the humor lies in the pointlessness or irrelevance of the plot or punch line.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shaggy-dog | title=Definition of SHAGGY-DOG }}</ref>

Humanities scholar Jane Marie Todd observed that the shaggy-dog story demonstrates the nature of desiring humor and how that process occurs.<ref name=":0" />

==Archetypal story==
{{More citations needed section|date=December 2020}}
The eponymous [[wikt:shaggy|shaggy]] dog story serves as the [[archetype]] of the genre. The story builds up a repeated emphasizing of the dog's exceptional shagginess. The climax of the story culminates in a character reacting to the animal by stating: "That dog's not so shaggy." The expectations of the audience that have been built up by the presentation of the story, both in the details (that the dog is shaggy) and in the delivery of a punchline, are thus subverted. [[Ted Cohen (philosopher)|Ted Cohen]] gives the following example of this story:

{{quote|A boy owned a dog that was uncommonly shaggy. Many people remarked upon its considerable shagginess.  When the boy learned that there are contests for shaggy dogs, he entered his dog. The dog won first prize for shagginess in both the local and the regional competitions.  The boy entered the dog in ever-larger contests, until finally he entered it in the world championship for shaggy dogs. When the judges had inspected all of the competing dogs, they remarked about the boy's dog: "He's not that shaggy."<ref name=Cohen />}}

However, authorities disagree as to whether this particular story is the archetype after which the category is named. [[Eric Partridge]], for example, provides a very different story, as do William and Mary Morris in ''The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins''.

According to Partridge and the Morrises, the archetypical shaggy-dog story involves an advertisement placed in the ''Times'' announcing a search for a shaggy dog. In the Partridge story, an aristocratic family living in [[Park Lane (road)|Park Lane]] is searching for a lost dog, and an American answers the advertisement with a shaggy dog that he has found and personally brought across the Atlantic, only to be received by the butler at the end of the story who takes one look at the dog and shuts the door in his face, saying, "But not so shaggy as ''that'', sir!" In the Morris story, the advertiser is organizing a competition to find the shaggiest dog in the world, and after a lengthy exposition of the search for such a dog, a winner is presented to the aristocratic instigator of the competition, who says, "I don't think he's so shaggy."<ref>{{cite book|title=Secret of Humor|first=Leonard|last=Feinberg|year=1978|publisher=Rodopi|isbn=90-6203-370-9|pages=181&ndash;182}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Shaggy Dog Story|work=World Wide Words|first=Michael|last=Quinion|url=http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-sha1.htm|date=19 June 1999}}</ref>

==Examples in literature==
=== Isaac Asimov and the story of the Shah Guido G. ===
In the collection of stories by [[Isaac Asimov]] titled ''[[Buy Jupiter and Other Stories]]'' is a story titled "[[Shah Guido G.]]" <ref>{{cite book |author=Asimov, Isaac |author-link=Isaac Asimov |title=Buy Jupiter and other stories |publisher=Fawcett Crest |location=New York, NY |year=1975 |pages=33–44}}</ref> In his background notes, Asimov identifies the tale as a shaggy-dog story, and explains that the title is a play on "shaggy dog."

==Examples in music==
* [[Arlo Guthrie]]'s antiwar "[[Alice's Restaurant Massacree]]" is a shaggy-dog story about the military draft, hippies, and improper disposal of garbage.<ref>{{cite web |first=Eric |last=Berman |url=http://www.chicagonow.com/booth-reviews/2010/11/song-of-the-day-alices-restaurant-massacree-by-arlo-guthrie/ |title=Song Of The Day – "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" by Arlo Guthrie &#124; Booth Reviews |publisher=Chicagonow.com |access-date=2 June 2014 |archive-date=18 May 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140518031215/http://www.chicagonow.com/booth-reviews/2010/11/song-of-the-day-alices-restaurant-massacree-by-arlo-guthrie/ |url-status=dead }}</ref>
*[["Weird Al" Yankovic]]'s "[[Albuquerque (song)|Albuquerque]]," the final track on his 1999 album ''[[Running with Scissors ("Weird Al" Yankovic album)|Running with Scissors]]'', is an over-11-minute digression from one of the first topics mentioned in the song, the narrator-protagonist's longstanding dislike of [[sauerkraut]].<ref>{{Cite news |title=Spotlight on "Weird Al" Yankovic He May Look More Normal, But Parodist is Still an Oddball at Heart|first = Dave|last = Howell|url= https://www.mcall.com/news/mc-xpm-2000-01-29-3296970-story.html |access-date=|date =28 January 2000 |website=The Morning Call}}</ref>
*[[The J. Geils Band]]'s "No Anchovies, Please" on their 1980 album, ''[[Love Stinks (album)|Love Stinks]]'', is a shaggy-dog story that tells the tale of an American housewife who meets an unfortunate fate after opening a can of [[Anchovies as food|anchovies]].''<ref>{{Cite web |last=jb |date=2006-05-13 |title=Still Another Great Moment in the History of Background Music |url=https://thjkoc.net/2006/05/13/still-another-great-moment-in-the-history-of-background-music/ |access-date=2022-05-31 |website=The Hits Just Keep On Comin' |language=en}}</ref>''

==Other examples==
*[[Myles-na-gCopaleen]], one of the pen-names of [[Flann O'Brien]], was a master of long shaggy-dog stories, most commonly in his ''Various Lives of Keats and Chapman'' stories in his [[The Irish Times|Irish Times]] column the <nowiki>''Cruisceann Lawn.''</nowiki> Almost all the stories would have meandering, painful, often esoteric detail, leading to a meaningless ending to justify a dreadful yet amusing pun or spoonerism, the more excruciating the better. Indeed the name and characters of the column, based on the poets Keats and Chapman derive from the first such story where [[John Keats]], in addition to his poetical gifts, is somehow reckoned an expert vet, to whom a prize homing pigeon belonging to [[George Chapman]] is brought, choking. Keats opens the bird's beak widely, stares down for some seconds, deftly removes a piece of stuck champagne cork from the bird's throat, and health is restored to Chapman's pigeon. Upon which happy event, Keats is moved to write his famous sonnet, "[[On First Looking into Chapman's Homer]]" (''homer'' being slang for [[homing pigeon]], as well as the name of the great Greek poet for whom Keats' poem was actually written).<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/flann-obrien/the-various-lives-of-keats-and-chapman-and-the-bro/ |title=THE VARIOUS LIVES OF KEATS AND CHAPMAN (AND … {{!}} Kirkus Reviews |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=O'Neill |first=Jamie |date=2003-11-22 |title=Whims and shams, puns and flams |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/22/classics.flannobrien |access-date=2023-03-29 |issn=0261-3077}}</ref>
*Comedians [[Buddy Hackett]] and [[Norm Macdonald]] were famous for telling shaggy-dog stories.<ref>{{cite news| url = https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/for-norm-macdonald-facts-are-just-starting-points-for-comedy/2016/09/20/ad39cfd6-7f42-11e6-8d13-d7c704ef9fd9_story.html| title = For Norm Macdonald, facts are just starting points for comedy - The Washington Post| newspaper = [[The Washington Post]]}}</ref>
*In ''[[The Simpsons]]'', the character [[Grampa Simpson]] frequently tells nonsensical shaggy-dog stories, often to the annoyance of other characters. In the season 4 episode "[[Last Exit to Springfield]]," Grampa tells [[Mr. Burns]] that he uses "stories that don't go anywhere" as a strike-breaking technique before launching into a rambling tale.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/lists/grampa-stories|title=Simpson Crazy, the ultimate Simpsons fan site — in association with Krusty Krowd Kontrol Barriers}}</ref>
*In the novel ''[[V.]]'' by [[Thomas Pynchon]], the main character Benny Profane recalls a shaggy-dog story about a boy who is born with a golden screw in his belly button, the only purpose of which turns out to be to hold the boy's bottom in place.<ref>{{cite book |last=Pynchon |first=Thomas |author-link=Thomas Pynchon |date=1963-03-18 |title=V. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=STZbAAAAMAAJ |publisher=J. B. Lippincott |isbn=9780397003013}}</ref>
*In a [[Boy Scouts of America]] [[campfire story]] called "You're Not a Monk," a storyteller tells a 10-minute long story about a man who goes through a long series of trials to become a monk in hopes of gaining permission to learn a mysterious secret, and at the end, the storyteller refuses to tell the audience what the secret is because "you aren't a monk."<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.boyscouttrail.com/content/joke/youre_not_a_monk-605.asp | title=You're Not a Monk Joke }}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Anti-humor]]
* [[The Aristocrats]]
* [[Chekhov's gun]]
* [[Feghoot]]
* [[Information overload]]
* [[No soap radio]]
* [[Rakugo]]
* [[Red herring]]
* [[Shaggy dog (disambiguation)]]
* [[Shaggy God story]]

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

== Further reading ==
* {{cite book|title=Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor: A Lifetime Collection of Favorite Jokes, Anecdotes, and Limericks with Copious Notes on How to Tell Them and Why |first=Isaac|last=Asimov|year=1991|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Books|isbn=0-395-57226-6|pages=[https://archive.org/details/isaacasimovstrea00asim/page/49 49&ndash;67]|chapter=Shaggy Dog|chapter-url-access=registration|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/isaacasimovstrea00asim/page/49}}
* {{cite journal|title=A Classification for Shaggy Dog Stories|author=Jan Harold Brunvand|author-link=Jan Harold Brunvand|journal=The Journal of American Folklore|volume=76|issue=299|date=January–March 1963|pages=42&ndash;68|doi=10.2307/538078|publisher=American Folklore Society|jstor=538078}}
* {{cite news|title=The Shaggy Dog Story|first=Eric|last=Partridge|author-link=Eric Partridge|work=[[New Statesman]]|year=1931|page=534|publisher=Statesman Pub. Co.}}
* {{cite book|title=The 'Shaggy Dog' Story: Its Origin, Development and Nature (with a few seemly examples)|others=Illustrated by C. H. Drummond |location=London|publisher=Faber & Faber |year=1953|first=Eric|last=Partridge|author-link=Eric Partridge}}
* {{cite journal|journal=Journal of Popular Culture|volume=2|year=1969|pages=563&ndash;577|author=Francis Lee Utley and Dudley Flamm|title=The Urban and the Rural Jest (With an Excursus on the Shaggy Dog)|doi=10.1111/j.0022-3840.1969.0204_563.x|issue=4}}

{{Narrative}}

[[Category:Anecdotes]]
[[Category:Dogs in literature]]
[[Category:Folklore]]
[[Category:Humour]]