Doug Jacquier writes from the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. His works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and India.

Doug’s story ‘A Tail of Co-dependence’—a high-octane cat-and-mouse chase—features in THE BARE BONES BOOK OF HUMOUR. The anthology’s editor Ankit Raj Ojha interviewed him to find out about his literary influences.

Tell us about your perspective on humour and its place in writing and in life.

I love humour, wit, absurdity, wry social commentary, and people’s funny moments in their life. I love writers who know how to craft their submissions to reach the audience they crave. So much of what passes for humour, especially on the major US ‘humor’ sites, is infantile, derivative punchline driven, and consists mostly of put-downs, snark, and adolescent obsessions with genitals. 

What are the things, works, and authors that have influenced your writing? 

As an Australian, I grew up in the Anglo-Irish tradition of humour, wit, and absurdity that didn’t necessarily have a punchline and didn’t always generate belly laughs, but made you smile and made your day more human. Everything from the BBC’s The Goons, Monty Python, My Word, Take It From Here, etc., through the inimitable Irishness of Flann O’Brien and Roddy Doyle, and Australian TV shows like The Mavis Bramston Show and The Naked Vicar Show. 

Is there any image, phrase, idea, place, person, or memory that became the seed for your story? 

It came from a photo prompt in a group I used to belong to and consisted of a rural town intersection at night. I don’t know why but the parked cars and shadows prompted the idea of a pursuit, and it grew from there.