Great Comic Novels

A good list: In Read 'Em and Laugh, Roger Kimball lists his five favorite comic novels. I've read 1, 2, and 4 and agree with him about them, including his comment at the beginning of his description of the first book that he'd like to offer the collected works of P. G. Wodehouse. I agree with him about Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, but The Loved One, Vile Bodies, and Decline and Fall are also very funny (meaning laugh out loud funny, not chuckle funny).

Comments

[dilys]

Rapier-sharp descriptions and funny situations: Randall Jarrell's Pictures from an Institution. And we return to Trollope's Barchester Towers for the Day of Proposals and Mrs. Prouty.

[Judy Warner]

Thank You For Smoking, by Christopher Buckley, made me laugh so hard reading it in bed that I woke up my husband.

[Angie]

Thanks for the list. I'm always eager to add to my humor reading line-up. I would also recommend "Cold Comfort Farm" by Stella Gibbons. The book, first published in 1932, is a parody of the melodramatic, romantic, "noble savage" novel. Says Amazon: "In Gibbons's classic tale, first published in 1932, a resourceful young heroine finds herself in the gloomy, overwrought world of a Hardy or Bronte novel and proceeds to organize everyone out of their romantic tragedies into the pleasures of normal life. Flora Poste, orphaned at 19, chooses to live with relatives at Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex, where cows are named Feckless, Aimless, Pointless, and Graceless, and the proprietors, the dour Starkadder family, are tyrannized by Flora's mysterious aunt, who controls the household from a locked room. Flora's confident and clever management of an alarming cast of eccentrics is only half the pleasure of this novel. The other half is Gibbons's wicked sendup of romantic cliches, from the mad woman in the attic to the druidical peasants with their West Country accents and mystical herbs. Anne Massey's skillful rendering of a variety of accents will make this story more accessible to American audiences. Recommended for both literary and popular collections."

[Juli]

Angie beat me to the punch with Cold Comfort Farm. Another good one is Three Men in a Boat.

[Michael Leone]

MY SEARCH FOR WARREN HARDING by Robert Plunket is the funniest book I have ever read. One of the funniest American books ever written.

[Rob Grano]

I didn't like LUCKY JIM much at all, but I love the Wodehouse. Haven't read the Waugh yet. Two of my favorites are Booth Tarkington's PENROD and W.E. Bowman's THE ASCENT OF RUM DOODLE. Dickens' PICKWICK PAPERS has some hilarious episodes as well.

[Charlie Stanford]

C.D. Payne's "Youth in Revolt" is an incredibly funny book as well. It's about a scheming, intellectual 14 year old who tries to lose his virginity. Payne has also written some political satires from the perspective of a pigeon.