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Funniest novels?


Liam

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Fresh off the back of the news that the Wodehouse award (one for the funniest book of the year, as submitted for appraisal of course) is not being awarded this year due to none of the books being funny enough, what are your favourite humorous novels?

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1 hour ago, odessasteps said:

The first thing that popped into my head was Who Censored Roger Rabbit. Along with various Pratchett works, including Good Omens. And Vonnegut. 

I really enjoyed Good Omens. Also, pretty much all the Vonnegut I've read.

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On 5/17/2018 at 9:14 PM, odessasteps said:

The first thing that popped into my head was Who Censored Roger Rabbit.

I've bought this now - was on Kindle for just under £2. Look forward to it.

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Allow me to bring up the works of Thomas Sharpe , such as A Riotous Assembly , The Throwback, etc. Jim Blaylock, a pretty funny guy in his own right, turned me on to Sharpe in the 1980s. Funny, crude, offensive (to the right people), in short, everything I look for in satire.

Also, considering the number of Pratchett fans on this board, the lack of discussion of one of his major sources makes me sad. Thorne Smith was a lot more than just the "Topper" novels. Rain in the Doorway is the single funniest book I've ever read and re-read  (much to the annoyance of the wife, who was trying to sleep while I kept laughing out loud). Check him out, hell, he's probably on Project Gutenberg.

And here's one that may surprise y'all... Robert Bloch, author of Psycho and many other horror novels, was a funny, funny guy. Bloch always wanted to be a comic working vaudeville, but we know what happened there... Bloch would occasionally be able to slip in the funny story to a Hitchcock antho, but he only really got to show his comedic talents a few times. There's the "Lefty Feep" stories (and a basic knowledge of Damon Runyon will enhance the experience), and then the novels from Unknown such as Nursemaid to Nightmares and The Eager Dragon. Funny stuff.

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Me again... I''m not sure that any of his work belongs in the total funny category,  but the novels of Harry Crews are loaded with funny (if rather grotesque) stuff.  If I were to tell you that among my favorite novels are books about a body builder, a trailer park manager, a gospel singer, a soap salesman, and a boxer who can knock himself out you might think I've gone mad. Somehow Crews makes this stuff work, he turns a magnifying glass on the weirdest that humanity has to offer and damned if we don't see parts if ourselves reflected. For my money, the greatest American novelist after Faulkner and  McCarthy.

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It's well covered here already, but Good Omens was my immediate reaction to the thread title.

Sir Apropos of Nothing by Peter David, which is basically him doing Flashman in a fantasy setting is great, but the sequel was not great.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Tristam Shandy is hilarious and has an array of bizarre textual experiments (from marbled pages to add-your-own-response sections) that work 250 years later.

For literary comedy, I'm also very fond of the short stories of Donald Barthelme.

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The Thursday Next novels by Jasper Fforde have clicked most with me in terms of comedy stuff. I've also enjoyed some of Victor Gischler's comedy horror stuff and The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway.

I have very particular comedy tastes though, which is to say I haven't actually been able to get into Pratchett outside Good Omens and a lot of the UK comedy fantasy crowd do nothing for me.

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3 hours ago, The Unholy Dragon said:

The Thursday Next novels by Jasper Fforde have clicked most with me in terms of comedy stuff. I've also enjoyed some of Victor Gischler's comedy horror stuff and The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway.

I have very particular comedy tastes though, which is to say I haven't actually been able to get into Pratchett outside Good Omens and a lot of the UK comedy fantasy crowd do nothing for me.

I never quite got to grips/enjoyed the Jasper FForde books myself. It seems like it is aimed at me - meta-literary comedy etc - but the writing just did nothing for me.

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