According to the HoustonPress blog, these are the Top Ten Most Funny Novels of All Time. I'm going to admit this now, and get it over with: I've never even heard of half of them and haven't read a single one.
Suggestions for what they missed? Disagree with anything? I'm wracking my own brain as I finish this post but I've come up with nothing so far.
Here they are:
Notaro's books of humorous essays should be required college reading for any creative writing course. If nothing else, to help show you all you have to look forward to in your career as a professional writer. Her first novel, a fictionalized account of her move to the Pacific Northwest and trying to fit in, isn't quite as side-splitting as her nonfiction, but it's worth the read just for the scene where she joins a gothic book club expecting Mary Shelley and gets Practical Magick. Yes, magick with a "k."
Yes, comic books count as novels. Anything good enough for Alan Moore should be good enough for you. Garth Ennis did this hilarious and definitely R-rated send-up of the superhero comic where a single mom who moonlights as a prostitute is given superpowers in a dare by an alien. It contains the greatest sodomy joke of all time, a sentence that we cannot believe we got paid to type.
We'd expect nothing but comedy gold from a Cracked.com writer, and that's what you get. We only had to read three pages of sarcastic paranormal horror story before we knew that it was the perfect gift for the most deranged members of our social circle. You probably won't like this one unless there is something completely wrong with you.
Ellis is a comic genius that has finally turned to prose. Crooked Little Vein is a detective tale that starts with its hero matching wits with a rat that is pissing in his coffee, and then heads out into America to seek a lost Constitution misplaced by Richard Nixon in a whorehouse. We had to clean soda off of the computer screen before we finished the first page.
Neil Gaiman can't really be called funny, even though we're at a loss to think of a single work that didn't have at least one brilliant joke. Conversely, Terry Pratchett writes some of the funniest books around, but picking one Discworld novel is impossible. We compromised on Good Omens, which was a collaboration that heavily parodies the Omen. Several very helpful theories are put forth in the novel, such as how all albums left in a car eventually become The Best of Queen, and how freeway design is actually a plot by Hell to increase frustration in the world.
To paraphrase Kathleen Madigan, Amanda McKittrick Ros was hilarious, but she had no idea why. Her husband self-published her novel as a tenth wedding anniversary present, and it eventually became the greatest unintentional literary comedy ever written. Tolkien and Lewis would hold reading competitions to see who could get the furthest through the book without laughing. Why is it so funny? Here's a sample of her writing style:
"Speak! Irene! Wife! Woman! Do not sit in silence and allow the blood that now boils in my veins to ooze through cavities of unrestrained passion and trickle down to drench me with its crimson hue!"
Seriously, she's like a real-life Fawful without the rocket hat. The best part is, while finding a physical copy of Irene Iddesleigh costs over $100, it's available on Kindle now for free!
Based on Millington's acclaimed Web site chronicling his relationship with his girlfriend, the full-length book version more than lives up to the legacy he built. Nothing appeals more than a dysfunctional relationship that manages to survive, or reading as the narrator is driven to pants-soiling panic while his girlfriend turns a run for Chinese food into a white-knuckle car chase when she spots the van of the roofers she suspects stole their broom.
Do we really need to say anything about this one? Well, one thing... has anyone else realized that if you wrote "Don't Panic" on an iPad case and made Wikipedia your browser's homepage, then you would totally have the actual Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
Jesus has been many things, savior, rock star, vampire hunter, but this is the first time that he's been the straight man in a buddy adventure. Of course, every Christopher Moore book should be on a list like this, but our hearts will always belong to Christ's best friend Biff, and the journey they take across the Orient in search of spiritual enlightenment, kung fu and, in Biff's case, sexual chocolate. Also available in a super-fancy Bible-style version for the extra dose of blasphemy.
Most people were probably expecting Catch-22 here, but honestly we've never gotten even a quarter of the way through the book. We just don't get it. While we're willing to admit that Joseph Heller undoubtedly wrote the more significant novel, Hooker wrote the funnier one. It's a masterpiece of language, absurdism and prankishness that would make Ken Kesey blush.
Tempted to check any of these out? I know I am...
Word Lily, Hmm! Sounds suspicious there's more than one list of funniest novels floating around out there... The game's afoot!
Posted by: Bluestalking | January 11, 2013 at 08:03 AM
And, shockingly, this list is almost completely different than the one I saw that was published in England a few years ago ... (but I don't think they claimed "all time" in their heading).
Posted by: Word Lily | January 10, 2013 at 06:31 PM
Good points, Persephone. These should be called 'Books That Made Me Laugh,' which would be interesting as a recommendation from one reader to another. But that's not as eye-catching, not as dramatic for the media, which of course thrives on that. I love lists but absolutely see your point.
Fiction doesn't generally send me into fits of laughter, either, with the possible exception of Wodehouse-like novels featuring understated and ridiculous British humor. And some books have passing hilarious moments but it's so hard to sustain that. It would be tiresome after a while.
I know I've read funny books but drat if I can think of one right now to save my life. Figures.
RSAM will officially go on my list.
Posted by: Bluestalking | January 10, 2013 at 04:55 PM
First off, we gotta lose this idea that we can compile a list "for all time". It's arrogant, to say the least. I, for one, am sick of radio programmes claiming to play the best songs ever and they all fit within the compass of a decade or so.
Secondly, humour is many things, but it's *not* universal -- it depends on shared assumptions and understandings, so something that was hysterically funny fifty years/ two centuries/ a millennium ago rarely is a giggle-fest today, because we simply don't understand the world the same way. So how can we say for all time when what is funny changes drastically with age and place?
The funniest books I've guffawed over are usually not novels. Real life is usually so much more absurd. On this list, the one book I'd agree on without hesitation is Hitchhiker's Guide. It appeals to my sense of humour -- that of a reasonably educated Canadian of British parentage. I never found MASH that funny. Lamb was okay, but I wasn't crying with laughter. One novel that made my belly ache was Red Sky at Morning by Richard Bradford. They made a rather humourless TV movie of it, but the book kills me. But is it a funny book for all time? I can only say that it appeals to me (but I'd still recommend it heartily if you haven't read it).
Never heard of the rest of 'em, but in the two books I've read by Sarah Vowell, her jokes were so topical that I doubt anyone will get them in a few years' time.
"For all time." Sheeesh....
Posted by: Persephone | January 10, 2013 at 04:09 PM