The Pulitzer-winning author of Less and Villa Coco explores the art of writing humour \u2013 plus 10 of the best novels to make you laugh<\/p>\n
In March 2020, when the mayor of San Francisco instructed all citizens to remain in their houses due to a pandemic, the first thing I did was order all the books of Agatha Christie. I was not alone; I think many of us immersed ourselves in reliable narratives to drown out the chaos. It did not matter if it ended in marriage or murder; the reliability was what mattered. Later when I realised I would need to hole up for some time, my reading shifted to a different kind of novel. And because, like Christie, our world has an endless supply of new terrors, it is the comic novel that still fills my reading hours.<\/p>\n
Nobody knows what a comic novel is. And once you start discussing it, all the fun runs out. EB White compared it to dissecting a frog (you\u2019re left with innards and a dead frog) but I would compare it to turning all the lights on at a party: everyone looks terrible and you\u2019ve ruined the party. Most would agree, of course, that Wodehouse wrote comic novels, but I turn to books hardly anybody would classify that way \u2013 Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, for instance \u2013 that yet seem to me to be a hoot. I think they are books that decide<\/em> something is funny, as Jerry Seinfeld once defined comedy. In Moby-Dick, it\u2019s a coin nailed to a masthead. In Vladimir Nabokov\u2019s Pale Fire, it\u2019s the worst best poem you\u2019ve ever read. And yet we feel we\u2019re getting at something the most solemn narratives aim for: an understanding of the human condition, of grief, of love, of death. All the big stuff. The comic novels I love are books that could just as easily have been tragedies. It is simply that the author has decided<\/em> it\u2019s funny.<\/p>\n
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