/lit/, how do you guys feel about comedy in literature, not just as a side note but as the genre itself? How many genuinely funny books are there?
Pic related
the Greeks liked it so it must be fine.
I can't say I like it very much when people are trying to be funny. It's much better when it's funny because it's absurd, in which case telling it straight usually makes it more funny.
>>7458776
So humour through an absurd analogy wouldn't get you? I agree that situational humour is generally the way to go. I think having a funny character is probably better than jokes, I guess
>>7458796
i don't want to copy off of dfw here, but there is a way to read kafka where pretty much everything that happens in the castle seems ridiculously funny. for some reason i had an image of some of these scenes recently and i just couldn't stop laughing through it. even though the prose is very restrained and doesn't immediately seem to contain any exaggerations that would make something funny. the humor seeps in slowly because of the overall situation.
Well I loved Catch 22, I can say that much.
>>7458766
Comedy or Humor is pretty much required at some point or else there is no soul or humanity present. Also humor is the best way to create some sense of emotional investment.
>>7458766
I didnt think this book was very funny. there were times where the action was getting really absurd and it was great for a joke to be told at that moment, but the way the book was written was just too "proper" I guess and it killed any momentum it had
Funniest novel ever written is also one of the most underrated. Kafka's "Amerika"
>>7458846
>K's "assistants"
that fucking book!
it gets funnier every time I read it
>>7459817
>>7458766
DQ and ACoD are the funniest books ever written imo.
>>7458766
This is one of the only books I've found genuinely funny. One of the only books I thought actually did dialogue well too. That probably just shows how little I've read though.
Why did JKT rip himself?
This is pretty damn funny
My family and I are all New Orlenians. ACoD has a reverential place on our bookshelves, but even so I think it's the only book that's actually made me laugh.
I've read other comedies and satirical works, but they haven't elicited more than a nose huff from me. Christopher Moore's Lamb was apparently supposed to have me in Stiches, but I just half-chuckled a couple of times.
I'm not disparaging it. I just think that prose doesn't really have much potential to make me actually laugh.
>>7460871
He was tore up about something
>>7460871
We'll never really know. His doting mother burned his suicide note.
>>7460960
>are you black?
>>7458766
Check out John Swartzwelder, he's got a great sense of humor
>>7458766
This bitch right here.
>>7458776
i've been looking for absurdist literature. any recs?
Why does it feel like every /lit/izen's list of comedy literature begins and ends with A Confederacy of Dunces?
Humour is one of the best cures for existential angst. All novels should try to make the reader laugh at least once.
>>7458846
the first page of the metamorphosis makes me laugh out loud every time i read it.
