Comic novels you have known and liked?

[lobelia321]

What comic novels have you known and liked? Or even loved?

By comic novels, I don't mean graphic novels but novels without pictures that are humorous and caused you to be amused.

Also: comic fics you have known and loved...? I believe in the slash world we like to call them 'crack', *gg*.



• Philip Hensher, The Fit
What sticks in my memory is the rollicking beginning and the hilarious scene with the German tourist. That was a read-aloud scene and a lol-scene.

• Bernice Rubens, Mr. Wakefield's Crusade
This takes me way back, *g*. I used to love this mainly for its delicious slashiness (I first read this in 1986! I still had 16 years to go until I discovered slash! My, how did I survive them?) and the hilarity of its duped narrator. What sticks in my memory is the scene with the cutlery in the pot and the absurd travels to Merthyr Tydfill (also the name Merthyr Tydfill). Again, there was a rollicking zippy tempo that spiralled into over-the-topness.

• Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
Mostly forgettable but what does stick in my memory are the detailed descriptions of geekdom. These were a delight of realism.

• Martin Amis, Lucky Jim
I laughed so much in the final chapter that I had tears streaming down my face and caused passengers on the night-time tram in Amsterdam to ogle me askance. Again, it's the manic tempo and out-of-controlness and the foiledness of speed that pushed this into absurdity territory.

• Andrea De Carlo, Creamtrain
I'm not sure this is strictly speaking a comic novel but it plays its hero's adventures for laughs and contains a wonderful restaurant scene which I find endlessly satisfying in its nitty-gritty debunking and realistic detail.

A book that failed:
Michael Frayn, Headlong
This wanted to be 'headlong' and zippy but it failed to amuse me. Ultimately, it felt too laboured and too contrived. The main sex interest character totally did not convince me. Also, the art history was rubbish (and that never helps).

So: what makes a comic novel comic? Some preliminary ideas:

• There's seriousness behind the fun.

• There's a breakneck zippy tempo, at least some of the time.

• There's lots of realism, and mainly of the detailed descriptive type (what kind of toothpaste?) and of the foiled type (X can't get to the phone because his legs are tangled in his underpants from trying to wank upside down).

• There's much focalisation and hardly any omniscient narration. A lot of the humour derives from the narrating character (the focalisor) being misled, duped, unreliable, in a state, not cognisant of his own real motives and desires and obsessive. A central comic character is rarely easy-going, happy, in control and suave (although he may think he is which makes for the comic disjuncture).

• Central characters tend to be men. Now I am racking my brain to remember a funny novel with a female main character. I remember a few that tried very hard, of the pink-lipstick variety ('I've got a zillion children and am frazzled!', 'I am going on a zillion blind dates and failing to catch a man!'). This is of course an ideological issue and one which could theoretically incense me but pragmatically speaking: I have no recent practice in how to write women. Writing men suits me fine.

• Okay, I've just remembered Jane Austen's juvenilia which is full of women and is a total hoot in its piss-taking of romantic-novel conventions.

• Which makes me think that comic novels are perhaps always at least a bit subversive.

• They are also dependent on other genres because they take the piss; they do pastiche.

• There is a happy ending, often of the romantic kind (this is where Michael Frayn fails).

Hm, a really fantastic comic novel is actually rare (for my taste, anyway). None of my top ten novels of all time are primarily what I'd call comic. Though some have comic elements, like Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveller. It's actually difficult to make me laugh out loud, in both films and novels. I much more easily weep. The times I've cried with laughter over a book or film can be counted on 7 fingers. Also, David Lodge has many amusing moments that might be worth revisiting.

• Comic fic I have known and liked:
- Demelza's fic (aka badgermonkey. The best had a rollickingness and a freshness and a sharp realism about them, especially in the dialogue.
- Recently, I've laughed out loud at grondfic's Harry Figwit series, simply because it is so totally insane. It bandies stereotypes and throws pairings together in gay abandon.
- I laughed tears over cimorene111's opening pages to one of her first long lotrips fics but later I discovered these were not meant to be funny. They were, though. What sticks in the memory was Viggo undressing Orli from his Legolas-costume with his teeth. I remember reading and re-reading this in a state of helpless hilarity. It just seemed so totally audacious (this was my first fic with real people in it) and ludicrous.

It occurs to me that slash authors perhaps tend to put their long-term energies more into serious than crack fics. Cracky fics tend to be shorter. The long fics tend to be more angsty, plotty, adventurey, actiony, subjectivity-exploringy. But hey, prove me wrong with recs. Actually, I've just remembered that mistful is someone who can pull off a humorous tone over a long stretch of fic. But then there is always such darkness beneath.

:-)



You can see where this is going. I am trying to learn from these.