Funny Books: Classic (?) Edition

November 27, 2024 8:26 AM

The Center for Fiction has a list of six classic novels that bring the laughs. Esquire's list of 45 of the funniest books ever written suffers from recency, but does include a classic or ten. A handful of writers reveal in a Guardian article their favorite funny books. Goodreads has you covered with 1415 Funniest Novels of All Time (some of which I assume are dreck, self-published, AI content, or whatever).
posted by cupcakeninja (52 comments total)

Everybody mentions 'A Confederacy Of Dunces'. Didn't do it for me personally. OTOH, I re-read Myles na gCopaleen AKA Flann O'Brien AKA Brian O'Nolan constantly. Also, where's Terry Pratchett?
posted by GallonOfAlan at 8:52 AM on November 27 [8 favorites]

I can't hear "funny classics" without thinking of John Barth's 1960 novel, "The Sot-Weed Factor". It's the story of a naive gentleman-turned-aspiring poet, Ebeneezer Cooke, and his 1680s journey to the New World in a vain attempt to become the Poet Laureate of Maryland.

The humor of the book is largely in its riotously absurd plotline, full of deception, subterfuge, and ridiculous cases of hidden identity. And, my favorite part -- the book is written entirely in period English. I would say it is easily the funniest book I've ever read.
posted by gunwalefunnel at 9:22 AM on November 27 [4 favorites]

Everybody mentions 'A Confederacy Of Dunces'. Didn't do it for me personally.
Couldn't agree more.

Obviously, this is a matter of taste, but, to me, any such list - especially one that favors The Recent - that omits the works of Gary Shteyngart and Sam Lipsyte is madly incomplete. Shteyngart's Absurdistan (and, really, anything) and Lipsyte's Home Land certainly make my list.

Also, I'm rereading Moby-Dick at the moment. I'm sure I'm not the only person to observe that it is a work of mad comic genius.
posted by Dr. Wu at 9:25 AM on November 27 [10 favorites]

Lucky Jim.
posted by whatevernot at 9:30 AM on November 27 [8 favorites]

Sad to see that William Gaddis has fully fallen off the reading radar.
His four big books are above all very funny: The Recognitions, J R, Carpenter's Gothic, and A Frolic of His Own.
posted by chavenet at 9:33 AM on November 27 [4 favorites]

Humorous writing is so good when it works Zadie Smith's early books, especially "White Teeth" are really funny.
John Collier is hilarious, if a bit dated-- his short story collection "Fancies and Goodnights" is easiest to find. Personally, I like Thurber a lot, also dated, but worth it.
posted by lwxxyyzz at 9:35 AM on November 27 [3 favorites]

Glad to see Hyperbole and a Half! The story of being attacked by a goose is one of the funniest things I've ever read.
posted by orrnyereg at 9:57 AM on November 27 [8 favorites]

Everybody mentions 'A Confederacy Of Dunces'. Didn't do it for me personally.
Couldn't agree more.

ditto.
I didn't make it much past chapter two.

In fact, of that first six, the three I've encountered I did not finish, though Confederacy is the only one that outright sailed past me laugh-wise. Scoop -- I guess I just found it a bit too upper crust English to really care enough about (not that I haven't laughed at other Evelyn Waugh stuff).

As for Master and the Maragarita, I was maybe a quarter of the way through and ... not quite connecting with it. I could see how hilarious the various situations were in theory, but something just wasn't clicking. But I kept at it until one day I was reading it on the bus, something of a milk run through bland suburban zones, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. A young guy, smiling enigmatically -- he holds up the book he's reading. Master And The Margarita. "What are the chances?"

Which got us to comparing notes and me explaining my lack of enthusiasm for a book he was clearly loving. At which point he took a look at my copy. "Problem is, you've got the wrong the translation," he concluded.

And so on.

Which reminds me I need to go find the right translation. Comedy's like that, I guess.
posted by philip-random at 10:06 AM on November 27 [1 favorite]

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal is an attractive title.
posted by y2karl at 10:59 AM on November 27 [4 favorites]

The funniest book I've ever read has two different titles: either 'Happiness(TM)' or 'Generica' by Will Ferguson. The publisher changed the title after it was released. That's a funny enough start for a satire of the book publishing industry.
posted by ovvl at 11:12 AM on November 27 [2 favorites]

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome (#17 on the Goodreads list) is my go-to recommendation for a funny public domain book. 135 years and never out of print, and still feels fresh and familiar to anyone who has ever been on a camping/canoeing trip.
posted by fings at 11:24 AM on November 27 [11 favorites]

Ctrl-F Lucky Jim. at least whatevernot recognizes this Kingsley Amis classic, though the lists didn't seem to. Funniest book I've ever read. I'm afraid to re-read it in case it's aged badly. I know it's horribly sexist, classist, etc.; it's English, but what if it's not so funny?
posted by theora55 at 11:31 AM on November 27 [6 favorites]

If you're familiar with large Midwestern universities with Ag schools, check out Moo by Jane Smiley.
posted by Citizen Cane Juice at 11:42 AM on November 27 [6 favorites]

Bought two, wish listed another for later.

I fear to tell you, Lucky Jim has dated quite badly.
posted by biffa at 12:13 PM on November 27 [2 favorites]

We recently read Three Men in a Boat in one of my book clubs, and I still find it very funny.

I haven't re-read it in ages, by James Thurber's My Life and Hard Times story collecting had me literally falling on the floor laughing in college. I really need to revisit it to see if the Suck Fairy has hit it.

The Code of the Wooster by P.G. Wodehouse is one of my favorites too.

Add me to the list of those who didn't get A Confederacy of Dunces. I finished it, but remember it as being faintly repellent.
posted by Archer25 at 12:16 PM on November 27 [3 favorites]

I guess I'm a real average Joe and find the standards that usually make these lists funny, like Catch-22 and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Those books did make me laugh out loud, something generally hard for a novel to do. Mark Twain, of course, not necessarily his novels but his more autobiographical stuff.

And yeah, Confederacy of Dunces is overrated, I think because of the way it was written and discovered: unsuccessful writer commits suicide, and later his mother discovers the "masterpiece" he had written before his death. That in itself is a narrative and the literary world loves themselves a good story. But the novel itself hasn't aged well.
posted by zardoz at 12:56 PM on November 27 [2 favorites]

Tristram Shandy; I hated that book, and Hitchhiker's Guide, and The Sotweed Factor, and every one of the 3 Pratchetts I read (all the shit and straw there must be a pony around somewhere, right?, But if so, it escaped long before I was a guest at the sprawling Pratchett dude ranch).

Really did love Confederacy, but was not a bit surprised that the author committed suicide because I thought there was a strong undertone of 'a love that dare not speak it’s name' throughout, and the early '60s South was not a tolerant milieu.

Interesting that there were no Flashman or Bandy books mentioned. I never liked either one — Flashman because of the cruelty, and Bandy may have been a bit too n the nose for me personally — but they did have a heyday.

Waugh's Decline and Fall was funny, and his letters are funnier, but I seem to remember that his Antisemitism was harder to ignore in the letters.

But where are The Canterbury Tales? Not only the funniest book in English, but almost a bravura demonstration of every possible form of humor.
posted by jamjam at 12:56 PM on November 27 [2 favorites]

Over the years my dad has told me again and again — if you knew him you would know he only really hits his stride after the eighth or ninth retelling — about the only book he ever found so funny he actually laughed out loud: Tom Jones. In fact, so as not to be shushed he had to leave the Oak Park Public Library periodically to go outside for a belly laugh while reading it.

Now, I love that picaresque shit as much as anyone, but with every time I hear that story told, dismay sets deeper and deeper: he’s only ever laughed out loud at one novel? What on Earth is wrong with this motherfucker?
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 1:58 PM on November 27 [4 favorites]

I read Catch 22 earlier this year, it's part of an effort to backfill books assigned in high school that i liked but never finished. Quite funny, and the audio book on Libby is excellent. I also reread Hitchhiker's Guide and found it not nearly as funny as i remembered.

The funniest book i ever read was Et Tu, Babe. Laugh out loud funny, i read it so many times I could recite large passages. I lent it out and didn't get it back, but idk if I would still find it funny.
posted by Horselover Fat at 2:22 PM on November 27

I don't know if it has people rolling in the aisles, but...surely, Pride and Prejudice?
posted by thomas j wise at 2:43 PM on November 27 [3 favorites]

Tom Jones!! How could I have for— see what I mean about an excess of laughter wiping memory … oops! I guess that was the other thread!

But absolutely yes. I still occasionally use variations of some of Fielding's studied insults.
posted by jamjam at 2:43 PM on November 27 [1 favorite]

If P&P won’t serve, maybe Northanger Abbey will.

But true hard cases might have to resort to her letters, which are amazing.

When George III sent her a thank you note calling it something like a 'handsome volume' after receiving a copy of one of her books, she wrote to her printer observing that the King was impressed with his part of their joint enterprise, anyway.
posted by jamjam at 2:58 PM on November 27 [2 favorites]

Richard Brautigan. That brings me back. "Revenge of the lawn" is really funny.
posted by acrasis at 3:13 PM on November 27 [1 favorite]

Laughs? How uncouth. A gentleman chuckles.
posted by julianeon at 3:16 PM on November 27

No Alexander McCall Smith? Really? Fine.
posted by wintermind at 3:42 PM on November 27

While many writers have made me laugh out loud, only Wodehouse has reduced me to tears of helpless mirth on public transport. Three Men In A Boat runs it a close second but, forewarned, I only reread it at home. (The only book to make me say "Holy FUCK" out loud in public is Jenna Moran's The Night Bird's Feather, but although it's very funny in places, I would not describe it as a funny work.)
posted by Hogshead at 4:12 PM on November 27 [2 favorites]

Tom Jones!! How could I have for—

In loosely related, Barry Lyndon (uh Thackeray not Fielding) read on paper is wayy funnier than Kubrick's dry ironic version.
posted by ovvl at 4:18 PM on November 27

Tristram Shandy; I hated that book, and Hitchhiker's Guide, and The Sotweed Factor, and every one of the 3 Pratchetts I read (all the shit and straw there must be a pony around somewhere, right?, But if so, it escaped long before I was a guest at the sprawling Pratchett dude ranch).

(Sorry for stripping the formatting; I'm too lazy to reproduce it.)

jamjam, could you say which three they were? The early Pratchett is almost definitely not going to hook a new reader (although I think it holds up to re-reading as juvenilia once you're hooked), and, though I think it's ungentlemanly to say so in public, the end-of-career Pratchett probably isn't going to, either. (I'm assuming that you were at least in the Discworld series; he has other series which have their own qualities, but I don't think that they're the place to start.) Mid-series Pratchett is the way to go if you want to see what all the fuss is about.
posted by It is regrettable that at 4:35 PM on November 27 [5 favorites]

My Dad loved to read; I remember him reading M*A*S*H and laughing out loud. One of my favorite memories; he's been gone a long time.
posted by theora55 at 6:22 PM on November 27 [1 favorite]

I’m just going to put this out here because it’s true and I still don’t know how I feel about that fact, but the Ron Burgundy memoir, Let Me Off at the Top!: My Classy Life and Other Musings made me laugh so damn much.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 7:06 PM on November 27 [1 favorite]

Antkind by Charlie Kaufman is making me laugh and I disregard most attempts at humor especially by Judd Apatow and Wes Anderson.
posted by swallow at 7:11 PM on November 27 [1 favorite]

Catch-22 is the first novel that came to mind for me in terms of quality fiction* that made me laugh loud and hard when I first crossed paths with it. I was fourteen at the time and in the habit of grabbing "adult stuff" that I noticed lying around at friend's places etc. Stuff like The Godfather and James Clavell options and suddenly, unexpectedly this sustained eruption of hilarity.

* by quality fiction, I guess I mean an overall thematic intent that's anything but trivial, easygoing, fun. There may be big laughs but we're dealing rather unflinchingly with the most horrible subject there is (war).
posted by philip-random at 7:16 PM on November 27

Well I enjoyed A Confederacy of Dunces. But a lot of that is down to the way the protagonist prefigures today’s cranks and reactionary pseudo-intellectuals. I do recall it getting a bit repetitive - at some point you’ve pretty well got the idea of the character.
posted by atoxyl at 7:49 PM on November 27

I've rarely laughed so hard at anything as I did Confederacy, but I was a callow, privileged 19yo at the time, so it was just such a perfect puncture of a meaningful part of my identity that I couldn't help but literally fall off coffeehouse chairs laughing at it. My friend Elizabeth had to take it away from me for a couple of days. But I can see why other people wouldn't think it was funny.

If you don't find Catch-22 hilarious and then get 2/3 of the way through and become horrified, you missed something. David Foster Wallace tried WAY too hard to be actually funny.

Two different people gave Ms. Hobnail and me separate copies of Hyperbole and a Half and we almost hate-read it, it was so dumb and unamusing. YMMV.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 8:23 PM on November 27

Oh, Wodehouse yes, not laugh aloud funny to me but richly, warmly humorous. Confederacy of D? I couldn't make it past the first chapter but also went in with high expectations.

Now Catch-22 is an interesting one. What parts made you laugh out loud? Curious to know. I've read it twice but it never struck me as being funny. But then my laugh out loud is bits of Ulysses, mostly because of the Monty Pythoney bits.
posted by storybored at 9:47 PM on November 27

Come to think of it, Wodehouse was eerily and chillingly prophetic in calling his english speaking fascists "the Brownshorts".

There is some weird connection between fascism and shitting your pants.
posted by jamjam at 10:10 PM on November 27 [2 favorites]

I can't believe we've made it this far in without talking about Percival Everett.
posted by thivaia at 1:13 AM on November 28 [1 favorite]

I very recently finished Master and Maragarita, and quite enjoyed it. Count me in as one of those who also finds Moby-Dick hilarious. But I’m alone in my family; I’m very often trying to explain to my wife what’s making me laugh in a novel, but she’s never going to read most of what interests me, she’s more into true crime and biographies, not classics or translations. My son has the potential to pick up some of the books that made me laugh, but he steadfastly refuses to accept my recommendations - the only recent times he’s read a book I wanted him to read, it was because he found it himself at a bookstore (if I had recommended it to him, it would have killed his interest, he’s 15 and that’s how 15 year olds roll I guess!)

So we get me, partway through Don Quixote a few years back, trying to explain to my wife what made me think “sleeves somewhat short, to make the hands look longer” so goddamn funny. I mean there were parts of the book (especially the second half) that were a slog, but the buried gems kept my interest.

(Oddly enough if you search for that term, there are currently multiple websites explaining to those interested how to make their hands look longer by wearing sleeves that stop mid-forearm. 500 years later and it went from a joke to actual fashion advice?)
posted by caution live frogs at 7:15 AM on November 28

Now Catch-22 is an interesting one. What parts made you laugh out loud? Curious to know. I've read it twice but it never struck me as being funny. But then my laugh out loud is bits of Ulysses, mostly because of the Monty Pythoney bits.

fourteen year old me (who was incidentally a huge Python fan) was hungry anything that let him laugh out loud at the big league ugliness of the adulthood world which at the time (1974) was characterized by Watergate and Vietnam atrocities, etc. As I recall, the read was a bit of slowburn at first, a realizing that it was in fact supposed to be funny, and much of this funny was driven by root the absurdity of the situation, and the sly tone with which it was all delivered. And then there was the more one-liner kind of stuff like a computer with a sense of humour deciding that a man named Major Major should immediately be promoted to the rank of Major, regardless of his training or experience.

Of course, as outgrown_hobnail points out above, Catch-22 shifts in tone as the pages turn, and it's as much horror as anything else by its final act.
posted by philip-random at 8:28 AM on November 28 [2 favorites]

(checks the list with 1,415 books on it)

Yes, well, fine, I suppose
posted by jscalzi at 8:31 AM on November 28 [4 favorites]

When Toby explains the great god Fuck to the Crakers in Maddadam.
posted by brujita at 5:22 PM on November 28

Yes, Canterbury Tales. So many fart jokes.
posted by ginger.beef at 6:27 PM on November 28

Tobias Smollett's The Expedition of Humphry Clinker is notable for the grotesque caricatures. Come for the Scotsman Lismahago, stay for the little dog Chowder.
posted by ginger.beef at 6:00 AM on November 29

Jane Austen all the way. I can think of very few books that have ever made me laugh as much. I recently read Persuasion for the first time.

Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did, nor could the valet of any new made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliot, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion.

His good looks and his rank had one fair claim on his attachment; since to them he must have owed a wife of very superior character to any thing deserved by his own. Lady Elliot had been an excellent woman, sensible and amiable; whose judgement and conduct, if they might be pardoned the youthful infatuation which made her Lady Elliot, had never required indulgence afterwards.

posted by hydropsyche at 10:10 AM on November 29

E.F. Benson's Lucia novels are hilarious, although I came to them via the Masterpiece miniseries (also hilarious).
posted by cyndigo at 10:34 AM on November 29 [1 favorite]

There is some weird connection between fascism and shitting your pants.

The science fiction writer Algis Budrys, who saw Hitler alive in person, witnessed this very thing.

He was the son of a Lithuanian diplomat who saw Hitler live in Königsberg, then the capital city of East Prussia now the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad in the Baltic. The people he saw literally lost their shit in mass hysteria.
posted by y2karl at 11:01 AM on November 29 [1 favorite]

Thank you very much for that, y2karl!

In her great essay Fascinating Fascism, Susan Sontag says, essentially, that Hitler brought the crowd to orgasm:

The expression of the crowds in Triumph of the Will is one of ecstasy; the leader makes the crowd come.)

but they were apparently in the grip of a more basic ecstasy.

And we can’t know this about Hitler, but our experience of Trump suggests that this is an ecstasy the Leader shares with the crowd.

Count me as another reader who has become less enchanted by Catch-22 over the decades since I read it in high school. Mainly because I now view the human capacity for bitter laughter in the face of the extreme absurdities of War as one of the indispensable lubricants for its machinery, along with blood, sweat, tears, and shit — not to mention another ‘precious bodily fluid'.
posted by jamjam at 1:01 PM on November 29 [1 favorite]

From how I parsed what Budrys said; he saw examples of both in the same crowd. Budrys, by the way, was in my opinion a remarkably prescient writer, albeit his future was a lot more benign than ours. His Michaelmas was in my opinion the first and best AI novel written -- and in the 1970s at that. It is a remarkably deep book.
posted by y2karl at 3:06 PM on November 29 [1 favorite]

Clarice Lispector's novel The Hour of the Star contains some quotes which I find worth mentioning:

She thought that everyone has a duty to be happy. Therefore she was happy. Was she an idea before she was born? Was she dead before she was born? Would she die after she was born? But what a thin slice of water melon.

(...)

The girl didn't ask why she was always being punished, you don't need to know everything, and not knowing anything was an important part of her life.

(...)

Glória lived in General I-don't-know-what Street and was very content with living in a street named after a military man, it made her feel more secure.

(Disclaimer: This is my own translation of the Danish translation of the original Portuguese text.)
posted by WalkingAround at 11:30 AM on November 30 [1 favorite]

Mod note: [Thanks, cupcakeninja, we needed this! We've added it to the sidebar and the Best Of blog.]
posted by taz (staff) at 3:10 AM on December 2 [1 favorite]

Any novel including The United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company must be included.
posted by Lemkin at 8:14 AM on December 8

METAFILTER: So many fart jokes.






[sorry]
posted by philip-random at 10:15 PM on December 10