By Nick Bhasin
I was at an event recently, talking about my novel. It’s a “comic novel” – as in, one that is meant to be funny. When someone asked me what it was similar to, I paused.
There are a lot of influences that inspired the humour but I couldn’t think of one book that would helpfully answer the question. “Is it like A Confederacy of Dunces?” someone else asked. “That’s the only book anyone mentions when people talk about funny novels. No one knows the names of any others.”
No one is writing stories designed to make people laugh any more.Credit: Aresna Villanueva
Could that be true? I wondered.
When I go to the bookstore and peruse the new fiction releases, every book appears to be a sombre tale of self-awakening. Except the ones that are about deep, dreamlike trauma, usually in the pursuit of self-awakening or perhaps even self-realisation.
I might also find the 35th instalment of a gruff, no-nonsense crime detective series. Plus the 425th instalment of the young woman who learns that she’s a woodlands witch … while navigating the pressures of high school.
Also the 76th instalment of the series about a gruff, no-nonsense attorney who isn’t afraid to cut corners but is afraid to love and be loved as a woodlands witch. Also? A retired divorcee moves to an island off Iceland and embarks on a chilling journey of gruff, no-nonsense farm-to-table restaurateurship.
Or this one: the year is 1792 and the world is changing faster than anyone understands. But not for Henrietta, a butter-churning woodlands witch who’s been poisoning everyone in her village for years. Will the handsome new bread-maker discover her secret?
I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover – even though everyone literally does just that and publishers know it, so they put a lot of work into designing them – but even the covers ached with despair. An errant twig floating down a river of blood. An extreme close-up on the saddest single eyeball in the universe. A suitcase floating in a puddle of tears. Multicoloured boxes thrown together incoherently. A close-up of a sad hawk’s beak, sadly gripping a sad quilt.
You know what I don’t see? Funny novels. Oh, there were novels that claimed to be funny. Or, more accurately, their blurbs did. “Bone-crushingly hilarious”. “Side-splitting”. “Mordantly humorous”. “Charmingly funny”.
You read these blurbs and think you’re dealing with a comedy, then you flip the book over and it’s a dour campus novel about five aspiring writers struggling to fall in love and deal with their trauma and make it to class on time.
So where was the comic fiction?
Right now you’re saying, “There is literally a Humour section in every bookstore. Why don’t you start there, detective?” Well, have you ever been to a Humour section? It’s filled with the most forced, unfunny stuff you could ever find. And it’s mostly non-fiction like …
A Stoic’s Guide to Plant Ownership
Scott Morrison’s 300 Jokes for the Gym
An Anthology of Australia’s Best Racist Cartoons
4000 Unemployed Dad Jokes
’Til Death Do Us Fart: How to Have a Successful Marriage
That’s Not a Knife: A Larrikin Guide to Aussie Humour
Here’s where I pause and assure everyone that I am not casting aspersions on the quality or comedic value of anyone’s writing. I would love for my writing to find purchase in that sweet, sweet Humour real estate.
If you think there hasn’t been a funny novel since P. G. Wodehouse published Right Ho, Jeeves in 1934, that’s fine. If you think Where the Crawdads Sing is the funniest book you’ve ever read, that is none of my business. And maybe you think racist cartoons are hilarious. That’s not great, but I’m not here to police anyone’s sense of humour. What I’m saying is that there are very few books out there intentionally trying to be funny as their main purpose. And if there are such books, no one knows about them.
My novel. A funny novel! Hopefully.Credit:
Confession time. As discussed, I’ve written a comedic novel. Some (very humourless and out of touch) people (who are dead inside) may not find it funny. But my intention was to write a story designed to make people laugh. Now, the laughs are derived from very dark, very uncomfortable circumstances while exploring “serious” themes like grief, racism, male body dysmorphia and mental illness. But that’s what makes me laugh. I don’t know what to tell you.
So I filled my book with as many jokes as possible. It’s a satire of early 2000s Hollywood, so I made up hundreds of movie and TV-show titles, working very hard to balance the comedy with the sadness. But to me, if it makes people laugh, that’s the bigger achievement. As Judd Apatow has said, “It’s not hard to make people cry. Kill a dog.”
I’ve read a lot of sad books, but the ones that stick with me are the funny ones. A Confederacy of Dunces, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Wake Up, Sir! … The only time I’ve ever cried from laughing was while reading David Sedaris’ Naked. That was a true gift for which I will be forever grateful.
As part of my research for my book, other than mining the depths of my soul for truth and justice, I looked into other comic novels, new and classic, especially satire. I came across a lot of the usual suspects – famous books I had already been familiar with, often because they had been adapted into movies or TV shows.
The Sellout by Paul Beatty, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, Less by Andrew Sean Greer, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis.
Humour is never taken seriously, even though it is literally the only thing that matters in this short, brutal existence.
Certain authors consistently came up as writers of comic fiction: Philip Roth, Kurt Vonnegut, Terry Pratchett, Nathanael West, Nora Ephron, Carl Hiaasen, Evelyn Waugh, Mark Twain, Steve Toltz, Marian Keyes. (A lot of white dudes on these lists, I know. But that’s a conversation for another time.)
But there were a lot more. People and books I’d never heard of. I felt like a big ignoramus. But am I alone? What are the funny books you know? How many can you think of? I just listed a whole bunch – do you remember any of them? I don’t and I just wrote them all down.
So why does it feel like there aren’t many comic novels? (Or, at least, more that people have heard of.) Well, they may be a hard sell. Perhaps comedy is more subjective than straight drama – people laugh at different things but they cry at the same stuff. Publishers have a hard-enough time letting people know about their crime thrillers, which people buy a lot of, without trying to sell something funny.
There may also be a stigma issue, thanks to the complete lack of artistic respect given to comedy. Humour is never taken seriously, even though it is literally the only thing that matters in this short, brutal existence, so writers seeking that kind of validation and dignity may not be encouraged to get into the funny game. Benjamin Stevenson, for example, initially worried that if he wrote crime fiction funny, he wouldn’t be taken seriously. If you’re really about that funny life, you probably won’t aim for fiction writing. You might go to stand-up or TV first.
Another theory suggests that the format of the novel is too long to practically sustain what would traditionally be described as a comedy. It’s too immersive, so it needs to be made complex, mixed with tragedy. But a healthy mixture of funny and sad wouldn’t preclude a story from being categorised as comedy. It would just add depth.
To me, what it comes down to is that writing comedy is always hard, and especially so with a book. Developing and maintaining an engaging comedic voice for 350 pages is a tall order for most writers. Not for me, though. I’m extraordinarily talented. Almost absurdly so.
Writing funny is hard. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. So much of the world is utter chaos and depravity. Moral failure. Catastrophe and collapse. We see it every day. What could be more valuable than helping people laugh?
In Preston Sturges’ film Sullivan’s Travels (1941), a Hollywood comedy director lives life as a tramp in order to mine the seriousness of life so he can provide gravity to his new film. As he lives among the downtrodden he sees that what they want more than anything else is to laugh. So he goes back to making comedies.
It’s extremely powerful and possibly the most convincing, moving summation of the value of comedy I’ve ever seen. Is this not what we all want? A brief respite from the dark? Why can’t it come in book form?
Here comes the To Be Sure op-ed moment, where I’m compelled – forced! – to anticipate and acknowledge a few counterarguments.
1. You haven’t read enough books. There are thousands of comic novels throughout history. Maybe do a little research before you come at me with this “there are no comic novels” nonsense. OK, well, I’ve already admitted to being a complete ignoramus when it comes to classic comic literature. That was pretty big of me, I think. But, yes, point taken.
2. Funny is subjective. Who made you the decider of what is and is not funny? Again, I am not saying there are lots of books pretending to be funny when they’re not. I’m saying there are very few books that are meant to be funny.
3. What about romantic comedies? Comedy is right there in the name. Yes, there are definitely a lot of romantic comedy novels being published. And they appear to sell well. But I would argue they are, generally, more about stirring up romance than trying to get laughs. As with other books described as funny, the humour is secondary, a side note.
I’ve listened to countless interviews with the authors of these books and they’re asked about “using humour” as if it’s some mystical, unknowable magic. “Tell me, why did you decide to use … humour?” the interviewer says, marvelling at the wizardry but also clearly afraid of it.
And so we find ourselves drowning in a lake of laughlessness, doomed to read increasingly serious and sad novels, completely miserable and alone. I guess that’s funny. Kind of.
Nick Bhasin is the author of I Look Forward to Hearing from You, published by Penguin Random House Australia.
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