How often do you laugh out loud at something you've read?

[Gregory Torso]

I've been thinking for a while about this: I rarely laugh at something I read - I'll think to myself 'that's really funny' or 'damn that's great' but won't actually laugh out loud.
Comparatively, I'll piss myself into cramps listening to an episode of Athletico Mince, or watching Norm Macdonald - christ, he only has to say the words "9/11" and I'm in stitches.
Maybe I respond more to visual/audio comedy? Although it might be the unexpectedness (?) of those media. Like, the guffaw thread on here is hardly ever funny because most of the quotes are taken out of their context which removes the incongruity or surprise of them. But that's a personal thing.
And then some of the times I've laughed hardest at things have been either visual or some ridiculous thought or image that's come into my brain or dream.

Sorry, I'm not quite sure what this thread is about. I suppose, do you respond more to the written word, or the visual joke, or someone doing a silly voice? Is it choice of language, cheeky smirk upon face, corpsing over a deliberately terrible pun? Maybe it's a drawing, I always liked Achewood and that had terrible art but amazing writing. So now I'm contradicting myself.

OK, so, ignore my opinions. Do you respond better to things you see, hear, or read?

Right. Post that.

[Mantis Toboggan]

I think it's certainly harder to make someone laugh through the written word. There's simply less to work with.

That said, when something written makes you laugh, I think it can be really special. I've read some things in the likes of Viz that have hit my comedy nerve like a jackhammer. I think to read something and find it funny you have to really connect with the writers tone and thoughts. Maybe that's a little more special than instinctively laughing at someone falling down a flight of stairs.

[Gregory Torso]

I think to read something and find it funny you have to really connect with the writers tone and thoughts. Maybe that's a little more special than instinctively laughing at someone falling down a flight of stairs.

I think that's a great point, actually. And since I posted the OP I've been thinking of loads things that I've read that have made me laugh. But as you say, it's much harder.

[TheBrownBottle]

The funniest things in Viz have always been the Letterbocks/Top Tips sections.  I've lost control laughing at some of the stuff in there

This applies elsewhere too.  A well-executed single sentence comment is far more likely to make me laugh out loud.  There's something about the punchiness of it.

It strikes me that brevity is really the most important thing when it comes to laughing at the written word.  As Shakespeare almost wrote

[the]

As suggested, it's a deep laugh when something written does hit home. The first time I read the Red Dwarf novels as a teenager, there was something that made me laugh so hard it took me about 5 minutes to compose myself after.

There was also something in Great Bus Journeys Of The World about futons.

Mantis was right about connecting with the tone and thoughts of the writer, when you have that and something funny surprises you, it can cause a devastating laugh.

[Wet Blanket]

Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two Birds and Norm MacDonald's Based on a True Story both had passages that reduced me to paroxysms of real-life laughter

[Marner and Me]

Far more than I would ever do watching TV I think, as my imagination can run wild with what I am reading.

[pigamus]

Clive James and Bill Bryson do it for me

[gilbertharding]

I definitely remember something Bill Bryson wrote which made me laugh out loud, and also David Sedaris. Can't remember what - and I don't know if it would work twice.

Also, sometimes stuff people have written on the internet (here, on Bobpitch...) but it's also quite rare.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

I think the most I have ever laughed at anything is this line from Woody Allen's Without Feathers: "Do you wanna pass me those raisins?"

It's hilarious in context, believe me.

Also, Danny Baker's vivid description of going to see Hair in the first volume of his memoirs. He describes the experience like a Vietnam veteran recounting the nightmarish horrors of war. But in a funny way.

[Small Potatoes]

Wodehouse is the only author who can make me do this. Even if I'm reading something for the 15th time, it'll still make me snort and guffaw like a simpleton.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Clive James

Oh yes. Few critics have ever matched his ability to take the piss in such a succinct and perfectly worded way. It's been posted on here a few times over the years, but his critique of Little & Large is beautiful.

Little is not pretending to be just standing there, he is just standing there. Meanwhile Large knocks himself out. There is a certain terrible fascination to it, like watching two men share one parachute.

[Voltan (Man of Steel)]

I definitely remember something Bill Bryson wrote which made me laugh out loud, and also David Sedaris. Can't remember what - and I don't know if it would work twice.

For me it was the bit in his memoirs when, on one particularly rushed morning, his absent-minded mother handed him his sister's old capri pants and halfheartedly tried to convince him they were pirate pants he could wear to school: "They were a brilliant lime green, very tight, and had little slits at the bottom. They only came about three-quarters of the way down on my calves. I stared at myself in the back hall mirror in a kind of confused disbelief. I looked like Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity."

I was in tears of laughter reading that.

[pigamus]

And Craig Brown before he went shit. Heartbreaking to read him nowadays - it's like he's forgotten how to be funny.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Peter Cook was a very funny prose writer too. He wrote like he spoke, in perfectly formed witticisms.

He should've written a book, but, as per his attitude to most things, he presumably couldn't be arsed.

Weirdly, Stewart Lee, who is so economical in his use of language while performing on stage, is the opposite of Cook as a writer of prose. His columns are unreadable, they're a clunky jumble of verbiage.

[gilbertharding]

I also think I laughed quite hard at a particularly visceral passage in the Miles Jupp book 'Fibber in the Heat'.

I find him very funny at the best of times, and his prose matches his voice so well that you get a real sense of comedy from it.

Another vote for Wodehouse.

[gilbertharding]

For me it was the bit in his memoirs when, on one particularly rushed morning, his absent-minded mother handed him his sister's old capri pants and halfheartedly tried to convince him they were pirate pants he could wear to school: "They were a brilliant lime green, very tight, and had little slits at the bottom. They only came about three-quarters of the way down on my calves. I stared at myself in the back hall mirror in a kind of confused disbelief. I looked like Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity."

I was in tears of laughter reading that.

I think, for me, it was a passage early in Notes from a Small Island - which was the first thing of his I read. I don't think he's been as funny since, but whatever I got in that first dose was powerful enough to keep me looking.

[pigamus]

Bertram Pantyshield?

[holyzombiejesus]

Oh yes. Few critics have ever matched his ability to take the piss in such a succinct and perfectly worded way. It's been posted on here a few times over the years, but his critique of Little & Large is beautiful.

It's impossible to read that without hearing his voice.

[Artie Fufkin]

I think, for me, it was a passage early in Notes from a Small Island - which was the first thing of his I read. I don't think he's been as funny since, but whatever I got in that first dose was powerful enough to keep me looking.

I laughed hard and often whilst reading this book. I've read others by him, and while finding them funny, I haven't LOLZ'd at any. The same with High Fidelity and then other books by Hornby. HHGTTG I LOLZ'd at quite a lot.

[Voltan (Man of Steel)]

Bertram Pantyshield?

Colin Crapspray.

[QDRPHNC]

The only book that has ever made me laugh out loud was Portnoy's Complaint.

[Brundle-Fly]

Some of the posters on CaB make me spit crisps. Viz Comic thirded and lots of underground comics such as Eightball, Hate, Yummy Fur, Crap, Stickboy and a lot of Mad artists. The Charles Addams thread was gold.

[neveragain]

A Confederacy of Dunces was transcendent in its hilarity the first (and only) time I read it.

[TheBrownBottle]

A Confederacy of Dunces was transcendent in its hilarity the first (and only) time I read it.

Agreed - funniest book I ever read.  Ooo-wee.

[Artie Fufkin]

Oh. Rules Of The Playground (or whatever it was called) made me LOLZ. Some great stuff on there.

[Norton Canes]

I'll laugh out loud if I'm at home and everyone else is on their phones, just to let them know that books are better.

[timebug]

Another vote for Wodehouse here!
And the first time I ever read Spike Milligan's 'Puckoon' when I was a teenager, I reached one particular spot in the text and literally cried with laughter. I was gasping for air it so amused me;but of course, to continue reading, I had to pick up the book and return to the same spot....which set me off again. A good ten minutes of slightly decreasing chuckles until I was able to carry on with the text.

[dissolute ocelot]

I only laugh out loud when reading stupid stuff at work, not when reading critically-acclaimed comic novels in the privacy of my own home. But give me a stupid C&B thread and an office full of people and the titters start. I'm sure it's similar to laughing at funerals.

[Schnapple]

Viz and 'We Need To Talk About Alan', the first Partridge book, immediately come to mind.

I also really enjoy the sheer level of joyous, world-building detail in The Simpsons' Guide to Springfield.