"Hilarious" middlebrow books that are not, in fact, hilarious

[Mister Six]

One of my little bugbears is the habit of middlebrow publishers to vastly oversell how funny a novel is. I'm currently reading the Pulitzer Prize-winning Less, which is tremendously well written, has a sardonic narrator and puts its protagonist moderately wacky situations, but I've yet to find it - despite the breathless blurb - "hilarious", "hysterical", "brilliantly funny", "unexpectedly funny", "endearingly funny" or even merely "very funny". Although, admittedly, I'm not too far along.

I had a similar reaction to Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon, which is a truly wonderful novel in many ways, but I was about halfway through the thing before I realised it was supposed to be making me laugh. There's a dog called "Doctor Dee", which is the kind of zany-but-not-really detail that people who aren't actually funny like to put in their stories to assure you that they know how to do a joke. The dog gets shot and ends up being driven around in the boot of the protagonist's car, which I retrospectively recognised as a hilarious and shocking development to people who write for The New Yorker. The protagonist's literary agent is a dissolute wretch and we know that because he knowingly sleeps with a trans woman, which I suppose must have passed for scandalous degeneracy to upper-middle-class white men in the mid-'90s.

Less is more convincingly "funny" than Wonder Boys because of its narrator's withering asides, but neither is really dealing in proper jokes so much as placing its characters in ostensibly amusing situations. And not necessarily doing a lot with or within those situations.

Now I'm the sort of person who - when told that a book is "hilarious" - expects something along the lines of Douglas Adams, who could slip a hefty laugh into a passing paragraph like it was nothing at all. So this brand of milquetoast humour, this comedic affectation, is genuinely confounding to me when presented by the blurb as eye-popping hilarity.

Is it just that Upper West Side New Yorkers genuinely are that bland in their comedic tastes, or is there a lower bar for humour once you're in the realm of "proper" literature?

Erm, that's probably not enough for a thread, is it? What stuff gets on your tits in the literary world?

[samadriel]

I've never understood people who bitch about the New Yorker, it frequently contains some terrific journalism. Sure,  the cartoons are usually no good,  but they make up, what, 0.5% of the magazine?

[shoulders]

Critics have a series of careerised incentives to err towards hyperbole.

[buttgammon]

Humour in literature is something I feel a lot of critics and publishers don't know how to handle. I can't be alone in finding it massively important in determining how much I enjoy and engage with a book, but it's often either oversold or ignored. At the same time, pretty much all the literature I love is funny and I think the idea of 'seriousness', while not incompatible with humour, is really overrated, often to the detriment of humour (I'm actually trying to write something about this at the moment).

[dontpaintyourteeth]

I am, admittedly, dead inside, but I don't think I've ever laughed out loud while reading a book, even ones I've found very funny, the most they elicited was a grin

comma overdose post

[Magnum Valentino]

I am, admittedly, dead inside, but I don't think I've ever laughed out loud while reading a book, even ones I've found very funny, the most they elicited was a grin

comma overdose post

There's a line in one of John Niven's Stephen Stelfox books where he writes that the main character is broke, then adds "not broke like you're broke, you, you idiot, sitting in your flat reading a book like a fucking cunt" which really caught me off guard as he wasn't using direct address constantly and, well, mister, I'm just not accustomed to folks speaking to me like that.

Anyway, that made me laugh out loud. He has another line about a Michael Jackson-alike child abuser that goes along the lines of "[the kid's recovering from having] a half-Fergal ploughing his fucking farter" which is so targeted towards being offensive on all levels that it illicited another gigantic laugh.

And that's it that's all the two times I ever laughed reading words

[13 schoolyards]

Most of the time I think reviews or press materials describing a book as in any way funny is more about letting the reader know that it's going to have a certain lightness of tone rather than being, you know, actually funny.

A lot of readers (and people in general I suspect) have a hard time with jokes and direct attempts at comedy - they get annoyed and frustrated if they're reading jokes that they don't get. So unless an author is really really good at being funny, often they're better off dialing it back to the literature equivalent of "being funny", which is more of a wry tone and some unlikely events rather than going all out like Spike Milligan's war memoirs.

I've only ever laughed out loud at a novel a handful of times, and I think every time it was at a very specific way of describing a clearly doomed and fool-hardy project. So yeah, if you want big laughs from me, make sure your novel contains a dim-witted yet overblown concept for a crap amusement park or shitty movie

[buttgammon]

Despite saying how much I value humour in literature, laughing out loud at a book is as rare for me as it is for most readers. There are some absurdly long lists of silly names in the Cyclops chapter of Ulysses that have done it and I remember laughing lots while reading The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen, but that's an uncommonly funny book by an uncommonly funny writer.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

i think the most ive laughed out loud reading books was vonneguts as a teenager and not nearly as much at anything after. maybe flann obrien and joyce.

Humour in literature is something I feel a lot of critics and publishers don't know how to handle. I can't be alone in finding it massively important in determining how much I enjoy and engage with a book, but it's often either oversold or ignored. At the same time, pretty much all the literature I love is funny and I think the idea of 'seriousness', while not incompatible with humour, is really overrated, often to the detriment of humour (I'm actually trying to write something about this at the moment).

irony/seriousness so often form a circuit that skips over humour entirely, or else consigns the humour to a subset of something else (which you see in theory where people use jokes always as illustrative of some wider serious idea, not interesting in structure or affect themselves)

[Mister Six]

I've never understood people who bitch about the New Yorker, it frequently contains some terrific journalism. Sure,  the cartoons are usually no good,  but they make up, what, 0.5% of the magazine?

It's because everyone hates how they call books "hilarious" when the books are, in fact, not.

There's a line in one of John Niven's Stephen Stelfox books where he writes that the main character is broke, then adds "not broke like you're broke, you, you idiot, sitting in your flat reading a book like a fucking cunt"

Gonna read these now, on that basis alone.

[The Crumb]

The Good Soldier Svejk is the most laugh out loud book I've read, although the humour is definitely not middlebrow. The Shitter Jenom passage is a classic.

[jobotic]

Totally agree. As is the magazine with the made up animals and Dub (I think) shouting "you think you know me? You don't know me".

[dontpaintyourteeth]

i think the most ive laughed out loud reading books was vonneguts as a teenager and not nearly as much at anything after. maybe flann obrien and joyce.

irony/seriousness so often form a circuit that skips over humour entirely, or else consigns the humour to a subset of something else (which you see in theory where people use jokes always as illustrative of some wider serious idea, not interesting in structure or affect themselves)

I wish I understood what people saw in Flann O'Brien because Third Policeman just read like lolrandom bollocks to me. Maybe I was in a bad mood that week, or something

[non capisco]

I am, admittedly, dead inside, but I don't think I've ever laughed out loud while reading a book, even ones I've found very funny, the most they elicited was a grin

comma overdose post

I definitely remember laughing out loud at the sentence "My valve is screaming for appeasement!" from A Confederacy of Dunces but now you mention it....

Parts of Three Men in a Boat maybe. I certainly remember being taken aback by how contemporary some of the humourous phrasing felt for something written in the late 1880s.

[Magnum Valentino]

It's because everyone hates how they call books "hilarious" when the books are, in fact, not.

Gonna read these now, on that basis alone.

It was either Kill Your Friends or Kill Em All. One was adapted into a movie that I haven't seen and there's at least one other about the same character that I've not read. I'd start with Kill Your Friends I suppose.

[Clatty McCutcheon]

I wish I understood what people saw in Flann O'Brien because Third Policeman just read like lolrandom bollocks to me. Maybe I was in a bad mood that week, or something

I only managed the first few pages the first time I tried to read The Third Policeman, but loved it on my second attempt. I'm sure I did laugh out loud at points. I think I'm a sucker for utter absurdity presented in a matter-of-fact, relentlessly logical way though. Magnus Mills' novels, particularly The Restraint of Beasts, make me laugh in places too.

I definitely remember laughing out loud at the sentence "My valve is screaming for appeasement!" from A Confederacy of Dunces but now you mention it....

Definitely LOL'd quite a bit at A Confederacy of Dunces too, mostly at such pompous pronouncements from that Dr. Nut-guzzling lummox Ignatius.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I wish I understood what people saw in Flann O'Brien because Third Policeman just read like lolrandom bollocks to me. Maybe I was in a bad mood that week, or something

maybe reading swim-two-birds first helps

swim-two-birds is an immaculate mesh work of narrative craft and parodies of voice, an intricate satire of writing, study and storytelling

third policeman is the same care and wit used to roll out a ridiculous shaggy dog story that ends somewhere bleaker than beckett. one of joyces page-long legpulls but sustained for a whole short novel

[madhair60]

Critics have a series of careerised incentives to err towards hyperbole.

This is the absolute most ridiculous thing I have ever read.

[elliszeroed]

The only books I have only laughed out loud at, in private, are several by John Swartzwelder. Especially How I Conquered Your Planet, which is one of the few that doesn't feature time travel.

[jamiefairlie]

A few Discworld novels made me properly laugh but nothing else I can remember.

[Mr Vegetables]

I laughed out loud a lot at Yes Men by Danny Wallace, but I am embarrassed to admit this in public as he seems to be universally loathed.

But I don't think anything else made me come close to laughing as much. Maybe the opening of Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent, which blew my mind as a naive 14-year-old who hadn't realised you were allowed to write so plainly and so well.

But neither of those books are middlebrow really. Most of the middlebrow stuff I've read that made me laugh out loud are biology books, and I don't know what that says about me. Possibly middlebrow books struggle to be funny because in order to be funny in print you often have to show real vulnerability, and that's a hard thing to do when trying to sound clever. Definitely Danny Wallace and Bill Bryson made me laugh the most when they were at their least impressive within the narrative; I don't know how you'd square that with wanting the broadsheets to read you and puff their cheeks

[Video Game Fan 2000]

i think i would have found Catch-22 laugh out loud funny when i first read it, i thought it was very good but i had almost every major (phnarr) part of it spoiled by people describing why its so funny

[ProvanFan]

I'm always laughing at books. Look at the state of them.

[Ferris]

I was in a conversation with 2 people (both of whom should have known better) who decided to recommend books to me for some mad reason.

One suggested Time's Arrow by Martin Amis having obviously never read it, and the second chimed in "oh yes, I have read that: a funny book. Yes, very dry, some great humour. A ha ha" at which the first person agreed "oh yes, funny of course, very well described".

Now, I've never read it, but a quick google tells me it's a psychological recounting of the holocaust, with perceived time going backwards. Perhaps Amis slips in a knob gag or two but I can't see where the humour comes in.

This is my only experience of middle brow "humorous" books, and I accept it is not entirely apposite. Still, nevertheless.

[mr. logic]

Amis can be funny though. I haven't read that one but The Information made me laugh a lot.

[badaids]

There's a line in one of John Niven's Stephen Stelfox books where he writes that the main character is broke, then adds "not broke like you're broke, you, you idiot, sitting in your flat reading a book like a fucking cunt" which really caught me off guard as he wasn't using direct address constantly and, well, mister, I'm just not accustomed to folks speaking to me like that.

Anyway, that made me laugh out loud. He has another line about a Michael Jackson-alike child abuser that goes along the lines of "[the kid's recovering from having] a half-Fergal ploughing his fucking farter" which is so targeted towards being offensive on all levels that it illicited another gigantic laugh.

And that's it that's all the two times I ever laughed reading words

Niven is very good at this in his books, especially when Stelfow decides to aim his vitriol at the reader. I like it when he calls us 'tolers',

[luckyjim]

Continuing to stray off topic to books that actually  are hilarious. I'm not sure how we're defining "middle brow" here, but Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis is genuinely funny. The but I remember laughing out loud at most is the hoax threatening letter Jim writes to his housemate. The main gag during the climax drew a laugh too.

The Flashman novels are arguably low brow but can be vert funny at times.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

I was in a conversation with 2 people (both of whom should have known better) who decided to recommend books to me for some mad reason.

One suggested Time's Arrow by Martin Amis having obviously never read it, and the second chimed in "oh yes, I have read that: a funny book. Yes, very dry, some great humour. A ha ha" at which the first person agreed "oh yes, funny of course, very well described".

Now, I've never read it, but a quick google tells me it's a psychological recounting of the holocaust, with perceived time going backwards. Perhaps Amis slips in a knob gag or two but I can't see where the humour comes in.

This is my only experience of middle brow "humorous" books, and I accept it is not entirely apposite. Still, nevertheless.

I haven't read it -though I do/did have a copy of it somewhere- but doesn't it have shit going back up someone's arse or something

[Dyl Spinks]

Martin Amis is absolutely fucking hilarious

[madhair60]

Rik Mayall's autobio