It’s really hard.
No, it’s really really hard.
Writing with humor. It’s just hard. Trust me on this.
Physical humor, that’s relatively easy. Live humor, before a supportive audience, that’s kind of easy, too.
As for live TV, Letterman, Leno, O’Brien, Kimmel and the rest have lots of writers. Dozens of writers. Even so, Letterman and Leno haven’t been very funny in … oh … say a decade or so.
A weekly or bi-weekly humor column (a la Erma Bombeck or Dave Barry), that’s pretty easy, although the writers eventually burn out. Heck, even a bi-monthly religious humor and satire magazine (say, for instance, choosing one at random here, like the late, lamented Wittenburg Door) wasn’t ulcer-inducingly difficult to produce. We had our moments.
Even doing a weekly comedy show (be it Carol Burnett or Saturday Night Live) is reasonably easy, if you’ve got a talented cast and great writers (and keep them).
Humor in movies, at least when the writing and acting is good, that’s somewhat easy. Of course, for every Annie Hall, A Fish Called Wanda, Some Like It Hot, or Local Hero, there are lots of really really unfunny movies. We’ve all seen ‘em, alas.
But I venture to say that writing books that are honest-to-goodness, slap-your-pappy, laugh-out-loud funny, now that’s hard.
It’s hard for a lot of reasons. You don’t have the continuity humor of a great comic strip (like Bloom County or Calvin and Hobbes or Doonsbury), you don’t have the physical humor or facial expressions (think Charlie Chaplin or Richard Pryor), you don’t have the explosive, unexpected humor of improve (think Jonathan Winters or Robin Williams). You sure don’t have the timing, the dramatic pauses, the roar of the crowd (think Chris Rock or Ellen DeGeneres). You only have the printed page.
In fact, you just can’t write jokes. Jokes are only funny once. And God forbid you should write puns …
No, writing funny books … or at least chronicling the funny things and actions of otherwise sane characters that you care about while you’re advancing the plot, it’s about as difficult as it gets in the writing biz.
I think that writing funny nonfiction books, be they a collection of essays or actual narratives, is relatively easier. I’ve read very, very funny books by Mike Yaconelli (even in the midst of some very serious messages), Joe Bob Briggs (John Bloom), Woody Allen, Robert Flynn, Ann Lamott (again, while making heart-breakingly vulnerable observations), Lynda Stephenson, and others.
All that to say, I have read some genuinely comic novels. And no, I’m not making a distinction between comic novel and humorous novel.
To me, the true test of a novel blessed with great, insightful, unpredictable humor is this: Am I willing to read it again? The novels below, in no particular order, I am willing – eager, even – to read again someday (and some I have read more than once):
Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O’Toole
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Parts of just about anything by Charles Dickens
The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie
The Liar by Stephen Fry
Parts of several fantasy novels by Fritz Leiber
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Bellweather by Connie Willis
Just about anything by P.G. Wodehouse
MASH by Richard Hooker
Quicksilver and Confusion by Neal Stephenson
Any of the Flashman novels by George MacDonald Fraser
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Just about anything by Mark Twain
Parts of several Kurt Vonnegut novels
The Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore
Parts of several “novels” by Douglas Adams
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
I’m sure I’ll think of more such novels tomorrow. And no, I do not unreservedly recommend them all. Humor is such a personal thing. There are some things that I think are funny that probably nobody else would think is funny. There is stuff that’s so funny to you that you laughed so hard that milk came up through your nose while you read it … but I would only be mildly amused by the same passage. That’s OK. A lot of humor is derived from experience. If we don’t share those experiences, we probably don’t find the same things funny. So if you ask me to recommend one of the above books, I’ll have to consider what I know about you … and what you’ve considered funny to this point in your life.
Still, I’m always looking for more absolutely great, expansive, uproarious, hilarious, joyous, goofy, transcendently funny novels.
Know any? I’d love to hear about ‘em from you.