/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12413938]

What are the funniest novels ever written?

[Anonymous No.12413968]

Ilf and Petrov's Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf. Funny and also immensely culturally influential in Russia, yet rather overlooked abroad and on "/pol/ for smart people" in particular.

[Anonymous No.12413969]

Catch 22

[Anonymous No.12413970]

>>12413938
Catch 22 and nothing is even close

[Anonymous No.12413980]

>>12413969
>>12413970
Yep. Also Pickwick Papers and Three Men in A Boat

[Anonymous No.12413985]

>>12413938
Don Quixote
The Nonexistent Knight

[Anonymous No.12413991]

Confederacy of Dunces
Phenomenology of Spirit (the part about the shrimp)

someone please make a chart with books that provide bursts of laughter 100% guaranteed

[Anonymous No.12413998]

All Rabelais.

[Anonymous No.12413999]

>>12413969
this and Dirk Gently for me
also The Magic Mountain had me laughing out loud constantly but I'm not sure if it's a funny novel

[Anonymous No.12414001]

>>12413968
Have you read the original or a translation? I have a feeling two thirds of the charm of those books gets lost in translation.
t. a Russian

[Anonymous No.12414034]

>>12413991
seconding the chart

[Anonymous No.12414035]

>>12413991
>someone please make a chart with books that provide bursts of laughter 100% guaranteed

At least 80% would be Terry Pratchett.

[George Saunders No.12414052]

>>12413938
In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders

[Anonymous No.12414078]

The Good Soldier Svejk

[Anonymous No.12414216]

>>12414078
This. Best for laugh

[Anonymous No.12414249]

>>12413970
Except for our boy Kurt Vonny who does get a bit close

[Anonymous No.12414285]

I don't understand why there aren't more funny novels. I think it's because it's too difficult or too rare a talent.

[Anonymous No.12414309]

Anything by Freud will give you some laughs

[Anonymous No.12414313]

OP here. I'd probably rank my top five as:-

1. Catch 22.
2. The Master & Margarita.
3. Cold Comfort Farm.
4. Good Omens.
5. The Wasp Factory.

[Anonymous No.12414325]

>>12413970
Reddit invasion proof

[Anonymous No.12414342]

gravity's rainbow

[Anonymous No.12414375]

>>12414342
God almighty, I mean I get that it has funny elements, but I have the feeling that being funny wasn't Pynchon's goal. I wouldn't read it to laugh.

[Anonymous No.12414378]

Dead Souls, easily

"The room was the familiar sort, for the hotel was also the sort familiar in provincial capitals, where for two rubles a day travelers get a quiet room with cockroaches black as damsons peeking out of every corner, and with a door, blocked by a chest of drawers, leading to a room where someone else is staying, taciturn and unobtrusive but extremely inquisitive and curious about every detail of his neighbor, the traveler. The hotel’s exterior façade matched its interior: it was very long and two stories high. The lower story was of plain dark-red brick, even darker thanks to the deleterious effects of the seasons, and dirty by its very nature. The upper story was painted the inevitable yellow. Built into the lower story were shops selling yokes, ropes, and wooden balls to protect horses’ legs from chafing. In the corner shop, or in the window to be precise, a spiced-drink seller was sitting, with a copper samovar and a face equally copper-colored, so that at a distance you might think that there were two samovars in the window, were it not that one of these samovars had a beard as black as pitch."
"While the servants were busy sorting everything out, the gentleman set off for the dining room. Any traveler knows only too well what these dining rooms are like: the usual oil-painted walls, blackened high up by pipe smoke and rubbed to a shine farther down by the backs of various travelers, even more so by the backs of the local merchants, for on market days the merchants come in groups of six or seven to drink their usual pot of tea with an extra pot of boiling water; the usual sooty ceiling; the usual sooty chandelier with a thicket of pendant bits of glass, which bounce up and down and jingle every time the waiter runs past between the oilcloth-covered tables, waving with bravura a tray carrying as many teacups as there are birds on the seashore; the usual oil paintings on the wall—in a word, the same as anywhere else, the only difference being that one picture portrayed a nymph with breasts more enormous than any that the reader, I am certain, has ever seen, although such a freak of nature can be seen in certain historical paintings of unknown date, provenance, and ownership, which are imported into Russia, sometimes by our great magnates, lovers of the arts, who buy a lot of them in Italy on the advice of their guides."

[Anonymous No.12414397]

>>12413938
definitely not that one

[Anonymous No.12414426]

my diary desu

[Anonymous No.12414441]

>>12413938
unironically the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

[Anonymous No.12414460]

>>12414378
I don't get it.

[Anonymous No.12414518]

>>12413938
From the same author, "Heart of a Dog". It's a much shorter novel, but imo even funnier.

[Anonymous No.12414549]

>>12414460
pseud

[Anonymous No.12414559]

>>12413938
Good as Gold, Joseph Heller

[Anonymous No.12414564]

>>12414378
Based

[Anonymous No.12414589]

the sellout is brilliant and hilarious

[Anonymous No.12414604]

>>12414549
I could stomach being called 'stupid', because I am, but psued would be if I said I did get it, but the part I thought was funny wasn't actually funny.

[Anonymous No.12414688]

>>12414604
Stupid

[Anonymous No.12414690]

>>12414688
what a pushover

[Anonymous No.12414700]

>>12414460
I get it but it's just not that funny. Comedy needs human expression.

[Anonymous No.12415104]

>>12413938
Anything Wodehouse

[Anonymous No.12415348]

>>12414700
t. de reddit

[Anonymous No.12415398]

>>12414604
What?

[Anonymous No.12415487]

>>12414035
no

[Anonymous No.12416372]

>>12414589
Ngl it’s probably the funniest book I’ve ever read

[Anonymous No.12418322]

>>12416372
>Ngl

Qué?

[Anonymous No.12418336]

>>12414375
Parts two and three are fucking hilarious. I haven't gotten to part four yet. Part one wasn't funny to me, but I may only be saying that because I was still getting my pynchon-legs.

[Anonymous No.12418380]

>>12414375
I got the opposite impression, I thought it was a pure comedy with occasional serious bits

[Anonymous No.12418410]

>>12413938

[Anonymous No.12418725]

>>12418322
Not gonna lie

[Anonymous No.12418835]

>>12418725
why would you lie in that statement.It doesn't make sense that you use it?

[Anonymous No.12418883]

>>12413938
None of them. Books don't lend themselves to humor as they lack timing and immediacy,

[Anonymous No.12418903]

>>12418883
This. I dont think I have ever laughed while reading a book.
Reading The Master and Margarita now and its not really funny

[Anonymous No.12418953]

>>12418883
Humor is generally timeless; yes it can follow 'trends', but humor is pervasive enough to resonate broadly. And even with regard to timing (not exactly sure how you intended to use that word) - the dramatic effect of language and its pacing and placement throughout a written work has everything to do with 'timing'.

[Anonymous No.12418958]

>>12418835
it's idiomatic - it's used to emphasize the opinion that follows it

[Anonymous No.12418959]

>>12418883
Literal autism.

[Anonymous No.12418997]

>>12413938
"funny" doesn't necessarily imply humor or comedy

>>12418883
>they lack timing and immediacy
this may be true but a novel can make massive use of dialogues, which kinda solves the issue. Reading theatre can be very funny for the same reason

I had bursts of laughter while reading Old Goriot, perhaps 3 or 4 times. There are a few sentences so perfectly efficient they're hilarious. A lot of good books can be funny for different reasons (I'd reply Daniil Kharms to OP, but he didn't write novels iirc).

The reason why it may seem difficult to find a lot of funny novels is probably because most good novelists just don't aim at it. Things are different in theater with the traditional distinction between comedy and tragedy. Novels have a different history, possibly a more complex one with several different roots (what's the first novel ever? some will argue that it depends on the language)

[Anonymous No.12419017]

>>12418953
He means timing, not timeliness.

As in what's the secret to comedy?

(long pause) timing

>>12418997
humour is just what unfunny writers call their unfunny writing. Or what unfunny critics call funny writing.

[Anonymous No.12419053]

>>12413938

[Anonymous No.12419097]

>>12419053
>shilling your own book
lmao get bent

[Anonymous No.12419166]

>>12414001
if two thirds of the charm of the golden calf is lost in translation I wonder if the original might actually have too much charm

[Anonymous No.12419190]

>>12414378

[Anonymous No.12419297]

The radiant future by Aleksandr Zinoviev

[Anonymous No.12419396]

[Anonymous No.12419407]

>>12413938
Notes From Underground. But the funniest thing ever written is the section about british candies in GR.

[Anonymous No.12419450]

Not Master and Margarita

[Anonymous No.12419499]

>>12418883
'I don't understand you, Lord Sidcup.'
'Then you must be as big an ass as you look, which is saying a good deal. I am referring to your behaviour towards my fiancee. I come into this room and I find you fondling her face.'
I had to correct him here. One likes to get these things straight.
'Only her chin.'
'Pah!' he said, or something that sounded like that.
'And I had to get a grip on it in order to extract the gnat from her eye. I was merely steadying it.'
'You were steadying it gloatingly.'
'I wasn't!'
'Pardon me. I have eyes and can see when a man is steadying a chin gloatingly and when he isn't. You were obviously delighted to have an excuse for soiling her chin with your foul fingers.'

[Anonymous No.12419516]

[Anonymous No.12419552]

>>12414378

>more enormous than any that the reader, I am certain, has ever seen

Diary of a Madman and The Nose are great, but it's easy to tell when some of his work got fucked with when it was published through Samizdat.

[Anonymous No.12419571]

[Anonymous No.12419610]

Nothing is funny.

[Anonymous No.12419781]

>>12419610
That's an awful way to live life. Might as well just die if you can't laugh.

[Anonymous No.12419787]

>>12419781
I can laugh, and sometimes do, when not doing so is socially inexpediant.

[Anonymous No.12419806]

>>12419610
That's funny

[Anonymous No.12419831]

>>12413991
what shrimp?

[Anonymous No.12419947]

>>12419831
just checked it again, sorry for the mistake, it's actually a crawfish.
it's when Hegel analyzes phrenology and the significance of the shape of the skull: chapter V, A), c)
>...it's possible as well to consider the crawfish jumping onto the donkey and petting the flying cow...

[Anonymous No.12420002]

>>12413969
Is catch 22 the only good Heller novel?

[Anonymous No.12420017]

>>12420002
>Joseph Heller was occasionally asked why he had never written anything else as good as “Catch-22”. “Who has?” he'd reply with a self-satisfied grin

[Anonymous No.12420082]

>>12420017
Cringe to be honest

>>12420002
Something Happened was better, Catch-22 is less mature, the wit is too forced and self aware in the latter. Both good books though

[Anonymous No.12420421]

>>12420017
baste if tru

[Anonymous No.12421142]

Finnegans wake

[Anonymous No.12421203]

>>12420002

I've also read Closing Time, which was a dissapointment.

[Anonymous No.12422136]

>>12414518
polygraph polygraphovich did nothing wrong.

[Anonymous No.12422702]

>>12413938
Confederacy of Dunces in up there

[Anonymous No.12422707]

>>12414313
>Cold Comfort Farm
good taste op where in blighty are you from?

[Anonymous No.12422747]

>>12413938
I like Tristram Shandy and all of Saki's short stories.

[Anonymous No.12423317]

>>12420082
I think the reason people like Catch-22 so much is that it’s one of only a few popular anti-war novels that takes an original approach to its theme. Like instead of it being a cliche “war is hell, look at all these people dying and other bad shit,” it was one of the first popular American lit novels to satirize war by making fun of military bureaucracy and depicting the pointless, plotless adventures of insane soldiers. Like all satire, it’s not very subtle and the characters consist mostly of shallow exaggerations, but I feel like it has a unique identity among other anti-war novels and so it feels a lot more original.

[Anonymous No.12423425]

>>12423317
Good point i agree, i still think its good but personally i enjoy something happened more because of what you said about satire

[Anonymous No.12423565]

Catch 22 and this piece of shit

[Anonymous No.12423859]

>>12423565
How amusing, I literally thought of the same two books.

I suppose I wouldn’t call Snow Crash high literature but I found it to be very entertaining and worth reading nonetheless. It seems like everyone dismisses it here because they don’t realize it’s supposed to be over-the-top and parodic.

[Anonymous No.12425119]

Catch-22 and Gravity's Rainbow

[Anonymous No.12425135]

Memoir of Bane - Ivan Turngenev

[Anonymous No.12425194]

>>12423565

Snow Crash is retarded, but as long as you understand that it's essentially meant to be retarded, it becomes entertaining.

[Anonymous No.12425527]

>>12425135
turgenev made a funny book? fathers and sons was very... slow i guess you could say

[Anonymous No.12425552]

>>12413938
Journey to the End of the Night

It's also a depressing book desu, even if some parts are laugh out loud funny

[Anonymous No.12425660]

>>12425527
>fathers and sons was very... slow i guess you could say
I am currently reading that book. What are your opinions about it?
Im only about 1/4ft in, to me it seems a big nihilism vs conservatism debate, but im still a bit confused about the "nihilists" in terms that while claiming that they see dont recognize any authority and see things in the "objective nature", most of the young characters always treat Bazarov as their master and guide of their thoughts and even fall into a bit of romanticism with the ladies, so they just seem to be youngsters that try to act as if they can rise above those things but ultimately cant ascape them.
I still dont know how the story is gonna play out and in favour of which ideology, but seems to be that in the end the nihilists will fall short. But i might be wrong.

[Anonymous No.12425683]

>>12419166
I know that half of my Russian parents' jokes consist of quotes from the books.

[Anonymous No.12425795]

>>12425660
I had to read it for a class last year and the nihilism vs conservatism, young vs old debate really is the center of the book. I almost said it was depressing but really that's a shorthand for anything that feels slow in pace and contemplative. It was only three months ago but I don't really remember of how things played out between the character, or rather what, if any sort of conclusion was reached between them all. I guess it plays as much into the opinions from how you feel when you're young to when you're old, as to the actual merits of the political/philosophical arguments. It was nice to read at the very least