/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.5432167]

ITT: books that actually made you laugh (daily reminder that pure comedy books are almost never funny)

[Anonymous No.5432176]

>>5432167
Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk.

>le edgy meme author

Shut up, it was funny.

[Anonymous No.5432192]

>>5432176
>le edgy meme author
It's not a meme, that's like saying dislike of 50 shades of grey is a meme.

[Anonymous No.5432217]

[Anonymous No.5432220]

>>5432217
Don Quixote?

[Anonymous No.5432240]

i don't know but I found Kafka's Metamorphosis hilarious for some reason. Mostly the beginning where Gregor is struggling to move with his new body. I chuckled a few times.

Am I the only one that found it mildly comical?

[Anonymous No.5432249]

>>5432240
Kafka sure as fuck didn't.

[Anonymous No.5432256]

>>5432249
Wrong, he stressed the humour when reading it to others

[Anonymous No.5432259]

>>5432249
>authorial intent
😂😹🙊

[Anonymous No.5432263]

>>5432220
Pretty sure that's a screenshot from Faust: the movie by Michael Bay

[Anonymous No.5432279]

>>5432192
But -

It is.

[Anonymous No.5432280]

>>5432256
TIL

[Anonymous No.5432282]

Book of Laughter and Forgetting

[Anonymous No.5432289]

[Anonymous No.5432304]

dat ass

[Anonymous No.5432307]

>>5432167
Crime and Punishment. When Rodya is looking for an axe or something, he sees it, it gets thouroughly described, and then it's something like:
'He took the weapon from under the wood (it was an axe by the way) when it was completely obvious to begin with. Made me laugh.

Also, Madame Bovary, when Charles' first wife dies, it's just:
'She got sick and she died. What a surprise!' made me laugh aswell.

[Anonymous No.5432319]

>>5432256
[citation needed]

[Anonymous No.5432327]

>>5432259
>unicode smilies
There is so much faggotry in the world, sometime I feel like I can't take it..

[Anonymous No.5432328]

The Magic Mountain had plenty funny moments

[Anonymous No.5432331]

>>5432240
There were parts in The Trial that were funny. Like when K's assuredness reaches idiotic levels, or the first chapter with the two police in his apartment.

[Anonymous No.5432405]

>>5432167
GR was the funniest and most depressing book I've ever read

[Anonymous No.5432457]

>>5432167
one of the funniest books ever written imo. also:

Catch-22
A Confederacy of Dunces
White Noise

[Anonymous No.5432461]

I'd argue that all books have the potential to make someone laugh. Regardless, Pynchon and DFW's entire oeuvre have made me laugh at various points throughout. An example that comes to mind is when Pemulis selling urine to other students. "Urine trouble? Urine luck!"

[Anonymous No.5432499]

>>5432461
>I love it when my literature has puns! :oD

[Anonymous No.5432509]

Did anyone read it all, its pretty funneh.

[Anonymous No.5432512]

>>5432457
How is Catch 22 funny though? It's more irritating than anything.

[Anonymous No.5432521]

>>5432499
Don't pretend that Joyce wasn't addicted to puns.

[Anonymous No.5432539]

>>5432512
Dont be obtuse. Humour cant be explained or forced.

[Anonymous No.5432560]

>>5432512
It's very funny in a dry way, which is humor i love

[Anonymous No.5432610]

>>5432509
Link?

[Anonymous No.5432643]

>>5432249
he did

[Anonymous No.5432668]

Peter De Vries is the funniest author I've ever read.
Some of the funniest...
Slouching Towards Kalamazoo (1983)
Consenting Adults; or, The Duchess Will Be Furious (1980)
The Glory of the Hummingbird (1974)
Reuben, Reuben (1964)

[Anonymous No.5433530]

"Last week, in the British sector someplace, Slothrop, having been asshole enough to drink out of an ornamental pond in the Tiergarten, took sick."

My fucking sides.

[Anonymous No.5433874]

>>5432249
Kafka is funny as fuck dude

[Anonymous No.5434550]

I Claudius made me laugh a few times.

[Anonymous No.5434565]

Infinite Jest got me quite often. The line about the Chinese translation of The Old One Two still gives me a sensible chuckle.

[kitty !kitty/EnNg No.5434579]

wilkie collins' 'moonstone' which i am reading right now. i wonder if they teach that book in school or it's too 'problematic' because it has a decent bit of satire of feminism

[Anonymous No.5434599]

Just read Portnoy's Complaint, so fucking funny. Particularly the crybaby dad and all the fapping - sides destroyed

[Anonymous No.5434687]

The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek.

This book is really getting to me. I'm only 1/3rd done or so and I already know this is going to be one of my all time favorites. I'm feeling a little bit of what Harold Bloom feels for Hamlet and Falstaff with this protagonist (on top of being really funny.)

That humor is the optimism that sits at the top of Švejk's moral outrage and deep fear of losing his life for a country that he doesn't give a damn about. The humor is courage, and it's tremendous. The humor is the "fuck you, you can't hit me where it counts."

[Anonymous No.5434704]

The Communist Manifesto.

>mfw someone told me it was not satire

[Anonymous No.5434706]

great expectations
don quixote
tristram shandy
pynchon stuff
moby dick
as you like it

[Anonymous No.5434718]

>>5434687
Hello, Švejk friend.

[Anonymous No.5434742]

>>5434718
greetings.
can you perhaps direct me to other awesome shit from eastern europe that the western world is missing out on right now?

[Anonymous No.5434769]

>>5434704
Most fucking ignorant post I've ever seen! Well done, dickweed.

[Anonymous No.5434775]

I laffed at Scheisskopf's parade, when he goes "look no hands".
even his name amuses me.
also >>5432217
when sancho shits himself and the don says that he's scared.

[Anonymous No.5434808]

>>5434769
umad ivan?

[Anonymous No.5434809]

>>5434808
>Ivan
Eastern Europeans hate communism.

[Anonymous No.5434822]

>>5434809
You're right.

umad schlomo?

[Anonymous No.5434902]

>>5433874
DFW go to dead

[Anonymous No.5434913]

>>5432512
I was about to get mad at you but then I remembered this guy at my high school who complained about how it was "pornographic."

And then two years later this sheltered ex-homeschooler in my class got it banned from our school.

I went apeshit and wrote letters to the principal and superintendent but we never got back to studying it.

Sorry. I had to vent. I'm still bitter.

[Anonymous No.5434916]

>>5434742
I wish I could. I learned about Švejk through Catch 22. Regardless, cheers!

[Anonymous No.5434930]

>>5434769
Truly he is right. It is more Pathos than Logos and must be satire!

[Anonymous No.5434937]

>>5434913
I'd be bitter too.

[Anonymous No.5434993]

American Psycho
Knowing people like Bateman makes it even better

[Anonymous No.5435008]

Moravagine was absolutely hilarious.

[Anonymous No.5435010]

>>5432240
I found 'In the Penal Colony' funny as hell at some points despite the fact that's the most morbid Kafka I've read

[Anonymous No.5435012]

why rehash the same shit all the time

offer something new dweebs
>pic related

[Anonymous No.5435025]

>>5432217
sweet jesus i had tears of mirth so many times during this masterwork

[Anonymous No.5435032]

Delillo's White Noise was pretty damn funny despite how sad it was.

Speaking of Delillo what else should I read of his besides Underworld? I something shorter of his again before I dive into that.

[Anonymous No.5435043]

>>5435012
Everybody needs to read more swartzwelder

[Anonymous No.5435052]

>>5435032
>delillo is awful
2014 is the current year

[Anonymous No.5435061]

>>5435052
this post makes no sense

[Anonymous No.5435082]

>>5435061
it's a work of post-meta posting

>tfw you wouldn't understand

[Anonymous No.5435098]

>>5435052
Delillo was a communications major. Maybe that's why there's nothing important or meaningful in his sound and fury. What a worthless hack.

[Anonymous No.5435108]

>>5435098
Yup. He's kind of a shitty Roth. And I think Roth is kind of shitty.

>tfw dropped both Roth's Anatomy Lesson and DeLillo's White Noise.
feels good

[Anonymous No.5435152]

>>5435032
I enjoyed White Noise up until the last few chapters. Throughout, I was considering recommending it to a relatively well read friend, only to have my appreciation entirely diminished by a wholly underwhelming ending.

[Anonymous No.5435231]

When Meursault makes it a point to identify Masson's habit of adding "and I'd even say" to sentences for no reason and then Masson testifies after the murder and says that Meursault is was honest "and I'd even say decent," it made me laugh.

[Anonymous No.5435241]

>>5432249
Didn't Kafka used to get complaints from his neighbors because he'd laugh really loud at night when he was writing his stories?

[Anonymous No.5435255]

This book had a very strangely comedic tone to it.

[Anonymous No.5435263]

>>5435255
Not at all.

[Anonymous No.5435271]

>>5435263
Yes it did.

[Anonymous No.5435276]

>>5435271
Nah

[Anonymous No.5435312]

>>5435276
Yuh-huh.

[Anonymous No.5435318]

>>5435312
Nope.

[Anonymous No.5435331]

>>5435255
>>5435263
>>5435271
>>5435276
>>5435312
>>5435318
Actively following this enlightening debate. Please, please continue.

[Anonymous No.5435332]

>>5435318
Yeah.

[Anonymous No.5435424]

Funniest book I've read in years.

[Anonymous No.5435528]

Infinite Jest constantly had me ling ol

[Anonymous No.5437103]

>>5434687
Švejk is boss

[Anonymous No.5437110]

>>5434742
not really eastern Europe, but Momo Kapor.
His book, From 7 till 3, is like a mix of The Trial and Heller's Something Happened (but not so overly long)

[Anonymous No.5437832]

>>5437110
how is Serbia not eastern Europe?

[Anonymous No.5437846]

>>5432167
Have a banana

[Anonymous No.5437862]

>>5435098

>judging people by their major

19 year old autism pls go

[Anonymous No.5437868]

>>5432167
I think Infinite Jest is one of the more consistently funny books I've read.

I also nominate The Man Who Was Thursday

[Anonymous No.5437870]

>>5437846

[Anonymous No.5437885]

>>5437868
Have you read any of DFW's nonfiction? I'm reading consider the lobster right now and it's pretty gr8

[Anonymous No.5437893]

>>5437885
Not nonfiction but Brief Interviews is smirkworthy if you skip the one about muh depression

[Anonymous No.5437904]

>>5435231
I laughed at that same part.

[Anonymous No.5437924]

Woody Allen's writings are hilarious. Well while talking at it, anybody knows books with similar humour?

[Anonymous No.5437937]

This is mandatory reading.

[Anonymous No.5437997]

>>5434599
10/10 book. i read it a long time ago, but I remember something like "I am the dostoievski of jacking off" it was hilarious.

[Anonymous No.5438980]

>>5437885
Bought A Supposedly Fun Thing a month ago, I've read the first essay and the David Lynch one.

[Anonymous No.5439189]

'Must get that scraper fixed.'

[Anonymous No.5439198]

Hitchhikers guide was the most dissapointing trash I've ever read. It seemed like the Baby Boomer version of penguin of doom.

69 is the meaning of the university >______<, holds up spotlight lololol so random.

[Anonymous No.5439205]

Hitchhikers guide was the most dissapointing trash I've ever read. It seemed like the Baby Boomer version of penguin of doom.

69 is the meaning of the universe >______<, holds up spork lololol so random.

[Anonymous No.5439209]

Hitchhikers guide was the most dissapointing trash I've ever read. It seemed like the Baby Boomer version of penguin of doom.

69 is the meaning of the universe >______<, holds up spork lololol so random.

[Anonymous No.5439211]

>>5435255
I have to say i found pic related to be pretty funny at times, in a dark dry way. Like when a character gets stabbed in the back and exclaims "I'm killed!"

[Anonymous No.5439212]

Catch-22 is obviously hilarous.
There are funny sections in Înfinite Jest, although it is a predominately sad book.
Pynchon is pretty funny if you understand some of his weirder jokes and/or references

[Anonymous No.5439225]

>>5432240

a man wakes up as a beetle and his first thoughts, as his legs wiggle in front of him, are about how boring his job is. it's very funny.

[Anonymous No.5439230]

this shit right here

[Anonymous No.5439231]

>>5439230
thought it was tedious and dumb
>muh bicycles

[Anonymous No.5439249]

>>5439231
Agelast.

[Anonymous No.5439263]

>>5439231
I had lots of kekz. Great ending too

[Anonymous No.5439268]

Last Exit to Brooklyn instilled a real sense of melancholy in me. Melancholic episodes were juxtaposed with seconds of temporary yet frenzied madness and hatred. But, it did make me laugh, here and there.

[Anonymous No.5439399]

>>5439230
reading this next, hope it's good and this guy >>5439231 is wrong

[Anonymous No.5439484]

>>5439211
>"Not three weeks before this he was run out of Fort Smith Arkansas for having congress with a goat. Yes lady, that is what I said. Goat."

Added quotation marks for clarity's sake.
That book occasionally had wonderful strokes of comedy.


Then he starts describing the dessert some more.

[Anonymous No.5439487]

Candide
I honestly thought it was a pretty funny book.

[Anonymous No.5439512]

The Know-It-All
Waiting for Godot
Breakfast of Champions
Candide
Bartleby the Scribner

[Anonymous No.5439526]

>>5439512
Scrivener. Shut up, I'm tired.

Also Mark Twain and the Principia Discordia

[Anonymous No.5439610]

>>5432167
Pic related. fucking hilarious. thought provoking.

[Anonymous No.5439810]

>>5439211
>Like when a character gets stabbed in the back and exclaims "I'm killed!"
I don't remember this ever happening in Blood Meridian.

[Anonymous No.5439818]

[Anonymous No.5439837]

>>5439810
Doesn't that happen in MacBeth? "Oh, mother, I am slain."

[Anonymous No.5439842]

>>5439837
it happens in like every shakespeare play where someone dies

[Anonymous No.5439847]

>>5439810
"John Dorsey and Henderson Smith, two boys from Missouri, were the first into the street. They were followed by Charlie Brown and the judge. The judge could see over their heads and he raised one hand to those behind him. The bier was just passing. The fiddler and the cornetist were making little bows to each other and their steps suggested the martial style of the air they played. It’s a funeral, said the judge. As he spoke the drunk with the knife now reeling in the doorway sank the blade deep into the back of a man named Grimley. None saw it but the judge. Grimley put a hand on the rough wood frame of the door. I’m killed, he said. The judge drew his belt pistol and leveled it above the heads of the men and shot the drunk through the middle of the forehead."

[Anonymous No.5439853]

>>5432249

>he never read the essay about Kafka in Consider The Lobster

[Anonymous No.5439868]

>>5439484
added spoiler for ambiguities sake

[Anonymous No.5439874]

John Hodgmans books are the only wholly faux-almanac works I laughed aloud while reading.

I truly hope he writes more in the future.

[Anonymous No.5439875]

You guys. Take my advise and read this, funniest shit I've read in a long time.

[Anonymous No.5439884]

>>5433530
>Will Laren collection soon

[Anonymous No.5439981]

>>5439884

Will Laren is amazing, I don't know how he comes up with this stuff.

[Anonymous No.5440007]

Today I was reading Introduction to Psychoanalysis and it got some laughs out of me with some of the more elaborate interpretations.

[Anonymous No.5440364]

>>5439847
Oh, yeah, I remember now

[Anonymous No.5441205]

>>5432249
Dude couldn't keep a straight face reading the trial to close friends

[Anonymous No.5441256]

>>5437893
I found the depression one hilarious, as I read it before IJ, and all the (ie, the depressed person) got so absurd I couldn't help but chuckle for the last several pages.

[Anonymous No.5441272]

>>5439981
I love how his works read like weird drawings that some kid scribbled retarded captions onto. For example, that birds one. It's just so bizarre that someone intentionally wrote that, and I fucking love it

[Anonymous No.5441733]

>>5441256
That too, but still found it tedious

[Anonymous No.5441754]

Portnoy's Complaint
Woody Allen's Complete Prose
parts of IJ
parts of The Corrections
The Most of SJ Perelman
The Areas of My Expertise
Don Quixote
The Sot-Weed Factor

[Anonymous No.5441938]

>>5437832
Balkans is more its own thing

[Anonymous No.5441953]

[Anonymous No.5441995]

>>5437997
I believe it was, "I am the Raskolnikov of masturbating." I too lost it at that quote.

I was reading in a silent classroom after an exam - people saw.

[Anonymous No.5442003]

When Patrick Bateman got an erection at the U2 concert.

[Anonymous No.5442008]

Ulysses.

[Anonymous No.5442012]

>126 posts and 24 image replies omitted
>ctrl+f
>no Three Men in a Boat

Filthy plebs.

[Anonymous No.5442069]

>>5434993
definitely a funny novel

[Anonymous No.5442108]

>>5442012
OP already proved that comedy book are boring, so there's no point.

[Anonymous No.5442115]

>>5442012
i read that years ago. it was dry, did not laugh once. you are trying too hard. that or you have a old mans sense of humor, which is not a good thing

[kitty !kitty/EnNg No.5442123]

>>5442012
a great book, way funnier than most of listed in the thread (of which i read) , i didn't mention it because there were many books which made me laugh and i only mentioned the latest one

[Anonymous No.5442133]

>>5442012
It's humorous, sure. But not the least bit funny.

[Anonymous No.5442167]

>>5442108
>someone on 4chan proving anything
lel

>>5442115
Maybe you're just not british enough?

[Anonymous No.5442758]

>>5434993
DFW's parody version - "Girl With Curious Hair" - was way, way funnier. Really laughed out loud. You really had to know American Psycho to get it, though.

[Anonymous No.5442800]

>>5432167
>daily reminder that pure comedy books are almost never funny

[Anonymous No.5442804]

[Anonymous No.5442807]

>>5442758
>Girl With Curious Hair
>Parody

is this a troll post?

[Anonymous No.5442816]

>>5442807
>>Girl With Curious Hair
>not a collection of parodies of various pomo styles

[Anonymous No.5443014]

>>5439875
This looks pretty dope, thanks.

[Anonymous No.5443021]

>>5442012
Yeah this is pretty good.
Montmorency confirmed for best character.

[Anonymous No.5443029]

i didn't enjoy infinite jest at all but the "FUCK NIGERS" made me crack up.

[Anonymous No.5443134]

>>5443029
>>5432167
>Slothrop sticks his head out in the long tunnel and hollers, in his most English accent, "Major Marvy sucks!" "Up this way!" Sounds of galloping GI boots, nailheads smacking the concrete and a lot of other ominous metal too going snick . . . snick . . . "Now," beams mischievous Glimpf, setting the hoist in motion. A fresh thought occurs to Slothrop. He puts his head back out and hollers "Major Marvy sucks NIGGERS!"

[Anonymous No.5443143]

>>5432167
The whole "path to hell paved with stuffed animals," bit from The Sun Also Rises made me make a fool of myself on a place once.

[Anonymous No.5444693]

>>5432512
>major major

[Anonymous No.5444952]

120 Days of Sodom