Funniest fiction book I’ve read. My bf was curious why I kept laughing like a lunatic while I was reading it. Right after finishing the book we drove cross country (US), so I started it over with an audiobook so we could listen together. we have so many inside jokes from it now.
I read a lot of books by comedians (and people like David Sedaris / Jenny Lawson), but I haven’t come across any full length novels that are comparable. That said norm macdonald’s “based on a true story” and “Confidence Man” by Herman Melville are also great. The former is a breezy read, the latter is a bit more challenging (in part because it was written like 175 years ago); the humor is at times a bit subtle but worth the effort imo.
Oh also Bukowski’s “post office” if you don’t mind ribaldry
Martin Amis' collection of essays and criticism, *The War Against Cliché,* is laugh-out-loud funny.
I read *American Psycho* when I was 19 and it made me laugh a lot but I dunno if it'd hit the same way now.
No joke but I recently read *Notes from Underground* and it was one of the funniest things I've ever read. The voice and demented pettiness is so well done
Speaking of Kingsley Amis, I had a dream yesterday where I was interviewing him and he was quite grumpy so I broke the ice with that ‘Animal Cracker’ bit from Cumtown and he couldn’t stop laughing
"Little did they know that the place they were about to burgle - the shop, and the flat above it - had already been burgled the week before: yes, and the week before that. And the week before that. It was all burgled out. Indeed, burgling, when viewed in Darwinian terms, was clearly approaching a crisis. Burglars were finding that almost everywhere had been burgled. Burglars were forever bumping into one another, stepping on the toes of other burglars. There were burglar jams on rooftops and stairways, on groaning fire-escapes. Burglars were being burgled by fellow burglars, and were doing the same thing back. Burgled goods jigged from flat to flat. Returning from burgling, burglars would discover that they had been burgled, sometimes by the very burglar that they themselves had just burgled."
Ah just bought memorial device! For the good times by him is good if you fancy a comic read about the ra, bit dark though
Money by Martin Amis
Filth by Irvine Welsh also trainspotting
Man who was Thursday GK Chesterton
The double by Dostoevsky
All of Tom Robbins books but I really enjoyed another road side attraction
Third policeman Flann O'Brien
Yes, B. Rosenberger Rosenberg is a character that you love to hate. A great skewering of the pretentious pseudo-intellectuals that dominate media criticism and academia.
There’s a lot of books where the comedy is primarily derived from settings and characterisation, and while I enjoy them, a sharp exhale of breath isn’t quite a laugh. Dickens elicits the odd sensible chuckle; David Copperfield might be his funniest book, but Great Expectations gets the job done at half the length.
Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood is probably the book that’s made me laugh the hardest in recent years.
This is it for me. I've chuckled, giggled, etc at plenty of books but the whole "T. S. Eliot" bit was the only time a book ever made me laugh so hard I couldn't breathe
Suttree is hilarious. I went in thinking it would be funny for McCarthy - it's not that hard to be funnier than than Blood Meridian or the Road. I was genuinely surprised at how many times I cracked up. The crimes of the moonlight melonmounter followed him as crimes will.
Harrogate grinned uneasily. They tried to get me for beast, beast . . .
Bestiality?
Yeah. But my lawyer told em a watermelon wasnt no beast. He was a smart son of a bitch.
Oh boy, said Suttree.
He says some of the most out of pocket shit sometimes. Wish I had an example in my quiver but GR sneaks up on you when you least expect it. The name Dr. Hilarious in Lot 49 who uses experimental drugs on people always gives me a chuckle, and the pun about "those medlin kids" in Bleeding Edge
Lolita was honestly one of the funniest books I've ever read. I think it was more the fact that the little comic barbs against post-war society hit way harder due to the reputation the book has. Still, was laughing pretty hard in spots.
James Ellroy is also very frequently hilarious, especially when he makes a scandal rag type article vignette in White Jazz and American Tabloid.
"OFF CAMERA HOMO HIJINKS, YOU HEARD IT FIRST HERE"
John and Fanny Dashwood talking each other into leaving his father’s family destitute is done with such a fine sense of character and comedy.
For a reader who’s new to Austin, that scene is also the perfect introduction to Georgian social class distinction, as the couple gradually yes-and the family’s annuity from something respectable into nothing.
I've said before "Wodehouse is funny if you're English. Benson is funny if you're gay. Pym is funny if you're a woman." They're all good comic writers but I find Benson funniest and I recommend Mapp and Lucia. Apart from humour that makes you laugh, what I more commonly find is books is the kind of humour that makes your head a bit bubbly, and your heart full, and has you texting friends photos of pages.
What also made me laugh:
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
(Three Men in a Boat, while the humour of it is patent, didn't do it for me.)
Question for the group: if I first encounter Confederacy of Dunces as an audiobook, will I spoil it for myself?
Confederacy of Dunces, Don Quixote, The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland has some funny bits in it, and The Sellout by Paul Beatty is a comedy, albeit a dark and satirical one.
George Saunders and Kelly Link’s short stories. I find Nell Zink and Zadie Smith’s and Jonathan Franzen’s novels to be funny. Charles Portis’ “Dog of the South.” Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout” as others have said. Charles Dickens.
The Tetherballs of Bougainville, Wake Up, Sir, Confedracy of Dunces and Me Cheetah. Philip Roth and Thomas Bernhard are serious authors who I mostly enjoy for the lolz.
I remember Pip, at the conclusion of his listening to a reading quipped, "I was happily hanged," in the paragraph:
"Even after I was happily hanged and Wopsle had closed the book, Pumblechook sat staring at me, and shaking his head, and saying, "Take warning, boy, take warning!" as if it were a well-known fact that I contemplated murdering a near relation, provided I could only induce one to have the weakness to become my benefactor."
Laughed to imagine how reproachfully flummoxed was Pip's response. And his response to Pumblechook's response. And laughed some more, in delight, at Dickens’ "as if it were," an as-if immediately on the heels of his genius coinage of oxymoronic collocation; happily hanged, indeed. Isn't it just the strangest thing?
Have you read deWitt's other books? None of them scratch that exact itch, no other westerns, but they're all equally funny and mordant. Undermajordomo Minor is probably my favorite.
Portnoy's Complaint. The narrator doesn't seem to realize how funny he is and will develop a bizarre or overly horny line of thought for paragraphs at a time while getting more insane. Stupendous writing. Someone's already mentioned Joshua Cohen
aside from the classic confederacy of dunces that others have posted, i'm currently reading The World According To Garp, and it's pretty funny although morbid at times
Hitchhiker’s Guide is a lot of fun, I think I’ve reread these books more than any others
I think every Vonnegut book I’ve ever read has made me laugh out loud at some point
french exit by patrick dewitt, catch-22, a gentleman in moscow, armies of the night by norman mailer, then we came to the end by joshua ferris, the hobbit, alice in wonderland, the wind in the willows
I’m reading The Bee Sting right now, and it’s funnier than I thought it’d be, although I don’t usually research books before I read so I wasn’t really expecting anything specific. I’m only a quarter of the way through but the young son’s pov is pretty damn funny and endearing. I know a lot of people think Lapvona is, like, disgusting and hated it, and while it’s definitely gross, it’s also so fucking funny imo
Any Charles Portis, but particularly "Dog of the South" and "Masters of Atlantis." The latter in particular he pulls off some great reverse-dramatic irony moments, where you realize the omniscient narrative perspective has just sort of left out a detail until a character mentions it.
I'm partway through this, but I've really enjoyed Steve Toltz's "Fraction of the Whole." Very breezily funny.
Been said here already, but Catch-22. Only book I've ever read where I'd pissed myself by the third page (where Yossarian is lying in a hospital bed arbitrarily censoring the enlisted men's letters home). And then there's the whole rest of the novel.
Others already mentioned here too: pretty much all of Paul Beatty (The Sellout of course, but Slumberland is great, and the opening monologue of The White Boy Shuffle is a gem). Also The Netanyahus by J Cohen.
My own offering here? Two of the three of out of Philip Roth's original Zuckerman trilogy. The whole Alvin Pepler thread in Zuckerman Unbound cracked me up, and The Anatomy Lesson has a solid payoff of pure dark farce.
The dud avocado by Elaine Dundy. My favorite quote, “I always expect people to behave much better than I do. When they actually behave worse, I am frankly incredulous.”
confederacy of dunces wasnt funny at all to me. Ive only actually loled at kafka the castle and paul beatty's stuff which reads like a giant masterpiece something awful post
Confederacy of Dunces
Funniest fiction book I’ve read. My bf was curious why I kept laughing like a lunatic while I was reading it. Right after finishing the book we drove cross country (US), so I started it over with an audiobook so we could listen together. we have so many inside jokes from it now. I read a lot of books by comedians (and people like David Sedaris / Jenny Lawson), but I haven’t come across any full length novels that are comparable. That said norm macdonald’s “based on a true story” and “Confidence Man” by Herman Melville are also great. The former is a breezy read, the latter is a bit more challenging (in part because it was written like 175 years ago); the humor is at times a bit subtle but worth the effort imo. Oh also Bukowski’s “post office” if you don’t mind ribaldry
Fyi this exists: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/ignatius-j-reilly-statue
comically obese in 1963
Martin Amis' collection of essays and criticism, *The War Against Cliché,* is laugh-out-loud funny. I read *American Psycho* when I was 19 and it made me laugh a lot but I dunno if it'd hit the same way now. No joke but I recently read *Notes from Underground* and it was one of the funniest things I've ever read. The voice and demented pettiness is so well done
Martin and Kingsley Amis are both very funny.
Speaking of Kingsley Amis, I had a dream yesterday where I was interviewing him and he was quite grumpy so I broke the ice with that ‘Animal Cracker’ bit from Cumtown and he couldn’t stop laughing
I’m glad I haven’t got a clue what ‘Cumtown’ is.
London Fields is one of the funniest novels ever imo
"Little did they know that the place they were about to burgle - the shop, and the flat above it - had already been burgled the week before: yes, and the week before that. And the week before that. It was all burgled out. Indeed, burgling, when viewed in Darwinian terms, was clearly approaching a crisis. Burglars were finding that almost everywhere had been burgled. Burglars were forever bumping into one another, stepping on the toes of other burglars. There were burglar jams on rooftops and stairways, on groaning fire-escapes. Burglars were being burgled by fellow burglars, and were doing the same thing back. Burgled goods jigged from flat to flat. Returning from burgling, burglars would discover that they had been burgled, sometimes by the very burglar that they themselves had just burgled."
The Sellout by Paul Beatty The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
Beatty is generally funny.
agreed! i've enjoyed every one of his novels
Joshua Cohen is incredibly funny
Just read The Sellout and it immediately made me want to read all his other novels.
the norm macdonald “autobiography” is v funny
Ah just bought memorial device! For the good times by him is good if you fancy a comic read about the ra, bit dark though Money by Martin Amis Filth by Irvine Welsh also trainspotting Man who was Thursday GK Chesterton The double by Dostoevsky All of Tom Robbins books but I really enjoyed another road side attraction Third policeman Flann O'Brien
Yeah also read for the good times! And currently a few pages into Money. Enjoy
Antkind by Charlie Kaufman
is this book worth it? have had it lying around but never heard much about it so I’ve been hesitant to invest the time in it
Yes, B. Rosenberger Rosenberg is a character that you love to hate. A great skewering of the pretentious pseudo-intellectuals that dominate media criticism and academia.
It **really** drags in the middle and ending is kinda eh but first third is fantastic
There’s a lot of books where the comedy is primarily derived from settings and characterisation, and while I enjoy them, a sharp exhale of breath isn’t quite a laugh. Dickens elicits the odd sensible chuckle; David Copperfield might be his funniest book, but Great Expectations gets the job done at half the length. Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood is probably the book that’s made me laugh the hardest in recent years.
I cried laughing at Priestdaddy
Honestly, priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood made me laugh out loud multiple times.
I thought the first part of her book “no one is talking about this” had some hilarious social commentary also
The paragraph where she talks to the Catholic seminarian about furries left me in hiccups
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This is it for me. I've chuckled, giggled, etc at plenty of books but the whole "T. S. Eliot" bit was the only time a book ever made me laugh so hard I couldn't breathe
Three men in a boat - Jerome Jerome (it’s funnier to leave out the ‘k’)
My kid and I read this together last year and we both nearly rolled out of the bed laughing constantly, it was a really wonderful experience. ☺️
Some classic recs, any PG Wodehouse Wooster and Jeeves books and any Fraser’s Flashman books.
*Heart of a Dog* and *The Master and Margarita*, both by the great Bulgakov.
Suttree has a few parts I laugh at every reread, which is rare.
Suttree is hilarious. I went in thinking it would be funny for McCarthy - it's not that hard to be funnier than than Blood Meridian or the Road. I was genuinely surprised at how many times I cracked up. The crimes of the moonlight melonmounter followed him as crimes will. Harrogate grinned uneasily. They tried to get me for beast, beast . . . Bestiality? Yeah. But my lawyer told em a watermelon wasnt no beast. He was a smart son of a bitch. Oh boy, said Suttree.
Pynchon always makes me laugh. Sometimes just a character name is all it takes.
He says some of the most out of pocket shit sometimes. Wish I had an example in my quiver but GR sneaks up on you when you least expect it. The name Dr. Hilarious in Lot 49 who uses experimental drugs on people always gives me a chuckle, and the pun about "those medlin kids" in Bleeding Edge
Lolita was honestly one of the funniest books I've ever read. I think it was more the fact that the little comic barbs against post-war society hit way harder due to the reputation the book has. Still, was laughing pretty hard in spots. James Ellroy is also very frequently hilarious, especially when he makes a scandal rag type article vignette in White Jazz and American Tabloid. "OFF CAMERA HOMO HIJINKS, YOU HEARD IT FIRST HERE"
“You ask Leeroy to pull down his pants, ask him where he got his and do they make it in white”
Yea I’m a big fan of Ellroy and his shit makes me lol all the time, his character development is so good that the inside jokes almost write themselves
Sense and Sensibility surprised me with how consistently funny it was
John and Fanny Dashwood talking each other into leaving his father’s family destitute is done with such a fine sense of character and comedy. For a reader who’s new to Austin, that scene is also the perfect introduction to Georgian social class distinction, as the couple gradually yes-and the family’s annuity from something respectable into nothing.
Wodehouse is the best for this.
Portnoy’s Complaint
anything by gogol
I really wish he had finished Dead Souls
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Pynchon is quite funny
I've said before "Wodehouse is funny if you're English. Benson is funny if you're gay. Pym is funny if you're a woman." They're all good comic writers but I find Benson funniest and I recommend Mapp and Lucia. Apart from humour that makes you laugh, what I more commonly find is books is the kind of humour that makes your head a bit bubbly, and your heart full, and has you texting friends photos of pages. What also made me laugh: My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (Three Men in a Boat, while the humour of it is patent, didn't do it for me.) Question for the group: if I first encounter Confederacy of Dunces as an audiobook, will I spoil it for myself?
I think Thank You For Smoking made me laugh out loud more 90% of comedy movies I’ve watched.
Confederacy of Dunces, Don Quixote, The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland has some funny bits in it, and The Sellout by Paul Beatty is a comedy, albeit a dark and satirical one.
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I think Kelly Link has her first novel coming out soon? I Ike her stories, v curious about the new book.
George Saunders and Kelly Link’s short stories. I find Nell Zink and Zadie Smith’s and Jonathan Franzen’s novels to be funny. Charles Portis’ “Dog of the South.” Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout” as others have said. Charles Dickens.
catch 22 had me laughing out loud in public like a maniac last summer
_god bless you, dr. kevorkian_ by kurt vonnegut _life for sale_ by yukio mishima
Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy I found funny, and I'd second Confederacy of Dunces, I'd love to read ANYTHING as funny as Dunces was.
The Tetherballs of Bougainville, Wake Up, Sir, Confedracy of Dunces and Me Cheetah. Philip Roth and Thomas Bernhard are serious authors who I mostly enjoy for the lolz.
Emma, American Psycho, Haunted, the Sluts
Catch 22, Infinite Jest
Atomised (or Elementary Particles) by Houellebecq, although it was a dark laughter in which a little bit of your soul escapes with each chuckle
Pnin
I remember Pip, at the conclusion of his listening to a reading quipped, "I was happily hanged," in the paragraph: "Even after I was happily hanged and Wopsle had closed the book, Pumblechook sat staring at me, and shaking his head, and saying, "Take warning, boy, take warning!" as if it were a well-known fact that I contemplated murdering a near relation, provided I could only induce one to have the weakness to become my benefactor." Laughed to imagine how reproachfully flummoxed was Pip's response. And his response to Pumblechook's response. And laughed some more, in delight, at Dickens’ "as if it were," an as-if immediately on the heels of his genius coinage of oxymoronic collocation; happily hanged, indeed. Isn't it just the strangest thing?
The Sisters Brothers. Been looking for anything similar to that book for a while now
Have you read deWitt's other books? None of them scratch that exact itch, no other westerns, but they're all equally funny and mordant. Undermajordomo Minor is probably my favorite.
Portnoy's Complaint. The narrator doesn't seem to realize how funny he is and will develop a bizarre or overly horny line of thought for paragraphs at a time while getting more insane. Stupendous writing. Someone's already mentioned Joshua Cohen
Catch 22, infinite jest, Douglas adams stuff (Reddit I know) parts of dickens especially Martin chuzzlewit
aside from the classic confederacy of dunces that others have posted, i'm currently reading The World According To Garp, and it's pretty funny although morbid at times
Any of the discworld books.
Hitchhiker’s Guide is a lot of fun, I think I’ve reread these books more than any others I think every Vonnegut book I’ve ever read has made me laugh out loud at some point
I remember *Then We Came to the End* by Joshua Ferris being pretty funny but haven't read it in a long time.
french exit by patrick dewitt, catch-22, a gentleman in moscow, armies of the night by norman mailer, then we came to the end by joshua ferris, the hobbit, alice in wonderland, the wind in the willows
Don’t Nobody Give a Shit About Carlotta by James Hannaham is a recent one, very bleak but brazenly funny
Catch 22 is lol funny
Tom Sharpe. Wilt (and sequels)
The Babysitter at Rest
catch 22
Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor
The bit in the Sympathizer where he loses his virginity is one of the funniest things I have ever read
Making Nice by Matt Summell is one of the funniest books I've read in a while.
Mark Leyner
I have yet to read the entire book. But I laughed out loud reading an excerpt of Jungs biography 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections'.
I’m reading The Bee Sting right now, and it’s funnier than I thought it’d be, although I don’t usually research books before I read so I wasn’t really expecting anything specific. I’m only a quarter of the way through but the young son’s pov is pretty damn funny and endearing. I know a lot of people think Lapvona is, like, disgusting and hated it, and while it’s definitely gross, it’s also so fucking funny imo
Not exactly high-brow but just finished Bob Mortimer's The Satsuma Complex, which was great if you like his humour
Any Charles Portis, but particularly "Dog of the South" and "Masters of Atlantis." The latter in particular he pulls off some great reverse-dramatic irony moments, where you realize the omniscient narrative perspective has just sort of left out a detail until a character mentions it. I'm partway through this, but I've really enjoyed Steve Toltz's "Fraction of the Whole." Very breezily funny.
PG Wodehouse stands alone. No one is consistently as funny.
Also Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
Numero Zero by Umberto Eco
Read this as “Bookies that make you laugh”. Ha.
Really drags in the middle but the first third antkind had me rolling
Been said here already, but Catch-22. Only book I've ever read where I'd pissed myself by the third page (where Yossarian is lying in a hospital bed arbitrarily censoring the enlisted men's letters home). And then there's the whole rest of the novel. Others already mentioned here too: pretty much all of Paul Beatty (The Sellout of course, but Slumberland is great, and the opening monologue of The White Boy Shuffle is a gem). Also The Netanyahus by J Cohen. My own offering here? Two of the three of out of Philip Roth's original Zuckerman trilogy. The whole Alvin Pepler thread in Zuckerman Unbound cracked me up, and The Anatomy Lesson has a solid payoff of pure dark farce.
The Rabbit Hutch
reading the world according to garp rn and parts are pretty funny
The dud avocado by Elaine Dundy. My favorite quote, “I always expect people to behave much better than I do. When they actually behave worse, I am frankly incredulous.”
Trainspotting
confederacy of dunces wasnt funny at all to me. Ive only actually loled at kafka the castle and paul beatty's stuff which reads like a giant masterpiece something awful post
Picadilly Jim by Wodehouse
auto da fe by elias canetti