Twenty-Five Favorite Works of Humorous Literature
(The actor James Garner said, “I do humor, not comedy. If I’m funny at all, I try to be slow funny. I tend to look at everything from the side, and I’m more interested in character than flash, because flash hits quick and leaves quick. It takes a little longer to know a character, but character builds and builds, and it’s funnier.“ I resist an awful lot of comic literature for the same reason I find Saturday Night Live unbearable: I can feel the performers straining for laughs, and the laughs are less apparent to me than the strain. Here, though, are my twenty-five favorite works of humorous literature—all of which are actually funny to me, and not mournfully funny, either: just funny—arranged by form and then listed alphabetically by author.)
Novels
A Field Guide to the Aliens of Star Trek: The Next Generation, by Joshua Chapman, Age 11 by Zachary Auburn
The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts by Louis de Bernières
Love Creeps by Amanda Filipacchi
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
All Shall Be Well; And All Shall Be Well; And All Manner of Things Shall Be Well by Tod Wodicka
Story Collections
Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem
Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Authors by Ryan O’Neill
The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure by Jack Pendarvis
Inherited Disorders: Stories, Parables & Problems by Adam Ehrlich Sachs
Graphic Novels and Comics
Excuse Me: Cartoons, Complaints, and Notes to Self by Liana Finck
Barrel of Monkeys by Florent Ruppert and Jérôme Mulot
Demon by Jason Shiga
Mister O by Lewis Trondheim
Drinking at the Movies by Julia Wertz
Children’s or Young Adult Novels
Matilda by Roald Dahl
Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars by Daniel Pinkwater
King Dork by Frank Portman
The Squirrel’s Birthday and Other Parties by Toon Tellegen
Nonfiction
Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence by Geoff Dyer
My Family and Other Hazards: A Memoir by June Melby
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments by David Foster Wallace
Exile in Guyville: How a Punk-rock Redneck Faggot Texan Moved to West Hollywood and Refused to be Shiny and Happy by Dave White
Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste by Carl Wilson
— November 9, 2020