2006-08-14 14:39:31 · 12 answers · asked by Anonymous in Arts & Humanities ➔ Books & Authors
You have my vote for Catch 22 as the all time greatest comedic novel...and it should be required reading for anyone who wants to claim they have a sense of humor.
There have been a few other seminal novels, but none that have touched such a nerve, coined a phrase, and prompted such discussion and debate.
I realize you're after comedic novels, but for some reason when I read your question Molière's play "Tartuffe" popped into my head. He wrote it in the later half of the 1600's if memory serves, about religious zealots and their hypocritical ways...and it's one of the funniest, sarcastic and caustic plays I've ever read or seen performed. And like good comedy...it transcends time by being just as relevant and funny today as it was almost 400 years ago.
2006-08-15 03:52:50 · answer #1 · answered by gotalife 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Catch-22, got to be. Friend of mine was reading that the entire year we did high school English together - he'd not bother turning up to lessons, and said he had all the English literature he'd ever need right there. When it came to the exam of course he knew nothing of what we were supposed to have learned. So he actually wrote a paper on the poetry of Keats, beginning like this:
Keats is crap. His notions of permanence and transience are dilletante and rooted in meaningless romanticism.
An example of a work that is not crap, and that brings transience and permanence to life, is Catch-22 by Joseph Heller..."
He went on to write the entire essay on Catch-22 rather than the poems of Keats! Class. He ended up lending me the book, and I could never read it - I'd be helpless on the floor after a few chapters. Ultimately, when I was planning to leave an unhappy relationship, I picked up Catch-22 again and read it avidly from cover to cover - but I had to be essentially depressed in my life to make it all the way through! Now I read it regularly for the pure pleasure of the piece. Catch-22 all the way!
2006-08-16 04:58:20 · answer #2 · answered by mdfalco71 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Catch 22 is an absolute classic. I studied that at college and we would take turns reading and analysing passages. Lessons would degenerate into everyone, teacher included just rolling around laughing!
Vernon God Little is very funny as well. I love vernons tone all the way through; very tragi comic.
Fight Club is about as offbeat as they come; a little disturbing but much more comic than the film
Also Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy; absolute genuis.
I can't pick just one, sorry!
2006-08-15 06:12:10 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
"The Eyre Affair" and its sequels by Jasper Fforde (With a name like "Fforde" how could you NOT write off-beat comedy.)
Let's see - these books are set in an alternate universe where doe-does have been cloned back into existence, the Crimean War is entering its 131st year, time travel is routine and literature is taken so seriously that a special branch of police is needed to crack down on all the scam artists trying to forge new works of Shakespeare.
The heroine (who goes by the name of Thursday Next) is one of those literary officers and her task through the first book is to save Jane Eyre, who has been kidnapped from the pages of her novel.
Absolutely everything in these books is tongue-and-cheek, and the better you know the original, the funnier it gets.
2006-08-15 00:09:31 · answer #4 · answered by poohba 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I vote for A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole as well.
It won a pulitzer.
2006-08-15 11:46:38 · answer #5 · answered by billm_07456 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I never read the latter, but the first one is classic.
But, have you read, "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole? That would probably be my #1. It's brilliant, and hilarious.
2006-08-14 21:46:04 · answer #6 · answered by Da Whispering Genius 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Hmm... Catch 22 is really good... I don't know the other one... How about Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
2006-08-15 15:01:29 · answer #7 · answered by ? 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Wow! I would have to say the same thing Confederacy of Dunces. I am from Louisiana and this book is so funny.
2006-08-14 22:40:04 · answer #8 · answered by Jason G 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I, Billy Shakespeare by William Peter Blatty. You have to know Shakespeare to appreciate it, but if you do, it is hysterical! And surprisingly political. And damn near impossible to find.
2006-08-16 02:59:41 · answer #9 · answered by isaidno 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I vote for M.A.S.H. (the novel, but you can put the movie out there as well).
2006-08-14 23:19:18 · answer #10 · answered by swarr2001 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋