Comments on: Comments on 11715

Post number 11715

Sinner — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 14:31:44 -0800

Modern Humorist's "Rough Draft: Pop Culture the Way it Almost Was" is finally available. A few samples are here. And while I like the Modern Humorist and enjoyed their first book I'm partial to The Onion's "Our Dumb Century" as the funniest.book.ever. As I brace for the sarcastic responses, what do you think is the funniest book ever written?

By: msacheson

msacheson — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 14:41:11 -0800

Pancakes, Pancakes!

By: rebeccablood

rebeccablood — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 14:54:36 -0800

the importance of being earnest. if plays can't count, then I'm in for three men in a boat.

By: Carol Anne

Carol Anne — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:12:20 -0800

if plays can't count, then I'm in for three men in a boat. To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis' "sequel" novel is a hoot, too.

By: Kafkaesque

Kafkaesque — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:14:22 -0800

OK OK here goes again: Getting Even, Without Feathers and Side Effects. Bill Bryson's Notes From A Small Island makes me laugh out loud every reread. And Stephen Fry's The Liar is a good one. As is Good Omens. Oh and The Meaning of Liff.

By: djfiander

djfiander — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:14:30 -0800

Three men in a boat. Especially if you can get an edition with Fredericks' illustrations. My ex-mother-in-law lost my edition with same somewhere in Europe *sigh*.

By: rosecrans

rosecrans — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:17:58 -0800

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. Hilarious. Also, as posted above, "Good Omens" is very funny.

By: Kafkaesque

Kafkaesque — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:27:45 -0800

Oh, and there was this incredibly whack book called Snail by Richard Miller which is now out of print. It involved, among other things, an elixir of everlasting life given to Hitler by The Wandering Jew, and the protagonist changing into a five foot snail and having sex with the goddess Athena. Oh and a flaming Tooth Fairy. Weird! But funny. And an old edition I have has cover art by Clive Barker (!)

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:33:06 -0800

Cruel Shoes always makes me laugh. And apparently I'm not the only one..

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:42:04 -0800

Confederacy of Dunces. Is the funniest book ever written.

By: mattpfeff

mattpfeff — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:56:14 -0800

It's a little-known fact, but the Oxford English Dictionary is demonstrably the funniest book ever written. I say demonstrably because everyone who has ever read it all the way through has been cackling uncontrollably ever since.... (Hell, Sinner asked for sarcastic responses, didn't he (or she)? Surely someone can top me, though.)

By: Grum

Grum — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 16:08:24 -0800

Personally, Mediagate is the funniest book I've ever read. Some of the writers have gone on to do work for the Simpsons and Futurama. It will be hard to find nowadays, but I don't know how many time I ended up laughing myself to near unconsciousness.

By: ethmar

ethmar — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 16:29:47 -0800

Surely someone can top me, though. And that is accomplished by tepping on the brake, tupid. :-P Catch-22 had me busting a gut in places. Importance of Being Earnest ranks up there too somewhere.

By: MrBaliHai

MrBaliHai — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 16:36:10 -0800

How many old fogies here besides me remember Max Schulman the author of I Was a Teenage Dwarf, Barefoot Boy With Cheek, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and Rally Round The Flag, Boys? He was a terrible punster, but his books always made me laugh out loud.

By: nicwolff

nicwolff — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 16:43:51 -0800

Thorne Smith's "The Nightlife of the Gods". Although Maxx Barry's "Syrup" is also hilarious.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 16:49:25 -0800

Jerome K. Jerome! woot! The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is quite funny by spells as well. I must, however, also place my vote with Confederacy of Dunces. I saw a musical (!) stage production of it once at LSU in Baton Rouge that was a brilliant adaptation--pity it never got a wider audience.

By: holgate

holgate — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 16:56:39 -0800

At Swim-Two-Birds is guaranteed to make me laugh out loud and astonish me, which can't be bad.

By: Sinner

Sinner — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 17:02:26 -0800

Have to agree with Hitchhiker and Confederacy as by-default members of the pantheon, but as I said in tresponse to someone mentioning Getting Even and Without Feathers in the thread which spawned this one, ... I've read Getting Even and Without Feathers and on a whole lot of levels think that ODC is better in terms of complexity, artistry and most of all, sheer number of quality jokes - that's the hardest part at all. It's the density of the book that just amazes me. I've probably read it a half-dozen times and literally every time read something which I'd missed - sometimes because I didn't get the joke, but more often because it was offhandedly tossed in a margin somewhere or something.

By: lileks

lileks — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 17:04:52 -0800

Anything by Peter DeVries at his best. No one could write dialogue like that. No one ever spoke dialogue like that, but no matter. I remember meeting the editor of my first novel, and telling him I wanted to be as good as Peter DeVries some day; he nodded, sagely, then said quietly "you might feel differently if you saw his sales figures." Humor books are an incredibly hard sell now as well - most don't sell for squat unless they have some sort of cross-platform support, like Sedaris (NPR) Barry (newspapers) and the Onion / Modern Humorist (that internet thing.)

By: the biscuit man

the biscuit man — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 17:06:12 -0800

I highly recommend My Uncle Oswald, by Roald Dahl. It contains one of the greatest premises ever. Becoming a millionaire by collecting sperm from 51 of the early 20th centuries' greatest minds and selling it to rich widows and forgotten wives. Brilliantly filthy. I like it!

By: MiguelCardoso

MiguelCardoso — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 17:18:04 -0800

Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman; Samuel Beckett's Watt, S.J.Perelman's Eastward Ho, Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, Fran Lebowitz's Social Studies and Redmond O'Hanlons In Trouble Again are all hilarious and infinitely rereadable.

By: marknau

marknau — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 17:51:47 -0800

The author didn't intend it as humor, but my vote goes to How to Good-Bye Depression

By: nprigoda

nprigoda — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 18:06:07 -0800

yeah, marknau, any book that can enable a man to "make #### three times in succession" and "shoot out his immaterial fiber" must be a laugh. ick, I feel dirty

By: sunsolid

sunsolid — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 18:21:01 -0800

The Bible

By: double+good

double+good — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 19:12:34 -0800

youth in revolt by c.d. payne naked by david sedaris and the person who said humor books are a hard sell right now is correct. perennial was to publish a collection of my "humorous" short stories and essays in june, but the date got bumped once to october, and again 'til "next spring." but what the hell -- it was a bunch of plagarized old spy magazine articles anyway.

By: Mack Twain

Mack Twain — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 19:24:56 -0800

I've seen projectile vomiting, urinating & defecating as direct results of reading FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS...Hunter S Thompson is certifiable; course,I'm well now.

By: ferris

ferris — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 19:25:06 -0800

The grandaddy of comic meta-novels, The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy. You can read the whole dang thang here.

By: ferris

ferris — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 19:34:39 -0800

Oops, Tristam Shandy online is courtesy of Blackmask.com. By the way, there's an online excerpt from Confederacy of Dunces at this site.

By: katexmcfly

katexmcfly — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 19:50:18 -0800

God bless 'em: John Fante, especially The Road To Los Angeles and P. G. Wodehouse, particularly Very Good Jeeves.

By: krakedhalo

krakedhalo — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 20:17:22 -0800

Good Omens, by Neil Gaimann and Terry Pratchett. I've read this book ten or fifteen times and it makes me laugh out loud every time. I'm always finding something new I hadn't noticed before. Think Hitchhiker's Guide does the Apocalypse.

By: MiguelCardoso

MiguelCardoso — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 20:35:21 -0800

Robert Benchley, Beachcomber(both only available in anthologies)and Auberon Waugh's Private Eye Diaries are all crippling too.

By: D

Mon, 22 Oct 2001 20:41:23 -0800

Dear God yes, Hunter S. Thompson. Fear & Loathing blew my brain out. Mark Leyner is worth mentioning here. I've only read Et Tu, Babe, but I hear My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist is hardcore as well.

By: Sinner

Sinner — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 21:18:02 -0800

Although I don't think any of them compare with ODC, while on the humor-book topic, I'd like to add plugs for Jerry Seinfeld's Sein Language, George Carlin's Brain Droppings, Dennis Miller's Brain Droppings, and of course, Jewel's A Night Without Armour. OK, I never read Jewel's book and yeah, it's a cheap shot, but aside from the Bible reference, I've been disappointed with the sarcastic responses so far...

By: brookedel

brookedel — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 22:24:53 -0800

Dave Barry Dave Barry Dave Barry! Sorry. I really like Dave Barry. I also salivate over Christopher Durang plays.

By: emf

emf — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 23:08:53 -0800

I will be absolutely flabbergasted if anyone has heard of Peter Pook, a wonderfully funny English writer. There is no mention of him anywhere outside my local library. And PG Wodehouse is great; today I like PJ O'Rourke and HST.

By: swerve

swerve — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 23:21:26 -0800

Richard Russo. Straight Man and Nobody's Fool, particularly.

By: swerve

swerve — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 23:27:07 -0800

Oh, and Christopher Buckley's Wry Martinis.

By: chinstrap

chinstrap — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 02:25:16 -0800

Paul Theroux's Fong and the Indians, included in On the Edge of the Great Rift : Three Novels of Africa, is the funniest piece of fiction I've read.

By: meep

meep — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 02:55:00 -0800

I'm with rosecrans, Me Talk Pretty One Day made me scare Midwestern airline passengers by my vigorous shaking (I was =trying= not to laugh out loud, and was much more disturbing) -- even though some of the humor for me comes from the fact that I grew up in Raleigh, I think it's the funniest thing I read in the last year. Oh, P.J. O'Rourke makes me let out a Mrs. Krabappel-like "HA!". P.G. Wodehouse, Oscar Wilde's frothy plays, and Stephen Fry also make me "HA!".

By: waffleboy

waffleboy — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 04:52:22 -0800

Consider this another vote for Good Omens, by Neil Gaimann and Terry Pratchett. I've read it many times and it always makes me laugh out loud.

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 04:56:38 -0800

Confederacy of Dunces--without a doubt. ::rushmc:: You're right about that LSU stage production. The best part? The rollerskaters zooming through the crowd singing "Gloria." They should have made the movie version back then. Unfortunately, Spud's too old to do it now. (interesting subnote) I've been working on a screenplay for Confederacy of Dunces for seven years. The rights to the movie are owned by a friend of a friend in Dallas, who bought the rights the first time he read the book and said, "Damn, this would make a good movie!" It's the only movie rights he's ever owned or even thought of owning.

By: Frasermoo

Frasermoo — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 05:44:45 -0800

The Reluctant Vampire by Eric Morecambe. Comedy genius. As well as anything by Spike Milligan.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 06:15:11 -0800

::rushmc:: You're right about that LSU stage production. The best part? The rollerskaters zooming through the crowd singing "Gloria." I thought the innovative rotating stage was way cool. And the fact that they served Dr. Nut.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 06:17:06 -0800

I laughed the loudest at Hitchhiker's Guide books, Woody Allen's books, Confederacy of Dunces, yeah, but I read them all when I was a teenager, like 7 million years ago, approximately. Can't think of anything I've read more recently that made me pee my pants in quite the same way, unless it were the occasional dong_resin or Kafkaesque post here. (And yes I know I'll be going to the Miguel Cardoso Memorial Ring of Dante's Inferno for that reach-around comment, but I'm too sodden to care at the moment) By the way, I wish you bastards would stop linking to Amazon, unless we can figure out a way to make some mathowie-server-bux out of it. I mean 'bBastards' as a term of endearment, of course.....

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 06:31:35 -0800

Is "reach-around" a term of endearment, too?

By: Frasermoo

Frasermoo — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 06:40:00 -0800

i knew there was one book that had made me wet my jim-jams. Red Dwarf by Naylor. Read the part where Rimmer takes his officers exam. I'm nearly crying now thinking about it (or my wet jimmy-jams).

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 06:53:16 -0800

More a motion of endearment, ColdChef

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 07:06:32 -0800

(now feeling guilty for leaving out other Big.Funny.MeFites from my comment above)

By: bob bisquick

bob bisquick — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 07:13:29 -0800

Catch 22 V by Thomas Pynchon Baked Potatoes - The Pot Smoker Guide to Movies - not a novel, but freakin' hilarious

By: Tarrama

Tarrama — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 07:17:42 -0800

The moon is a balloon by David Niven and Dear me by Peter Ustinov, it makes me smile just to think of these books again.

By: Frasermoo

Frasermoo — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 07:27:44 -0800

"Stavrosthewonderchicken Bastes Himself" - by Stavrosthewonderchicken

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 07:31:01 -0800

Self-bukkake : the next poultry-porno rage in Japan.

By: Frasermoo

Frasermoo — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 07:36:23 -0800

i was going to make a reference to cow & chicken with just a hint of oninism, but i think i shant.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 07:38:29 -0800

*apologies to the Keeper of the Bukakke*

By: briank

briank — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 08:05:54 -0800

Late to the party, but count my votes for Confederacy of Dunces, the first three books of the Hitchhiker trilogy, all of Wodehouse, and Naked by Sedaris (much funnier, IMHO, than the latest one), among others. Sorry if that sounds "me-too"-ish, but obviously many people share the same sensibility.

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 08:15:51 -0800

::GEEK ALERT:: Last week, I finished a project I started mid-summer. I read the entire Hitchhikers series on my Handspring Visor . But here's the twist: I only read it while I was on the crapper at work. Sorry if that's TMI. I imagine that the laughter coming from the bathroom gave my coworkers plenty to gossip about.

By: Kafkaesque

Kafkaesque — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 09:00:01 -0800

And also The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker. I'm too damn lazy to link it. One of the best passages is a discussion of Shy Kidney Syndrome, a condition the main character was suffering from at work. He would have trouble urinating at a urinal when someone was standing near him, until he solved his problem by imagining peeing all over the person's face. Some great lines about the mental image of his victim sputtering in the stream of urine, his hair being parted by the flow. gads, cracking me up again.

By: bingo

bingo — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 10:17:04 -0800

I stopped reading Confederacy of Dunces after a few chapters because it was too depressing for me at the time. Either the tone changes a lot, or I am way out of touch with y'all's sense of humor. By the way, I asked Neil Gaiman to autograph my copy of Good Omens, and he wrote "Burn this book!" inside the cover.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 15:10:45 -0800

And also The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker. Nicholson Baker is perhaps the best observer of minutia I've ever seen. Haven't read The Mezzanine, but I read Vox and The Fermata.

By: holgate

holgate — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 15:46:21 -0800

I can't quite appreciate how non-Brits get the best jokes in Good Omens: that War is basically a piss-take of Kate Adie; the M25 gag; and so on. Of course, Gaiman wrote all the funniest bits. [looks round for copy, having not read it in years; realises it's with Herself in Connecticut. damn.] (And Kafkaesque: I've used that bit of advice from The Mezzanine for about 10 years now, whenever necessary.)

By: basilwhite

basilwhite — Thu, 25 Oct 2001 09:04:57 -0800

Definitely the Tick Omnibus #1 from New England Comics.