Lucky Jim (Kingsley Amis)
The Hippopotamus (Stephen Fry)
What a Carve Up (Jonathan Coe)

........Tristan Shandy

Anthea Turners Biography....

"As I looked up from the big game reserve I sensed a deep sense of freedom that I had finally escaped the ravages of the English press"

Hitchhiker's, surely?

A Confederacy of dunces - the best surely?
Diary of a no-body - Gem.
Mrs. Pooter's diary - Not the best of Keith Waterhouse, but still a great follow up to the original

Diary of a Nobody indeed.

*big hugs*

Nearly anything by Kurt Vonnegut

>Nearly anything by Kurt Vonnegut

Earlier stuff = better. Gets overdone after a while. Not his fault. Nuff said.

Why are all his books yellow?

In the plural: Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius books, for those of us awake to the multiverse.

I'd plump for The Pickwick Papers, Dickens's reinvention of the comic novel. If you read Smollett and then read Pickwick you can see what a huge stride forward it was. And it still (genuinely) makes me laugh out loud 164 years after it was written.

.... or if all the suckered American academics were right, it would be 'Flashman' by George MacDonald Fraser'.

Aren;t these all a little modern to be classed the most influential? I would have thought that some early satire might.

Or how about Petronius' 'Satyricon'?

And most important, obviously. Sorry.

>Aren;t these all a little modern to be classed the most influential? I would have thought that some early satire might.
>
>Or how about Petronius' 'Satyricon'?

For 'influential' I'd say 'Job" (as in 'the book of'), as the unfortunate antics of this Pooter-esque figure encouraged the uncomplaining forbearance of untold millions.

>........Tristan Shandy

Actually, it's Tristram.

>Aren;t these all a little modern to be classed the most influential? I would have thought that some early satire might.
>
>Or how about Petronius' 'Satyricon'?

The name of the thread is "Most important comic novel of all time." The novel is a relatively recent literary form, ruling out the things you mention.

Apart from the fact that I already acknowledged the influential/important mistake, that the first novel was written in about 300 BC and was inspired by Xenophon, and that you just want to have a pop, thanks.

I did get the first bit wrong, though. Sorry.

I've read 17 posts and no-one's said Catch-22.

In fact, you've annoyed me a little. A further example of the Roman novel is Seneca's 'Apocolocyntosis', a work which must be Neronian from references within the text.

On the Satyricon, I quote 'There have been many characterisations of the Satyricon, and for most of them there is some evidence in the work. It is seen as an early picaresque novel like 'Gil Blas', 'Guzman d'Alfarache' or even 'Don Quixote', the parody on knightly romances being matched by the parody on the Odyssey which runs through the Satyricon'

If not the novel in its present form then, which I believe it to be, then certianly an early evolution of it tinged with Menippean satire.

'That's right'

Actually, I used to own 'Diary of a Nobody' on tape, read by Richard Briers. And it was smashing.

Well, I owned it for a numbner of two-week periods in a row, to be honest. But it's close.

Foiled! Tom Adams, I read every post here hoping no-one would say Catch 22, so that I could be the cleverest boy in class when I mentioned it. Seriously, best book ever - and all Heller's other stuff is well worth a read too, whatever anyone else tries to tell you.

It wasn't Tom Adams - it was andy33 - sorry mate. I'm pissed.

Thanks mate, but that was just about the only message I didn't send. Although you are right. Obiovusly.

Well you can't say Hitchhikers' without beforehand including Sirens of Titan, the novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr that "didn't influence" Douglas Adams. Perhaps benefitting from being one of Vonnegut's most conventional novels and featuring many themes that feature in HHGTG some twenty or so years its senior, and its author ironically survivng Mr DNA, long may he do so. My money's with you Mr Herring.

>My money's with you Mr Herring.

Boone is Mr Murdoch! I claim my £5.

Douglas Adams - The Hitchkiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, the Universe and Everything, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
Kingsley Amis - Lucky Jim, The Anti-Death League.
Nicholson Baker - The Mezzanine, The Fermata.
John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy, The Sot-Weed Factor.
Samuel Beckett - Murphy, Watt, Mercier and Camier.
Anthony Burgess - A Novel in Four Movements,Earthly Powers.
Italo Calvino - If On A Winter's Night A Traveller.
Cervantes - Don Quixote.
Don DeLillo - White Noise.
Gustave Flaubert - Bouvard and Pecuchet, Sentimental Education.
Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm.
Gunter Grass - The Tin Drum, The Rat.
Graham Greene - Travels with my Aunt, The Bomb Party, A Burnt-Out Case.
George and Weedon Grossmith - Diary of a Nobody.
Joseph Heller - Catch 22.
Eugene Ionesco - The Hermit.
James Joyce - Ulysses.
B.S.Johnson - Christie Malry's Own Double Entry.
Milan Kundera - Slowness, The Joke.
Michael Moorcock - The Final Programme, A Cure for Cancer, The English Assassin, The Condition of Muzak, The Entropy Tango, The Alchemist's Question.
Geoff Nicholson - Hunters and Gatherers.
George Orwell - Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Coming Up For Air.
Thomas Pynchon - Vineland, Gravity's Rainbow.
Rabelais - Gargantua-Pantagruel.
Raymond Queneau - Zazie on the Metro.
Robert Sheckley - Options, Dimension of Miracles, Mindswap.
John Sladek - The Muller-Fokker Effect, The Reproductive System, Roderick.
Lawrence Sterne - Tristram Shandy.
Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels.
John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces.
Boris Vian - Froth on the Daydream.
Voltaire - Candide.
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5, Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan.
David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest.
Keith Waterhouse - Billy Liar, Office Life
Nathanel West - Miss Lonleyhearts, The Day of the Locust.

Evans clearly wanted to be the cleverest boy in class much more than I did.

>Evans clearly wanted to be the cleverest boy in class much more than I did.

Didn't want to. Just am.

I thought Swift et al were too early?

I also think you forgot to mention Petronius' Satyricon.

>I thought Swift et al were too early?
>
>I also think you forgot to mention Petronius' Satyricon.

On Cervantes, Rabelais,Swift, Voltaire et al: none of their works were novels: they gradually became novels as later novelists (Diderot, Balzac, Flaubert, Gombrowicz, Vancura) took their inspiration from them, openly drew on them, integrating them into the history of the novel, or rather acknowledging them as the first building blocks in that history.
Petronius would be pushing it a bit.

on a purely chronological scale? Can't see it, myself. Especially not with the Renaissance and all.

The Perishers' Dotty Dictionary too.

>on a purely chronological scale? Can't see it, myself. Especially not with the Renaissance and all.

a) No, not purely chronological. At different phases in the evolution of the novel, different nations, as in a relay race, took the initiative: first Italy with Boccaccio, the great precursor; then France with Rabelais, and Spain with Cervantes and the picaresque novel; the English novel in the eighteenth century and then, towards the century's end, the German contribution, with Goethe; the nineteenth century, which belonged almost entirely to France, along with the Russian novel in the last third; then the twentieth century and its Central European adventure with Kafka, Musil, Broch and Gombrowicz.
b)What about the renaissance?

And when everybody woke up, the whole thread was ruined........

Most thorough guidebook to comic novels, anybody?

What about the renaissance? Well, apart from the fact that ancient texts once again became influential, I can't see what effect it might have had.

Plus, regardless of any influence it might have had (and because of its filthy content, it was considered unsophisticated), it was the first comic novel that there is. Which only adds to its importance. I can't think of any other way to describe it.

And as i said, Petronius pre-dated picaresque by a full 1700 years.

Are you going to say that Sophocles had no efect on tragedy as well?

>What about the renaissance? Well, apart from the fact that ancient texts once again became influential, I can't see what effect it might have had.
>
>Plus, regardless of any influence it might have had (and because of its filthy content, it was considered unsophisticated), it was the first comic novel that there is. Which only adds to its importance. I can't think of any other way to describe it.

Hang on,are you saying that the renaissance was a comic novel? Or are you back to Petronius again? I'm not arguing against the importance of the renaissance as an historical period, nor its importance in the development of the novel as a form.
Would you describe The Iliad as a novel?

NO, because it's a poem.

And also that it's a song that just happened to be written down.

>And also that it's a song that just happened to be written down.

OK, so what's Satyricon - not in its re-discovery, its interpretation, or its canonisation, but in Petronius' own context?

To Petronius? Well, he couldn't write poetry - he has several tries during the text - I think he means it to be a satirical work on Epicurean morality. Probably against raw emotions.

It certianly owes nothing to oral tradition. And we know Petronius existed. Which makes all comparisons to Homer futile.

It's the form that leads me to consider it a novel, almost identical to the structure we have today.

Anyway, Dorian Gray is similar to Encolpius in many ways. Most notably his strange combination of sophistication and filth.

>It's the form that leads me to consider it a novel, almost identical to the structure we have today.

OK, you've convinced me. Dogmatism isn't my aim.
Now, what about The Perishers' Dotty Dictionary?

It's clearly Jerome's Three Men In A Boat. Highly funny and highly influential.

But I'd also like to mention A Confederacy of Dunces at this point (again)...

In between clubbing, super models and orgies with Barrymore I've found the time to read these comic novels:

Gulliver's Travels, Candide, Huckleberry Finn, Billy Liar, The Tin Drum, Flaubert's Parrot, Dog Years, AT Swim Two Birds.

Great ways to keep regular forum bores off a thread - discuss Petronius at length. Should happen on more threads.

And if Gravity's Rainbow don't count as a comic novel nothing might as well do.

>>Nearly anything by Kurt Vonnegut
>
>Earlier stuff = better. Gets overdone after a while. Not his fault. Nuff said.

you prefer his earlier, funnier books then?

i dont know where slaughterhouse 5 falls chronologically but it is ace

as to most important comic novel i would say catch 22 by joseph heller

Lawrence Sterne's 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy'.

Easy.

>It's clearly Jerome's Three Men In A Boat.

I laughed until I was sick when the beaten tin-can causes fear.

Petronius was better on the radio.

Evans - thanks for giving me a reading list for the summer

My bets are (ands most have been mentioned already)

Some of the short stories of Guy De Maupassant
Confederacy of DUnces
What a Carve up
American Psycho
Anything by Shaun Hutson

Mr Evans, you must be easily amused if you rate either of those 2 Orwell novels as "comic".

And I would say "A Cool Million" is the funniest Nat West novel. "Day Of The Locust" is merely depressing.

"Crying Of Lot 49" should have been on your list as well. And what about Nabokov's "Pale Fire"? Made me laugh.

53 posts and no Evelyn Waugh? Not necessarily the winner, I grant you, but a bloody strong contender, particularly...

A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh

Spike Milligan's Puckoon. The partitioning of Ireland made amusing. And also jokes about wedding tackles.

>It's the form that leads me to consider it a novel, almost identical to the structure we have today.

A Model T Ford is a racing car?
A Greek Chorus is a TV narrator?
Paper planes are Apollo rockets?

The Haunted Study springs to mind as a much more coherent argument about novels than I can come up with in a lunchtime, as I'm officially "off duty", as far as lit-crit goes, until September. I see your point about Satyricon (although I don't actually agree with your argument for it) but I think the terminology involved in a good lit-crit argument is really inappropriate to this particular arena. Or I suppose we could apply Russian Formalism to the early works of Benny Hill if you want....

How about The Dandy?

Already mentioned: Diary of a Nobody, Pickwick, Tristram Shandy, Cold Comfort Farm, Hitchhiker's.

This month oi 'ave mostly been rereading and laughing uncontrollably at:
Scoop, & Decline and Fall, Evelyn Waugh.
Divorcing Jack and sequels, Colin Bateman.
Soul Music, Terry Pratchett, if only for the "swear he's Elvish" and "felonious monk" puns.

The book that has most recently made me *howl* with laughter, however, is not a comic novel. It's the "maths" chapter of Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark, which I had convinced myself I was remembering incorrectly - I reread it and it *still* reduced me to tears of pain and hilarity.

>How about The Dandy?

Sorry. Missed the "novel" bit.

Youth In Revolt by C.D Payne

People in this forum talking about Petronius? I think all my dreams have come true at once.....

Can we do Menander next?

It's not very comical (maybe in places), but I 've just finished Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. Anyone else like/rate it?

Do I get some kind of no-prize for being the first person to mention Terry Southern's The Magic Christian? Very funny ideed, although granted not the most important. Just wanted to make it hot for you all.
Oh, and thanks for motivating me to make Catch 22 my next read, it's been admonishing me with a READ ME! glare from my shleves for quite a while now.

Sorry but for the purposes of this thread, the novel began with Don Quixote. Although the one truly funny thing written before then that I've ever read is 'The Frogs'.
I don't get why Tristram Shandy is meant to be funny.
Other books that people have mentioned that I would have put in my list if I'd thought about it:
Candide - top cynical humour.
Catch 22.
3 Men in a Boat.

Books/writers that everyone seems to go on about on this forum that I haven't read: BS Johnson books.
Confederacy of Dunces by whoever.

Seems like they're genuinely under-rated as I've never heard them mentioned anywhere else.

Why it's obvious: The Fist Of Fun book.
Well, it's sort of like a novel - it uses words.

If we're going to broaden it to "books" in general - Woody Allen Complete Prose, Onion Our Dumb Century, Fist of Fun book, Seinfeld scripts book.

What is the word 'important' doing in this title, anyway? What's wrong with 'best'? Or better still 'funniest'? Important as in, if all the comic books had an election, 'Three Men In A Boat' would be Prime Minister and 'Catch 22' would be king? Wodehouse hasn't even been mentioned yet, which is astonishing, and it must be because nobody can bring themselves to say 'Thank You, Jeeves' is 'important'. It's bloody funny, though. And as a canon, the Wodehouse books have in some way affected at least half of all the comedy written since, in any medium. That's an actual fact, I researched it very carefully before I wrote it, using statistics and Catherine Clarke from the Oxford English Dictionary.

Most Important Sprinter should be an olympic event.

We should have a 'Most important thing anyone's ever said in a pub' topic.

>What is the word 'important' doing in this title, anyway? What's wrong with 'best'? Or >better still 'funniest'?

Because I copied it from the "comedy film" thread.
But something could be funny without being influential, so 'important' sort of combines being funny (which is the most important thing) with influential. Also maybe it includes commenting on society. Hence, 'Dr. Strangelove' was important because not only was it funny, it drew attention to the madness of Mutually Assured Destruction. Or something.

the fall and rise of reginald perrin. blimey it's good.

the fall and rise of reginald perrin. blimey it's good.

>Mr Evans, you must be easily amused if you rate either of those 2 Orwell novels as "comic".
>
>And I would say "A Cool Million" is the funniest Nat West novel. "Day Of The Locust" is merely depressing.
>
>"Crying Of Lot 49" should have been on your list as well. And what about Nabokov's "Pale Fire"? Made me laugh.

1) Orwell is funny because precisely because he is so lumbering.
2) Of West's four novels, I find A Cool Million the least satisfying. Not being American, the parody of the Alger Hiss legend only theoretically funny at novel length. The Day of the Locust is, as you say, a very bleak book. But also very funny - check out the Tom Mix parody.
3) When it comes to Pynchon, I think the longer the book, the greater the cumulative effect of his absurdities, a sort of exponential comedy growth. The Crying of Lot 49 is great, but a bit short for this effect to really kick in, I'd say.
4) Pale Fire I'll give you.

Alfred Jarry, 'The Supermale'
Kenneth Patchen, 'Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer'
Bruce Robinson, 'The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman'