Catch 22. I've read it perhaps a dozen times and will likely read it again soon. And it always has the same impact. Heller was a keen observer of life, as well as a voyeur of the future of America.
I first read Catch-22 when I was living in Japan, and read most of it while riding the train to work. Americans are expected by the Japanese to be loud and obnoxious, and while I routinely tried to buck that stereotype, I’m sure everyone on that train—Japanese or no—found my full-throated laughter loud and obnoxious.
And while I’ve never laughed harder at a book, Catch-22 is also one of the few books that has brought me to tears—the revelation of Snowden’s terrible secret (& source of Yossarian’s sorrow & rage) is among the most heartbreaking moments in American literature.
Of course most of Wodehouse is a given, but every time I reread Brideshead Revisited I laugh out loud at what a sardonic treasure Charles Ryder’s father is:
“My dear boy, how good to see you again so very soon. How long have you been away?”
Jan 21, 2022·edited Jan 21, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
Oh, there's several: Thurber always yields delights: but Terry Pratchett's long project to send up the tropes of fantasy that morphed into a keen view of modern life, Diskworld, always gets me to crack up somewhere in any of the whole corpus: as well as nod sadly. "Small Gods" is my most recent reread...He's so stuffed with gags, I never know where it will strike me funny.
J Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces", Stella Gibbon's "Cold Comfort Farm" will always drag out a chuckle: : and the image of Good Scout Wesley rolling the corpse of his Confederate ancestor ("General Flintrock Poker Sash") out the side door to get to the Coke machine first at his mother's long delayed Teacher college graduation, not knowing the "General" had expired, in Flannery O'Connor's "A Late Encounter with the Enemy",(which contains as good rendition of the falsity of Southern Heritage and it's relationship to Hollywood movies as one might wish) stays in my mind.
Big ups to Toole: not only is that book dizzing in its bizarrerie, silliness, obvious love for NOLA, ruthless in its self-flagellation, & keen sense of social satire -- both Toole & Reilly are medievalists, & I know a dozen dozen medevalists who nurse the same weird anti-modern grievances as Reilly.
Also "The Society for Moorish Dignity" could not be a better pre-satire of any number of wack "woke" tone-deaf white responses to the BLM summer...
I couldn't help but think of Reilly when I first read the yobbo styling himself 'Vox Dei'—though I soon learned that Reilly was smarter, less delusional, and likely more attractive.
O'Brian's columns were very funny and hold up amazingly well. My favorite was the series about the Brother, a pompous know it all who keeps everyone in his sister's boarding house completely under his thumb. As far as writers who make me laugh goes, Kingsley Amis consistently makes me laugh out loud. Girl, 20, is hysterically funny in my opinion, so much so I've read it twice.
For me it's "My Life and Hard Times" which always gets a laugh no matter how often I read it. Particularly "The Night the Bed Fell." Then there is "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Certainly the first third, same with the movie.
Love the Night the Bed Fell. The Night the Ghost Got In as well. It does highlight Roy's point that some level of physicality helps the humor stay fresh.
I do like grandpa in all these stories, The third man up Missionary Ridge. Always a little confused but interesting. Didn't he shoot a cop in the Night the Bed Fell?
The Night the Bed Fell was given to us in 7th grade by an English teacher who was from Thurber's hometown of Columbus, Ohio -- I think she grew up on his street. I never had read anything so funny. I marveled that such a circus could exist on paper. Ahh, that teacher -- she must have been at least 60 in 1985 -- long gone now. She was great. Also introduced me to Saki, a different kind of funny. I think the Thurber was passed out on xeroxes of her own doing while Saki was in our unwieldy hardcover "American Classics" textbook -- but that book had a million stories, so full credit, it was her decision to assign Saki.
Yes, another vote here for The Night the Bed Fell. Must have read that dozens of times as a kid and it cracked me up every time, I wonder if it would have that effect today?
Also from Thurber, can't remember the name: He's staying at a friends house, gets up in the morning to shave, drops something down the sink, hilarity ensues. I'd love to read that again, if I could just remember where it is.
Jan 21, 2022·edited Jan 21, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
In addition to numbering the jokes, there should be numbered phrases that recall a certain time and region when/in which the risibles would jocularly nudge the extended joke/story along. Twain did it a lot. My old boss, who grew up in Indiana, could quote James Whitcomb Riley (he called him 'Jim") for hours, and what I enjoyed the most were the turns of phrase that stretched but did not break the boundaries of the journey. I cannot bring a single one to mind right now, but "to be well and truly" works. I'll toss this one on the pyre:
"so much more than merely"
to kickstart this assembled moblet – add yer own below.
Dang, forgot the Always Read All the Comments Before Commenting rule, but I dropped a similar note above. The MST3K flick was Season 2, Episode 2, THE SIDEHACKERS.
They continued calling back to it, imitating Hoke Howell's hillbilly drawl, for years afterwards ("That was Number TWO!")
I think the (non-)punchline is "So then the new guy calls out 'S10E9' -- and the room is silent. And the old-timer leans down & whispers, 'They're still sore that Sci-Fi took over...'"
Jan 21, 2022·edited Jan 21, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
Shulman delivers the goods. Actually, the Dobie Gillis stories collected under the title 𝘐 𝘞𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘛𝘦𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘋𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘧, in which the diminutive hero recounts his romantic triumphs and failures from the ages of thirteen to thirty (although, oddly, he appears to remain firmly affixed throughout in a kind of endless 1958), are pretty damn hilarious.
Shulman did humor pieces for his college paper. A talent spotter from Doubleday got in touch with him, and between them they cobbled a number of these pieces together for Shulman’s first novel (set on a campus, natch), 𝘉𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘰𝘵 𝘉𝘰𝘺 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘊𝘩𝘦𝘦𝘬, published in 1943, when the author was twenty-four. Excerpt (the protagonist is about to depart for university):
****
“Aw, you’re not so dumb,” I protested.
“Yes I be,” she declared. “I don’t know no more than your old houn’ dog Edmund layin’ over there by the stove.”
I jumped up from the table. “Now you just be careful what you’re saying about Edmund. I don’t mean to have that dog run down while I’m here. He’s a mighty smart dog.” I whistled to him. “Play dead, Edmund,” I said. “See,” I told Mother. “Look how he obeys. All four feet sticking up in the air.”
“He ain’t playin’, son,” Mother said softly. “I didn’t want to tell you. He’s been dead since Friday.”
Edmund dead! I couldn’t believe it. Why, only last Friday I had seen him happily flushing grouse. In his excitement he had flushed too many, and we had had to call a plumber. But it was all fixed now, and Edmund was forgiven. Naturally, I had punished him, but—No. No! I couldn’t have—
“Mother!” I cried.
“Yes, son,” she said. “He died right after. That last time you ran over him with the car did it.”
As if his acting, standup and banjo artistry aren’t enough, Steve Martin’s “Pure Drivel” has a laugh out loud line on every page. Sure, it’s the same line but it’s really funny.
Many books made me laugh out loud, but I haven't revisited any of them to see if they still do. Catch-22 was one of the few I can remember, and, besides Thurber, writers like P.G. Wodehouse (e.g., "The Truth About George"), J.P. Donleavy ("The Unexpurgated Code") and almost anything by S.J. Perelman made me laugh the first time around. My problem is my old brain is such a sieve these days I just can't remember them.
My dad had a completely different (and far less funny) ending for the Old Comedians' Club (nobody laughs at "36" and the guest asks why--"He's not telling it right"). The only Myles columns I know, the Keats and Chapman stories, always work https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Various_Lives_of_Keats_and_Chapman/gEVbJ-pexT4C?hl=en Mortimer's examples below, and the weird moments in Pynchon novels where he becomes uncontrollably silly, like the "Chinese joke" in V.
oh my gosh, my granddad used to tell a version of the Old Comedians' Club joke - one that takes place in a prison, where the guys are yelling out numbers in the cafeteria to uproarious laughter. an old con tells a confused newbie that the guys yell out numbers from a joke book since they're not allowed to tell jokes. the newbie yells "47!" and the room falls silent. the old con shakes his head and says "i guess some guys just can't tell a joke."
That version gets a workout in the 1969 Ross Hagan/Michael Pataki sleaze fest SIDEHACKERS (aka FIVE THE HARD WAY). The movie is terrible and gets a well-deserved savaging on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
They neglected to watch the whole thing before buying the rights, didn't see the rape/murder three-quarters in, and later were shame-faced, eliding it and saying 'For those of you playing at home, Rita is dead.'.
Take this with a big ol’ helping of salt, but several of the footnotes in INFINITE JEST do that for me. Two in particular: (1) Avril’s letter to Orin about springtime at the academy and a bumblebee so large it sounded like a tuba; and (2) Orin’s responding with a form letter from his football team about reponses to fan letters, signed “Jethro Bodine.”
I'd completely forgotten, but Woody Allen's collections of stories were hilarious. Before the fall, of course. And I did read some of those more than once and still laughed. One story I can actually remember is "The Kugelmass Episode" where a professor gets magically transported into "Madame Bovary."
Didn't he do one where two guys who play chess by mail are arguing about the positions of the pieces on the chessboard? I know, it doesn't sound funny when I describe it like that, but man, that was hilarious when I read it.
Catch 22. I've read it perhaps a dozen times and will likely read it again soon. And it always has the same impact. Heller was a keen observer of life, as well as a voyeur of the future of America.
I first read Catch-22 when I was living in Japan, and read most of it while riding the train to work. Americans are expected by the Japanese to be loud and obnoxious, and while I routinely tried to buck that stereotype, I’m sure everyone on that train—Japanese or no—found my full-throated laughter loud and obnoxious.
And while I’ve never laughed harder at a book, Catch-22 is also one of the few books that has brought me to tears—the revelation of Snowden’s terrible secret (& source of Yossarian’s sorrow & rage) is among the most heartbreaking moments in American literature.
"Where's the John, Milton?"
“Want eat! Want EVERYBODY eat!”
"...said 'Oh, well, what the hell' and flew into a mountain."
Of course most of Wodehouse is a given, but every time I reread Brideshead Revisited I laugh out loud at what a sardonic treasure Charles Ryder’s father is:
“My dear boy, how good to see you again so very soon. How long have you been away?”
“15 months.”
“Really? It seems a much shorter time.”
Oh, there's several: Thurber always yields delights: but Terry Pratchett's long project to send up the tropes of fantasy that morphed into a keen view of modern life, Diskworld, always gets me to crack up somewhere in any of the whole corpus: as well as nod sadly. "Small Gods" is my most recent reread...He's so stuffed with gags, I never know where it will strike me funny.
J Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces", Stella Gibbon's "Cold Comfort Farm" will always drag out a chuckle: : and the image of Good Scout Wesley rolling the corpse of his Confederate ancestor ("General Flintrock Poker Sash") out the side door to get to the Coke machine first at his mother's long delayed Teacher college graduation, not knowing the "General" had expired, in Flannery O'Connor's "A Late Encounter with the Enemy",(which contains as good rendition of the falsity of Southern Heritage and it's relationship to Hollywood movies as one might wish) stays in my mind.
Big ups to Toole: not only is that book dizzing in its bizarrerie, silliness, obvious love for NOLA, ruthless in its self-flagellation, & keen sense of social satire -- both Toole & Reilly are medievalists, & I know a dozen dozen medevalists who nurse the same weird anti-modern grievances as Reilly.
Also "The Society for Moorish Dignity" could not be a better pre-satire of any number of wack "woke" tone-deaf white responses to the BLM summer...
I couldn't help but think of Reilly when I first read the yobbo styling himself 'Vox Dei'—though I soon learned that Reilly was smarter, less delusional, and likely more attractive.
O'Brian's columns were very funny and hold up amazingly well. My favorite was the series about the Brother, a pompous know it all who keeps everyone in his sister's boarding house completely under his thumb. As far as writers who make me laugh goes, Kingsley Amis consistently makes me laugh out loud. Girl, 20, is hysterically funny in my opinion, so much so I've read it twice.
For me it's "My Life and Hard Times" which always gets a laugh no matter how often I read it. Particularly "The Night the Bed Fell." Then there is "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Certainly the first third, same with the movie.
Love the Night the Bed Fell. The Night the Ghost Got In as well. It does highlight Roy's point that some level of physicality helps the humor stay fresh.
I do like grandpa in all these stories, The third man up Missionary Ridge. Always a little confused but interesting. Didn't he shoot a cop in the Night the Bed Fell?
The opening scene in Fear and Loathing is always funny. Something sbout the Barstow reference, perhaps.
The Night the Bed Fell was given to us in 7th grade by an English teacher who was from Thurber's hometown of Columbus, Ohio -- I think she grew up on his street. I never had read anything so funny. I marveled that such a circus could exist on paper. Ahh, that teacher -- she must have been at least 60 in 1985 -- long gone now. She was great. Also introduced me to Saki, a different kind of funny. I think the Thurber was passed out on xeroxes of her own doing while Saki was in our unwieldy hardcover "American Classics" textbook -- but that book had a million stories, so full credit, it was her decision to assign Saki.
Yes, another vote here for The Night the Bed Fell. Must have read that dozens of times as a kid and it cracked me up every time, I wonder if it would have that effect today?
Also from Thurber, can't remember the name: He's staying at a friends house, gets up in the morning to shave, drops something down the sink, hilarity ensues. I'd love to read that again, if I could just remember where it is.
Saki's great.
The opening of Saki's "The Storyteller" is merciless. "Thurber was passed out on xeroxes" is pretty funny too!
Sounds like Thurber was at a good party.
(You just sent me to reread The Storyteller. So fun.)
In addition to numbering the jokes, there should be numbered phrases that recall a certain time and region when/in which the risibles would jocularly nudge the extended joke/story along. Twain did it a lot. My old boss, who grew up in Indiana, could quote James Whitcomb Riley (he called him 'Jim") for hours, and what I enjoyed the most were the turns of phrase that stretched but did not break the boundaries of the journey. I cannot bring a single one to mind right now, but "to be well and truly" works. I'll toss this one on the pyre:
"so much more than merely"
to kickstart this assembled moblet – add yer own below.
Edited to add: "42!"
After Donald Trump, "45" will always be a joke.
Yup. And '45 rpm' now means 'Trump repealed presidential meaning', or something...
FDR became president in ’33. TFG was # 45, and when Biden took office he was 78. My head is spinning.
Cartoon seen the other year: schoolboy and father in elevator; kid says to parent: “Dad, why don’t buildings have forty-fifth floors?”
I heard a variant of the "Old Comedians' Club" told in a MST3K movie (in the movie itself IIRC), but can't remember which one.
Ooh, that works too! Behold:
"Ancient MST3K Fanclubbers Home"
"S313!" one calls, & the parlor rings with guffaws."
Nice, no?
Dang, forgot the Always Read All the Comments Before Commenting rule, but I dropped a similar note above. The MST3K flick was Season 2, Episode 2, THE SIDEHACKERS.
They continued calling back to it, imitating Hoke Howell's hillbilly drawl, for years afterwards ("That was Number TWO!")
Thank you!
I think the (non-)punchline is "So then the new guy calls out 'S10E9' -- and the room is silent. And the old-timer leans down & whispers, 'They're still sore that Sci-Fi took over...'"
Max Shulman's "The Feather Merchants"- or, actually, anything by him pre-Dobie Gillis...
Shulman delivers the goods. Actually, the Dobie Gillis stories collected under the title 𝘐 𝘞𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘛𝘦𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘋𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘧, in which the diminutive hero recounts his romantic triumphs and failures from the ages of thirteen to thirty (although, oddly, he appears to remain firmly affixed throughout in a kind of endless 1958), are pretty damn hilarious.
I've been hearing good things about Shulman for years. About time I caught up!
Shulman did humor pieces for his college paper. A talent spotter from Doubleday got in touch with him, and between them they cobbled a number of these pieces together for Shulman’s first novel (set on a campus, natch), 𝘉𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘰𝘵 𝘉𝘰𝘺 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘊𝘩𝘦𝘦𝘬, published in 1943, when the author was twenty-four. Excerpt (the protagonist is about to depart for university):
****
“Aw, you’re not so dumb,” I protested.
“Yes I be,” she declared. “I don’t know no more than your old houn’ dog Edmund layin’ over there by the stove.”
I jumped up from the table. “Now you just be careful what you’re saying about Edmund. I don’t mean to have that dog run down while I’m here. He’s a mighty smart dog.” I whistled to him. “Play dead, Edmund,” I said. “See,” I told Mother. “Look how he obeys. All four feet sticking up in the air.”
“He ain’t playin’, son,” Mother said softly. “I didn’t want to tell you. He’s been dead since Friday.”
Edmund dead! I couldn’t believe it. Why, only last Friday I had seen him happily flushing grouse. In his excitement he had flushed too many, and we had had to call a plumber. But it was all fixed now, and Edmund was forgiven. Naturally, I had punished him, but—No. No! I couldn’t have—
“Mother!” I cried.
“Yes, son,” she said. “He died right after. That last time you ran over him with the car did it.”
As if his acting, standup and banjo artistry aren’t enough, Steve Martin’s “Pure Drivel” has a laugh out loud line on every page. Sure, it’s the same line but it’s really funny.
Many books made me laugh out loud, but I haven't revisited any of them to see if they still do. Catch-22 was one of the few I can remember, and, besides Thurber, writers like P.G. Wodehouse (e.g., "The Truth About George"), J.P. Donleavy ("The Unexpurgated Code") and almost anything by S.J. Perelman made me laugh the first time around. My problem is my old brain is such a sieve these days I just can't remember them.
"Something to Say" helped my 17-year-old self recognize that the tortured writer shtick was lame.
Actually it made it sound even more fun to me!
You're a better writer.
tsk
My dad had a completely different (and far less funny) ending for the Old Comedians' Club (nobody laughs at "36" and the guest asks why--"He's not telling it right"). The only Myles columns I know, the Keats and Chapman stories, always work https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Various_Lives_of_Keats_and_Chapman/gEVbJ-pexT4C?hl=en Mortimer's examples below, and the weird moments in Pynchon novels where he becomes uncontrollably silly, like the "Chinese joke" in V.
oh my gosh, my granddad used to tell a version of the Old Comedians' Club joke - one that takes place in a prison, where the guys are yelling out numbers in the cafeteria to uproarious laughter. an old con tells a confused newbie that the guys yell out numbers from a joke book since they're not allowed to tell jokes. the newbie yells "47!" and the room falls silent. the old con shakes his head and says "i guess some guys just can't tell a joke."
I’ve also hears the prison variation, but the punchline was the prisoner who yells out “17” and gets silence saying “I never could do accents.”
I laughed at Roy's version, and it just keeps getting better!
…or the new guy gets silence, asks the man helping him to try it, at which point that guy just frowns and says 'I donʼt do dialect.'.
I know that one! Hard to choose between them.
This one's better, it gives you that nice reaction of "But wait.. how could he..." and throws you off balance while you're laughing.
This is the version I heard in that old (possibly MST3K-spoofed) movie
My dad used to tell that version, but I think this one's funnier, takes the absurdity one step farther.
That version gets a workout in the 1969 Ross Hagan/Michael Pataki sleaze fest SIDEHACKERS (aka FIVE THE HARD WAY). The movie is terrible and gets a well-deserved savaging on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
They neglected to watch the whole thing before buying the rights, didn't see the rape/murder three-quarters in, and later were shame-faced, eliding it and saying 'For those of you playing at home, Rita is dead.'.
Take this with a big ol’ helping of salt, but several of the footnotes in INFINITE JEST do that for me. Two in particular: (1) Avril’s letter to Orin about springtime at the academy and a bumblebee so large it sounded like a tuba; and (2) Orin’s responding with a form letter from his football team about reponses to fan letters, signed “Jethro Bodine.”
I'd completely forgotten, but Woody Allen's collections of stories were hilarious. Before the fall, of course. And I did read some of those more than once and still laughed. One story I can actually remember is "The Kugelmass Episode" where a professor gets magically transported into "Madame Bovary."
Yep. And Robert Benchley, who clearly i gluenced Woody.
"I shot a moose once..."
Oh. And let us not forget the complete works of Arnold Schnabel, for multiple transportations into multiple bad novels...
Didn't he do one where two guys who play chess by mail are arguing about the positions of the pieces on the chessboard? I know, it doesn't sound funny when I describe it like that, but man, that was hilarious when I read it.
Yeah that one. And at the end of it, one of the codgers switches to Scrabble and claims a phenomenal first word score...
"chased by the hairy irregular verb tener."
Red Sky at Morning where the kids come across the body of a decomposing horse in the ditch.
Definitely has the element of action involved with the humor.
I had to read that for my freshman high school English