What are the Funniest Classic Works of Literature You Have Read?

[Red Terror]

I like Moliere's Misanthrope and Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. They were both hilariously entertaining. I have before me, right now, Evelyn Waugh's Scoop which many people declare to be a satrical and comical masterpiece. What do you guys say your favorites are?

[qimissung]

I found The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner to be surprisingly funny (in places ).

[MANICHAEAN]

"Scoop" was a classic.

One of my favourites.

[Jackson Richardson]

I found Scoop very funny indeed, at least the scenes set in England. I recently saw on another message board the comment that the African scenes are racist. Waugh's personal attitude was very reactionary but he is rarely direct in expressing it.

I think Red Terror would enjoy Waugh's earlier Vile Bodies, a considerably darker book than Scoop.

[Leopard]

Dickens's The Pickwick Papers and the Alice books by Lewis Carroll.

[Emil Miller]

One person's sense of humour will often differ from another but, for my part, as somone who has read and laughed heartily at humourous writers such as P G Wodehouse, Scoop literally left my sides aching.

[Red Terror]

One person's sense of humour will often differ from another but, for my part, as somone who has read and laughed heartily at humourous writers such as P G Wodehouse, Scoop literally left my sides aching.

I never read any of Wodehouse's books but have heard his name bandied about a lot from Isaac Asimov, Gore Vidal, Alexander Cockburn, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, among others. Pardon my ignorance, but which is his best novel? Is it The Code of the Woosters? As someone new to Wodehouse, can I begin to read any of his novel in any order?

By the way, I was reading a book of interviews of Gore Vidal and he said Scoop was the funniest book he has ever read and he used to re-read it once a year.


I found Scoop very funny indeed, at least the scenes set in England. I recently saw on another message board the comment that the African scenes are racist. Waugh's personal attitude was very reactionary but he is rarely direct in expressing it.

I think Red Terror would enjoy Waugh's earlier Vile Bodies, a considerably darker book than Scoop.

Thanks, pal. How are you doing these days? I hope you are well.

[stlukesguild]

Laurence Sterne- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
William Faulkner- As I Lay Dying
Gore Vidal- Myra Breckinridge
John Kennedy Toole- A Confederacy of Dunces
Flannery O'Connor- Short Story Collection: A Good Man is Hard to Find (especially Good Country People)
Donald Barthleme- Miss Mandible
Philip Roth- Portnoy's Complaint
Nathanael West- Miss Lonelyhearts
Joseph Heller- Catch 22
Jonathan Swift- A Modest Proposal
Oscar Wilde- Importance of Being Earnest
Ambrose Bierce- Devil's Dictionary
Franz Kafka- Metamorphosis (obviously, I have a dark sense of humor)
Mark Twain, Don Quixote, Chaucer, Rabelais, Moliere, etc...

[JCamilo]

Voltaire, not only his short stories, but more serious stuff. There are momments in the Dictionary that are like Monty Phyton sketches.
Lord Byron Don Juan is very funny.
Machado de Assis short stories and The Alienist are quite funny. Monteiro Lobato children stories have several momments of irony. Master and Marguerita is quite funny. Machiavelli Belphegor is funny as hell.

[siobankelley]

Ok, Che ... Assuming you know Shakespeare...I'll point you toward a more obscure Restoration piece LONDON CUCKOLDS by Edward Ravenscroft. The Restoration is filled with froth...Sheridan, Wycherly (Wycherley? sic) THE COUNTRY WIFE, which is based on Moliere's School for wives. Moliere, you can't go wrong. SCAPIN is one of the standard Moliere's that gets down regularly. Probably one in performance somewhere in the world while you are reading this. Just pick any play of his and read., Etherege's THE MAN OF MODE, Congreve's WAY OF THE WORLD is good. THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS by Carlo Goldoni is a riot. That should get your belly rolling with laughter.

Anybody on here of a mind to discuss, opine or share experiences directing, performing, designing, viewing Shakespeare. I'm retired, bored and looking for intelligent discourse to keep my brain combed.

[Danik 2016]

Guess I go with the flow. All funny Dicken´s characters, Mark Twain, Moliere are the ones I can remember at first thought.

As for ironic Classic fiction the realistic novels and short stories of Machado de Assis come first, The Patriot (Lima Barreto), Gullivers Travels, everything I know by Kafka,Lord of the Flies (William Goldin).

[Jackson Richardson]

Anybody on here of a mind to discuss, opine or share experiences directing, performing, designing, viewing Shakespeare. I'm retired, bored and looking for intelligent discourse to keep my brain combed.

Hello.

Start a new thread somewhere and I'm sure you'll get lots of responses. But here you will only get people interested in the this thread.

Good luck

[theycallmemommy]

I think Jane Austen is funny in a subtle, snarky way. I loved D.E. Stevenson's Miss Buncle's Book. Subtle, British humor. I really want to read Doctor Thorne by Trollope, I've heard good things about that. I don't read a lot of classics that are humorous to ME, at least.

[Jackson Richardson]

Thanks, pal. How are you doing these days? I hope you are well.

That’s kind of you, Red. Coping, coping.

From what I know of you, you might well find P G Wodehouse too gentle. But for what it’s worth, The Code of the Woosters is good, but it is a sequel to Right Ho. Jeeves! which has one particularly funny chapter describing the prize giving at Market Snodsbury grammar school, when the teetotaler prize giver has overdone the Dutch courage beforehand.

I think Red would like Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest. I no longer laugh as I just quote lots of it from memory. It has a definitely dark side. Eg:

Jack: I have lost both my parents, Lady Bracknell.

Lady Bracknell: To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune, Mr Worthing. To lose two looks like carelessness.

[mortalterror]

423BC Aristophanes writes Clouds
422BC Aristophanes writes Wasps
421BC Aristophanes writes Peace
414BC Aristophanes writes Birds
411BC Aristophanes writes Lysistrata
411BC Aristophanes writes Thesmophoriazusae
317BC Menander writes The Grouch
234–184 BC Plautus writes The Pot of Gold, Amphytrion, The Haunted House, Miles Gloriosus, The Menaechmus Twins, and Pseudolus
166BC Terence writes the Girl from Andros
165BC Terence writes The Mother in Law
163BC Terence writes The Self-Tormenter
161BC Terence writes Phormio and Eunuchus
160BCTerence writes The Brothers
60 Petronius writes Satyricon
160 Lucian writes True History
1400 Geoffrey Chaucer writes Canterbury Tales
1470 Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini publishes his Facetiae the greatest Renaissance joke book
1498 Triboulet becomes court jester of France
1501 Stańczyk becomes court jester of Poland
1510 Hermann Bote writes Eulenspiegel
1532 Rabelais writes Gargantua and Pantagruel
1554 Lazarillo de Tormes written by Anonymous
1565 Andrew Boorde compiles the Jests of Scoggan
1566 The Merie Tales of Skelton published
1583-1585 Richard Tarlton is comic for the Queen's Men
1589 Christopher Marlowe writes The Jew of Malta
1592 Shakespeare writes The Comedy of Errors based on a work by Plautus
1593 Shakespeare writes The Taming of the Shrew
1594 William Kempe joins The Lord Chamberlain's Men
1597 Shakespeare writes Henry IV part I
1598 Shakespeare writes Henry IV part II
1599 Shakespeare writes Much Ado About Nothing
1600 Shakespeare writes The Merry Wives of Windsor, Robert Armin joins Lord Chamberlain's Men
1602 Shakespeare writes Twelfth Night
1603 Shakespeare writes Measure for Measure
1605 Cervantes writes Don Quixote
1606 Ben Jonson writes Volpone
1626 Francisco de Quevedo writes The Swindler
1664 Moliere writes Tartuffe
1675 William Wycherley writes The Country Wife
1676 George Etherege writes The Man of Mode based on his friend John Wilmot
1677 Aphra Behn writes The Rover
1684 John Wilmot writes Sodom, or the Quinetessence of Debauchery
1697 John Vanbrugh writes The Provoked Wife
1700 William Congreve writes The Way of the World
1707 George Farquhar writes the Beaux Stratagem
1722 Ludvig Holberg writes Jeppe of the Hill
1728 John Gay writes The Beggar's Opera
1729 John Swift writes A Modest Proposal
1730 Marivaux writes The Game of Love and Chance
1738 Harry Woodward joins David Garrick's acting company at Drury Lane
1743 Carlo Goldoni writes The Servant of Two Masters
1759 Voltaire writes Candide
1761 Carlo Gozzi writes Love For Three Oranges
1764 Thomas Weston acts at Drury Lane
1773 Oliver Goldsmith writes She Stoops to Conquer starring Ned Shuter
1777 Richard Sheridan writes The School for Scandal and Thomas King stars in it
1780 Denis Diderot writes Jacques the Fatalist
1818 Thomas Love Peacock writes Nightmare Abbey parodying his friends Shelley and Byron
1836 George Buchner writes Leonce and Lena
1842 Nicolai Gogol writes The Inspector General
1876 Mark Twain writes Tom Sawyer
1878 Gilbert and Sullivan premiere H.M.S. Pinafore
1879 Gilbert and Sullivan premiere The Pirates of Penzance
1884 Mark Twain writes Huckleberry Finn
1885 Gilbert and Sullivan premiere The Mikado
1889 Jerome K. Jerome writes Three Men in a Boat
1892 Oscar Wilde writes Lady Windermere's Fan
1894 George Bernard Shaw writes Candida and Arms and the Man
1895 Oscar Wilde writes The Importance of Being Earnest
1911 Ambrose Bierce writes The Devil's Dictionary
1912 George Bernard Shaw writes Pygmalion
1961 Joseph Heller writes Catch-22
1972 Hunter S. Thompson writes Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
1973 William Goldman writes The Princess Bride
1979 Douglas Adams publishes the novelization of his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[mortalterror]

Funniest of those: Catch-22, Huckleberry Finn, plays of Aristophanes, The Farce of Sodom.

[Silas Thorne]

I think maybe Catch 22 or Angela's Ashes for me.

[Red Terror]

That’s kind of you, Red. Coping, coping.

From what I know of you, you might well find P G Wodehouse too gentle. But for what it’s worth, The Code of the Woosters is good, but it is a sequel to Right Ho. Jeeves! which has one particularly funny chapter describing the prize giving at Market Snodsbury grammar school, when the teetotaler prize giver has overdone the Dutch courage beforehand.

I think Red would like Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest. I no longer laugh as I just quote lots of it from memory. It has a definitely dark side. Eg:

Jack: I have lost both my parents, Lady Bracknell.

Lady Bracknell: To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune, Mr Worthing. To lose two looks like carelessness.

Thanks. Good.
I read that Wilde play in college. I remember it had a great deal of wit and I also remember liking it a lot and had a good time reading it.

By the way, I just finished reading the first chapter of Scoop. I expect to continue. Ciao.

[Jackson Richardson]

More from Ernest:

The good ended happily and the bad ended unhappily. That is the meaning of fiction.

Brilliant.

I can't imagine you'd care for a novel about English eccentric aristocrats (although with scenes on the Communist side of the Spanish Civil War) so you might not like Nancy Mitfords's The Pursuit of Love.

However Nancy's sister, Jessica, thought it was very funny as an account of their childhood and Jessica was a member of the American Communist Party during the McMarthy era, so you might be interested.

(Two of their other sisters were both Fascists. The Mitfords were an extraordinary family.)



1818 Thomas Love Peacock writes Nightmare Abbey parodying his friends Shelley and Byron...

1878 Gilbert and Sullivan premiere H.M.S. Pinafore
1879 Gilbert and Sullivan premiere The Pirates of Penzance..

1885 Gilbert and Sullivan premiere The Mikado

I don't think mortalterror and I have the same sense of humour (no Jane Austen) but I'm glad to see a mention of Thomas Love Peacock who I read when a teen (I was an atypical teenager) and I really like. Nightmare Abbey is the one I'd recommend. He probably appeals to me because of his combination of conservative social tastes with radical political sympathies. They are far from realistic novels, but with a definite ironic take on life.

And Gilbert has a far darker and cynical side than his cosy fuddy duddy reputation:

"I always voted at my party's call:
I never thought of thinking for myself at all." (Pinafore)

"I often wonder in my artless Japanese way why it is I am so much more attractive than other women. Can this be vanity? No! Nature glories in her beauties. I am a child of Nature and I take after my mother." (Mikado)

[YesNo]

I found Thomas Love Peacock's Nightmare Abbey online and have been reading it. I don't know why it seemed to say "Read Me!" in mortalterror's list, but I do enjoy the "melancholy".

I also thought Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was rather funny, but I never finished it. Anita Loos' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is pretty good. Another piece of humor written by a female. I don't know if it is a "classic" work.

[Danik 2016]

I enjoyed "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratched
A funny and serious reflection about the forces of good x the forces of evil.:Angel_anim: x :devil:

[Goodman Brown]

Something I read awhile back is a short story by Ohenry, I thought it hilarious because of the situation these two kidnappers put them selves,,,, Ransom for Red Chief,,, short story,,,,,,

[JCamilo]

I enjoyed "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratched
A funny and serious reflection about the forces of good x the forces of evil.:Angel_anim: x :devil:

Pratched must be blamed for all comedy in Good Omens, his Discworld series is basically what would happen if Monty Python wrote a typical fantasy series. While Gaiman has a touch for irony (a Chesterton fan after all), he does not have that rythim for comedy.

[JBI]

Don Quixote probably -- the humor is consistent anyway, except for the godawful poetry.

[Danik 2016]

Pratched must be blamed for all comedy in Good Omens, his Discworld series is basically what would happen if Monty Python wrote a typical fantasy series. While Gaiman has a touch for irony (a Chesterton fan after all), he does not have that rythim for comedy.

I didn´t know that, not having read anything else by them. I usually read older authors. But I liked the typical English humour of the story. It reminds me a bit of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Camillo
which you certainly know, though the context is very different.

[Scheherazade]

Dickens's The Pickwick Papers and the Alice books by Lewis Carroll.

Pickwick Papers for me too... As well as Catch-22 and Three Men in a Boat

Oh, and Steinbeck's Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday

I read the former while I was new to the American Literature and English language and for a long while I thought it was "canary" and could not make any sense of the title!

[kev67]

I found Scoop very funny. I found Evelyn Waugh's Black Mischief not so funny and a bit racist. A Handful of Dust was very black comedy. Officers and Gentlemen was dry comedy. My dad liked it but I did not find it very funny.

I don't know if Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim is considered a classic internationally, but I found that funny.

Jane Austen can be quite funny. The scene where Mr Elliot is in the carriage with Emma Woodhouse in Emma is very funny. Lizzie Bennet's father in Pride and Prejudice is funny.

[Red Terror]

I'm 100 pages into Scoop and I don't find it funny at all. I find it rather dull --- and I have been reading it slowly and carefully. I'm now finished with the first part called "The Stitch Service" and am proceeding with "20 Pound Sterling" (the 2nd part). Will it get better? I may not read another Waugh book.

[Jackson Richardson]

In my opinion the first part is the best. O well senses of humour differ.

[Red Terror]

In my opinion the first part is the best. O well senses of humour differ.

Thanks for the info. I might put it aside. I guess the sense of humor of Edwardian England was Pollyanish. I am depressed.

[Jackson Richardson]

I wouldn't have called Waugh Pollylannaish at all. There's a very dark side to him. Have a skim of Vile Bodies, for an early Waugh novel which has a more obvious dark side to it. But it's probably not your thing.

(And although he was indeed born in the reign of Edward VII, his early novels belong to the between-wars period. His later novels aren't so funny.)

[Red Terror]

I'm still reading it, which is a surprise to me. I have less than 100 pages to go. I still do not like it.

[Red Terror]

Finally finished reading Scoop several days ago and my opinion has not changed. I won't be reading any more Waugh's novels.

[Gerardo 7 Reyes]

Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

[kev67]

I thought George MacDonald Fraser was sometimes funny. He wrote a series of Flashman books about a Victorian calvary officer who's a coward and a cad, but always ends up looking like a hero. His Private McAuslen books were very funny too.

Small World by David Lodge was very funny, much funnier than Trading Places.

I thought Lionel Asbo by Martin Amis was very funny in a sick way.

[kiz_paws]

I have a book of Gogol's short stories, entitled Diary of a Madman, and the title short story "Diary of a Madman" was humerous, yet wrenching at the same time.
I have often felt that Gogol was a forerunner to Oscar Wilde, with the tongue-in-cheek style of writing. Sadly, much of Gogol's work was subject to rigorous editing, to ensure that 'the masses were receiving quality literary work' -- thus spake the censors of the time ... *sigh* ... (which would explain what happened with Dead Souls? Just saying...)

[Alvin Pepler]

Not a "classic" yet, but Philip Roth's "Sabbath's Theater". C'mon any story that involves a man using the writings of Kant to get laid has humor!

[kiz_paws]

Not a "classic" yet, but Philip Roth's "Sabbath's Theater". C'mon any story that involves a man using the writings of Kant to get laid has humor!

LoL!! :)

[wreade1872]

I didn't that much of Scoop but Vile Bodies is good. Wodehouse is objectively very funny but i've found his style doesn't quite suit my personal taste.

Some mentioned Nightmare Abbey by Peacock, its pretty good but i think his book Crotchett Castle is better. You will need access to a computer though :) . He uses a lost of obscure words that were so obscure at the time they've dropped completely from the english language so a dictionary won't help. Of course you can infer most of the meanings from the context.

Any fans of Pratchett or good hilarious books should also check out Jurgen by James Branch Cabell. Pratchett ripped some of it off for his book Eric. Jurgen is just.... amazing. A version with annotations is best as he uses a lot of references, stuff like Koschei, which is a devil from russian folklore etc.

The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek is quite decent, unfinished though, but still quite long, considered an inspiration for Catch-22 i believe.

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, so good so surreal and messed up and funny and weird.

Also the Crock of Gold by James Stephens, philosophical, fantasy-comedy? Whatever it is its very funny.

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons is another good one. Its a satire of something... Rebecca maybe or Wuthering Heights that sort of thing, but very funny.

I thought Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott was very good too.

But Jurgen by James Branch Cabell is my number one recommendation :thumbs_up .