Funny, that. (OT)

[Barry Arrowsmith]

Been up  to my ears in stuff over the past few months.
Stuff to the left of me, stuff to the right of me, stuff accumulating  
until capillary action threatens it'll eventually invade my chuff.

Such is reality.
Seriously in need of some light relief I browsed my bookshelves, book  
piles, book stacks, books-as-carpets -  well, you get the idea. I've  
got a lot of books - around 2,500 after the last charity shop  
donations clear-out, which was sometime last year, and a lot more  
have been bought since.

Shelf-fulls of history; shelves of political philosophy; on the  
sciences; on cookery; on wines; whodunnits; criticism (no, not the  
deconstructionist sort); whole bookcases of SF and odd handfuls of  
other subjects/authors that caught my fancy at the time. But light  
relief seemed thin on the ground.

Which was a bit of a surprise. I pride myself that I can make a joke  
of even the most inappropriate subject matter, construct  the most  
God-awful puns, play around with words to produce the unexpected  
punchline, yet the number of genuinely amusing books around the place  
were at a premium, let alone the laugh-out-loud variety. And those  
that I could find were mostly old, some written before I was born,  
hell, before the Great Depression, some of them.

Sure, there are a few modern writers with an intelligent comedic  
touch - Tom Holt, Jeffrey Fforde and the like, but my word, they seem  
thin on the ground. And yes, there're authors that throw in a joke or  
slapstick episode to change the pace, but part-timers are not what  
I'm on about, nor writers that use humour to make a point, P. J.  
O'Rouke for example.

And don't trust the reviewers. So-called laugh-a-page classics  
aren't, in my experience. Lucky Jim, Catcher in the Rye and the like  
swiftly made their way from my bookshelves to the charity shop.  
Breach of the Trade Descriptions Act IMO.

Interestingly, apart from the two authors above, those I did find  
were peculiarly English. Whether most of them would travel or  
translate well is problematical. If I give you a list you'll see what  
I mean.
The Molesworth books by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle,  
brilliant, as ane fule kno.
The Misleading Cases series by A. P. Herbert (all hail Haddock!),
Tales from a Long Room (and sequels) by Peter Tinniswood - for  
cricket buffs only. The Brigadier, esconced in the rural paradise of  
Whitney Scrotum, beneath the lowering fastness of Botham's Gut and  
the pee-wits twittering among the water-meadows of Cowdrey's Bottom  
spins the most outrageous cricket tales full of puns and mischievious  
character assassinations. You need a fairly comprehensive knowledge  
of first-class cricketers to understand it. A joy nonetheless.
England, their England by J. G. McDonnell (more cricket there),
A few classic SF stories, mostly shorts, though Eric Frank Russell  
managed some book-length stuff.


Eventually I settled on the Master. The one and only. Wodehouse.
Not a novel, but his golf stories.
Yes, I know - golf, how boring.
Not with P.G. it's not.
Cheered me up no end.
In the collection is what I consider to be the perfect humorous short  
story - The Clicking of Cuthbert. Written (I think) in 1919, love  
conquers all while taking the piss out of middle-class pretensions,  
Russian literature and communism. Pretty neat for a story about golf.  
And his foreword to the collection - written when he was in his  
nineties - is a demonstration of the writers craft at a level very  
few will ever aspire to while appearing to be nothing special - until  
you analyse it.

When I was younger, P.G. was on my rubbish list. Dated, trite,  
repetitive. But in my 40s I  tried him again and have never looked back.

Still, one does wonder why there are so few genuinely funny  
accomplished writers. And why no women writers in the genre? Or are  
there? Does Helen Fielding count? Or Muriel Spark with The Abbess of  
Crewe? Hmm.

Mind you, if you include unintentional belly laughs the field widens  
enormously.....

Kneasy