Guest Post By Author Mark Nutter

 

LAUGH-OUT-LOUD BOOKS

Mark Nutter

"I laughed out loud." There is no higher compliment you can pay a writer of humorous fiction.

The first time I laughed out loud reading a story, I was thirteen, on a commuter train returning to my home in Mokena, Illinois, having purchased a book at Kroch's and Brentano's in Chicago.

The book caused me to involuntarily hoot. People stared at me. It felt great. I thought, this is voodoo -- little black marks on a white page that generate happy brain chemicals (a technical term).

I have few literary aspirations. If I can elicit an audible guffaw from a reader, I've done my job.

Of course, humor is subjective. What follows is a biased and personal list that, in my experience, can make people sitting nearby say, "What's so funny?"

GETTING EVEN, Woody Allen. This is the book that turned heads on the train. It's a collection of Woody's absurd humor pieces published in the New Yorker, long before he chose to be less funny. From “A Look at Organized Crime”: Albert (The Logical Positivist) Corillo assassinated Lipsky by locking him in a closet and sucking all the air out with a straw.

CATCH-22, Joseph Heller. Yes, Heller had serious points to make about war. But the book is so damn funny. Reminds me of a quote by Terry Pratchett: "The opposite of funny is NOT serious. The opposite of funny is NOT FUNNY."

THE MOST OF S.J. PERELMAN. Everything Woody Allen learned about writing prose comedy he got from Perelman, a master wordsmith. Speaking of a favorite teacher, he wrote: “I can still recall his chiseled grin and his grizzled chin.”

ANYTHING BY P.G. WODEHOUSE. The funniest prose writer in the English language.

TRAGICALLY I WAS AN ONLY TWIN, Peter Cook. Not strictly prose but transcriptions of Cook’s performance pieces. Especially funny are the absurd musings of Cook’s character E.L. Wisty.

COLD COMFORT FARM, Stella Gibbons. A very funny parody of novels that romanticize rural British life.

MINDSPLOITATION, Vernon Chatham. Subtitled, Asinine Assignments for the Online Homework Cheating Industry. Not humorous fiction, but I had to include it because it will make you spit coffee across the room. Chatham submitted absurd assignments to websites that create essays for you, for a price. (Example: Write an essay about how the Holy Bible would be different if it starred the Giant Spider from Kafka’s The Metamorphosis instead of Jesus as the lead character.) The results are either AI generated or written by individuals with a shaky command of English, or a combo. Who knows and who cares? I gave a copy to a friend who was recovering from surgery. She had to put the book aside, afraid her laughter would open the stitches… Happy reading!