Comedy

This chapter makes a claim for the significance of comedy in contemporary fiction, arguing that it has taken an identifiable funny turn. By funny turn I mean not only that much of the most interesting contemporary writing is funny and that there is a comic tendency in contemporary Anglophone fiction, but also that this humour, this comic license, allows writers of contemporary fiction to do peculiar and interesting things – things that are funny in the sense of odd or strange and which may in turn inspire a funny turn in readers. To have a funny turn is to feel peculiar or light-headed, to feel that something is awry, and at its best and most powerful, comic writing can inspire just such peculiar feelings. In the short stories of George Saunders, for example, humour mingles with horror and pity at the increasingly desperate circumstances of his protagonists. Or in the twisted picaresques of Nicola Barker, comic laughter can move between shock and repulsion, through uneasy recognition to eventual understanding or even identification. And while some may argue over the relative preponderance and merits of US versus UK humour in fiction, ¹ it is certainly true to say that much of the most innovative and interesting fiction on both sides of the Atlantic is comic. Any list, and indeed any entry on a subject, is necessarily limiting, but a discussion of the topic could, in addition to the writers already mentioned, include Michael Chabon, Paul Beatty, Magnus Mills, Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Coe, Junot Diaz, Ali Smith, Will Self, Gary Shteyngart and many more besides, along with an even larger body of writers whose work includes comic moments or interludes. Fictional comedy is hard to categorise or codify in the same way as theatrical comedy – this may be one reason why the topic has received comparatively little scholarly attention – but as a working definition I define the comic as that which is designed to be humorous. This necessarily introduces an element of intentionality, but it is important to separate that which is funny because it is intended to be funny from that which is accidentally humorous. There is a significant difference between I, Partridge (2011), the ‘autobiography’ of the fictional radio DJ Alan Partridge, a comic character played by Steve Coogan, and Poptastic! (2007), the often unintentionally hilarious autobiography of real-life radio DJ Tony Blackburn: both may inspire laughter, but there is a significant difference in intent. ²