Comedy in Novels

According to Woody Allen, comic writers sit at the children's table. We who write funny are second-class citizens in the city of great literature. For the most part, Nobels and Pulitzers go to the "serious" writers, who receive the long, thoughtful, layered, prominently placed reviews. And except for Shakespeare's comedies, happy endings are dismissed as cop-outs.

Louis Bayard once wrote, reviewing a Steve Martin novel:

"Few foundlings enter the world less auspiciously than the comic novel. Distrusted by publishers, disowned by publicists, cold-shouldered by literary panels and MLA conferences, the grimy urchin takes its place in the back of the shelf and, with an upward tilted face, pleads for our love. Who has the heart to tell it that laughter is the least predictable or explainable thing in the world? That the most a comic novel can hope for is the slow easy smile of recognition…and then oblivion?

Humor goes to the heart of what I write and how I think. Although many readers share a built- in conviction that something funny has to be light (or lite), we comic writers, nevertheless, deal with the same themes the heavy-hitters do minus the solemnity and the accompanying dirge. Maybe the Puritan (or the Maine) in us requires any pain to be painted in the gray tones of suffering. But because so much of life is ridiculous, I trust my readers to see (and they always do) that underneath the jokes lies the real stuff. Stories are more poignant if they aren't underscored by heavy-duty orchestration. Does a novel have depth and seriousness because it's set in a trailer or a diner rather than a Beacon Hill living room or sushi restaurant? Does jug wine convey more gravitas than a Merlot? Should love be dismissed in favor of war as themes for novels? Hard truths anchor all the entertainment. And if reading a novel makes a person less lonely, isn't it even better to make that person smile? Easy reading takes hard writing, says Trollope.

Let me end this with an email from my friend Stephen McCauley, the master of the comic novel:

I feel such a kinship that horrible feeling that after all we're just writing these pointless domestic comedies and really should be lined up and shot for unleashing them into the world.

But how can I feel that way when the books I most like to read, and in some ways respect the most, are the small domestic comedies, the Barbara Pyms and the Ann Tylers and Muriel Sparks? There's a lot of other stuff I adore, but even re-reading Anna K recently, it was the smallness and intimacy of so much of it that struck me as brilliant, not the vast scope. The pleasure for me is in the selection of tiny moments. I think that writing this kind of smart, funny, and (oh oh) entertaining fiction really is the highest calling, in some peculiar way. It's what I most enjoy reading and what seems to be most under-appreciated in the big world of critics. And it is HARD WORK to do it well and make it funny and make it true and that's what's so often overlooked. I mean, poo on all those "serious" novels about someone drowning in the pool and getting raped by daddy. I'm sick of 'em. Throw in a little incest and what? it's suddenly literature?

I think we just have to do what we do and what we--really deep down inside, don't you think?--want to do. The qualities of warmth and wit and a little bit of regret and a lot of humanity and understanding of how people really are-- I think that's an awful lot to ask from a book.

So we just have to keep in mind the people who really do like the books and remember what a wonderful privilege it is to make someone, some stranger a wee bit happy for a few hours. What a nice thing to be able to do. We have to make sure that breathing our last breath we hear the fan (who has no ax to grind, no resentments or hidden agendas, after all) saying our books helped them through a rough day or bad week or difficult breakup. That's what matters.

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