My Big Funny Summer Reading List

[rich]

amusing was Riotious Assembly. a different side to the South African
constabulary for sure


On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 6:05 PM, <malignd at aol.com> wrote:

> One other outlier, from Hemingway of all people -- The Torrents of Spring.
> Hemingway was contractually obliged to give his first  novel to Horace
> Liveright, but wanted to sign with Scribners.  With The Sun Also Rises
> done, he tossed of Torrents, a bitchy and very funny parody of Sherwood
> Anderson's Dark Laughter, a terrible book. but Anderson was Liveright's top
> author, so they were forced to turn it down, leaving H. free to sign with
> Scribners.
>
>  Downside is that one needs to buy Dark Laughter in order to fully
> appreciate Torrents.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: malignd <malignd at aol.com>
> To: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Mon, Jun 3, 2013 5:56 pm
> Subject: Re: My Big Funny Summer Reading List
>
>  I like Tom Sharpe too.  The Throwback, Wilt ...
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Charles Albert <cfalbert at gmail.com>
> To: kelber <kelber at mindspring.com>
> Cc: Pynchon Liste <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Mon, Jun 3, 2013 7:26 am
> Subject: Re: My Big Funny Summer Reading List
>
>   My favorite Murder - Ambrose Bierce
>
> Mark Twain skewers James Fenimore Cooper -
> http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/rissetto/offense.html
>
>  Porterhouse Blue, Riotous Assembly - Tom Sharpe
>
>  love,
> cfa
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 5:18 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>> Been dealing with some emotionally rough stuff lately, and need some
>> diversion. I can handle reading about Nazis, torture, toxic waste, and
>> Man's inhumanity to Man during the days, but at night I need some reading
>> matter that won't keep me lying awake in agony until dawn. Only it's damn
>> hard to find books that are both intelligent and genuinely funny. There's
>> plenty of humor in Pynchon, or in books like Catch-22, say, but it's
>> accompanied by stuff that's too dark for me in my present fragile-minded
>> state. I can think of plenty of funny movies and TV shows (Arrested
>> Development, Season 4, being the latest). And years later, I still laugh at
>> the Mad Magazine offerings I loved as a kid - heavy on parody and cranky
>> sarcasm. But it's really hard to think of many laugh-out-loud books.
>> Offhand, I'm thinking David Lodge (Nice Work, Small World, etc.); Alison
>> Lurie (Imaginary Friends. Probably should read more of her); Kingsley
>> Amis's Lucky Jim; No Name, by Wilkie Collins. I'm sure we can all recommend
>> lots of great books, but how many at the top of our lists are genuinely
>> funny, with no depressing elements [NOT Pale Fire, for example]. Tangent to
>> the is-or-isn't-literature-morally-edifying conversation, is there
>> something about humor (wordplay, parody, genuinely funny insights about
>> character) that's too lowbrow for high-minded literary types to bother with?
>>
>> So, any recommendations of really funny books that aren't Shakespearean
>> comedies of error (sorry), and that don't remind one even obliquely of
>> genocide or cruelty to animals or toxic waste?
>>
>> Laura
>>
>
>
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