Inspired by a recent issue of Rolling Stone magazine which asked comedians to name the funniest films and TV shows of all time, The New York Times Book Review took an internal poll to name some laugh out loud literature: the best funny books ever.
As David Kelly wrote on the Review's blog, their selection included Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim, David Lodge's Small World and the oeuvres of Evelyn Waugh, PG Wodehouse and John Mortimer. Other favourites were Joseph Heller's Catch 22 and Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon. Have you noticed a theme yet? Yep, that's right: out of all the books written by women over the last millennium, not one of them was funny enough to warrant a mention.
Jennifer Weiner, herself an amusing author of note, was incensed by this news. As she wrote on her blog:
"There are plenty of women-written, women-centred books that have funny/sharp or funny/zippy dialogue, or funny set pieces in novels dealing with serious topics." Her suggestions include the very funny Bridget Jones's Diary and the hilarious Heartburn, by Nora Ephron.
But she was in the minority in responding this way: depressingly, most of the 199 comments on David Kelly's blog advocated yet more books by men some of which can only be jokes (Gogol - really?) Those commenters who do stick up for women authors are defensive about it, admitting to enjoying Bridget Jones's Diary as a "guilty" pleasure, or prefacing a recommendation of Cold Comfort Farm with "maybe you have to be a woman to enjoy this ..." Others recommend writers who wouldn't make my top 100 in a million years: I love Kate Atkinson, but she is hardly a laugh riot and Janet Evanovich may have a wicked way with words but her female heroines are routinely subjected to brutal male violence. Attempted murder? Not funny.
But I can agree with the commenter who said, "What about Nancy Mitford? Her novels, especially The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, make me laugh out loud." Nancy was a great and often underrated wit. Someone else suggested American author Lorrie Moore (albeit with the addition of a question mark), another witty woman writer. Her debut collection of short stories, Self Help, satirised the genre before almost anyone else, as well as packing a strong emotional punch. (And the first line of her story How to Become a Writer rings true for almost anyone who has ever put pen to paper: "First, try to be something, anything, else...")
Jane Austen, whom Kelly adds as an afterthought at the end of his post, also wrote some great comedy: I laughed a lot louder when I read Emma than when I read Catcher in the Rye, which a lot of commenters suggested. It's been documented often that men are less likely to read books by women than vice versa, which would explain the mostly male NYT staff's bias towards male authors.
But it's still disappointing that no women made the list, and that some of the choices made by the panel and NYT readers were so predictable (and in many cases, so unfunny). There are many more great books by women that could have made the list. As well as the ones I've mentioned above, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, anything by Marian Keyes and Carrie Fisher's comic classic Postcards from the Edge would be in my top 10.
