The Counterforce No. 10
Exceptionally Funny Books - Eric Idle, J.P. Donleavy, Steve Aylett, Paul Beatty, Thomas Pynchon, plus Seven Songs...
I was thrilled to see The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass in Vulture’s Best Comedy Books Of 2023 (So Far) list last week. That’s really awesome. Got me thinking about my favourite books that make me laugh. And I mean really make me laugh. All too often I’ve seen a booked hyped as ‘hilarious’ only to read far too much of it without emitting even the tiniest giggle. I guess someone must find those amusing, but for the life of me I don’t know why. And just amusing isn’t what I’m after. I want to laugh. In my tour talk for Buttery Cake Ass I’ve been talking about how around 1994 irony really seemed to seep into the culture and it became the thing to try and make someone groan rather than elicit a full-on belly laugh. A shame, as ecstatic laughter is one of life’s great joys. It’s what I was gunning for with The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass.
A while ago I made a Bookshop.org list of The Funniest Novels I’ve Read. Let me know yours, I’m always on the lookout for new laughs
I’m sure I’ll do other posts on this topic but the five below have always stayed with me. Hello Sailor and Lint, with their laughs on every page, were the benchmarks I was holding myself to when I wrote The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass.
Eric Idle – Hello Sailor
I love this book. I tracked it down in 2007 and re-read it again recently. I’m not British and it was published the year before I was born so I’m probably missing specific political references but I don’t think that particularly matters. The idea of a deceased acting Foreign Secretary who has been treated by a taxidermist to keep up appearances in the Cabinet is hilarious however you look at it. As is the over-the-top ‘selling war as spectacle’ idea just to save face. With the US planning to bring the conflict in South East Asia to Europe, obtaining financial backing from Warner Brothers for the whole production, while the CIA hire and train men in Cambodia to act as Communists just so the States will have an enemy to be seen fighting against. At one point the President calls the Prime Minister collect. It’s satire turned up to 11 and very good fun.
J.P. Donleavy – Schultz
I’ve purchased this book no less than 25 times. Whenever I see a used copy, I buy it and pass it along to someone, hoping they’ll get even a tenth of the joy it brings me. Donleavy can make you both laugh out loud and bring a tear to your eye, sometimes even in the same paragraph. Schultz starts strong as “through a typist’s error, the company had been named Sperm Productions instead of Spear Productions.” And carries on from there. With Sigmund Franz Isadore Schultz launching himself into an insane hustle around London trying to get his show off the ground. To strike it rich so he can inoculate himself against the horrors of the world, sleep with every beautiful woman he sees, and hopefully even find true love. I’m even more fond of the sequel, Are You Listening Rabbi Löw, when Schultz’s mental state starts to unhinge and we often find him conversing with the legendary rabbi of Prague. Who has lots of great lines. And perhaps my favourite ones in all of literature comes from this second book on page 399, “And Rabbi, I’ve found there’s nothing you can do to make women love you. But if you don’t do anything at all they’ll forget you.”
Steve Aylett – Lint
One of the most original minds I’ve ever come across. And Alan Moore is a big fan too. Lint is the fake biography of failed pulp writer Jeff Lint. Who happens to be present at many of the important events of the 20th century. Such as finding Burroughs cut-up poems and piecing them back together into their original order. Lint himself doesn’t find any publishing success until he starts submitting work under the name ‘Isaac Asimov’. And one of my favourite passages in any book is Lint’s theory that the bullet that killed JFK was the same one used to shoot Lincoln, which then proceeded to make its way around the world for the next 98 years taking part in every major political assassination until it wound up in Dallas on that fateful day.
I spoke with Steve on my ETC podcast here
Paul Beatty – The Sellout
This is one hell of a funny book. Satire on so many levels - the US government and legal system, social science, psychology, child stars, and of course race. Played out in the vanished Los Angeles neighborhood of Dickens, after the narrator saves the life of Hominy Jenkins, Buckwheat’s understudy and the last surviving member of The Little Rascals, the two enter into an outrageous relationship that takes him all the way to The Supreme Court. Beatty has a wonderful way of constructing a sentence, often hitting hard and with a laugh just by plainly stating the truth. I love the lines “If there is a heaven worth the effort that people make to get there...” and, when discussing our nation’s atrocities, “Anything that, like baseball, keeps a country that’s constantly preening in the mirror from actually looking in the mirror and remembering where the bodies are buried.” Prentice Onayemi does a fantastic job on all of Beatty’s audiobooks.
Thomas Pynchon – Vineland
The funniest line I have ever read in print and one that still makes me guffaw every time I think of it is “as a great nation pursued its war on a botanical species…” Arguably the funniest of Pynchon’s novels and, up until Inherent Vice, the easiest to read. The karmic adjustment stuff is great, as are all the usual pop culture references (my favourite here being the Godzilla ones), and you got the Tubeheads and Thanatoids, all interspersed into what is, at its heart, a very moving family saga. Though that doesn’t stop Pynchon from, at its emotional peak, throwing in a reference to an iconic scene from Empire Strikes Back.
SEVEN SONGS
Jon Pertwee - ‘Pure Mystery’. In 1972 the third Doctor released his “Who Is The Doctor?” 7” single based on the Doctor Who theme music. The b-side is a hidden gem. An ageing stage magician reflecting back on his life, still believing in the power of wonder against mounting melancholy
Serge Gainsbourg & France Gall – ‘Dents De Lait, Dents De Loup’. Such a groovy intro then straight into pure pop. Apparently only this snippet exists, made especially for this TV performance
Deaf School - ‘What A Way To End It All’. One of the great Liverpool bands, bridging the gap, time-wise at least, between The Beatles and the late 70s/early 80s scene of Echo & the Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes, Wild Swans…
Marianne Mendt – ‘Wie A Glock’n’. Utterly joyous pop. ‘Like A Bell’
Radiah Frye - ‘Il pleut bergère’. I discovered this lovely tune yesterday after listening to the Nino And Radiah record (great album cover too), which has an English version of Ferrer’s ‘Le Sud’ (see below for both)
Nino Ferrer – ‘Le Sud’. Gorgeous.
Foxygen – ‘On Lankershim’. Foxygen at their 70s Hunky Dory-esque best. “Don’t walk away…”