contemporary humorous writing

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Can you tell me if you've read some good contemporary humorous writing lately? I liked Mark Leyner but I don't know how to find other stuff. I would also be interested to know what humorous writing people like from the past.

― Maryann, Saturday, 23 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

OK: Ambrose Bierce: curmudgeon as artform. Inadvertently invented WC Fields. SJ Perelman: absolute genius New Yorker columns and Marx Bros scripts. Great new anthology (published by Penguin?) available NOW! Flann O'Brien: The Cruiskeen Lawn, Irish Times column, originally in Irish, then in English, then in Latin, then in an inscrutable idiom of his own. See the Pinefox's forthcoming critical volume, otherwise lots of great anthologies by Picador (?). Novels are good too: At Swim Two Birds, The Third Policeman (see also: Magnus Mills), The Poor Mouth. Donald Barthelme: 60 Stories and 40 Stories should be an essential part of any 21st century library. Contemporary: Leyner I find a bit too self-conciously avant for my taste. However, I do like 1) David Bowman - 'Let the Dog Drive', one of the best American debut novels I've read in the last 10 years. 2) Jonathan Lethem, who may settle into MOR acceptance, but the first three novels are funny and good. 3) McSweeney's still occasionally hits the mark. 4) Stretching it a bit, but Lorrie Moore, for my money the best living American short story writer, is funny-sad and should be writing screwball comedy scripts if the world and/or Hollywood had any sense.

― stevie t, Saturday, 23 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sorry for lack of paragraph breaks and effusive senselessness: just in from pub.

― stevie t, Saturday, 23 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The Onion and McSweeney's should do for starters...

― JM, Saturday, 23 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

McSweeney's not fucking funny. I have two McSweeney's t-shirts I didn't pay for, who wants them? They have horseshoe crabs. They're cotton.

― Otis Wheeler, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

A.M.Homes and Nicola Barker

Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle will take you to places that seem strangely familiar...

Carrie Fisher (ps i am a gurl)

― mark s, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Can I have them?

― JM, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I will bring the shirts to the next meet.

― Otis Wheeler, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Back to what Stevie said -- just start with Ambrose Bierce and let the rest follow from there. It's absolutely fascinating how _The Devil's Dictionary_ has only just become outdated here and there -- he saw right through the heart of America as a concept and tore it to shreds, and it works through til today just fine.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

But Willans and Searle are hardly contemporary, and if they may seem so it's only the fault of official cowardice ...

Might be too broad and / or indecipherable for Maryann, but obviously: http://www.tvgohome.com.

― Robin Carmody, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

He's not at all contemporary, but Patrick Hamilton is very, very funny. I'd particularly recommend 'The Slaves of Solitude' - just about the only book that has made me laugh more than 'Catch 22'.

― Johnathan, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Robin - re: TV Go Home - it's cool, we get a lot of British TV here...lot of it's (the supposedly "new" stuff ) a year or 2 or 3 old so if they're specifically parodying something we haven't seen yet...like, you know, those wolf fucking & piss fight shows still haven't made it to NZ yet...Oh I just realised you probably meant "broad" as in "broad humour" not "broad (international) appeal", right.

― duane, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

also you said "too broad" not "not broad enough" so that doesn't even make sense, duh.

― duane, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Thanks for all these ideas, I will read all of them. Robin - I went to the tv go home website - it was great - I read a fucking lovely image from the blurb for the 'cunt' tv show of a victim of society circling a bunch of jackals having an orgy in a pit of mud, hoping to catch some of the, um, sperm in his mouth. It was like lying down, the relief of remembering that just sometimes, occasionally, people still can argue for a short period of time that money isn't the highest value, and even make clever jokes about it. Thanks!

― maryann, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

+ Martin Millar: Lux the Poet; Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation; The Good Fairies of New York

― mark s, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Cheers, Maryann. Have you seen the World War II TV schedule in the current edition?

(explanation: the UK actually had no TV whatsoever during WW2 so this is one of my favourite pieces of *imagined history* ever, easily up there with the "Memories of 1944" sequence of The Day Today, if anyone remembers that.)

― Robin Carmody, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

one year passes...

Have you tried the Ballyhoo Examiner? I try to catch it at least twice a week...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Ballyhoo+Examiner

It's Irish contemporary humour at its very best.

― Thomas Nas, Monday, 8 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

sirawesome.diaryl and.com
whyihateyou.diaryla nd.com
indykid.diaryland.c om
chappuh.diaryland.c om
natepreston.dia ryland.com
brace- paine.diaryland.com

― UOIU, Monday, 8 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

one year passes...

I am reading Martin Amis's LONDON FIELDS. It is humorous in a way, I suppose. Does anyone like it? I am surprised at the lack of an ilx thread on Amis.

― the pinefox, Saturday, 2 August 2003 10:24 (twenty-two years ago)

that guy gives me a pain, nothing funny happened in any of the novels i read/tried to read by him. but you know what was good, & funny, this bk of short stories of his from a few years ago...i forgot what it was called tho sorry

― duane, Saturday, 2 August 2003 10:42 (twenty-two years ago)

I like him! That's one of his very best, The Pinefox. He isn't very likeable to most, I think.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 3 August 2003 19:49 (twenty-two years ago)

I really hate London Fields.

― RickyT (RickyT), Sunday, 3 August 2003 19:55 (twenty-two years ago)

The Plug
The Plug
The Plug
The Plug
The Plug
The Plug
The Plug

So in conclusion... The Plug

― Jay Carlson, Wednesday, 6 August 2003 11:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Marc Maron's The Jerusalem Syndrome is pretty good.
So's Ian Frazier's Coyote V. Acme
Also Iain Levison's A Working Stiff's Manifesto is pretty durn funny.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 6 August 2003 15:40 (twenty-two years ago)

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