I thought it would be worth having a thread on C20 comic works, not least since those who write comic books have tended to be regarded (wrongly in my view) as producing a lower and less important form of literature, as in the description of P G Wodehouse as "English Literature's performing flea". Here are some that I have enjoyed:
The Short Stories of Saki. Delicate, rapier-like and cutting wit.
At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien. Beautifully constructed, with surely one of the funniest court scenes in literature.
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh.
The Mating Season by P G Wodehouse. The master on top form, the apparent fluency of the writing the product of very painstaking rework.
The Most of S J Perelman. One of the scriptwriters of some Marx Bros films, he is a wonderful parodist and in particular his tale of countryside living "Acres and Pains" is excellent.
The Mortdecai Trilogy by Kyril Bonfiglioli. A very idiosyncratic stylist of black humour.
The Elephant and the Kangaroo by T H White. A semi-autobiographical account of an Englishman in a very wet Ireland.
The Damon Runyon omnibus. A unique and inimitable style.
The Best of Beachcomber (J B Morton). Despite being collected mostly from his newspaper columns, this is a very funny miscellany including characters like Justice Cocklecarrot and Charles Suet.
Go Postal by Terry Pratchett. I have come late to Pratchett's works but have found a superb comic writer with a gallery of wonderful characters and though the books are set in a fantasy world there is a sharp observation of human character and our own obsessions.
I have not mentioned foreign language works as I think unless one has complete mastery of another language it can be hard to pick up on the allusion and wordplay fully (and I have to admit I don't know many
). I have also omitted plays as otherwise writers like Dylan Thomas, Tom Stoppard, Michael Frayn among others would have to come into the picture.
The Short Stories of Saki. Delicate, rapier-like and cutting wit.
At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien. Beautifully constructed, with surely one of the funniest court scenes in literature.
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh.
The Mating Season by P G Wodehouse. The master on top form, the apparent fluency of the writing the product of very painstaking rework.
The Most of S J Perelman. One of the scriptwriters of some Marx Bros films, he is a wonderful parodist and in particular his tale of countryside living "Acres and Pains" is excellent.
The Mortdecai Trilogy by Kyril Bonfiglioli. A very idiosyncratic stylist of black humour.
The Elephant and the Kangaroo by T H White. A semi-autobiographical account of an Englishman in a very wet Ireland.
The Damon Runyon omnibus. A unique and inimitable style.
The Best of Beachcomber (J B Morton). Despite being collected mostly from his newspaper columns, this is a very funny miscellany including characters like Justice Cocklecarrot and Charles Suet.
Go Postal by Terry Pratchett. I have come late to Pratchett's works but have found a superb comic writer with a gallery of wonderful characters and though the books are set in a fantasy world there is a sharp observation of human character and our own obsessions.
I have not mentioned foreign language works as I think unless one has complete mastery of another language it can be hard to pick up on the allusion and wordplay fully (and I have to admit I don't know many
). I have also omitted plays as otherwise writers like Dylan Thomas, Tom Stoppard, Michael Frayn among others would have to come into the picture.
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