Will somebody purlease make me bloody laugh?
Ok, let's see now... ummm, nope, I think this one's clean... no
warnings necessary... you could read this to your five year old as
a beddy-time story. You are ok with bed wetting and four am
nightmare screams though, yeah? No? Riiiight... well, this is
probably not for you then, after all. Or your five year old. Fuck
it. Make me laugh What is it that makes you laugh? Not
biologically, I mean literally. And not one of those blasé “oh,
yes, he always makes me laugh” throwaway’s accompanied by the
little white lie “laugh” – because, let’s face it, “he” actually
rarely makes you smirk, let alone smile and a laugh just isn’t
going to happen. And besides, if you “always” laughed, I’m pretty
damn sure you’d be in danger of popping a blood vessel or ten, or
dying from lock-jaw-ache or the inability to breathe. Or something.
I know I can’t. Breathe, that is. When I’m laughing; I go scarlet
in the face and my blood pressure pops a vein in my eyeball.
S’true. I write all this stuff dead-pan. Of course, it’s
rarely-laugh-out loud funny, but there you go. Now shut up and
read. Why is it so hard for me to find a funny author? I don’t want
a joke book, I don’t want a “light-hearted” romp through medieval
England; I want a snot-propelling, vein-popping oh-my-god he can’t
say that novel the like of which just does not exist outside of
Frankie Boyle’s autobiography. Oh, and I don’t want a bloody
autobiography either. How hard can it be to write funny? Is it that
it isn’t hard but that there is just no pigeon hole for it in
Waterstones? “Sheldon Wortley? Yeah, he’s in the puerile section of
humorous fantasy fiction with a heavy sexual overtone and bad
language and violence; aisle fourteen, left hand side, top shelf,
of our London mega store… sorry.” I’m figuring I may be the first
author to be forced to have an 18 certificate for political
incorrectness. But even so, how bad is it that no-one can really
propel a novel based purely upon making us laugh? There are so many
avenues to explore, humoristically, that it becomes strange to me
that genres do not have a tiered approach to seriousness. With
situation comedy being rife on TV, why isn’t situationally funny
science fiction more prevalent? Or forget about the situation, what
about the incompetence of the lead character? I mean, how hard is
it to write fiction from the perspective of a complete twat? Is it
because, in theory, the reader must empathise with the hero? A weak
hero turns the reader off and that is obviously bad. But a div of
magnitude 40 on the “prichter” scale doesn’t have to be weak; they
just have to be un-pc. I am warming to the political incorrectness
more and more as I must have some innate trigger that makes
anything that is just plain wrong exceptionally funny. (Don’t get
me started on the use of the term “retard” as a nominative
declaration of undying admiration in our current jobsworthian
dystopia.) Although I am fed up with typing political incorrectness
and PI just doesn’t cut it as a suitable acronym. PI is, however,
an accurate acronym, but I could round in circles all day with this
one. See? Not very funny was it? Almost contrived, and I think that
alone is another reason why I cannot find a funny author; they tend
to try too hard; you can almost see the gag coming from twelve
pages away and the longer it takes you to get there the more you
cringe until you get to a (and this is, thanks to climate change,
the phrase of the century…) tipping-point where your desire to read
on is overwhelmed by your desire to flush the book down the loo, to
hell with the library’s late-return fees and thankfully the lack of
any “why is this book soggy and smells faintly of wee?” fee.
(EzBird did it again, by the way; (not flushed a book down the loo
but…) for Christmas I got a nice shiney new Dan Brown book – the
lost symbol, obviously – and with it came the caveat “must read it
by the weekend.” Oh? Why is that light of my life? “Coz it’s got to
go back to the library…” Ahhh. Gotcha.) I have a steely
determination to retain a couple of things in Paradise Falls that,
to this day, nearly three years on, make me laugh out loud: When
something obvious is pointed out to Sariro, the hero…, he replies
(as do I) “You know, you’d think I would…” and this has been marked
as “annoying” for its many appearances throughout the text. But the
thing that makes me laugh most and the one piece that I would
re-write the whole novel around if I had to, was a segment of
battle where a weak lad is surprised to find he holds the only
sword between him and his adversary whilst an on-looking crowd drop
into stunned silence. He looks at the sword, he looks at his
attacker, he looks at his sword and then looks to the crowd
whereupon one of his erstwhile colleagues screams “fucking twat him
with it!” and a small farcical demi-execution is played out.
Unsuccessfully, I might add. See, you don’t get that raw, gutter
humour in the novels I have read. There may, of course, be a bloody
good reason… So, lovely people wot read my drivel; off you go then
– what book has made you snort? What fiction has you keeping your
spouse (not partner – because obviously you’ll not be reading with
them, eh? Eh? Eh? Know what I mean? Eh? Yeah, EzBird tends to read…
during. Short sentences mostly. Sigh.) up late at night whilst you
annoy them with your cackling and worry them into intense
concentration whilst they work out whether the bed is rhythmically
vibrating due to your laughter or due to your smutty ministrations?
Your mission, should you accept it is to name a book – preferably
science fiction, could be fantasy fiction – that makes me laugh out
loud and I’ll… I’ll… laugh and say thank you afterwards… I warn
you, though. I’m a prolific reader and Terry Pratchett, Douglas
Adams, Jasper Fford (thanks EmmaD… whatever happened to EmmaD?),
Richard Ranking and Tom Holt are all well worn out with my demands.
Oh and I have read “Spindle” by Ian Taylor which was the last time
I ever really did snort mucousously. Ez
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25 Comments
Sorry Ez - can't help.
Why the bloody hell do I have to fiddle with hyperlinks until I get them in quotes as the friggin' site shortens them otherwise and forgets half of what it's cut out to the point where the link doesn't (link, that is)?!?!?!
Sounds like Paradise Falls is kinda Monty Pyhonesque then?
OK, be positive man. The one that springs to mind is Bill Bryson. I don't know why, I haven't analysed it. it's just that sometimes when I am reading his stuff I am reduced to a helpless quivering wreck of mirth, with tears of laughter rolling down my face. For me, Bryson.
Seriously funny stuff... The curry monster is just out of this world. Take a change of hankies.
I used to read Ben Elton in hope rather than expectation but have given up. I will no longer pay over my hard earned, but if I'm short of reading material and commuting to the big town, which I have to sometimes (thankfully not often), I may take one from the library; by mistake.
The last I bought was Past Mortem. Not a comedy, just utter rubbish. You could tell he hadn't done any research because his mandatory sex scene was the most risable part. Remember the suggestion that we should leave books lying around for others to pick up? Normally against my principles, but I left this on a park bench. A week later it was still there.
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