Dalkey
Archive Press compiled this list of the funniest works of fiction of all time from
responses to questions they sent to various booksellers and book people across
the U.S.A. I was especially enthusiastic about No. 13 on the list. And to be
on a list, any list, with Italo Calvino, Oscar Wilde, Flann O'Brien, and Samuel
Beckett, is honor enough for me.
Funniest
Works of Fiction
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy,
Douglas Adams
Kangaroo, Yuz
Aleshkovsky
Reservation Blues, Sherman
Alexie
Money, Martin Amis
Human Croquet, Kate
Atkinson
Behind the Scenes at the
Museum,
Kate Atkinson
The Sot-Weed Factor, John Barth
60 Stories, Donald
Barthelme
The Feast of Love, Charles
Baxter
Watt, Samuel
Beckett
Zuleika Dobson, Max
Beerbohm
Woodcutters, Thomas
Bernhard
Killoyle, Roger Boylan
The Ballad of Habit and
Accident,
Rock Brynner
Naked Lunch, William
Burroughs
Cosmicomics, Italo
Calvino
Auto-Da-Fé, Elias
Canetti
The Full Catastrophe, David
Carkeet
Death on the Installment Plan, Louis-Ferdinand
Céline
Tempest-Tost, Robertson
Davies
Jacques the Fatalist and His
Master,
Denis Diderot
The Ginger Man, J. P. Donleavy
The River Why, David James
Duncan
Walking Across Egypt, Clyde
Edgerton
The Franchiser, Stanley
Elkin
Otherwise Engaged, Suzanne
Finnamore
Bouvard and Pécuchet, Gustave
Flaubert
The Princess Bride, William
Goldman
Second Skin, John Hawkes
Catch-22, Joseph
Heller
House Mother Normal, B. S.
Johnson
Ulysses, James Joyce
The Trial, Franz Kafka
The Moccasin Telegraph, W.P.
Kinsella
Diminished Capacity, Sherwood
Kiraly
The Bear Went over the
Mountain,
William Kotzwinkle
Satan: His Psychotherapy and
Cure,
Jeremy Leven
Billy and Girl, Deborah Levy
Et Tu, Babe, Mark Leyner
Handling Sin, Michael
Malone
The Confidence-Man, Herman
Melville
Bloodsucking Fiends, Christopher
Moore
Pnin, Vladimir
Nabokov
At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O’Brien
The Dalkey Archive, Flann O’Brien
The
Third Policeman, Flann O’Brien
Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor
The Dog of the South, Charles
Portis
Norwood, Charles
Portis
Kiss of the Spider Woman, Manuel Puig
Jane and Prudence, Barbara Pym
Yellow Back Radio-Broke Down, Ishmael Reed
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Tom Robbins
Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth
Barrel Fever, David
Sedaris
Naked, David
Sedaris
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
Humphry Clinker, Tobias
Smollett
Imaginative Qualities of Actual
Things,
Gilbert Sorrentino
Tristram Shandy, Laurence
Sterne
Karoo, Steve
Tesich
A Confederacy of Dunces, John
Kennedy Toole
Player Piano, Kurt
Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt
Vonnegut
Timequake, Kurt
Vonnegut
Infinite Jest, David
Foster Wallace
A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya
Sisterhood, Rebecca Wells
Miss Lonelyhearts, Nathanael
West
Modern Baptists, James
Wilcox
The Importance of Being
Earnest,
Oscar Wilde
Very Good, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
