The Guardian has posted a blog by William Skidelsky in which he takes issue with the seeming lack of comedy in modern fiction. The impetus for the essay was the list of 21 top young authors unveiled by Granta magazine last month.

…of the 21 best young novelists in America, not one is producing work that makes people laugh. Isn’t this more than a little peculiar? It isn’t as if the comic novel doesn’t have a distinguished pedigree. Many of the acknowledged greats have been comedies, from Cervantes’ Don Quixote in the early 17th century, via Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy to Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 in the 20th. So what’s going on?

Skidelsky’s column leaves you with the impression that there aren’t a lot of respected comic novelists around right now, which is a dubious assertion. Has he never read Tom Perrotta? Ken Kalfus? Not to mention Mark Haddon, Jincy Willett, Miriam Toews, Marina Lewycka, etc, etc. But if Skidelsky is simply trying to say that “serious” novelists get more respect, then the argument begins to look a little more plausible.

It’s when he tries to explain why we place a higher value on serious literature that he really begins to sound bogus. Quoting heavily from an essay by writer Julian Gough, Skidelsky argues that there are two main reasons: 1) That “far more tragedies survived from ancient times than comedies, and since many western writers have taken the Greeks as their model, this has resulted in tragedy being favoured over comedy.” And 2) Christianity.

The one church spoke in one voice, drawn from one book, and that book was at heart tragic. All of human history, from the creation, was a story that climaxed with the sadistic murder of a man by those he was trying to save. Essentially, the church had to crush the comic impulse because it was so vulnerable to it. If people had started making jokes about Jesus, the entire edifice would have collapsed.

So if it weren’t for Christianity, we would all be worshiping Aristophanes, not Jesus? And instead of wearing crucifixes around our necks we’d be wearing rubber chickens?
If there is a shortage of comic novels these days – and that’s a big if – the reasons are probably a lot less fancy than those supplied by Skidelsky. Isn’t it more likely that, in North America, we are just so up to our eyeballs in comedy that novelists can’t help but feel that the comedic terrain is already well-covered? When every ad on TV is attempting to be a 30-second comedy classic, when every billboard displays a clever double-entendre, when every politician feels the need to appear on Jon Stewart to appeal to the under-40 generation, maybe a little more seriousness is finally in order.

One of the 21 authors that Skidelsky erroneously labels “unhumorous” is Jonathan Safran Foer, who spends at least the first half of Everything is Illuminated in flat-out humor mode. But then the novel takes an abrupt turn about halfway through. Quillblog doesn’t have the book at hand, but we recall the kooky Ukrainian narrator, Alex, suddenly announcing that he is tired of treating everything as a joke, that maybe comic detachment isn’t the ultimate attitude to aspire to. And from this point on, Foer himself becomes more serious, and the novel improves immensely for it. This is probably where a lot of young writers are coming from now; they’ve spent their lives being tickled to death, and they’re ready for something more.