Why Comedy?

I don't think comedy is taken seriously enough in writing. Let me rephrase that: I don't think comic writing is given the level of respect that it deserves.

I should say now that I write comedy. The Space Captain Smith books are comedies and while my novel for Games Workshop, Straken, isn't a comedy, I was interested to see that GW advertised it in their magazine, White Dwarf, as having a streak of black humour. In other words, I've got an angle on this, because I'd like to be respected more, especially if that involves some sort of financial gain.


Comedy tends to be regarded as unimportant, especially in highbrow literature. The main reason for this, I suspect, is the common belief that, to be good, a book has to be difficult and unenjoyable. Some comedies, of course, don't attempt to comment on real life, even obliquely. P.G. Wodehouse described his comic novels as musical comedy without the music, and they are still very readable.


Comedy with depth

On the other hand, life is sometimes comical, often blackly so, and a good comedy can reveal truths that more "realistic" (ie unamusing) novels will miss. Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim is very funny in places, but also rings true. It depicts a man forced to depend on idiots of higher social standing, and as a portrayal of angry desperation, and of the less flattering aspects of the male outlook, it feels absolutely right.

You could argue that Lucky Jim is also satire. A lot of social satire often feels quite ham-handed, but something like Nice Work by David Lodge is both funny and an accurate dissection of a certain type of person (two certain types, actually). And there's also satire not of the real world but of other fiction: Stella Gibbons' excellent rural comedy Cold Comfort Farm is a parody of "earthy" novels, especially those of Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence.

Comedy is not just empty fun: a full view of the world isn't possible without it. Even in the blackest situations, people make jokes. Not for nothing do we have "gallows humour". I think some of the modern "grimdark" novels miss this in their eagerness to be realistic by throwing as much mud and dung at the reader as they can. "Realistic" also means "humorous".

Cold Comfort Farm, home of the Starkadders

A forbidden viewpoint

Also, comedy allows us to say things that we wouldn't normally be allowed to say. George Orwell (that master of hilarity) once said that every joke was a small rebellion, because it allowed people to look at the world in a naughty, askance sort of way. Because comedy is regarded as unimportant, and because it often involves looking at things from a crooked, wry angle, it's possible to look at things that would be dismissed as "problematic" (ie forbidden) if they were presented seriously.

In my own writing, Space Captain Smith is a proud colonialist and empire-builder - his friend Suruk the Slayer is a homicidal maniac. But because this is a comedy, we don't have to automatically condemn them to demonstrate that we're right-thinking people, as we would elsewhere. And that, I think, allows us to take a more nuanced view of them both. They should be bad people, or morally compromised ones, but maybe there's a good side to this conquering, slaying business... or maybe not.