Witty and Sarcastic Writers

Lupine

I’m looking to read some witty books, ones that have plots and are not novelty books. Can anyone recommend some authors and books please?

Gneez

The first ciaphas cain trilogy 'hero of the imperium' is pretty funny, it's like flashman for the 41'st millenium, it's a sci-fi series set in the warhammer universe the guy is a commissar in a regiment of imperial guard

bigsmokewriting

The Silver Lining Playbook is very funny in my opinion, as well as Juliet Naked - two nice stories with some laugh out loud parts.
Ciaran - Big Smoke Writing Team

WillyWaggler

The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien.

im invisible

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

It's very funny, theres times you'll have to put it down, you're laughing so much, and there will be times you'll have to put it down, thinking 'he's trying too hard'

Red Hand

Our very own Myles na gCapaleen (Flann o Brian in newspaper form). His The Best of Myles is one of my favourite books...it's a collection of his from his time at the Irish Times from the 40s to the 60s.

Denerick

Depends what you are into. J.G. Farrel wrote some very intelligent and witty books - allegories, really - that saw the absurdity in daily life and in Empire. (Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur etc.)

Joseph Heller's Catch 22 is a classic of the postwar era, for a variety of reasons.

Umberto Eco provides some real subversive wit in Baudalino and The Name of the Rose. Not exactly laugh out loud stuff, but again, he exploits the absurd in a singularly amusing style. And his prose (Translated from Italian) is wonderful.

Sinclar Lewis is quite witty too, but his humour belongs to the 1920s really (Babbit and Main Street)

But I procrastinate. I will say no more. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Humorous...ish and tragic. Wilde to the core)

darjeeling

Evelyn Waugh. Try his early satire 'Decline and Fall', his mature and dark novel 'A Handful of Dust' or his cynical take on the newspaper industry, 'Scoop'. His weird semi-autobiographical account of a drink-and-pills-fuelled bout of hallucinatory paranoia on a long sea voyage (The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold) is worth a read too.

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Blackhorse Slim

PG Wodehouse (the Jeeves books) and Terry Pratchett spring to mind.

Both more witty than sarcastic.

tyler71

+1 for Flann O'Brien and Catch 22, great books
Worth trying one of the Jeeves and Wooster series by PG Wodehouse, the novels are always superbly plotted.
Also I love Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, sometimes the plots are weak, but the warmth and the humour generally carries them along.
Bill Bryson's travel books are pretty much guaranteed to make me laugh out loud, regardless of where he's writing about.

gamgsam

Flight from Deathrow by Harry Hill

You'll split your ribs

Bearhunter

Evelyn Waugh, Tom Sharpe, Colin Bateman and Christopher Brookmyre for sarcasm, Pratchett, Robert Rankin and Wodeholuse for humour. And Wambaugh and Shane Maloney for dark humour.

longshanks

I'd say Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiassen could fit the bill also

emeraldstar

Another vote for Wodehouse. The Jeeves and Wooster books are some of my absolute favourites!

raah!

Voltaire and a second vote Oscar Wilde are my reccommendations. Candide for Voltaire, and I haven't read any Oscar Wilde (Though I read a modern reinterpretation of him in the form of Stephen Fry's book) , but you've probably seen alot of his witty utterances quoted here and elsewhere.

"Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness." . Hoho ho ho, wot wot. Is a Stephen Fry one.

"Common sense is not so common. " hohoho, you do go on. Is a Voltaire one.

"It's the best of all possible worlds, but we must tend our gardens" hnof hnof hnof, absurd! That's Voltaire, Kris Krisstofferson has a similarly sarcastic and humerous commentary on this philosophy in his song "best of all possible worlds".

'The Village of Stepanchikovo' and 'A Christmas Tree and A wedding' would be representative witty novels/short stories from Dostoyevsky.

Lady von Purple

Absolutely yes to the Terry Pratchett Discworld novels, and to Catch 22-
my favourite novel of all time, the funniest book I've ever read.

I love Joe Abercrombie's fantasy novels, very well-written.

Oh, and for satire, you could check out Carl Hiaasen or Christopher Brookmyre. Hilarious novels. Particularly Brookmyre's The Sacred Art Of Stealing. Very very funny.

Fragglefur

The Ginger Man - JP Donleavy

randomguy

Some good ideas above (and some terrible ones).

Old school:
Saki - Witty Novels and Short storiesPenguin do a complete Saki
PG Wodehouse - any of the jeeves novels is a good start
Evelyn Waugh - a bit more serious than those two, but still funny.
Kingsley Amis
Jerome K Jerome - 3 Men in a Boat

A bit try-hard
Catch 22
A Confederacy of Dunces (I didn't find it funny, but plenty seemingly do).

Genre
Flashman - George MacDonald Fraser
Rumpole novels - John Mortimer
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (properly laugh-out-loud funny)
Carl Hiaasen - Tourist Season, Double Whammy, Skin Tight and Native Tongue are all dark and hilarious
High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
Louis de Bernieres - The Latin America Trilogy, starting with The War of Don Emmanuel's Underpants - very funny but the magic realist element might be a bit of an acquired taste for some.

But a great place to start would be:
Wilt (or anything else by Tom Sharpe)

And anything by David Sedaris should be funny, but they are essays rather than novels.

Humour tends to be on the subjective side (The Name of the Rose one of the 5 or so funniest books you can think of, Denerick??). Maybe if you let people know what you are into, people might be able to recommend something

darjeeling

Graham Greene might also be one to include here, for his more comic novels like 'Our man in Havana' or 'Monsignor Quixote'. His more serious books are not without their irony, too.

Fragglefur

second David Sedaris, sort of forgot about him! David Lodge is another one.

TanG411

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne

A very funny 18th Century book. Full of humour. It is a biographical account of Tristram Shandy who isn't born for over 100 pages. Has an accidental circumcision when a falling sash window lands on him.

fikay

I always felt that Post Office by Charles Bukowski had sarcastic undertones to it. It has its humorous moments too.
Also, although Catch-22 has gotten a few mentions already, I’d be of the opinion that Portrait of an Artist, As an Old Man is Joseph Heller’s funniest work.

E.T.

I find Louis de Bernieres brilliant, he manages to insert the most sarcastic sentences in the middle of seemingly innocuous paragraphs. I love his writing in general anyway, but just reread one of his books again this week and I'd forgotten how sharp he can be.

marienbad

to me the most most vicious ,witty and sarcastic as well as brilliant writer around has to be Philip Roth. How he had not been given the Nobel prize is beyond me.

sickdullplain

'McCarthys Bar' By Pete McCarthy is a very funny read. Based on his journey up the west coast of Ireland.

david75

Lights Out in Wonderland by DBC Pierre...cant recommend it enough.

mari2222

Lee Child
Harlan Coben
Janet Evanovitch
Len Deighton


All the above are hugely entertaining.

darragh666

Kurt Vonnegut. If I had a sharper mind I would constantly quote him.

BurnsCarpenter

Michael Marshall Smith is good for funny/sarcastic narrators in the Sci-Fi genre.

John Connolly's Charlie Parker is another good sarcastic narrator.

Opinicus

tyler71 wrote: »

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Also I love Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, sometimes the plots are weak, but the warmth and the humour generally carries them along.

+1, especially any of the Night Watch books. Night Watch, Thud! and The Fifth Elephant are my favourite discworld books. Sam Vimes = Awesome.

doomed

Anything by Carl Hiassen
Anything by Rich Hall

The Aurelio Zen books by Michael Dibdin (miles better than the TV series)

Some Tom Woulfe

Classics
Vanity Fair, by Thackery
Martin Chuzzlewit by Dickens
Emma or Pride and Prejudice

Oliverdog

Early Tom Sharpe - Riotous Assembly, Indecent Exposure, and my favourite Porterhouse Blue.
Clive James' autobiographical series Unreliable Memoirs, and his collections of TV Criticism when he wrote for the Guardian contain some real gems, although becoming a bit dated if you are too young to remember the programmes he was reviewing. I don't have that problem ! :rolleyes:

Morlar

Dorothy Parker is worth a read. Hunter S thompson (particularly his early 1970's journalism articles) could also be extremely witty.

IgnatiusJ

As my username might suggest, I'm a big believer in A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Hilarious book with a fascinating back story.

On Heller, I find him very funny but Catch-22 is too much hard work. Plenty of laugh out loud moments, but without doubt the most over-written book of all time. His Good As Gold is far easier to read and just as funny.

David Lodge is also worth reading, particularly his work from the '70s and '80s.

Lady von Purple

[QUOTE=IgnatiusJOn Heller, I find him very funny but Catch-22 is too much hard work. Plenty of laugh out loud moments, but without doubt the most over-written book of all time. His Good As Gold is far easier to read and just as funny.
[/QUOTE]

Completely disagree! I think the language makes Catch 22 incredibly challenging but I thought it was completely worth it. The detail was just amazing. I think it's really well-written.
One major problem (arguably) with it is that you can't just stop reading and start again a while later, like you can with most books.
You try that with Catch 22 and you end up going "damn, what the hell happened here?" so, imo, you have to read it all in virtually one go.

But still I think it's fantastically written and, while hard work, completely worth the effort.

Sorry for rambling, it's just I think it's the greatest novel I've ever read.

IgnatiusJ

Lady von Purple wrote: »

Completely disagree! I think the language makes Catch 22 incredibly challenging but I thought it was completely worth it. The detail was just amazing. I think it's really well-written.
One major problem (arguably) with it is that you can't just stop reading and start again a while later, like you can with most books.
You try that with Catch 22 and you end up going "damn, what the hell happened here?" so, imo, you have to read it all in virtually one go.

But still I think it's fantastically written and, while hard work, completely worth the effort.

Sorry for rambling, it's just I think it's the greatest novel I've ever read.

Certain parts of it are absolutely brilliant but I always thought there was a lot of room for editing the bits in between. Each chapter is basically a mini-biography of a new character. Some are hilarious, others not so much.

Then again, it's sold several million more copies than anything I've written, so maybe I've called this one wrong.

Lady von Purple

IgnatiusJ wrote: »

Then again, it's sold several million more copies than anything I've written, so maybe I've called this one wrong.

It's a matter of personal taste though, it's not like your opinion is wrong, I just get defensive of that novel.

...Sorry.

Some people I know have tried to read it, couldn't get through it and just written it off as a bad book. Now that's wrong!

chasmcb

Anthony Cronin's 'Life of Riley' about 1950s' Dublin bohemia is very funny and a more recent Irish comic novel that has great laugh-out-loud moments is Julian Gough's 'Jude Level 1'

I'd also add recommendations for Kinglsey Amis's Lucky Jim and the American novelist Percival Everett is very smart & funny; check out 'Erasure' & 'American Desert'