# Are there any great works of literature that are not funny? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 8, 2012, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878 "2012-08-08T16:28:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/61 "2012-08-09T23:39:14Z")
> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > I can’t think of much humor in Greek tragedy, unless you count Orestes’ nurse grumping about how much of a pain it is to take care of a baby. Irony, yes, but most of the time it’s meant to be the “bitter twist of fate” sort of irony rather than the funny kind. Still, you wouldn’t call a Greek tragedy humorless, certainly not drab, or dull, or simply dark, or boring. While tragic irony may not be humor _per se_, I think it may function in a way sort of like humor (and twist endings in more contemporary literature or film are sort of the same thing): One theory about why jokes are funny says that a joke works by creating an expectation, and then subverting that expectation in the punchline. The realization that something is different from what we expected, or, by extension, that a familiar structure has been turned on its head, creates a release. In jokes, it makes us laugh, in tragedy, it makes us… want to go kill ourselves. Well, either that, or experience catharsis, I suppose, if you believe Aristotle. Hmm… did I just have a thought? :dubious: _Goes off to start writing thesis_ ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/62 "2012-08-09T23:43:18Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > Did many of Poe’s works have humor? Surely he wrote some that were nothing but frightening/sad/depressing. I can’t think of much humor in Poe’s best or best-known work, but he did attempt a few humorous, satiric pieces, such as [“A Predicament”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Predicament_(short_story)) and [“Never Bet the Devil Your Head.”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Bet_the_Devil_Your_Head) ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/63 "2012-08-09T23:43:36Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > Did many of Poe’s works have humor? Surely he wrote some that were nothing but frightening/sad/depressing. Some of Poe’s stories are outright comedy, such as “The Man That Was Used Up” and “X-ing a Paragrab.” ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/64 "2012-08-10T00:26:05Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > In Euripides’s _Orestes_ I remember there’s a bit where Orestes is sleeping and Electra is watching over him. The chorus comes in and she tells them to be quiet so they don’t wake him. But the chorus, being the chorus, _can’t_ really be quiet. They just keep _saying_ they’re being quiet, and the whole thing turns into a kind of “Stop it!”/“I’m not touching you!” exchange that I thought was pretty funny. That sounds hilarious. Really. Why don’t I read more Euripides? ---
**Author:** ![whc.03grady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a6a055/32.png) [@whc.03grady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whc.03grady)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/65 "2012-08-10T01:08:21Z")
> [@NDP](#): > > From how I see it, the “joke” is that the tribe of the offended man (i.e., that of Judah, Simeon, Joseph, etc.) were always planning the massacre the other tribe no matter what. The request that they had to circumcise themselves was made only to just to dick with them (so to speak). In fact, it may have really been offered as a “go fuck yourself” type of proposal. They just didn’t expect the other tribe would be dumb enough to actually do it. Right, I get _that_, I just don’t get how ministryman thinks it constitutes humor. I’m not trying to be prudish; but if something like this occurred in a great film like _Pulp Fiction_, I don’t see how it’d be a _humorous_ part of the film. Not that it’d necessarily be a bad part, just that it wouldn’t be a funny part. I suppose it’s just an example of how far some people will stretch the Bible to try to make it a relateable [sic?] document, like trying to point out how it has its funny moments. It doesn’t. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/66 "2012-08-10T01:49:33Z")
> [@Maastricht](#): > > I agree. Dickens humor is often about catchphrases repeated often in incongruous circumstances. Like Pip’s older sister, who bosses both her kind husband and Pip around, yet keeps sighing that she works so hard and gets no respect and “I’m never out of my apron”. I thought it pretty funny how she keeps playing the martyr with that apron. > > Or that lawyer (not sure about his name) who bites his finger. A bad habit, like nail biting, right? No. That lawyer has turned his finger biting into an art, into a mighty weapon that sways judges and intimidates suspects and clients. The lawyer (Jaggers is his name) provides some of the funniest scenes in the book, actually; especially when he has his clients and clerks recruiting perjurious witnesses but insists (loudly and furiously!) on maintaining full deniability. > [@](#): > > “Here’s Mike,” said the clerk, getting down from his stool, and approaching Mr. Jaggers confidentially. > > “Oh!” said Mr. Jaggers, turning to the man, who was pulling a lock of hair in the middle of his forehead, like the Bull in Cock Robin pulling at the bell-rope; “your man comes on this afternoon. Well?” > > “Well, Mas’r Jaggers,” returned Mike, in the voice of a sufferer from a constitutional cold; “arter a deal o’ trouble, I’ve found one, sir, as might do.” > > “What is he prepared to swear?” > > “Well, Mas’r Jaggers,” said Mike, wiping his nose on his fur cap this time; “in a general way, anythink.” > > Mr. Jaggers suddenly became most irate. “Now, I warned you before,” said he, throwing his forefinger at the terrified client, “that if you ever presumed to talk in that way here, I’d make an example of you. You infernal scoundrel, how dare you tell ME that?” > > The client looked scared, but bewildered too, as if he were unconscious what he had done. > > “Spooney!” said the clerk, in a low voice, giving him a stir with his elbow. “Soft Head! Need you say it face to face?” > > “Now, I ask you, you blundering booby,” said my guardian, very sternly, “once more and for the last time, what the man you have brought here is prepared to swear?” > > Mike looked hard at my guardian, as if he were trying to learn a lesson from his face, and slowly replied, “Ayther to character, or to having been in his company and never left him all the night in question.” > > “Now, be careful. In what station of life is this man?” > > Mike looked at his cap, and looked at the floor, and looked at the ceiling, and looked at the clerk, and even looked at me, before beginning to reply in a nervous manner, “We’ve dressed him up like—” when my guardian blustered out,— > > “What? You WILL, will you?” > > (“Spooney!” added the clerk again, with another stir.) > > After some helpless casting about, Mike brightened and began again:— > > “He is dressed like a 'spectable pieman. A sort of a pastry-cook.” > > “Is he here?” asked my guardian. > > “I left him,” said Mike, “a setting on some doorsteps round the corner.” > > “Take him past that window, and let me see him.” > > The window indicated was the office window. We all three went to it, behind the wire blind, and presently saw the client go by in an accidental manner, with a murderous-looking tall individual, in a short suit of white linen and a paper cap. This guileless confectioner was not by any means sober, and had a black eye in the green stage of recovery, which was painted over. > > “Tell him to take his witness away directly,” said my guardian to the clerk, in extreme disgust, “and ask him what he means by bringing such a fellow as that.” ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/67 "2012-08-10T01:53:50Z")
The bit in _Catcher in the Rye_ where Holden, expelled from his school and departing his dorm late at night, screams, “SLEEP TIGHT, MOTHERFUCKERS!” (or words to that effect) is the closest thing to a funny bit in the book. And at that, it’s the kind of funny that will never get an actual laugh unless read out loud in an English class, or used in a screen-adaptation. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/68 "2012-08-10T02:02:47Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > Did many of Poe’s works have humor? Surely he wrote some that were nothing but frightening/sad/depressing. Well, there’s one or two dryly funny bits in “The Cask of Amontillado.” “THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.” “Luchesi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry.” (Amontillado is a **kind** of sherry.) “There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry in honor of the time. I had told them that I should not return until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned.” > [@](#): > > “These vaults,” he said, “are extensive.” > > “The Montresors,” I replied, “were a great and numerous family.” > > “I forget your arms.” > > “A huge human foot d’or, in a field azure ; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel.” > > “And the motto ?” > > “Nemo me impune lacessit .”\* > > “Good !” he said. \*“No one attacks me with impunity,” or, more whimsically translated, “Don’t tread on me.” Foreshadowing the end of the story, you see. > [@](#): > > I broke and reached him a flaçon of De Grâve. He emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand. > > I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement - a grotesque one. > > “You do not comprehend ?” he said. > > “Not I,” I replied. > > “Then you are not of the brotherhood.” > > “How ?” > > “You are not of the masons.” > > “Yes, yes,” I said, “yes, yes.” > > “You ? Impossible ! A mason ?” > > “A mason,” I replied. > > “A sign,” he said. > > “It is this,” I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds of my roquelaire. > > “You jest,” he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. “But let us proceed to the Amontillado.” ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/69 "2012-08-10T02:24:06Z")
I just finished reading “The Sun Also Rises”. There were a number of scenes in which the characters were doing things that \*they \*found humorous (at least some of them), but I don’t think there was a single thing in the entire novel that I’d call “funny”. ---
**Author:** ![Jaledin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Jaledin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaledin)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/70 "2012-08-10T04:24:28Z")
Caesar’s bell. Gall. Has absolutely no humor. The great war epics have word play, and some funny-ish bits, but Caesar is the greatest writer of literature who is always serious, all the time. Perhaps he didn’t intend his work as literature, but it is considered such today, unlike, for example, the scholastics or some purely didactic poems. The extant fragments I’ve read from e.g. Epicurus are not funny, but not really literature, either. _under the volcano_? Fun but not really funny. Joseph roth’s books aren’t that funny, nor are Broch’s. hölderlin not that funny, nor Rilke. D’aubigné’s _les tragiques_ isn’t funny iirc about the bartholomew day massacres. Maurice scève isn’t really funny either, but the word play is fun. But not funny. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/71 "2012-08-10T21:11:09Z")
Any humor in William Faulkner’s _As I Lay Dying_ and _Sanctuary_ must’ve passed me by, if it was there. ---
**Author:** ![koeeoaddi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/koeeoaddi/32/408_2.png) [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/72 "2012-08-10T22:22:02Z")
I don’t think I cracked a smile once reading _Crime and Punishment_. Or for days afterwards. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/73 "2012-08-10T23:04:11Z")
> [@koeeoaddi](#): > > I don’t think I cracked a smile once reading _Crime and Punishment_. Or for days afterwards. 🙂 Jude the Obscure…no, his thinking that foreign languages were adding “o” at the end of English words… Ah! Tess of the D’Ubervilles. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/74 "2012-08-10T23:10:29Z")
_Wuthering Heights._ The nearest thing to comic relief is Joseph, and him you just want to shoot. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/75 "2012-08-10T23:15:17Z")
There was nothing even slightly funny in Ayn Rand’s _Fountainhead_ or _Anthem,_ if they even count as literature. Never read _Atlas Shrugged,_ but I’ve never read or heard anything about it that would lead me to expect a single chuckle. There is nothing funny in Plato’s _Republic._ Not much funny in even the lightest of the dialogues, really, not even the _Symposium._ ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/76 "2012-08-10T23:51:34Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > _Wuthering Heights._ The nearest thing to comic relief is Joseph, and him you just want to shoot. I remember one of my friends saying she thought the scene where Heathcliff and Isabelle (?) got into an argument that involved the throwing of knives to be fairly amusing. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/77 "2012-08-11T00:29:46Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Raymond Chandler was born the same year as him, and Chandler’s work is reliably somber, with only occasional and brief moments of light-hearted dialogue to leaven the grimness. 😕 Maybe I’m just sleepy and missing a whoosh, but my favorite thing about Chandler is how he makes me giggle with a hilarious turn of phrase on virtually every page. [Some samples](http://home.comcast.net/~mossrobert/html/chandlerisms/chandlerisms.htm) > [@Raymond Chandler](#): > > "On the dance floor half a dozen couples were throwing themselves around with the reckless abandon of a night watchman with arthritis "—Playback (Chapter 8) > > “Tall, aren’t you?” she said. > “I didn’t mean to be.” > Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her. > —The Big Sleep (Chapter 1) ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/78 "2012-08-11T00:51:29Z")
> [@Jaledin](#): > > Caesar’s bell. Gall. Has absolutely no humor. The great war epics have word play, and some funny-ish bits, but Caesar is the greatest writer of literature who is always serious, all the time. Perhaps he didn’t intend his work as literature, but it is considered such today, … No, they’re not. People have been dissing Caesar as near illiterate as makes no nevermind for millennia. Me? I love the ablative absolute. ---
**Author:** ![Jaledin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Jaledin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaledin)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/79 "2012-08-11T02:06:46Z")
? The style of Caesar is, from what I know, pretty much sui generis. Nobody has any love for Jerome’s vulgate style, but it’s way more illiterate and coarse than Caesar. Caesar is probably still taught for second year HS students as literature many places. Yeah I guess he does use a lot of the absolute, but I’d bet Vergil uses the absolute far more often. It’s a convenient way to express something quickly and clearly, which is the whole point of those little war reports. What is funny to me is that Caesar always has the barbarians speak in grunts and horrible Latin, whereas Caesar’s own dialogue is proto-Ciceronian in parataxis and polish. I take it back – that still makes me laugh. But I read Caesar when I want to read terse, effective prose with restricted diction – fun, but not funny, except probably inadvertently so. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878/80 "2012-08-11T02:44:58Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > 😕 Maybe I’m just sleepy and missing a whoosh, but my favorite thing about Chandler is how he makes me giggle with a hilarious turn of phrase on virtually every page. [Some samples](http://home.comcast.net/~mossrobert/html/chandlerisms/chandlerisms.htm) General Sternwood: “Have you met my daughter?” Phillip Marlowe: “Yes, she tried to sit in my lap. I was standing up at the time.” Perhaps that isn’t humorous, but indicative of…whats her name…Carmine?..being totally whacko. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-great-works-of-literature-that-are-not-funny/630878.md?page=5)