For more evidence, just look at the first part of the 19th century, which had two major novelists-Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott. One of the two makes people laugh, and the other does not. And one is still read quite a bit, and the other is not. I'll leave you to guess how it all lines up.
Not that I'm particularly fond of Jane Austen: I certainly don't worship at her alter the way so many people do these days. But she has stayed remarkably readable and funny while Sir Walter Scott has withered on the vine. If it weren't for Ivanhoe, the progenitor of the historical novel probably wouldn't be remembered at all.
It can't be denied than Jane Austen was a clever and funny writer. But I have a strange reaction to her work. I can laugh along as I'm reading it, I can even enjoy myself, but by the time I set down the book, it has left me strangely hollow. Mostly, the problem is that Jane Austen's universe is not our universe. And I don't just mean that she lived and wrote in a different era-even in her own time she was writing about an England which didn't exist. Her people are entirely cut off from the day-to-day struggle for existence. Of course, the typical interpretation of Austen is that she was courageously satirizing the world of the posh and idle upper classes. But I would actually argue that the appeal of Austen, for most of her devotees, is the appeal of fantasy. People don't read her for the satire: they seem to love the idea of living in her unique mythic realm. The same can be said of P.G. Wodehouse, generally taken to be the greatest British comic novelist of the 20th century. But we'll get to him later.
Austen's century wasn't the best time for the "comic novel," although the broader category of "books that make us laugh," was still active. There were several uniquely 19th-century satires, long and plotted as they are. I'm thinking here of Trollope's The Way We Live Now and some of Thackeray's satires. There was also Samuel Butler, although his Erewhon is more satire than comedy and his longer and more famous novel, The Way of All Flesh, was too controversial to see the light of day during the author's lifetime. None of these follow the modern "comic novel" formula, with jokes on every page. Satire is a very different thing, and while the best comic novels are satirical, the best satires aren't always comic.
But what about Dickens? Surely he added something to the comic novel tradition. Well, to be sure, The Pickwick Papers and a few others would fall squarely into that category. And some of his books, like Nicholas Nickleby, follow fairly closely the old Smollett/Fielding picaresque formula (both authors influenced the young Dickens). But his best works, such as Great Expectations and David Copperfield, could hardly be called comic novels, even if they include the usual Dickens array of outrageous comic characters, as well as the deliciously ironic narration which both Pip and David share.
No, I would say that the comic novel as we know it-short, sweet, with what can be clearly identified as jokes-is a 20th-century invention. And if we're going to talk about modern comedy, there are three all-important names: Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, and P.G. Wodehouse.
Everyone remembers Huxley for the dystopian Brave New World, which has given him a reputation as a writer of fantasies and science fiction. But the books which first established him as a writer were quite realistic-most of them full of intellectual discussion and argument. Point Counter Point would be the perfect example. But his earlier novels, Crome Yellow and Antic Hay, were also written in this vein. Crome Yellow, in typical Huxley fashion, has very little discernible plot. A young poet named Denis Stone arrives at Crome, a fashionable country manor. It's not clear exactly why he's staying there or what his relationship is to the house's other inhabitants. That's not really the point. The novel follows the exploits, seemingly at random, of the ridiculous visitors at Crome. I would say an actual majority of the book is spent following the useless digressions of one Henry Wimbush, who's writing (and sharing with us) a history of Crome, and one Mr. Scogan-a sort of semi-fascist intent on reducing humanity to three categories: leaders, mystics, and a vast mindless herd made up of the rest of us. Nothing happens in the story, apart from Denis' unsuccessful efforts to seduce Anne and the attempts of Mary Wimbush to relieve herself of various "repressions." But that's just the glory of the book. If I had to choose my all-time favorite comic novel, Crome Yellow would definitely be in the running. It doesn't pretend to tell a story, which gives the satire free-reign. Huxley pokes fun at everything and everyone, and it's hard to go on for more than a few pages without setting down the book to laugh. And because it has no plot, per se, it remains consistently funny all the way through. It doesn't fall victim to the typical fate of comic novels, most of which cease to be funny with any consistency long before the end.
