In an interview on The Comic Novel

So Allen, is the comic novel different from other funny books, or are all funny books comic novels?

That's a good question. I suppose that when I was thinking of this list and I thought about where it would start and where it would end there were lots of books that I could have put on there. But what I think maybe separates the comic novel is a certain consistency of spirit. I mean, there are a lot of funny parts in Pride and Prejudice, but I don't know that I'd call it a comic novel...

There are several books on your list that are approaching the idea of not taking life too seriously in different ways. But I'd like to start with James Wood. Because Wood is the only critic on your list and he's a very well respected critic, amongst academics and also with readers of the New York Review of Books and fancy literary magazines like that. You've chosen a collection of his essays called The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter And The Novel. Would you be OK to start with James Wood? Although we could perfectly easily start with another author. I mean, coincidentally, The Irresponsible Self was published in the same year (2004) as Gideon Defoe's The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists.

Although I have a feeling he would hate that book. I’ve never seen him review a book about pirates in an adventure with anybody…

Wood’s talking about the role of laughter in novels?

Yes. And one of the things Wood talks about is the way that laughter is used in a way that says a lot about the author. So that Evelyn Waugh uses laughter in an often contemptuous way, while authors like Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky or Chekov use it in a more philanthropic kind of way… And this gets close to what I’m interested in, because what Wood’s also talking about is a fundamental historical shift. With the exception of Shakespeare, who I guess is a big exception, comedy had usually been a judgemental, derisory sort of affair. But what Wood puts his finger on in the late nineteenth century is the emergence of what he calls the comedy of forgiveness, as opposed to the comedy of correction and the satiric mode. Before this shift the comic mode had its roots in a quasi religious idea of correcting people’s faults and passing judgement on them. The books which I’ve chosen do not really stand back in judgement on Bertie Wooster or Mr Pooter or whomever it might be. It would just be incredibly boring if that was all that happened. Too easy, over too quickly. Rather it’s that the person who has all these manifest flaws is still a person who commands our sympathy and identification and recognition. And that this is really a creation of the novel, a secular creation which Wood puts like this: ‘if religious comedy is punishment for those who deserve it, secular comedy is forgiveness for those who don’t.’

I read an article in The Guardian on Wood’s book. A very reverential article. But one of the things the article made clear was that Wood’s book was pretty high brow. People like Wodehouse, Flan O’Brien and Defoe didn’t make the cut.

Well Wood has written on Wodehouse. I think in the TLS, and I don’t know why it’s not in that volume. A marvellous piece on Wodehouse.