The Times of London has an
excellent piece today discussing the place for the comic novel (as opposed to the "misery memoir," and other subgenres) on the literary scene. I very much agree with the writer's stance. As an
independent publicist, I represent the books I truly love, and continue to select comic novels even though people accustomed to evaluating cultural merit through the prism of seriousness seem not to know quite what to do with them sometimes. But if I enjoy a book so much I can't imagine doing anything but talking about for months on end, I'm going to do it no matter what the challenges may be. I want to tell people who might embrace it with the wholehearted pleasure that I do and that's a perfect way to spend my days. The novel the
Times mentions is Min Jin Lee's
Free Food for Millionaires, which I helped to publicize and which is often dark and quite gripping in its broad style, taking in whole aspects of humanity and weaving a story as intricate and complex as life itself. And definitely funny. That's the thing about the very best comic novels: they say the words that we can't say. Others that I've publicized in recent years:
Harry, Revised by Mark Sarvas –– which
Katherine Lanpher gave the best compliment, in my mind, deeming it
"funny and warm and knowing, sort of like having a guy friend
who will tell you what
men actually sound like when you're not around." –– and
Crust by Lawrence Shainberg, a fantastic political and philosophical, deeply media-savvy romp through the world we live in, about five minutes from now. My big book for spring is Maria Semple's
This One is Mine, a sparkling and sage debut from an ex-writer for television, and a real West Coast novel, and as I was saying at lunch today with my publicity colleagues at Little, Brown, a
delight, and then one replied, in the perfect, crisp, witty tone of the book, "and abortion, too."