100 best comic novels by Michael Dirda, Washington Post
1. Leave It to Psmith, by P.G. Wodehouse
2. Crome Yellow, by Aldous Huxley
3. The Pyrates, by George Macdonald Fraser
4. Augustus Carp, by Himself (Henry Howarth Bashford)
5. The Trials of Topsy, by A.P. Herbert
6. The Unfortunate Fursey, by Mervyn Wall
7. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, by Anita Loos
8. Mapp and Lucia, by E.F. Benson
9. What a Life!, by E.V. Lucas and George Morrow
10. The Young Visiters, by Daisy Ashford
11. Appleby’s End, by Michael Innes
12. Tik-Tok, by John Sladek
13. The Pot of Gold, by James Stephens
14. The Travel Tales of Joseph Jorkens, by Lord Dunsany
15. His Monkey Wife, by John Collier
16. Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis
17. Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh
18. Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons
19. Party Going, by Henry Green
20. An Armful of Warm Girl, by W.M. Spackman
21. Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things, by Gilbert Sorrentino
22. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
23. Amphigorey, by Edward Gorey
24. Pictures from an Institution, by Randall Jarrell
25. Bullivant and the Lambs, by Ivy Compton-Burnett
26. A Severed Head, by Iris Murdoch
27. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
28. Alan Mendelsohn, The Boy from Mars, by Daniel Pinkwater
29. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
30. The Night Life of the Gods, by Thorne Smith
31. The Sword in the Stone, by T.H. White
32. God Save the Mark, by Donald E. Westlake
33. Murphy, by Samuel Beckett
34. The Eyes of the Overworld, by Jack Vance
35. Cakes and Ale, by Somerset Maugham
36. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson
37. The Silver Stallion, by James Branch Cabell
38. The Napoleon of Notting Hill, by G.K.Chesterton
39. All About H. Hatterr, by G.U. Desani
40. Seven Men, by Max Beerbohm
41. The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut
42. The Chronicles of Clovis, by Saki
43. South Wind, by Norman Douglas
44. The Flower Beneath the Foot, by Ronald Firbank
45. The Gate of Angels, by Penelope Fitzgerald
46. You Know Me, Al, by Ring Lardner
47. The Locusts Have No King, by Dawn Powell
48. A Fan’s Notes, by Frederick Exley
49. The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster
50. Lady into Fox, by David Garnett
51. Letter to Lord Byron, by W.H. Auden
52. Too Many Cooks, by Rex Stout
53. Portnoy’s Complaint, by Philip Roth
54. The Thurber Carnival, by James Thurber
55. Guys and Dolls, by Damon Runyon
56. The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett
57. Or All the Seas with Oysters, by Avram Davidson
58. Two Serious Ladies, by Jane Bowles
59. At Swim-Two-Birds, by Flann O’Brien
60. Flaubert’s Parrot, by Julian Barnes
61. The Road to Oxiana, by Robert Byron
62. On the Shoulders of Giants, by Robert K. Merton
63. A Cab at the Door, by V.S. Pritchett
64. Candy, by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg
65. Federigo, by Howard Nemerov
66. Thus Was Adonis Murdered, by Sarah Caudwell
67. Wise Children, by Angela Carter
68. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
69. The Pursuit of Love, by Nancy Mitford
70. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
71. The Tin Men, by Michael Frayn
72. Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry, by B.S. Johnson
73. Up in the Old Hotel, by Joseph Mitchell
74. A Frolic of His Own, by William Gaddis
75. The Most of S.J. Perelman
76. The Moving Toyshop, by Edmund Crispin
77. A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole
78. Enderby, by Anthony Burgess
79. Sixty Stories, by Donald Barthelme
80. Life Among the Savages, by Shirley Jackson
81. The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, by Max Shulman
82. Lake Wobegon Days, by Garrison Keillor
83. Will This Do?, by Auberon Waugh
84. Man and Superman, by Bernard Shaw
85. Riotous Assembly, by Tom Sharpe
86. Mort, by Terry Pratchett
87. Is That What People Do?, by Robert Sheckley
88. Five Children and It, by E. Nesbit
89. The Rebel Angels, by Robertson Davies
90. A Glass of Blessings, by Barbara Pym
91. Hindoo Holiday, by J.R. Ackerley
92. Small World, by David Lodge
93. The Dick Gibson Show, by Stanley Elkin
94. The Mezzanine, by Nicholson Baker
95. Expecting Someone Taller, by Tom Holt
96. The History Man, by Malcolm Bradbury
97. A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, by Eric Newby
98. Rumpole of the Bailey, by John Mortimer
99. United States: Collected Essays, by Gore Vidal
100. Ulysses, by James Joyce