Customer Reviews

Present Laughter: Anthology of Modern Comic Fiction

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What makes you laugh? A twist in the tale? Bizarre behavior? Self-destructive foolishness? Love stories? Hate stories? Parodies? or pure humor? If all your answers are YES, you can safely pick up this book and laugh your way through. If not, well, you're in for some surprises.

There's no doubt that the collection is wholesome. The only problem is with the title. Looking at the title, many a reader will be forced to think that it's a collection that's going to send him/her rolling on the floor with laughter. It will not. As the editor rightly qoutes Sigmund Freud in the introduction - "Comedy is a complex human phenomenon. It has to do with pain as well as pleasure, anxiety as well as delight, cruelty, victimization and chaos..."

For someone looking to sketch the history of modern comic fiction, this book is a reasonably rich (29 pieces, to be precise) collection. The average reader though, in my opinion, would have loved more of the "Nobody Will Laugh" (Milan Kundera) or "The Champion of the World" (Roald Dahl) variety.