Comic writers aren’t funny enough to win top prize
A COMIC fiction prize will not be announced for the first time in its 18-year history as none of the novels made the judges laugh.
The prize for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2018 is being withheld after the judges decided that the 62 submissions for the coveted prize fell short of the necessary funny-factor.
There will therefore be no one joining the ranks of PG Wodehouse, or the prize’s previous winners, such as Helen Fielding, Michael Frayn, Howard Jacobson, Marina Lewycka and Alexander Mccall Smith.
David Campbell, judge and publisher of Everyman’s Library, said: “My fellow judges and I have decided to withhold the prize this year to maintain the extremely high standards of comic fiction that the prize represents.
“Despite the submitted books producing many a wry smile amongst the panel during the judging process, we did not feel than any of the books we read this year incited the level of unanimous laughter we have come to expect.
“We look forward to awarding a larger rollover prize next year to a hilariously funny book.” Victoria Carfantan, director of Champagne Bollinger, said: “We are confident that 2019 will make for an exceptional crop of hilarious submissions.”
It was announced earlier this month that the Swedish Academy has postponed the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature in the wake of a scandal over sexual assault allegations.
The crisis centred on the handling of allegations against Jean-claude Aranaut, the husband of an academy member, and led to her quitting along with the institution’s head and four other members. Arnault has repeatedly denied all the allegations against him; his lawyer saying he has become “the victim of a witch hunt” and that the accusations “may have been made with the sole purpose of harming” him.
When was the last time a book made you laugh out loud? Not recently, say the judges of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse annual prize for comic fiction. Out of 62 submissions, they couldn’t find a single writer who “captured the comic spirit” of Wodehouse and “prompted unanimous, abundant laughter”. So the judges decided to withhold this year’s award – and I’m very glad they did.
There’s nothing worse than mediocre comedy, or being told a book is “hilarious” only to plough through it with a face like an Easter Island statue.
As a comedy writer for more than 30 years, I’ve seen comedy change – and not for the better. Not so long ago excellent comic fiction was falling off the shelves. The first Wodehouse prize in 2000 was won by Howard Jacobson with The Mighty Waltzer, but he was run close by Sue Townsend’s angst-ridden Adrian Mole, The Cappuccino Years and the Telegraph’s former obituaries editor Hugh Massingberd’s The Book of Obituaries. Humour is subjective, but any of these would have received a brisk handshake of approval and an invitation for a snifter at the Drones Club from Bertie Wooster himself.
So what’s gone wrong? Are writers so worried about being PC that humour is about as cutting-edge as a damp sponge? Or is it that no one knows how to “write funny” any more? It is both, but comic writers have also fallen out of touch with their audience.
Undeniably, our world has changed since Lord Emsworth chased the Empress round Blandings Castle. We live in frightening times, with little to laugh about. Satire can tackle “issues” but the comic spirit of Wodehouse is about gauging the mood of the age and providing an escape.
Evelyn Waugh describes it thus: “His characters have never tasted the forbidden fruit. They are still in Eden. Mr Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.”
As did James Herriot’s vet novels and HE Bates’s The Darling Buds of May, which chronicled the bucolic life of the Larkins. The TV series was screened during the Gulf War and was watched by almost the whole country. Unashamedly escapist, feelgood and funny. Today, we watch
The Durrells for the same reason, as world powers threaten and skirmish.
Now we smirk, snigger, swear (oh, how we swear) and slag off in the name of comedy, but rarely do we see or hear wit, wordplay and pin-sharp, character-led dialogue on page or screen.
Writing great comedy isn’t about hurling insults and put-downs. It’s one of the hardest things to do – and one of the least appreciated. I was often asked: “When are you going to move up to writing drama?”, as if comedy was the bottom rung of the “proper writing” ladder. Comedy films rarely win Oscars and actors dream of playing Hamlet rather than, say, Felix in The Odd Couple.
The Wodehouse judges are right to hold out for the next Kingsley Amis, Nick Hornby, Alan Bennett or Michael Frayn – whose Sixties’ Fleet Street novel Towards the End of the Morning really is falling-down funny – because they’re not just great comedy writers but great writers, who’ve often spent a lifetime perfecting their craft.
Wodehouse recognised this: “When, in due course, Charon ferries me across the Styx and everyone is telling everyone else what a rotten writer I was, I hope at least one voice will be heard piping up: ‘But he did take trouble’.”