Kate Saunders
No Laughing Matter
To Wit – In Celebration of Comedy
By Penelope Gilliatt
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 298pp £17.95
Lingo
By Penelope Gilliatt
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 150pp £11.95
Laugh? I thought I’d never start. Penelope Gilliatt’s To Wit is a promising enough idea – a celebration of comedy and the philosophy of laughter, by an elegant and erudite writer. Unfortunately, elegant and erudite writers tend not to be made of the same common clay as the rest of us. Gilliatt is one of those people who totally lack vulgarity, and without it, much of the world’s humour passes her by. After a baffling preface, in which she discusses that knockabout comedian Sigmund Freud, out comes a significant confession:
‘I don’t believe that the general public is anything like as devoted to the old narrative conventions as it is still assumed to be. The avant-garde hostility to the well-made comedy isn’t a closeted snobbism; it expresses a doubt about whether the form still has the power to be genuinely popular.’
Gilliatt’s snobbism leaps out of the closet at an early stage. Like many clever, posh people, she believes that the general public would gladly swap Ray Cooney’s Theatre of Comedy for Bertolt Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble, if only the matter was properly explained to them.
Comedy is in the eye of the beholder, and this beholder thinks Beckett, Pinter, Ionesco and Bunuel are funny. Penelope Gilliatt does not really like jokes. She likes sly, exquisite nuances which shed a quirky sidelight on the human condition. This should warn off readers who weep tears of laughter
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk