Present Laughter: Anthology Of Modern Comic Fiction

by Malcolm Bradbury

This sparkling anthology offers 29 of the best marriages of comedy and fiction. A deliciously varied collection of comic short stories, representing the cream of twentieth century humour.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Humor

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Sir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE was an English author and academic. He is best known to a wider public as a novelist. Although he is often compared with David Lodge, his friend and a contemporary as a British exponent of the campus novel genre, Bradbury's books are consistently darker in mood and less playful both in style and language. His best known novel The History Man, published in 1975, is a dark satire of academic life in the "glass and steel" universities—the then-fashionable newer universities of England that had followed their "redbrick" predecessors—which in 1981 was made into a successful BBC television serial. The protagonist is the hypocritical Howard Kirk, a sociology professor at the fictional University of Watermouth.

He completed his PhD in American studies at the University of Manchester in 1962, moving to the University of East Anglia (his second novel, Stepping Westward, appeared in 1965), where he became Professor of American Studies in 1970 and launched the world-renowned MA in Creative Writing course, which Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro both attended. He published Possibilities: Essays on the State of the Novel in 1973, The History Man in 1975, Who Do You Think You Are? in 1976, Rates of Exchange in 1983, Cuts: A Very Short Novel in 1987, retiring from academic life in 1995. Malcolm Bradbury became a Commander of the British Empire in 1991 for services to Literature, and was made a Knight Bachelor in the New Year Honours 2000, again for services to Literature.

Bradbury was a productive academic writer as well as a successful teacher; an expert on the modern novel, he published books on Evelyn Waugh, Saul Bellow and E. M. Forster, as well as editions of such modern classics as F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and a number of surveys and handbooks of modern fiction, both British and American.

He also wrote extensively for television, including scripting series such as Anything More Would Be Greedy, The Gravy Train, the sequel The Gravy Train Goes East (which explored life in Bradbury's fictional Slaka), and adapting novels such as Tom Sharpe's Blott on the Landscape and Porterhouse Blue, Alison Lurie's Imaginary Friends and Kingsley Amis's The Green Man. His last television script was for Dalziel and Pascoe series 5, produced by Andy Rowley. The episode 'Foreign Bodies' was screened on BBC One on July 15, 2000.

Reviews

[Tim Orfanos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ίσως, η πιο πλήρης ανθολογία κωμικής λογοτεχνίας του 20ου αιώνα. Ξεκινά από το 1922 με το 'Δείπνο του Τίλοτσον' του Άλντους Χάξλυ και εκτείνεται μέχρι τον 'Δρ. Σκούμ' του Τζόναθαν Ουίλσον που γράφτηκε το 1993. Ωστόσο, το 1ο μέρος της ανθολογίας είναι λιγότερο ουισαστικό και ενδιαφέρον με πιο αδύναμες ιστορίες όπως του Χόρχε Λουίς Μπόρχες, της Μιούριελ Σπαρκ ή του Τζον Άπνταικ, ενώ οι ιστορίες-διηγήματα του Σίνγκερ ('Γκίμπελ, ο ηλίθιος'), της Μαίρυ Λαβίν ('Θείο Καλέσμα'), του Μίλαν Κούντερα ('Κανείς δεν θα γελάσει'), του Γούντυ Άλεν ('Υπόθεση Κούγκελμας'), της Κλερ Μπόιλαν ('Το κλεμμένο παιδί') και του Άντριου Ντέιβις ('Ο νέος μπαμπουίνος') εντυπωσιάζουν, διασκεδάζουν, αλλά καί προβληματίζουν τον αναγνώστη με τα κοινωνικά τους μηνύματα.

Βαθμολογία: 3,8/5 ή 7,6/10.

[Crzy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant collection of short stories, especially dark humor and satire. The only pain was the introduction and the short notes about each story by Bradbury. The notes about each author with tidbits on the background add an interesting facet to reading the story. But the explanation of the story itself killed the humor for me since most of the times it seemed to give away the twist in the short story. So once we learn to ignore that bit, the book turned out to be a delightful collection from the best of the genre. Most definitely a book you should add to your collection!

[Arax Miltiadous · Rating 3 out of 5]

ενδιαφερουσα συλλογη αλλα θελει ρτον χρόνο της....

[Aabha Sharma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some I liked, some I loved, others didn’t care for.

[Jeff Hobbs]

Read so far:

The Kugelmass episode / Allen, Woody --3
Interesting things / Amis, Kingsley --
Career move / Amis, Martin --2
*Lives of the poets / Atwood, Margaret --
The longstop / Bainbridge, Beryl --2
*To London and Rome / Barthelme, Donald --
*Pierre Menard, author of Don Quixote / Borges, Jorge Luis --
The stolen child / Boylan, Clare --
Modern love / Boyle, T. Coraghessan --
American dreams / Carey, Peter --2
*The kitchen child / Carter, Angela --
*The champion of the world / Dahl, Roald --
The new baboon / Davies, Andrew (NA)--
An outer London childhood / Dunn, Suzannah (NA)--
*The Tillotson banquet / Huxley, Aldous --
The royal family / Keillor, Garrison --
*Nobody will laugh / Kundera, Milan --
*My vocation / Lavin, Mary --
Lantern lecture / Mars-Jones, Adam --
*The assistant producer / Nabokov, Vladimir --
The waltz / Parker, Dorothy --3
A short history of the English novel / Self, Will --
Uncle Vlad / Sinclair, Clive --
Gimpel the fool / Singer, Isaac Bashevis --3
*A member of the family / Spark, Muriel --
*The Bulgarian poetess / Updike, John --
*Excursion in reality / Waugh, Evelyn --
*The wrong set / Wilson, Angus --
Schoom / Wilson, Jonathan

[Sayantan · Rating 4 out of 5]

No complaints about the collection - it contains some great pieces.

Only that I am surprised to find some of the stories categorised under the comic genre (eg: lives of the poets). Its difficult to consider some of the otherwise very good stories, funny. A few were positively tragic and also the satires might be great, but they are not 'funny'.

Also too many of the stories were about people who are writers (poets, authors, screenplay writers etc). I am sure writer's should be able to poke fun at other things than their own profession and lives.

[Xristoforou Nitsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Πολύ ενδιαφέρον βιβλίο. Διαβάζεται ευχάριστα. Είναι χαρακτηριστικό της αμερικανικής λογοτεχνίας. Ο λόγος στα περισσότερα αφηγήματα ρέει αβίαστα κ οι ιστορίες -πολύ διαφορετικές μεταξύ τους- συχνά μας αφήνουν με ένα χαμόγελο που απορρέει τόσο από την αφηγηματική δεξιότητα των λογοτεχνών όσο κι από τη φρεσκάδα κ το χιούμορ του θέματος.

[Priya Patankar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of short stories, more in the satire variety. Intricate plots, varied themes and some of the best writers. Thoroughly enjoyed this one!

[Haroula · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Υπόθεση Κούγκελμας"
"Ταξικό πρόβλημα"
"Η Βουλγάρα ποιήτρια"
"Ο θείος Βλαντ". Πολύ περισσότερο από χιουμοριστικά διηγήματα (και νουβέλες).