{"id":33754,"date":"2020-02-17T10:00:46","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T16:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/?p=33754"},"modified":"2026-01-16T20:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T02:18:13","slug":"stephen-mccauley-on-what-makes-a-comic-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/stephen-mccauley-on-what-makes-a-comic-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen McCauley on What Makes a Comic Novel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen McCauley is the author of a bevy\u2014a raft, even\u2014of beloved comic novels. Recent ones include My Ex-Life<\/em>, Alternatives to Sex<\/em>, and Insignificant Others<\/em>. Some of us have been comparing him to geniuses like Barbara Pym, Muriel Spark, and P. G. Wodehouse since we read his astonishing 1987 debut, Object of My Affection<\/em>, which was made into a Paul Rudd \/ Jennifer Aniston flick in 1998. If seven McCauley novels are not enough, you can also share my delight in his Tales from the Yoga Studio series, under the pen name Rain Mitchell. As his longtime Brandeis colleague, I know Steve is as good at talking about and teaching comic novels as he is at writing them. So I asked him to sit down with me and take stock of the genre.<\/p>\n

A longer version of this interview originally aired on Recall This Book<\/em><\/a>, a podcast partnered with Public Books<\/em>. You can listen to the whole thing here<\/a> or by subscribing to Recall This Book<\/em> on iTunes<\/a>, Stitcher<\/a>, or wherever you listen to podcasts.<\/p>\n

\n

John Plotz (JP):<\/strong> What is the comic <\/em>novel? It seems different from the mainstream realist novel, which is always about moral improvement: either the moral improvement of the characters, who are supposed to have come to a better place in life, or of readers, who are implicitly meant to be improved out of their bad habits, out of their laziness, out of their desire to sit around reading novels. By the end of the novel, there\u2019s going to have been a nudge: something that pushes characters and readers to reflect on the difference between the is <\/em>and the ought to be<\/em>. It opens up that space. Whereas comic novels are so delightful, because they drop that moral pretense. Like sitcoms, right?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stephen McCauley (SM):<\/strong> But sitcoms, especially bad ones, tend to be extremely moral. They have two story lines that converge to make one big moral point.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> They can be very moral. You\u2019re right.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> There has to be redemption at the end.<\/p>\n

JP: <\/strong>But comic novels are better by not <\/em>being moral?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> Obviously, we\u2019re talking in gross generalizations here. But I think that one of the reasons comic novels can be so delightfully subversive is that they can skirt around the idea of moral improvement.<\/p>\n

Think about Gentlemen Prefer<\/em> Blondes<\/em>, by Anita Loos, which was published in the 1920s. Lorelei Lee, the novel\u2019s famous character, is a gold digger. She is completely amoral. She is only out to improve herself in the crassest financial sense and will destroy as many marriages and wreck as many homes as she needs to to get her tiara. Unlike, say, in Edith Wharton, where financial and sexual ambition are squashed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> Right. Instead, Wharton\u2019s Lily Bart is on the rise, and then she\u2014<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> She must be punished, right?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> Yup: chloral will be administered.<\/p>\n

SM: <\/strong>Whereas, in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes<\/em>, the amoral Lorelei Lee triumphs. And Loos\u2019s most famous line, \u201cDiamonds are a girl\u2019s best friend,\u201d is pretty subversive when you think about it. It is true Lorelei\u2019s friend Dorothy provides the voice of reason and the virtues of nonmercenary love. But she\u2019s not nearly as much fun. The sequel (But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes<\/em>) is about Dorothy, and there\u2019s a reason it\u2019s not as well known.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> That\u2019s a really good point about sitcoms needing to trot out the big moral hammers at the end. That makes me think about Thackeray\u2019s Vanity Fair<\/em>, since it is the one 19th-century realist novel that actually refuses the moral improvement path. It\u2019s always struck me as funny how much Charlotte Bront\u00eb loves him, but I\u2019m just not sure she gets that antimoral side.<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> Yes. I wish Charlotte Bront\u00eb had written a comic novel. Her heroines are great wits in their own ways.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> What do you think about somebody like James Thurber as a comic novelist?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> Well, to me, he\u2019s more of a humorist. I\u2019m not sure really what the distinction is, if I could express it very precisely, but it seems to me he\u2019s best remembered for his commentary, not his fiction. He never wrote his Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/em>.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> Thurber said something that gets at what I love about comic novels. \u201cMan has gone long enough or perhaps too long without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with man is man.\u201d Which I take to mean, you can outrun everything except yourself.<\/p>\n

The point of the comic novel is if you look behind you, your butt is still there. No matter how fast you\u2019re going, your butt will still be the same distance from your mouth as it was before.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> As we were saying, no redemption.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n Reviews<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n B-Sides: Isherwood\u2019s \u201cPrater Violet\u201d<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n \"\" <\/a>\n \n Stephen McCauley <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

JP:<\/strong> One of Barbara Pym\u2019s novels is called Less Than Angels<\/em>, and that feels right to me. We humans are not just <\/em>dirt, because then there wouldn\u2019t be anything to say. But we\u2019re not angels, either.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> The shifts in Pym\u2019s characters are very, very subtle. We don\u2019t see big changes in her characters from the beginning to the end. They open up just a little bit and let in maybe a sliver more light or more warmth, perhaps. But they\u2019re not completely transformed by their experiences.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s just so fascinating to me, after having reread a couple of her novels recently, is the lack of what we typically think of as plot. They are anthropological studies of a period of time within a village and observations of behavior.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> Right. Part of what I love about comic novels is that there really is an edge<\/em> there, but it\u2019s just sometimes a little bit buried. It\u2019s not necessarily there in the characters.<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> Yes, and I think it\u2019s also in the attitude toward their lives. For example, Barbara Pym\u2019s best-known novel is her second, Excellent Women<\/em>. This is the narrator talking about herself: \u201cI suppose an unmarried woman just over thirty, who lives alone and has no apparent ties, must expect to find herself involved or interested in other people\u2019s business, and if she is also a clergyman\u2019s daughter then one might really say that there is no hope for her.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s such a sharp-eyed look at the character looking at herself. Later she compares herself to Jane Eyre in a very amusing way. So, back to Charlotte Bront\u00eb.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> My favorite Pym line is from An Unsuitable Attachment<\/em>. She\u2019s talking about a parish priest: \u201cAlthough invariably kind and courteous he had the air of seeming not to be particularly interested in human beings\u2014a somewhat doubtful quality in a parish priest, though it had its advantages.\u201d<\/p>\n

I just love the crisscrossing of that sentence: It brings you to the left bank, and then back to the right bank, and then back to the left bank again. \u201cSomewhat doubtful \u2026 though it had its advantages.\u201d I think this really goes along with the point you\u2019re making about the attitude taken toward characters, even though they may be in a very banal and apparently benign setting. Even those settings have their swift water and dark places.<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> Yes, and this quality of being able to see both sides or all sides of a person\u2019s character, that is very much Barbara Pym.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n Essays<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n A Small, Simple Stone: Looking for Barbara Pym in Oxfordshire<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n \"\" <\/a>\n \n Cassandra Neyenesch <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

JP:<\/strong> My question is whether what\u2019s satisfying in Barbara Pym is just really funny sentences, or what the funny sentences are doing.<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> I think it\u2019s both. Because I think she has spot-on phrasing that was undoubtedly the result of a lot of careful thought and revision. I\u2019m not sure comic novelists get enough credit for that. But also, the quotes we just read reveal something profound about the characters or reveal something about their attitude toward themselves as British, or single women, and so on.<\/p>\n

It has to be both form and content to have the satisfaction of comic resonance and the human observation that give her novels their depth. And darkness at times.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> You\u2019re saying that the sentences work because they\u2019re funny in their own terms, but they also go to revealing something about the way this character sees the world as distinct from how all the people around her see it.<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> The novel that I have read most recently that just exhausted me with its comic brilliance is The Sellout<\/em>, by Paul Beatty. And yet, in the case of Pym\u2014even more so than in the case of The Sellout<\/em>\u2014it\u2019s all about the context of the characters and the world the author created for them on his or her own terms.<\/p>\n

Not mainstream realism, as you put it at the beginning. That\u2019s what makes it funny: the context of their relationships with each other, what they overlook, what they refuse to discuss, and so on. The overlooking is more plausible in comedy, because it creates laughter, than in what I guess we\u2019re calling mainstream realism.<\/p>\n

What about Philip Roth, for instance? Portnoy\u2019s Complaint<\/em> is basically a three-hundred-page stand-up routine. It\u2019s a three-hundred-page Lenny Bruce routine; only funnier, I think, from having looked at some clips of Bruce online. There\u2019s a suffocating world created out of realism but made into something like an R. Crumb comic. Grotesque and queasy-making.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> Yes. Does Roth count? Is that a comic novel?<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> Oh, man, I think so. One of the great things about Portnoy\u2019s Complaint<\/em> is that it feels, and I believe this is how it was written, as if someone was sitting down and ranting, for however long it took him to get out the first draft of that novel. And yet it\u2019s meticulously crafted. Of course, it turns dark at the end.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> The question is whether the rawness of Portnoy\u2019s Complaint<\/em> and the subtleness of Barbara Pym are on the same spectrum or not.<\/p>\n

What I hear you saying is that it\u2019s a subtler kind of vinegar that she\u2019s dispensing. But I almost feel like it\u2019s vinegar she\u2019s made into lemonade. To me, the comic novel, it\u2019s hit the sweet-and-sour balance.<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> Right. And in fact, I know that you\u2019re not fond of this author, but I\u2019m equally obsessed with Anita Brookner, who wrote 24 novels, and they\u2019re all basically about loneliness. About some form of loneliness: lives that have not advanced in the way that the characters hoped that they would advance. She has a very bleak vision that\u2019s lit up by her wit and occasional bitter comedy.<\/p>\n

Brookner\u2019s is the least comforting worldview you can imagine, and yet there\u2019s something tremendously comforting about opening up one of her books and entering that world again.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n Essays<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n In Memoriam: Philip Roth<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n \"John <\/a>\n \n John Plotz <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

JP:<\/strong> It\u2019s true I don\u2019t like Anita Brookner, Steve, but I do really like this guy, Steve McCauley, so let\u2019s talk about him.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to read the first lines of Object of My Affection<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Nina and I had been living together in Brooklyn for over a year when she came home one afternoon, announced she was pregnant, tossed her briefcase to the floor, and flopped down on the green vinyl sofa.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs if I don\u2019t have enough problems with my weight already,\u201d she said. \u2026<\/p>\n

Nina\u2019s lower lip was thrust out, but I couldn\u2019t tell from her expression if she was genuinely upset, so I used my standard tactic for dealing with anything unexpected: I changed the subject. I pointed out a water stain on the hem of her dress and passed her half the sandwich.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re out of catsup,\u201d I apologized.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s this sort of Bergsonian quality to humor; the humor of life is seeing us all sort of attached to repetitive machinery where we just keep doing the same damn stuff over and over.<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> Yes, when people begin acting like mechanized dolls, there\u2019s something inherently funny in that. That\u2019s this Bergsonian idea of comedy, and that is certainly in Pym, in that these characters stick so much to their limits and their views of the world. When the cat lady character in An Unsuitable Attachment<\/em> goes to Rome, she cares only about the city\u2019s cats.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> Does that mean you\u2019re saying that true comic novels begin funny and end sad?<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> You know what? That\u2019s how it works in life. If you don\u2019t change, learn from your experiences, then yes, I think you\u2019re headed for sadness, certainly.<\/p>\n

What I want to do in my books is to have the characters face something, and then change as a result of it and understand that there are consequences. In the case of Object of My Affection<\/em>, consequences for pushing away the discussion about the pregnancy and instead talking about the absence of ketchup in the house. Which is what they do with everything. You do that for long enough and eventually you have to pay for it. Then things get a little bit sadder and darker. To me, that\u2019s very satisfying. It\u2019s satisfying to write. In my first novels, the characters were terrifically passive about their lives. In the end they pay a price for their passivity.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> That seems to go against Northrop Frye\u2019s definition of comedy: that comedy is basically the genre where, through a totally unforeseen set of circumstances, we arrive at a happy ending. In other words, if Romeo and Juliet are in the tomb and he takes the poison, boy, that\u2019s tragedy. But if he figured out just in time not to take the poison, or the poison was sugar water, then it would be comedy. For Frye, it\u2019s all about the upbeat outcome.<\/p>\n

But you just gave a totally persuasive description of what you do, which is almost like the opposite. Your books are really witty all throughout, and really funny all throughout, but actually end sadder than they began, because they end with us being able to see the limits of these people.<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> Well, by that strict definition, then yes, they\u2019re not comic novels. My books always have a bittersweet ending, not an upbeat one. Because I don\u2019t believe life turns out that way usually, especially for people like my characters, who on some level are always outsiders. Instead, there\u2019s a blend of happiness and sadness.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n Interviews<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n Samuel Delany on Capitalism, Racism, and Science Fiction<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n \"John <\/a>\n \n John Plotz <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

JP:<\/strong> I was thinking of a really weird analogy as I was finishing Object of My Affection<\/em>, which is Jude the Obscure<\/em>, which ends a lot darker than any of your books do. But this Thomas Hardy novel is really about what it means to want to be friends with someone, but not actually be married to them. To have a relationship that is neither one thing nor the other.<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> That\u2019s the subject of my most recent novel, My Ex-Life<\/em>. It\u2019s about a relationship that is neither one thing nor the other. It\u2019s a previously married couple who reconnect 30 years later. He\u2019s now openly gay, and they know it\u2019s not going to be a sexual relationship. A romantic friendship at best, unlike in Object of My Affection<\/em>, where at least half the couple would like it to be something more traditional. It has to do with the relative ages of the characters. It\u2019s not that the characters in My Ex-Life<\/em> have given up, but that they\u2019re willing to settle for good enough.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> So you\u2019re actually arguing the opposite of Frye: that the comic novel works because it allows you to see people in their neither one thing nor the other<\/em>\u2013ness.<\/em> In other words, there\u2019s the generic solution out there, but in real life people don\u2019t find that solution; they find some other solution.<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> Yes, and maybe that makes some of these novels that we\u2019ve been talking about less satisfying for certain kinds of readers. The students in a course on the comic novel I taught complained that the books weren\u2019t funny enough, that some were depressing. They were looking for Hollywood rom-com. There are plenty of novels that fit that bill. Just, for me, they are less interesting.<\/p>\n

I recently read a comic novel that ends very happily and, for me, unconvincingly. I threw it across the room because I felt cheated by an unearned ending. The happiness of the ending wasn\u2019t earned. I would much rather have seen an unhappy ending, although it was outside of the convention that this novel was clearly working in.<\/p>\n

One thing is certain: if, as a novelist, you start out trying to conform to someone\u2019s academic definition of genre, no matter how brilliant and insightful that might be, you\u2019re doomed to create something lifeless.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> I\u2019m convinced from this conversation that what makes the comic novel so satisfying isn\u2019t just that it might or might not happen to fit into those formats; it\u2019s that it actually allows you to see life, the way that life<\/em> doesn\u2019t actually fit into those forms.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re handed those forms. Everyone knows the princess-movie version of what you\u2019re supposed to be like when you\u2019re growing up. Then you grow up and you fall in love with somebody, or you fall out of love with somebody, and you realize, \u201cOh, wait a second, it doesn\u2019t look like that. It looks like \u2026 It\u2019s like the first cousin of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

A comic novel seems to be committed to saying, \u201cWell, actually, yes, if you look at people in their quirkiness, and the fact that they have their own bodies and their own habits and their own things that they\u2019re kind of ashamed of but they keep doing them anyway, that\u2019s what we all are.\u201d<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> Yes, and that\u2019s the beauty of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen McCauley is the author of a bevy\u2014a raft, even\u2014of beloved comic novels. Recent ones include My Ex-Life<\/i>, Alternatives to Sex<\/i>, and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":33782,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1193],"tags":[510,1710,17,206,20,1712,1714],"pbpartner":[1457],"section":[1132],"pbseries":[],"class_list":["post-33754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-comedy","tag-comic-novel","tag-fiction","tag-interview","tag-literature","tag-podcast","tag-recall-this-book","pbpartner-recall-this-book","section-literary-fiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStephen McCauley on What Makes a Comic Novel - Public Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Stephen McCauley is the author of a bevy\u2014a raft, even\u2014of beloved comic novels. 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