Funniest writier in the English-speaking Language...
And the award for 'Funniest, laugh-out-loud writer in the English-speaking language goes to... Thomas Hardy.
Thomas Hardy - didn't he write those depressingly melancholy works, Jude the Obscure (dubbed Jude the Obscene by his detractors) and Return of the Native?
I recently stumbled across a collection of Thomas Hardy's short fiction and discovered a newfound appreciation for this great, working class writer. Two of the stories in particular, A Mere Interlude and The Three Strangers are so outrageously funny that I couldn't believe they were written by the nineteenth century Englishman.
Hardy apparently saved his silliest buffoonery for the short fiction format. The Three Strangers - I'm not going to give away the plot - has so many clever twists and turns that I found myself chuckling inwardly on almost every page from the midpoint of this utterly goofy tale onwards.
A Mere Interlude is far and away even more ridiculous. Just to give you an idea how thoroughly nutty this story is, a young school teacher runs off and marries a fellow teacher, who she doesn't really love, because her parents have arranged a marriage with a neighbor old enough to be her father. The day after the clandestine wedding (i.e. and only days before her impending marriage to the old fart who knows nothing of her infidelity), the young husband drowns in a freak swimming accident. On the day following her husband's demise, the widow takes the ferry home and promptly marries the old geezer.
If your head is spinning, you should wait and see what's in store for the twice-married school teacher as the hallucinogenic plot progresses! The ending is both poignant and precious. Who would ever imagine Thomas Hardy writing such zonked-out prose?
