Robert Plunket’s first novel, My Search for Warren Harding, immediately established him as one of America’s most promising novelists. The jacket bio for Plunket’s second (and, so far, last) novel, Love Junkie, published in 1992 and also out of print, reads: I held in my hands one of the best, and most invigorating books I’d read in years, and certainly the funniest-and yet, how was it out of print? Why had I never heard of this novel before now? (Later I learned Tory had actually written an excellent piece about it for Tin House magazine in 2015.) Why had it disappeared so fully from the literary landscape? And what did that say about this literary landscape if it could bury a book like this? Most intriguingly: Who was Robert Plunket? When I was done, I sat in a kind of silent, focused delight. I opened the book a few weeks later-and despite my allergic reaction to the mold in the edition, kept reading for the next 256 pages. Tory bellowed through the muffling fabric of her N95 mask that it was one of her favorite novels-and really fucking funny. The copy of the novel that my friend, the writer Victoria Patterson, handed over to me looked the way we all felt in those days: yellowing, battered, dusty from too long in storage. We were in the worst of days-the depths of the pre-vaccine pandemic-and our world was on fire, both literally and figuratively. I might not have read a single truly funny novel that year if my friend hadn’t stopped by my Los Angeles porch one afternoon carrying an out-of-print copy of Robert Plunket’s comic masterpiece, My Search for Warren Harding.
National Photo Co., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. I find his writing to be the literary equivalent of a sitcom, he was involved in some Broadway productions, and he was a very prolific author, and there are many connections throughout his work having it self referential.President Harding with pet dog Laddie being photographed in front of the White House. Some of the Discworld novels I especially like are Guards! Guards! Hogfather! Soul Music, Masquerade. He once claimed in an introduction that anyone can write seriously but it takes great talent and hard work to come up with funny stories.Īnother author I have read a lot (but not all) of is Terry Pratchett.
He was a Canadian political science and economics professor who in his spare time also wrote humour essays and short stories.
When I was in university I discovered Stephen Leacock. I lost my dad this past August, but he helped me discover my favourite genre of literature. Over the next few years I consumed voraciously each work Adams wrote, until I knew them even better than my dad.
My first experience with adult humour writing was when I was 13 and my dad decided to show me his favourite author, Douglas Adams.
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