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Novel length work of humorous fiction

A comic novel is a novel length work of humorous fiction. Many well known authors have written comic novels, including P. G. Wodehouse, Henry Fielding, Mark Twain, and John Kennedy Toole. Comic novels are often defined by the author's literary choice to make the thrust of the work—in its narration or plot—funny or satirical in orientation, regardless of the putative seriousness of the topics addressed. Novels, books, plays, and many works of fiction or art can certainly contain and include passages or themes that are comic, humorous or satirical, but the defining characteristic of this genre is that comedy is the framework and baseline of the story, rather than an occasional or recurring motif. It is the through line and organizing genre for the novel's tone, orientation and sensibility. A reader is not expected to 'find' or 'discover' a humorous moment within the reality of the text, rather, humor is the ongoing mood, like a comedy movie, rather than a movie that has some comedy or laughs within it. Literary scholars distinguish textual analysis on this basis; the theory being that a story by Mark Twain that is a satirical critique in its very origin, for example, must be understood differently than a more literal novelistic plot.

One of the most notable British comic novelists is P. G. Wodehouse, whose work follows on from that of Jerome K. Jerome, George Grossmith, and Weedon Grossmith (see The Diary of a Nobody). Saki's work is also significant, although his career was cut short by World War I. A. G. Macdonell and G. K. Chesterton also produced flights of whimsy. Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling was a notable mid 18th century work in the genre. More contemporary British humorists are George MacDonald Fraser, Tom Sharpe, Kingsley Amis, Terry Pratchett, Richard Gordon, Rob Grant, Douglas Adams, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Nick Hornby, Helen Fielding, Eric Sykes, Leslie Thomas, Stephen Fry, Richard Asplin, Mike Harding, Joseph Connolly, and Ben Elton.

James Joyce's Ulysses is considered by some to be a comic novel.

Notable American comic novelists include Mark Twain, Richard Brautigan, Philip Roth, John Kennedy Toole, James Wilcox, John Swartzwelder, Larry Doyle, Jennifer Weiner, Carl Hiaasen, Joseph Heller, Peter De Vries, Kurt Vonnegut, Terry Southern, and Christopher Moore.