The Curious Case of Peter De Vries

(Moffly Media) In a moment we shall deal with the curious case of Peter De Vries, once deemed the funniest novelist in America, now all but forgotten.
... Great comic novels often arise out of a real-life sadness. Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five is basically about the firebombing of Dresden, in which masses of innocents were cremated while they slept. It’s hilarious. The power of such books lies in their consideration of darkness as well as light, embracing both a howl of existential doom (for we are all doomed in the end) and the laughter that is its only sane response. Somehow you end up laughing much harder, reading these books, than you do reading books where nothing really bad happens.This is because we relate more profoundly to that which is like life. As Mr. De Vries once told an interviewer, it is “false to life” to write books that are only serious or only funny. “You can’t talk about the serious and the comic separately and still be talking about life,” he said, “any more than you can independently discuss hydrogen and oxygen and still be talking about water.” Continued

Image: Fantastic Fiction