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Comedy is Pnin!

I am going to pause this argument, and give a new example of subtle, unexaggerated comedy.

This example is Pnin. Pnin is my favourite novel by Vladimir Nabokov.

Pnin is a Russian immigrant in the US. He is a comic figure - with his odd English, his inability to drive, his "passionate intrigue" with the washing machine, his clumsiness.

Pnin, then, is Tom And Jerry. Pnin's failures are funny. So Pnin seems like a farce. In fact, we are told that this novel is a farce, by the narrator. The narrator's theory of literature is this: "Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam."

But Pnin is not a farce. It is not an exaggerated comedy, written by the narrator. It is a subtle comedy, written by Nabokov.

My favourite moment in Pnin is this. Pnin is washing up, after a party. Lovingly, he places an aquamarine bowl in the water. This bowl is a gift from his young son. It is Pnin's most precious object. From the sink, he hears the sound of breaking glass.

At first, you nearly find this funny. Another goof from Pnin! But you know it is not funny. Pnin is not only goofy. He is lovable and noble, too.

Then something wonderful happens: "With a moan of anguished anticipation, he went back to the sink and, bracing himself, dipped his hand deep into the foam. A jagger of glass stung him. Gently he removed a broken goblet. The beautiful bowl was intact. He took a fresh dish towel and went on with his household work."

Nabokov, you see, is on my side. He signals this by rejecting the farcical pattern and refusing to let Pnin break his beloved bowl. Nabokov understood that, to be genuine, comedy cannot be untrue. It must be complicated and subtle.

Comedy is moral!

I have just had a thought.

So far, I have been arguing that the more subtle and accurate a comedy is, the funnier it is. But if this is true, and it is true, then it has lots of implications.

If the more accurate a comedy is, the more it is comic, then there must be a reason why. It must be because reality is structured comically.

We are trained to separate the serious from the vulgar, the moral from the obscene. Whereas the comedy that I like puts these back together. The truth is that reality is constantly impure - a hodgepodge, a mix-up.

But - simultaneously - the more accurate a novel is, the more moral it is. That is because the only moral imperative for a writer is this: it is being true to the facts. If a novel is accurate, then it is moral. Morality is the talent for comprehensive and precise detail.

Maybe you do not believe me. Perhaps you will believe someone older, like Henry James. In his great essay The Art Of Fiction, Henry James defines a writer's morality: "The essence of moral energy is to survey the whole field."

That is why there is no need to worry about the moral status of comedy.

If a novel is truthful, and detailed, then it will be comic. Because reality is comic. But it will not only be comic. If a novel is truthful, and detailed, then it will be moral, too.

Comedy is not comic!

This is getting more serious.

I could put this another way. In Pnin, Nabokov discovers an entirely new subject for comedy - the pain of exile.

Real comic talent, I think, consists in discovering the comic in entirely new and ignored areas. If you are that imaginative, you will not be able to help it. As I said, comedy is everywhere.

Now, this is why many comic masterpieces do not look like comic masterpieces. Often, they look quite sad. They do not make you laugh out loud.

Laughter is overrated as an index of comic value.

There is no reason why comedy should not make you sad, as much as it makes you laugh. Comedy's version of truth is not always happy. It often makes the reader confused.

Think of John Berryman's great Dream Songs, praised by Robert Lowell: "All is risk and variety here. This great Pierrot's universe is more tearful and funny than we can easily bear."

Or think of how, in Pnin, Pnin's clumsiness makes us laugh a lot. But when he thinks he has broken the bowl, it does not make us laugh. It makes us confused.

This, I think, is why. Often, the same thing that is funny in one situation, is desperately sad in another and simultaneously still funny . It's just that you are no longer laughing.

In this subtler form of comedy, the emotions become complicated. Just when you thought you could be lushly distressed, something comic occurs. Or, just when you thought you could laugh, something distressing occurs. My favourite comedy is full of these blocks and slippages and displacements. No emotion is as lush as you might like. It is blocked off.

Now, I am not as clever as Vladimir Nabokov. But I hope that my novel, like Vladimir's, is unsettling. My novel is based on the fact that something that is funny in one context feels disturbingly funny in another.

For instance, this is one of my favourite scenes in Politics: I describe the relationship of Stalin and the Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakov. As you may know, it was difficult for Bulgakov to continue working freely in Stalinist Russia. He wrote a courageous letter to Stalin, therefore, asking to emigrate from the censoring and constraining USSR.

This does not seem like a funny story. But it is.

Stalin did not act in a dictatorial way. Instead, he was socially adept. He phoned up Bulgakov, and was very friendly. This stymied Bulgakov - politically and emotionally.

It is not a grand anecdote. It is slightly sad. But it has its funny side. It is an example of the phenomenon that friendliness can be used coercively. And this is funny.

This might seem unlikely at first - I am going to give you a sneak preview from my novel - "but it's true. In case you had not noticed, in this book I am not interested in anything so small as the history of the USSR. I am not writing anything so limited. No, what I am interested in is friendliness."

Comedy is bigger than the USSR. It is universal. Whenever you want to be serious, especially when you want to be serious, there is comedy. Once you realise this, then you have to change your mind about what is a serious book and what is not. You have to revise your distinctions.

Comedy is everywhere. That is why there is no need to exaggerate. Comedy is realistic.

Comedy is comic!

But it is difficult to be subtle, and unexaggerated. I probably exaggerate, in my one and only novel, called Politics. In fact, I know I do.

The difficult attempt to write comedy has its comic side, too.