Issue 9 - Gold Dust magazine

How to write...a Comic Novel [cont’d]
Pooter herself, though every bit
as limited and suburban as her
husband, is altogether more
sensible, realistic and balanced
(though Sue Townsend's slightly
uneven but often hilarious
Rebuilding Coventry gives a fair
account of the comic potential of
a Carrie Pooter-like character –
the improbably-named Coventry
Dakin – on the loose in late
eighties London).
Evelyn Waugh was perhaps
the first (after the Grossmiths) to
grasp the comic potential of
introducing an ordinary, perfectly
affable but rather naïve character,
and then dropping him into a
thoroughly unpromising situation.
Paul Pennyfeather in
Decline and Fall, and William
Boot (in fact based on W F
Deedes) in Scoop, are the most
memorable of his creations in
this respect.
In the opening pages of
Decline and Fall, it is hard to
miss the innocently Pooterish
shades of Paul's character:
'Little suspecting the incalculable
consequences that the
evening was to have for him, he
bicycled happily back from a
meeting of the League of
Nations Union. There had been
a most interesting paper about
plebiscites in Poland.'
And just in case we do miss
them, Waugh rams the point
home (after Paul has had his
trousers removed by drunken
members of the Bollinger Club,
and been forced to run naked
across the quad): '…it's quite all
right,' a porter remarks, 'it's
Pennyfeather – someone of no
importance.'
In Scoop, obscure nature
reporter William Boot is sent, as
the result of a mix-up, to cover a
war in a fictional African country.
As with Paul Pennyfeather,
William is a figure of fun (his
prose style is legendary:
'Feather-footed through the
plashy fen passes the questing
vole'), but at the same time we
sympathise with his plight.
Waugh uses William's innocence
and bemusement as a
means of satirising British newspapers,
in particular the chaotic
nature of foreign reporting, and
many of the characters in the
The sort of humour produced
by this technique is often
unsettling. The reader laughs
at the character’s naivety...but
at the same time empathises
book are thinly-veiled portraits of
real personalities of the time.
The sort of humour produced
by this technique is often
unsettling. The reader laughs at
the character's naïvety and
mediocrity but at the same time
empathises to some extent with
him, and is drawn into his way of
seeing the world. There is obvious
potential for dramatic conflict
between these two perspectives.
Keith Waterhouse's Billy
Liar explores this potential to
memorable effect. Nineteenyear-old
Billy sees himself as a
comedian, but in fact works as
an undertaker's assistant in the
small (and fictional) Yorkshire
town of Stradhoughton. He is an
entertaining and witty narrator;
so much so that the reader is coopted
into seeing the world from
his perspective, and is initially
prepared to overlook the purposelessness
of his lies, his
equally purposeless thieving,
and his baffling engagements to
three (very) different girls. It is
not until we are about halfway
into the book that we are forced
to realise that Billy is deeply
flawed and extremely immature.
The central irony of the
book is that while Billy believes
that he's smarter than everyone
around him and destined for
great things, this is a pose, as
facile as Mr Pooter's self-importance,
which everyone else
comes to see right through. His
employer, Councillor Duxbury,
whom Billy has satirised as
being practically senile,
unmasks him as Billy is amusing
himself by mimicking his accent:
'"Well, tha's gotten me in a
very difficult position," he said
weightily, at last.
"How does ta mean,
Councillor?"
He studied me keenly, and I
realized for the first time, with a
sinking heart, that he was not as
daft as he looked.
"Is ta taking a rise out o' me,
young man?"'
And Waterhouse made the
Pooter connection plain by publishing,
in 1983, a book called
Mrs Pooter's Diary.
Mr Pooter, of course, is a
thoroughly hapless character.
He would not be funny, nor
poignant, if he weren't. There is
a deep sense that he is helplessly
trapped in the confines of his
6 www.golddustmagazine.co.uk - Issue 9 - Winter 2007