From Lysistrata to Don Quixote to Catch-22, literary comedy works best when a black heart beats beneath the hilarity. The comedic impulse is always transgressive, always an alternate avenue to the two tragic truths at the center of our existence: suffering and death. Levity must be rooted in tragedy because life, as Schopenhauer insisted, is essentially and irredeemably tragic, “something that should not have been.” The clown is usually the saddest guy at the circus; we guffaw at the expense of his anguish.
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