John Waters:
Ivy Compton Burnett's novels always make me laugh, but she's difficult to recommend. "My books are hard not to put down," she once quipped to a journalist. But try Darkness and Day (1951); her use of language here is so stylized, peculiar and vicious that I had to call up friends to read them the dialogue out loud.
John Waters has written and directed 12 films, beginning in 1969 with Mondo Trasho. His most recent movie is Cecil B. Demented, and he is currently writing his new screenplay, A Dirty Shame.
Anne Lamott:
The Dog of the South, by Charles Portis (Overlook Press, 256 pages, $14.95, paperback), because it is simultaneously hilarious and heart-breakingly odd and quintessentially Charles Portis. It's very, very human and quirky, so you find yourself laughing so hard in sections that tears run down your face, as you hold your stomach, because you so clearly see yourself in the fun-house mirror of these people.
Anne Lamott is the author of five novels and three best-selling nonfiction books, Operating Instructions, Bird by Bird and Traveling Mercies. She has taught at University of California, Davis and at writing conferences across the country. Her writing appeared on Salon.com. Her next novel is scheduled for fall 2002.
Terry Teachout:
I don't know whether it's the funniest book ever written -- that would take in everything from Rabelais to P.J. O'Rourke -- but I can't think of a book that has made me laugh out loud harder or more often than Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (Ecco Press, 320 pages, $14, paperback), Anthony Bourdain's outrageously forthright memoir of what it's like to cook for a living in New York City (think of a boys' locker room and you'll start to get the idea). Alas, none of Bourdain's best lines are anywhere close to printable in a family newspaper, but this characteristic snippet will give you a whiff of the way his mind works: "Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living."
Terry Teachout, the music critic of Commentary and a contributor to Time magazine, is a widely published critic and essayist. He recently finished writing H.L. Mencken: A Life.
KAL:
Our Dumb Century: The Onion Presents 100 Years of Headlines from America's Finest News Source (Three Rivers Press, 164 pages, $16). Headlines that read like punchlines -- this rollicking satirical journey through the 20th century is guaranteed to generate a gaggle of giggles from any news junkie, history buff or casual coffee table browser.
Kevin Kallaugher is the award winning editorial cartoonist for The Baltimore Sun and The Economist. He has published four collections of his cartoons. The most recent is KAL Draws the Line, published in fall 2000.
Norah Vincent:
The most humorous book ever written in my mind is 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade (Grove Press, 799 pages, $17.95, paperback). The reason is because he calls, um, well, a bowel movement "lodging a complaint" and I thought that was hilarious. There are a lot of funny things like that, such as scenarios of bishops eating ... well, it's gross but it's funny.
Norah Vincent writes a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times and a biweekly column for Salon.com. She is co-author of The Instant Intellectual: The Quick and Easy Guide to Sounding Smart and Cultured (Hyperion, 1998).
Jeff Danziger:
Peter DeVries' comedic The Prick of Noon (Little, Brown, 1985). Besides having a wonderfully uncomfortable title, it also has the best opening line. The book is about a girl at a Long Island beach club who tries to create good old bleeding heart equality for the cabana boys, with disastrous results, and it starts, "The trouble with treating other people as your equal is that they turn around and do the same thing back to you."
Jeff Danziger is an independent political cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune Media Service, and author of Rising Like the Tucson, a novel about the Vietnam War.
Aaron McGruder:
The Broke Diaries: The Completely True and Hilarious Misadventures of a Good Girl Gone Broke, by Angela Nissel (Villard, 212 pages, $9.95, paperback). I think that Angela has a really off-the-wall sense of humor and what makes it even funnier is its true. She's just a wacky person who lived this.
Aaron McGruder draws The Boondocks, a social, political and racial satire comic strip that is syndicated to about 250 newspapers across the country, including The Sun. His latest collection, Fresh for '01 ... You Suckas, was published this year by Andrews McMeel publishing.
Dan Rodricks:
