I came across this article yesterday by Hilary Mantel, a sort of encomium to the 20th century novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. It's a lovely piece about an author whose work has largely been forgotten, and it's worth reading just to meet her through Mantel's eyes.
But in the midst of it all Mantel offers a definition of comedy that I find so profound and also very much on point with some of the things I've been thinking about FALCON & WINTER SOLDIER.
See what you think...
Comedy is not generated by a writer who sails to her desk saying, “Now I will be funny”. It comes from someone who crawls to her desk, leaking shame and despair, and begins to describe faithfully how things are. In that fidelity to the details of misery, one feels relish. The grimmer it is, the better it is: slowly, reluctantly, comedy seeps through.
It's good, right?
