Nonsense Novels

Stephen Leacock's Nonsense Novels is a gleeful demolition of literary convention. In ten wildly inventive stories, the great Canadian humorist takes the pompous structures of Victorian fiction, the breathless romance, the bloodhound thriller, the sweeping saga, and bends them into something absurd and glorious. A train ride becomes an epic. A dinner party descends into chaos. Characters speak with desperate earnestness while the world around them crumbles into nonsensical glory. Leacock's genius lies in playing it straight: the narrator's grave tone makes the madness funnier. These are stories that know they're ridiculous and don't care. They're also remarkably prescient, foreshadowing the absurdism of tomorrow's literary rebels. Reading this book feels like watching a skilled magician pull apart a fancy suit of armor and find it's made of rubber. Pure delight.