A cheerful nihilism;: Confidence and "the absurd" in American humorous fiction

"The awareness that the absurd view is both progressive an destructive serious and hilarious yet the only possible view permeated American humor " writes Richard Hauck in the opening chapter of this engrossing study of American humorous fiction. The American absurdist he finds takes the exploration of meaninglessness as "a grim and hilarious game"; philosophically a nihilist he is nonetheless "cheerful" in his persistence in creating comedy in the face of an unresponsive universe. Mr. Hauck begins his survey with Benjamin Franklin whose writings he regards as "the first well-known" and fully expressed American humor of the absurd " and proceeds to a telling examinationof the grim "tall tales" of the western frontier. Against this background he explores in detail the work of Melville and Twain Faulkner and John Barth.