DAN TESSITORE

If I actually found myself in that stupid hypothetical situation where I was forced to spend the rest of my life on a desert island and could only take the collected works of one author, it would be Anthony Trollope. Not because I think he's the best but because he wrote so many books I'd always have a new one. Second on the list, though, would be Kurt Vonnegut. No one wrote so consistently well about human folly with as much insight and humor. And the man truly understood comedy:

Even the simplest jokes are based on tiny twinges of fear, such as the question, "What is the white stuff in bird poop?" The auditor, as though called upon to recite in school, is momentarily afraid of saying something stupid. When the auditor hears the answer, which is, "That's bird poop, too," he or she dispels the automatic fear with laughter. He or she has not been tested after all.

There isn't a book on the subject of comedy that sums it up any better than that. I just finished A Man Without a Country, in which he mentions that his current (now last) novel, If God Were Alive Today, is about "a stand-up comedian at the end of the world." Weren't they all?