The Mood of my Novel

I wanted the mood of my novel to be fun but I have been drifting away from the shores of humor, and my efforts to take my ship back have failed.

The funniest thing I wrote was when I first drafted the plot, but when I started plotting more seriously all the fun vanished. I got really serious!

I don't want cheap humor either--I don't need to elaborate, everybody knows what cheap humor is, isn't it?

Of course, not everybody will agree on what is funny and what is cheap humor, but at least I know when I read something funny. There are things that make me laugh--although not everybody likes the jokes I like.

I used to have a girlfriend who did not like my jokes. Each time I thought I was being funny I could see her squirming, reddening and smoking--just like boiling. She got really mad, and started throwing things. This was especially true when I joked about her, though. Now I think it was funny but I did not think so at the time she was throwing things at me.

Maybe I just need to read funny things, and get in the laughing mood. I think now of George Orwell's Animal Farm, one of the funniest and more intelligent books I've read. Another one is García Márquez's Cien años de soledad (A Hundred Years of Solitude). I once read a short novel written by Voltaire but I can't remember the name--can anyone enlighten me? Rabelais and his giants is also nice and worth mentioning.

I also remember Milan Kundera's The Joke--which is not always fun--, and I remember an essay of Kundera where he recommended Lawrence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Adolfo Bioy Casares' stories are also fun (A Russian Doll, for example).

I especially liked Vargas Llosa's La tía Julia y el escribidor.

I remember playing Molière's L'avare and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme; and also Beaumarchais's Le mariage de Figaro. We had lots of fun.

And what about the funniest and most intelligent novel of all times? Yes, Cervantes's Don Quijote is definitely humorous, and many other things. I would like to read this novels and plays again but with a critical question in mind: what makes funny things so funny?

Can anyone of my readers recommend funny and intelligent literature?