Cycle paper 1

Recently, I read a book I picked up at an airport bookstore. I never read a book quite like this one, titled A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore. It was funny, in a thought provoking, twisted sort of way. Because of this, I decided to research the author a little bit and maybe get a few more books by him. In the process, I found out about a new genre of books that my book apparently belonged to: Absurdist Fiction.
Well, the book I read was certainly absurd, but did silly books deserve a whole genre of their own? I googled the term, and discovered that it was a bit more than a group of “silly books”.
Absurdist fiction is primarily about human behavior, and a theoretical adventure that just usually happens to be funny. In an absurdist fiction story, the character is a normal person thrust into odd, disturbing, or fantastical situations. While this premise is not unique to the genre, what makes it interesting is that usually, the author puts great effort into showing how a normal person, one of us, might react when presented with the things in these stories.
In my book, for instance, the main character Charlie Asher is a typical, average guy who is, much to his chagrin, put in the position of Death. He must do his job, or the world will actually end. This book puts an oddly humorous spin on the concept of death, and makes it seem a little lighter in the process. Using these issues usually never thought up, much less addressed, the author shows us more about the behavior of humans.
Another interestingly hilarious study found in the novel talks about the concept of the beta male, who, unlike the alpha, makes his way through life not by overcoming adversity, but by anticipating and avoiding it.
Absurdist Fiction is by no means a new thing. On Wikipedia, there were lists for Absurdist fiction books that looked quite old. One, by an author I’ve heard of before but whose name I cannot recall now, involves a person witnessing the meetings of various famous and infamous people in Hell. The book was called A House Boat on the River Styx. The whole book is based on the question “What would happen if we put all these famous people in a room together?”
But back to my author. I did find more books he wrote that I will probably read sometime in the future. Some examples are Lamb, a chronicle of Jesus’ first 13 years of life on Earth by the Lost Disciple and the savior’s best friend, Biff.
Though I’ve not read much of it, I think I could get to like this Absurdist stuff. Deep studies on humans coupled with insanity and inappropriate jokes sound just fine to me.





P.S. The purpose of this was to share something that i just learned and thought was interesting. Thats all.