Books like The Erotic Comedies

Dino Buzzati is one of the greatest, most imaginative storytellers of the 20th centuries; he recalls Kafka, Calvino, Gogol, Pirandello and has lots of fantasy elements. Two stories (Seven Floors and the Time Machine) are absurd meditations on mortality and life. Indirectly the stories reveal postwar Italy and its mundane absurdities. These stories all surprised and delighted me.

I loved these intriguing, entertaining yarns about people from the quasi-past. Characters have to deal with absurd predicaments and obsessions. The title story is about a doctor investigating whether Poe had faked his own death. A WW2 lieutenant discovers a strong desire to take a vacation from fighting. A man and wife relentlessly compete with a mysterious bookseller to obtain a rare book. Most of these stories are fun (with 1 or 2 sad ones).

This notorious 1969 Roth novel is a monologue of a self-loathing and sexually repressed Jewish man to his psychologist.

He recounts in excruciating detail his efforts to escape his parents’ interference in his life and his lifelong obsession with bedding a "shiksa" (non-Jewish woman). Portnoy’s rants are brilliant, vulgar, and entertaining – though the cultural references are dated and female readers might become incensed at the demeaning descriptions of “Monkey” (the shiksa he finally beds).

In a story I wrote, a man facetiously asks his female friend whether Carrie Bradshaw’s neuroticism and sexual dalliances would make her the “female Portnoy.” Both are insightful, emotionally needy, and charming characters. Behind this novel’s sexual humor is a complex portrait of a man trapped by his own obsessions.

Marco Vassi wrote explicit novels that explored sexuality and polyamory. He grew up during the free love era in the 1960s, and his fiction mixes the cerebral with the sensuous. 

In Touch is a rich, complex tale masquerading as a minor satire of the psychotherapy profession. A female therapist helps patients explore their sexual fantasies (both literally and figuratively). This story was witty, sensuous, and yes, slightly ridiculous. 

Of course, there's a lot of sex, but the plot had several clever twists. I loved the witty banter between the therapist and her cynical screenwriter boyfriend.

I first heard portions of this crazy, hilarious story when it was broadcast on "This American Life" radio show.

The author worked as the only female clerk at a video store that rented out adult videos to (mostly) men. This tale relates the strange behavior she observed of the store's customers and the awkward conversations she had with them. 

The narrator does not sugarcoat the kinds of videos found at the store (or her opinions about the men who rented them), but mostly she takes everything in stride and enjoys the strange unreality that the store and its customers occupy. Davis’ portrayals of the store’s customers are great, funny, sympathetic, and even sad.

BONUS: The author herself narrated the audiobook.

This bawdy 1958 novel reads like a bizarre porn script (or a parody of one).

Like the hapless hero of Voltaire’s Candide, Candy Christian is an intelligent and generous-minded (albeit naive) college student who lets herself be taken advantage of by all sorts of sophisticated perverts whose only goal (they claim) is to assist Candy on her spiritual journey.

It’s probably asking a lot of the contemporary reader to continue with this absurd (and sexist) premise, but I admit it – I laughed a lot and on almost every single page. 

Candy is prurient, amoral, and silly, but easy and fun reading. Such novels upend the stereotype of 1950s American society as prudish and straight-laced and herald a more relaxed attitude towards sex.

If you remember reading "maze stories" as a kid and wondered what it would be like to read one that was sexually explicit, this is the book for you!

It centers around two British ex-lovers, Barney and Barbie, at a party. At the start, you can either be Barney or Barbie, but each faces a variety of choices about whether to hook up with new people, go to different parties, or try to rekindle a romance with an ex.

All the characters are great and hilarious, and so is the witty (and sexy) dialogue. This impeccably written maze story offers a variety of endings – including many unexpected ones. This book always left me guessing… and laughing.