There's a type of British comedy that when done well combines all the best attributes of farce, theatre of the absurd, and the British Pantomime tradition. Comedy troupes like Monty Python's Flying Circus and Beyond The Fringe were great examples of how this translated into sketch comedy for television, stage, and film. In fiction, the best known example of this style was the late Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series.
While the sketch comedy routines of television and radio didn't need to worry excessively about plot or even a narrative line, and could routinely go off like small bombs of comic excess with no worries about what would come next, Douglas Adams didn't have that luxury. Whether in its first incarnation as a BBC radio show, as a television series, or a sequence of novels, his Hitchhiker's Guide would not have worked without having its various plot lines and sub plots to guide its seemingly unconnected random moments of silliness.
It's a difficult path to navigate, balancing lunacy with the needs of a full length novel, and there aren't many writers who seem capable of carrying it off. One need look no further than Tim Scott's first novel, Outrageous Fortune, published by Random House Canada for proof that merely being funny doesn't make for a good novel. Like Adams, Tim Scott began his career with the BBC, appearing in the sketch comedy show, And Now In Colour under the name of Tim de Jongh, before continuing on to write and direct successful children's shows.
Unlike Adams, Scott does not appear to have understood what is necessary to make a good novel. While there is no denying he has a keen sense of the absurd, and even shows some flashes of genuine insight into human nature, his inability to tie together the bits and pieces that he's written into a coherent shape results in a novel that doesn't so much finish but peters out in the end.
Set some time in the future, Outrageous Fortune follows the misadventures of Jonny X as a particularly bad day turns into a particularly bad couple of weeks. After coming home from his job as a very successful dream manufacturer he finds that his house has been stolen. Not robbed, but the whole structure had been shrunk down to a hundredth of its size and whisked away to be sold in all probability on the housing black market. Adding insult to injury the thieves had left a business card in place of Jonny's house emblazoned with the words "Don't you hate it when this happens'? and a 1-800 number with final seven digits spelling out AARRGHH.
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