Comic novels are often defined by the author's literary choice to make the thrust of the work—in its narration or plot—funny or satirical in orientation, regardless of the putative seriousness of the topics addressed.
[1] Novels, books, plays, and many works of fiction or art can certainly contain and include passages or themes that are comic, humorous or satirical, but the defining characteristic of this genre is that comedy is the framework and baseline of the story, rather than an occasional or recurring motif.
Literary scholars distinguish textual analysis on this basis; the theory being that a story by Mark Twain that is a satirical critique in its very origin, for example, must be understood differently than a more literal novelistic plot.
[citation needed] More contemporary British humorists are George MacDonald Fraser, Tom Sharpe, Kingsley Amis, Terry Pratchett, Richard Gordon, Rob Grant, Douglas Adams, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Nick Hornby, Helen Fielding, Eric Sykes, Leslie Thomas, Stephen Fry, Richard Asplin, Mike Harding, Joseph Connolly, and Ben Elton.
[2] Notable American comic novelists include Mark Twain, Richard Brautigan, Philip Roth, John Kennedy Toole, James Wilcox, John Swartzwelder, Larry Doyle, Jennifer Weiner, Carl Hiaasen, Joseph Heller, Peter De Vries, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Terry Southern, and Christopher Moore.