A Cock-Eyed Comedy

There are novels that politely invite you in, and then there is A Cock-Eyed Comedy by Juan Goytisolo, which sounds as though it has already upended the furniture, insulted the authorities, and started laughing before you have even found a chair.

Published in this 2002 Serpent’s Tail edition, this is exactly the sort of book Crappy Old Books likes to discover lurking with intent among more obedient paperbacks. It has all the right signals: a great writer, a brilliant title, a publisher with form for the strange and unruly, and the unmistakable promise that what follows may not behave itself in any conventional literary sense. Which, frankly, is a relief.

The title is doing magnificent work. A Cock-Eyed Comedy suggests not a tidy farce, not a neat little entertainment, but something gloriously askew. Something lopsided, satirical, possibly feverish. Comedy, yes — but comedy with one eyebrow raised, one wheel missing, and a suspicious amount of smoke coming from the engine. It implies a world out of joint and fully aware of it. That is often the best sort of comedy, especially when produced by a writer as sharp and unhousebroken as Juan Goytisolo.

Goytisolo, of course, was no dealer in bland literary upholstery. He was one of those serious European writers who seemed permanently engaged in a struggle against hypocrisy, complacency, nationalism, piety, and the general suffocating tendency of society to pretend it is more orderly than it is. His fiction has bite. It has mischief. It has intellect. It has the sort of energy that makes lesser novels seem as though they were written under supervision. To pick up Goytisolo is to accept that the page may become argumentative.

And that is precisely why this title feels so appealing. A comedy from Goytisolo is unlikely to consist of lovable eccentrics misunderstanding one another over tea. One expects something darker, stranger, more politically alive, more morally sideways. A comedy, perhaps, in the ancient and useful sense: a form through which absurdity exposes the rot beneath the respectable surface. The “cock-eyed” part suggests that the angle of vision itself is the point. Reality seen straight is one thing. Reality seen slant is often much more revealing.

As sold by Crappy Old Books, this copy is in good condition, which suits it perfectly. A good-condition Serpent’s Tail paperback ought to feel like a book that has survived on wit and reputation rather than mass approval. It should look readable, ownable, and faintly dangerous in the best literary sense. Good condition means it is ready for a new shelf, a new reader, and a fresh chance to disturb the peace.

Serpent’s Tail is also exactly the right imprint for a book like this. Few publishers have done more to champion fiction with edge, style, provocation and a refusal to play nicely. A Serpent’s Tail edition carries a certain promise: that whatever is inside is unlikely to be domesticated. Crappy Old Books approves wholeheartedly. The world does not need more beige novels with workshop-approved emotional arcs. It needs more books that look as though they may have escaped through a side door.

There is, naturally, a rich irony in the whole setup. Here is a book called A Cock-Eyed Comedy, written by a formidable literary troublemaker, and now circulating through the democratic afterlife of second-hand bookselling. Once it may have been bought by someone admirably serious, perhaps someone who liked translated fiction, European dissent, or novels with a taste for dismantling illusions. Now it waits to be rediscovered, still sly, still crooked, still entirely more interesting than most things currently yelling for attention.

For collectors, it is a fine find: Juan Goytisolo, Serpent’s Tail, 2002, and a title with genuine shelf charisma. For readers, it promises that particular pleasure only good translated fiction can give: the sense of being jolted slightly sideways out of your own familiar narrative furniture and made to look again. For shelf appeal, it is excellent. A copy of A Cock-Eyed Comedy says that someone in the house may appreciate satire, literary risk, and the possibility that the world is best understood when viewed through a cracked lens.

It is also the sort of book that flatters its owner in the right way. Not by screaming prestige, but by implying taste, nerve, and a willingness to read things that are not merely “enjoyable” in the market-tested sense. It suggests curiosity with teeth. One does not own Goytisolo by accident. Or if one does, one quickly decides to make the accident look intentional.

So here we have a good-condition 2002 Serpent’s Tail edition of A Cock-Eyed Comedy: skewed, clever, likely subversive, and gloriously uninterested in behaving like a nice normal novel. It is the kind of book Crappy Old Books loves to rehome — literary without being dutiful, funny without being cosy, and full of the sort of crooked intelligence that makes the shelf around it look instantly duller.

If you like satire, translated fiction, serious writers with a wicked glint, or simply titles that sound as though they know the world is absurd and have chosen not to be polite about it, this is a splendidly off-centre thing to take home. A fine, sly survivor — and exactly the kind of comedy that may leave the furniture standing at an angle.

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