Comedy is not generated by a writer who sails to her desk saying, “Now I will be funny.” It comes from someone who crawls to her desk, leaking shame and despair, and begins to describe faithfully how things are. In that fidelity to the details of misery, one feels relish. The grimmer it is, the better it is: slowly, reluctantly, comedy seeps through.

Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self-…, loc. 1044