“the saddest story I ever heard”

Not to keep picking on the long-dead Ford Maddox Ford, since I already mentioned that his opening sentence (“This is the saddest story I ever heard.”) rings false with me, since the endless digressions of the narrative (often described as the book’s signal strength) simply served in my case to dull any emotional reaction at all.

But I was wondering, what famous book most deserves to begin with the sentence “This is the saddest story I ever heard.”

There must be many candidates for the honor, but I think the saddest novel I ever read (histories can be even sadder, for obvious reasons) is probably Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. I won’t include any plot spoilers here for those who haven’t read it, but there’s absolutely nothing left to hang your hat on by the end. Even the hero, so wounded by the cruelty of events near the end of the book, isn’t entirely blameless in the novel (I consider his one act of killing to be an utter atrocity, matter-of-fact though he is about it). So, my sympathy for him is always shadowed by a certain sense of shock and outrage directed towards him.

There’s also Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, but it’s so beautifully done that there’s a certain nobility to Werther’s fate.

Yes, King Lear. That’s an obvious one that I almost forgot. And there must be other likely candidates. But here even more than with Werther, there’s a real nobility to the play that blunts the sadness.

And what’s the funniest book you ever read? I’d need to think about that one a bit.