Books with strange senses

I recently re-read two books by authors with twisted senses of humor: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More by Roald Dahl and Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. As it happens, both books fit my size requirements and were on the shelf next to where I feed Dianthus at night. I've long thought that both men bring out humor in very odd ways. I see the series of unfortunate events as a natural descendant of Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, except that, unlike Lemony Snicket (whose creator went to college with my sister-in-law or something like that), Roald Dahl isn't smug about the pathetic (and darkly humorous)predicaments his characters are in and most of the time the "good" child prevails in the end. And until recently, I thought that Vonnegut wrote Roald Dahl books for adults.
With this reading, however, I realized a very big difference. I'm unconvinced that most Vonnegut it funny or is supposed to be funny. Yes, the author emphasizes the absurd and yes, there are lots of penis jokes. But, as with my reading of Hocus Pocus late last year, I found reading Breakfast this time to be downright depressing. No matter how silly the drawings or absurd the context, unmitigated rampant racism, sexism, pollution and greed just aren't that funny. I imagine that both men took their writing very seriously and put effort into making it appear effortlessly thrown together, but the stories in Henry suggest Dahl had fun creating his stories and Breakfast implies that his stories depressed and only moderately amused Vonnegut.
As for the books themselves, I have always enjoyed Dahl's eclectic Henry Sugar collection, particularly the title story, The Hitchhiker and his autobiographical piece about British boarding school life which helped explain Harry Potter to me. Danny the Champion of the World is by far my favorite Dahl work, but Henry Sugar falls second (perhaps because they are the only Dahl books I've ever owned, perhaps because I prefer realism to fantasy sometimes).
The Mister and I agree that Vonnegut wrote some great books, some good books and some pieces of trash, but disagree exactly what falls on each list. The Mister rates Breakfast as one of the greats. I categorized it as merely good prior to this reading, and there it stays. This reading also made me wonder if I'd find those I consider great and funny to be either anymore, but I'm not going to read them soon to find out.
Anthony Bourdain reveals his strange sense of right and wrong more in the collected essays of Nasty Bits than he does in his other works I've read or seen (chef right, demanding customer wrong, unless the chef is a celebrity or into silly fusion or foams and the customer is a real person requesting real food served promptly and simply, in which case the customer is right). Bourdain is a man clinging to a bad boy image while finding himself a respectful and overall respectable grown-up. The essay collection has a bit too many repeated themes: restaurant work is hard work; trends are bad unless they are bringing more good food to more people; simple food can be great; good chefs are hard to find, but overall they work. I particularly like that he included follow up comments at the back of the book in which, more often than not, he admits he was wrong and arrogant when he wrote the original essay.
Finally, I should report upon A Valley in Italy by Lisa St. Aubin de Teran, who just has strange sense. Written before A Year in Provence or Under the Tuscan Sun, A Valley in Italy is about an Englishwoman moving to a small village in Umbria and trying to fix up the local dilapidated castle enough to be inhabited. Fortunately, unlike the other books named, Aubin de Treran doesn't ooze wealth, doesn't marvel about the slow pace of life and then bitch about work never getting done, and understands that, overall, her family, rather than the villagers, are the freaks of this scene. While I revel in authors who don't take themselves too seriously, I was surprised by how much Aubin de Teran's bohemian sensibilties bothered me. In my opinion, a woman in her thirties, living in her third country and in her third child-producing relationship, should not be encouraging her teenage daughter to go and model in Paris and then plan a giant wedding for a pair of seventeen year-olds. Then again, nobody is selling books about people with my life: (went to school, worked hard, went to college, worked, went to graduate school, met single smart man, married him, found jobs, had child with husband).