is this funny?

My no-nonsense friend, N., told me a while ago that she cannot understand why people read depressing literature when life can be so depressing anyway. I take anything my friend N. says very seriously because she is the person I would like to be. She deals with ambivalence in a very non-ambivalent way. The question never really left my mind and i came up with several possible answers, both from theory and experience, all of them valid and satisfactory, but the consideration of such an issue left me with a feeling of guilt when i realized that i am not simply a reader of depressing literature, but a teacher of depressing literature. I think that there is humor in my syllabus; when, for example, Goldberg and McCann interrogate Stanley in The Birthday Party and ask him why the chicken crossed the road, among other things. Or in Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf? when Martha says about George that if he existed she'd divorce him. One of my personal favorites. But it is pretty nasty.
So i decided to explore the issue with my students, ease the pangs from my conscience that told me i was making them suffer under the weight of great literature, of classics that would enhance their understanding of art and of the human condition and on Tuesday evening i went through my shelves looking for something funny i could share with them. My search revealed Woody Allen and David Sedaris and a copy of Henry Hemming's In Search of the English Eccentric. What the results of the search tell about me or humor is another story.
I went for a Sedaris story. I have been a great fan of his since my friend Kostis Kourelis introduced me to him and so i was very familiar with his sense of humor. I know why i like him; will my students like him too?
It turns out they do. They enjoyed the story i brought in for them and i read them a second one. We read In the Waiting Room where the main character is in France and basically finds himself agreeing with whatever he is told because his French is not good enough and he is too embarrassed to live up to this. The climax of the story is when he finds himself sitting in his underwear in the waiting room of a french hospital. My students said the following made the story funny:
1. the main character's cluelessness and awkwardness
2. how ridiculous the situation was and the reason why he agreed to everything
3. the character's analytical and neurotic temperament
4. the character's self-consciousness, as well as his imagination.
When asked what they find funny in general, they went on to list TV series or movies they watch, only two of which i had watched myself. The question morphed from "what do you find funny?" into "how important is funny in your life?" (i kept using the word "funny", to avoid definitions of "humor" and "wit" and "sarcasm" that could possibly distract us), which brought me back to the original question.
I may have opened a can of worms for myself, but the element of humor remains an issue that i feel educators should not ignore. Despite cultural and genealogical differences, the list above shows that there is possibly a sense of humor shared by my students and myself and all socio-psychological explanations aside, it is worth noting.
I had fun with my students and i hope that N. realizes that i always, always listen to her. One should always listen to their friends. They talk sense.