In other words, while their characters might debase themselves, or one another, these writers would not attempt to make a punchline of such debasement, but instead, through the constancy by which they would make a reader aware of the indifference of nature, or the universe, to the joys and travails that are particular to these characters, to produce a kind of humor that would suffuse the very fabric of the story, and that we sometimes refer to as ‘tragicomic.’