The first monograph devoted to "black humor" (Max Schultz. The literature of black humor of the sixties 3), which gives precisely the definition, that is, the establishment of clear limits to the applicability of this term, was published in 1973. The subtitle of this work is: - "A pluralistic definition of man and his world." The material for the study this time was the works of American writers of the sixties (John Barth, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Berger, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Coover, Bruce Friedman, Charles Wright) and the stories of H.L. Borges, who were just becoming famous in America at that time. Considering "black humor" to be one of the types of literature whose content is the absurd, Schultz points out its essential differences: it does not glorify human individuality, as existentialism did, and, unlike other types of literature of the absurd, it is devoid of a sense of despair and powerlessness.