Not even a tiny little bit. I guess it's supposed to be a vaguely humorous book but it feels like laughing at a clown getting beat up.
I chuckled a little at the 'minimal wage' sweeper in the club (Jones?), he's just an amusing dude; and sometimes at Ignatious himself, but it's not at all a knee-slapper. If you read it for the humour you'll be disappointed.
The preface mentions that it's one of the few pieces of the period that wrote African Americans as anything other than a caricature but at the same time, Jones is every bit as short-sighted and self-destructive as everyone else. His self-destructive dimension just happens to be in a different direction. Every character in CoD is tragic. They are all tragic because they all invariably make the wrong choices for the wrong reasons at every juncture. I had a real hard time seeing anything else through the bleakness.
Maybe it was different for you, but although you're right, the characters are all tragic, it doesn't read like a tragedy - i.e. it's not depressing to read. Wasn't for me, anyway.
I suspect most people, myself included, reflect on the book and remember specific qualities of the characters as humourous, because it's painful to identify closely with their actual qualities.
Oh, I seriously beg to differ. It's bleak to read. I see aspects of myself in all the characters, and I see aspects of everyone I know in all the characters. Myrna's letter about her in-pre-production movie, as read from the perspective of one surrounded by hardscrabble Hollywood dreamers, was breathtakingly heartbreaking. I'm not sure how you couldn't identify with a lot of their qualities. It's a deep-diving, expansive study on the worst aspects of hubris and vanity, leaned against each other to better concentrate their withering rays.