The Read Around - B.J. Novak

57 Books Every Comedy Fan Should Read

The list, care of Splitsider.

David Sedaris on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart

In Defense of Puns

To pun or not to pun, that is the question. The lowest form of wordplay, or an ancient art form embraced by the likes of Jesus and Shakespeare, asks Sally Davies for BBC News.

From the piece...

No pun is an island. Within less than a mile of my house in Brooklyn, a wanderer will find:

• Fish & Sip, a coffee and seafood joint
• Prospect Perk Cafe, an allusion to the restorative properties of caffeine and of nearby Prospect Park
• The Winey Neighbor, a liquor store that pays homage to the venerable New York tradition of grumbling about the noise from the apartment next door

Where good humour and refreshments abound, puns seem to follow. 

Yet this neat little linguistic device - which exploits the multiple meanings of words or phrases that sound the same or similar - is considered by its detractors to be as irritating as it is irrepressible.

Jerry Seinfeld on How to Write a Joke

60 Years of Mad Magazine

The Return of Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey's arch eccentrics are on display in two reissues and a never-before-published story.

From a story in the Los Angeles Times...
 
Twelve years after his death on tax day 2000, Edward Gorey — writer, illustrator, Victorian aesthete born half a century too late — has earned an adjective all his own: "Goreyesque."

The word is used, increasingly, to refer to anything that manages to be amusingly lugubrious, in an arch sort of way. In recent years, Gorey's eccentric shadow has only lengthened across pop culture, his influence apparent in Tim Burton's gothic whimsies; the Lemony Snicket books by Daniel Handler; the emergence of the Gorey tattoo as a hipster fad; crowds thronging to the traveling exhibition of his work, "Elegant Enigmas"; and the resurrection of out-of-print Gorey tales
Three Gorey titles have just landed on bookstore shelves. 

From Pomegranate Press comes "Thoughtful Alphabets: The Just Dessert & the Deadly Blotter" (64 pp., $14.95), previously published only in obscure, limited editions, and "The Osbick Bird" (32 pp., $12.95), a Gorey classic unavailable for four decades, except in poor quality in "Gorey's Amphigorey Too" anthology, but now restored to a clarity so sharp-nibbed it almost hurts the eye.

Bloomsbury is also in on the act with "Saint Melissa the Mottled" (48 pp., $12), an unpublished story that Gorey never got around to illustrating, supplemented here with images from the Gorey archive, some never before published.

10 of the Funniest Essayists of Our Time

The list, care of Flavorwire.

David Rakoff on "This American Life"

10 Best Comic Works in All of Literature

The list, care of the Christian Science Monitor.

What Do You Get When You Put a Conservative and a Comedian in a Smelly RV?

So You Want to Be Funny

Beyond the Margins gives writers a primer on humor writing.

From the piece...


Magical Element #1: Absurdity

From Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock" and Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal"(admittedly more disturbing than funny) to Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" series, absurdity has gotten more readers laughing than all the other comic elements put together.

But how exactly do you make something absurd? And how do you work it into your own writing?
First, let your imagination—and your fingers—fly. Turn off the editor. Turn off the physicist, biologist, chemist and sociologist. Then let your brain dance with the impossible. Most of what will come out will be garbage. But it will be entertaining garbage.

Second, and this is the more important part, take those flights of fancy and weave them together with the most mundane details you can imagine. An alien race coming to destroy the Earth? Interesting. An alien race coming to destroy Earth in order to build a hyperspace bypass? Absurd. Literary characters escaping from their books and running rampant through modern England? Fantastical. Hamlet running away from his own play to find out what people in the real world think of him? Absurd.

How to Rewrite the Constitution

Colbert Talks Books

The Colbert Report
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Following Tina Fey, Comedians Churn Out Books

With the success of Fey's Bossypants, more comedians take to writing memoirs.

From a piece in the New York Times...

“Bossypants,” her 2011 memoir, isn’t just a commercial success or a critical darling. It’s a blockbuster, a staple of the New York Times best-seller list (27 weeks on the hardcover list; 19 and counting on the paperback one). But its impact can’t be measured solely in numbers.

Comedy has become a growing and diverse publishing genre. Published this week was "The Lowbroad Reader Reader” an excellent anthology of a 10-year-old comedy zine, and essays by the comedian Dave Hill called “Tasteful Nudes: ... And Other Misguided Attempts at Personal Growth and Validation.” The first week in June brings “I Hate Everyone ... Starting With Me,” an encyclopedia of kvetches by Joan Rivers, with more punch lines per paragraph than any book I’ve read in years. 

But the most popular literary form in comedy is the memoir, perfectly suited for beach and bathroom reads. These are typically around 250 breezy pages that mix “Can you believe I’m writing a book?” jokes with shoptalk and self-deprecating confessions. The ambitions are somewhere between a long magazine piece and a talk show interview. 

What made “Bossypants” a book likely to be imitated is its seemingly effortless balance of genuine insight with candid personal vignettes. It’s light comedy without guilt, which is much harder to pull off than it looks. 

10 of the Most Hilarious Memoirs You'll Ever Read

The list, care of Flavorwire.

Comedy Central - the Publishing House?

Indeed.

From a story in the Hollywood Reporter...

Comedy Central is taking its brand to bookstores.

The network is launching a publishing imprint with Running Press (part of the Perseus Books Group) with plans to release everything from memoirs to joke and novelty books. The first title from Comedy Central Books will be a holiday themed novelty book from actor-comedian Denis Leary. It’s set to roll out in October with a multiplatform marketing push highlighted by a new Leary-headlined comedy special on the network that will be reminiscent of 2005's Merry F#%$in' Christmas.

“I am truly delighted to be in business with Running Press and deliver a funny Christmas book based on a special I did for Comedy Central seven-and-a-half years ago,” says the Boston native and star and creator of FX’s recently wrapped firefighter drama Rescue Me. “Sorry for the delay, but I was a tad busy with Rescue Me, two teenaged kids, two Red Sox World Series victories, the 17th Boston Celtic NBA championship, the Bruins winning the Stanley Cup and online porn. Mostly the porn.”

Portlandia - the Book

Awesome.

How to Write Like a Funny Woman

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The Year's Best Humor Writing

The list, care of Splitsider.