I've been watching Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee with Jerry Seinfeld as he drives and has coffee and talks and laughs with various standup comics (I've been watching Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee with Jerry Seinfeld as he drives and has coffee and talks and laughs with various standup comics (highly recommended as a way to laugh at the end of the day). And in one episode the question of whether stand-up comedy can be taught came up and the answer from these comedians is NO, you can't teach it, and one of the comics, Steve Harvey, I think, had been asked to lecture to a stand-up class, and he told those students the fact that you're here means you won't make it. It turned out to be absolutely coincidental that my nightly watching of Seinfeld and others has dovetailed with reading The Material - a campus novel of sorts set in an unnamed university in Chicago, and focused on the students and professors in the MFA program in Stand-Up Comedy. It's a revolving cast of characters, six students, four professors, a controversial and famous comedian hired as a guest lecturer, and we're in all of their heads, moving in and out of their thoughts, as they mine themselves and their lives, their every thought and interaction and everything else for anything that might provide them with material, with bits that might eventually be written and honed and be funny. It takes place over 18 hours, beginning with a department meeting and ending with the annual battle between MFA student-comedians and an improve troupe of Second City. In between, there is so much - from Holocaust holograms of survivors, to crushes, to father-son and mother-son relationships, the sibling relationship between twins, sexual abuse, loneliness, divorce, a campus shooter, and more. At the core: the costs and failures, the consolations that are so rare, in trying to make this particular kind of art, but really any art. As Seinfeld and his cohorts often say during the series I've been watching - for comedians nothing is off the table, despite the always-changing boundaries of what is acceptable and not, and while that is mirrored here, to a degree, these students are also coming up against the limits, what is now considered politically correct, etc. It's a dense book in that we're moving among so many characters, and yet comes alive and I remained consistently interested to know how they would respond to whatever they might be facing. ...more
Last summer, I was asked if I would read The Anomaly for a possible blurb. I would, I did, I loved it, and I blurbed it.
“The Anomaly is a brilliant bLast summer, I was asked if I would read The Anomaly for a possible blurb. I would, I did, I loved it, and I blurbed it.
“The Anomaly is a brilliant balancing act of a novel, a fantastic rush and ride that works on myriad levels, at various depths, and in a multitude of styles. It’s a precise and erudite literary treat, a comedic sociopolitical-religious skewering of these contemporary times, a philosophical-scientific-mathematical dive into the puzzles of possibility, space, and time, and an ingenious thought experiment that lends itself easily to ad infinitum analysis and dissection. It’s also entirely grounded in human nature. Le Tellier’s pointillistic characters are, like all of us, buffeted by desires, seeking love, striving, aging, making good and bad decisions, choosing the right or wrong paths, believing they know and understand themselves, utterly trusting in free will. Highly intelligent, ironic without cheap cynicism, The Anomaly is an immensely fun novel, an immersive experience that leaves the reader analyzing everything anew.” —Cherise Wolas, author of The Resurrection of Joan Ashby and The Family Tabor...more
In this autofiction or autobiographical novel, the first-person narrator is Russian-born Katya Geller. In middle-age, she is a writer, a professor, thIn this autofiction or autobiographical novel, the first-person narrator is Russian-born Katya Geller. In middle-age, she is a writer, a professor, the mother of two teenagers, recently separated from her husband, Len (though the marriage probably ended before they had children), is pining for her off-and-on again lover, has recently ended a fast engagement to a billionaire Russian, and her mother, a writer of Soviet math textbooks, is dying in the family's Staten Island house. At her death, Katya finds her mother's notes for a math book she wanted to write for adults, which would have been her first since emigrating with Katya to the US. Vapnyar uses two kinds of devices: the framing device of her mother's math notes, which, as a non-math person, weren't particularly illuminating for me - although the ways in which Soviet math problems were created is very funny, and direct notes to the reader, some of which are amusing, some a little trite and self-evident. The book takes us from the mother and daughter's life in Russia to the US. Darkly comic - I laughed aloud a bunch of times - Katya is an engaging voice and character, with bright and apt takes on marriage, motherhood, Russia, America, love, etc. A fun read....more
Fun, breezy mother-lit. The characters all sound exactly the same, the dialogue and journaling of the teenage daughter and the 12 year old son is impoFun, breezy mother-lit. The characters all sound exactly the same, the dialogue and journaling of the teenage daughter and the 12 year old son is impossible to believe, but it's a sweet, uplighting, life lessons learned, everyone-is-happy-at the-end-tale, and I laughed more than a few times....more
