One of my favorite parts about this project is the behavior pattern changes I’ve had to navigate in order to meet my one book per week goal. I’ve been lucky to have some days off each week of this summer and I’m a fast reader, so I can get a lot of legwork done sitting by the pool. This past week, I had five days of work (for the first time since April!) plus a packed calendar after work, so I lost a lot of time that I usually have set aside for reading. It’s been nice to see how hard I worked this week to accommodate this, whether it was making myself wait for the next Metro to squeeze in some extra pages of my book, catching the bus instead of an Uber on the way home from Georgetown on Saturday afternoon to give myself more time to read or getting to Pilates early this morning and spending twenty minutes on the mat with my book before class started. I’m starting to transition out of summer in a lot of ways and this is a good preliminary test of how this project may go in the coming months, with a new graduate program, travel season and reading season on the horizon.
But the book! As I’ve mentioned in a number of posts, I really, really love comedy of all kinds. It is my preferred genre of anything. Don’t get me wrong, I can get sucked into a good drama or mystery as much as the next person, but I’d rather spend my time trying to keep up with one liners on a sitcom or laughing along to a stand up special as I go about daily tasks. I’ve yet to find a general topic so serious that a joke doesn’t add some welcome levity, so I especially love comedy that pushes the envelope. While I can’t claim to be a true student of comedy or even have a broad range of comedic interest (though if you put it on NBC, I’ll probably watch it), I have a huge appreciation for the genre and people who are really great at it.
Poking a Dead Frog is a phenomenal and fairly unprecedented look into the world of comedy. Mike Sacks has sourced interviews and advice from people throughout the comedy world: from my most well known and favorite players (Michael Schur, Amy Poehler, Paul Feig) to people I’d never heard of before (Peg Lynch, Gabe Delahaye, Glen Charles). There are some long form interviews with little bites of advice in between, split into two topics: Ultraspecific Comedic Knowledge and Pure, Hard-Core Advice. The breaks are spectacular and offer very, very personal insight from these really successful comedy figures. It’s almost sweet to think about these people offering their time to help readers understand their world and, in most cases, the struggles they went through to get where they ended up.
It’s really hard to pick a favorite part of the book- I have a TON of highlights- but the excerpts from the Freaks and Geeks “character bible” were particularly fascinating to me. I knew about this from the (amazing) Vanity Fair oral history, which is in itself worth a read for any fan of the show, but it was incredible to see what it actually looked like. EVERY detail about both characters and scenarios was laid out perfectly, down to what should be happening in the halls behind the main action of the scene. One of my favorite parts of comedy is the intense attention to detail because of the real sense of reward for the viewer or reader- the best example of this being all of the complex in-jokes of Arrested Development. It’s fun to feel like you get it on a level beyond the casual observer.
No question, this is a big book to undertake, which is why the corresponding post has been so long. (Paul Feig, creator of the 21,ooo+ word F&G character bible, would probably appreciate it.) It comes in at 480 pages- definitely a very tall order for any week, let alone a busy one. I’m not sure that there are many topics I could explore for dangerously close to 500 pages and there is no question that some of the interviews dragged a little. As with anything, when it’s full of references I get, I’m thrilled and engaged; at the same time, there is a somewhat finite amount of advice and insight to give on such a specific topic, so there’s a lot of overlap. But I never once felt that the advice was irrelevant- in fact, out of the context of comedy, most of it is still invaluable.
The short of it is: great book, long read. If you’re considering trying to break into comedy (personally on the fence about whether or not I’ve been convinced), this should be the next thing you read- six or seven times through.
You’ll like this if: you’re a fan of comedy. Quite simply, there’s something for everyone in this book and it’s worth reading at least part of it if you have any real interest in what goes on behind the scenes of any of your favorite comedic productions. It’s heavy (figuratively, though also definitely literally if you don’t own a Kindle) but worthwhile and likely pretty easy to pick up and put down as time allows.
Happy reading!
carlyreads 