Comedy has always fascinated me as a difficult to execute art. It’s hard to be funny, and I guess comedy is one of those things which you classify under tautological virtues (like humility for instance – the moment you say that you’re humble, you’re missing the point). So listening to people who are naturally funny tends to be a deconstructive experience for me as I try to figure out why so and so Joe entertains me, whereas if someone else said the exact same thing, it wouldn’t even spark a smirk.
So I just finished listening to Bob Newhart’s ‘I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This’, a semi-autobiography of the guy best known for his self-titled sitcom ‘The Bob Newhart Show’ back in the day.
Bob doesn’t talk about comedy as a science (the serious side of being funny) but narrates salient moments in his life mixing them with a dose of his classic material. The book is read by him of course, so the signature stuttering is omnipresent throughout the book.
In my little knowledge of what comedy stands for, it really is communicating something absurd without making it look such. Bob stresses this and says that comedy is making something illogical make absolute sense. Comedians are tasked to build that atmosphere.
Bob Newhart’s “I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This and Other Things That Strike Me as Funny” is a good three hour listen with one of the legends in modern comedy.
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