Simon Rich
Simon Rich
Simon Richis an American humorist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has published two novels and three collections of humor pieces, several of which appeared in the New Yorker, and his novels and short stories have been translated into over a dozen languages. Rich was one of the youngest writers ever hired on Saturday Night Live and served as a staff writer for Pixar. On January 14, 2015, Man Seeking Woman, a television comedy series from Rich, based on his The Last...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
CountryUnited States of America
At the end of the day I'm writing comedy. If you get too realistic as a comedy writer with your disasters, it stops being funny.
I try not to write jokes that are mean. I try my best to write jokes that are pretty universal and jokes that don't attack anyone. I know I often fall short of that and end up taking unfair swipes at people, but I try not to.
Most of my work is, I get an idea, and, with the help of Wikipedia, I can write. I don't have to leave my apartment.
I never felt ostracized or made to feel strange by obsessing over 'The Onion' or 'Calvin and Hobbes.' That was considered completely normal.
There are actual monsters in the world, but when my kids ask I pretend like there aren’t.
I never felt ostracized or made to feel strange by obsessing over The Onion or Calvin and Hobbes. That was considered completely normal.
I'm too young and ridiculous a person to speak for my generation, but I'd be happy to talk about my own experiences as a generation Y writer. I was raised by a generation of hippies. Throughout my childhood, teachers urged me to fight the establishment. My English teacher assigned Ginsberg and Kerouac and declared Bob Dylan "a genius." My science teacher told me that television was "the new opiate of the masses" and bragged about never having owned one. My drama teacher made us perform Beckett.
I admired the earnestness of these people, many of whom had joined Greenpeace and marched for noble things in their youth. But I didn't share their hatred of the establishment. After all, the establishment had given me so many of my favorite things: Nick at Nite, the New York Knicks, Stephen King, Taco Bell, Green Day. The list went on and on.
I wanted to be an artist after all, and my teachers told me these were the best authors the 20th century had to offer. But these books sucked. They were so boring and sloppy and plotless. And Bob Dylan's lyrics seemed nonsensical to me - almost like he had just gotten high and written down whatever random thoughts occurred to him.
By the time I got to college I had stopped reading books because I wanted to "be cool" and started reading books simply because I wanted to read them. I discovered heroes like Roth, King, Dahl, Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, TC Boyle, Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, David Sedaris. These people weren't trying to "rebel against the literary establishment." They were trying to write great, high-quality books that were as entertaining and moving as possible.
I've always liked to read about extremely wealthy people, especially when they are crazy (like Howard Hughes or Caligula.) While writing this book I did a lot of fun research on robber barons like Rockefeller and Morgan. But the most helpful stuff came from studying royal families and mad emperors. The best book I read was probably A King's Own Story, which is the memoir of Edward VIII. Also, anything about Ivan the Terrible or Ted Turner.