The Chicago Stand-Up program has enrolled young comedians for nearly a decade. Artie may be too handsome for standup, Olivia too reluctant to examine her own life, and Phil too afraid to cause harm. Kruger may be too vanilla to command his students' respect, Ashbee too detached. And then we have Dorothy – the only woman on the program's faculty – who can't tell whether she's too abiding, too ambitious, or too ambivalent. Whether a visiting professor – the high-profile, controversy-steeped comedian, Manny Reinhardt – will do more to help or harm their cause remains to be seen. But he's on his way. He'll be arriving sooner than anyone thinks.
An amusing variation on the campus novel ... You get the feeling that Bordas... wants to put wokeness if not to bed, then down for a nice nap ... a stream of neurotic consciousness flowing from person to person, an extended "take my smartphone — please" routine, and an impressive piece of Q3 reading.
Brimming with insecure characters, clever repartee, dark jokes and funny riffs ... A couple of subplots involve guns that, like some of the comedy routines, never detonate. But there’s also plenty of clever material, not just in the half-baked "bits," but in discussions about what subjects are off-limits, and whether emotion is the enemy of comedy.
This is a novel about artists and what they think about all day – and it doesn’t exactly demolish any myths that their every waking moment is spent self-examining and remembering and theorising. I’m no standup so I can’t comment on the veracity of this, but it seems an exhausting way to live, let alone make a living. Is this what Bordas wants us to feel? But with its determinedly meandering plotlessness, the novel will ultimately stand (up) or fall depending on how much it makes you laugh.
