START WITHOUT ME

A maestro of the mundane strains to lend substance to his humor.

In his second book, Janetti, a TV writer, producer, and actor, delivers a narrative full of stratospherically over-the-top pronouncements and lurid asides—and that’s just about his childhood in Queens. In his account of growing up gay, the author visits many familiar touchstones, occasionally uncorking a tart observation, though few are terribly original. Janetti holds forth on his distaste for the outdoors, tribulations in high school gym class, the fallacy of college preparing one for life, musical theater, and his tendency toward misanthropy: “I’m constantly maneuvering myself through life to be the farthest away as possible from people,” he writes, not quite tongue-in-cheek. “If I can hear your voice you’re too close.” It may be shtick, but the author can also be venomous at times, and his wit seems labored. “Maybe I met enough people over the years to realize that they just start repeating themselves after a while,” he writes. “So you’re never really meeting someone new. Just another version of someone else you know. ‘I already have one of you,’ I often find myself thinking while talking to a person I’ve just met.” The pieces in this collection allow the author to ramble on incessantly, usually about trivial matters. While it’s true that great comedy often springs from such preoccupations, the majority of Janetti’s jokes fall flat. His self-deprecating recollections cannot hide the fact that much of his comedy is dismissive or whiny. While there is solid advice for 20-somethings entering the world of independence—and a few touching moments—sarcasm is the principal arrow in his quiver, and it gets tiresome. Being judgmental can be wickedly amusing in a Woody Allen on-a-park-bench-pillorying-people sort of way. But it’s a double-edged sword. Janetti’s “vulnerability,” when revealed, is simultaneously so snarky that it’s hard to empathize with him.

Superficial and arch to a fault.