COMEDY BOOK

A comedy critic charts the history and evolution of American comedy.

“This is a love story,” writes Vulture senior editor Fox, invoking the famous quote from Season 2 of Fleabag. The author is a proud “member of the Seinfeld generation, a term I just made up to refer to the sort of millennial who grew up watching Seinfeld and, in turn, always knowing and caring about what goes into a stand-up’s comedy.” That passion for comedy led to this book, which “focuses on comedy made from 1990 through the early 2020s. This is the period in which millennials, and then Gen Z, emerged as cultural consumers.” Over the course of the narrative, Fox charts the history of comedy, evolving from “joke-jokes,” joke-book jokes that “have been around for millennia,” and comedians’ jokes, “a complete comedic idea.” Each chapter focuses on a different theme, including stand-up, “the most extreme example of comedy’s natural selection” that spans minstrel shows of the 1830s to vaudeville to the comedy clubs of the 1960s and ’70s; a thoughtful assessment of how, for better or worse, humor ages; a game defense of lowbrow humor, in which Fox wisely notes that “lowbrow does not mean low quality”; the immense influence of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show and the ways in which “comedy does and does not foster political progress”; the personal, confessional work of such figures as Hannah Gadsby and Jerrod Carmichael; and the rise of alternative comedy. The author occasionally tries too hard to be funny—e.g., “Seinfeld was less Waiting for Godot and more waiting for good joke”—but he’s clearly passionate about his subject and has an encyclopedic knowledge of modern humor. This book is like the work of a good comedian: inevitably hit or miss, but the best bits are comedy gold.

A well-informed, appreciative assessment of the current state of comedy.