“Him Her Him Again The End of Him” by Patricia Marx (2007)
“Bossypants” by Tina Fey (2011)

 I’m combining the reviews of these two books, because these two authors share something in common.  They are both former writers for Saturday Night Live.

 More importantly Patricia Marx was also a writer for ‘The Rugrats’ which was the funniest show on television while it was producing new shows.  Marx has also been a regular contributor to the New Yorker since 1989.  Quoting the Huffington Post, “Patricia Marx writes comedy because she is too shallow to do anything else.” 

 There is one joke in “Him Her Him Again The End of Him” that absolutely broke me up and put a smile on my face for days whenever I thought about it.  See what you think.      

I did some more stone kicking. “Do you know that book ‘Seven Types of Ambiguity’?” I said referring to a book they had made me read in school. I had a vague hunch it was relevant to what Eugene was talking about. I needed Eugene to think that I was smart.

Eugene nodded. “William Empson”, he said.

“Don’t you think that a better title would have been ‘Seven or Eight Types of Ambiguity”?

 I realize I’m committing a cardinal sin of book blogging writing about an author’s previous book just when they’ve released a new book, because Patricia Marx has just released “Starting From Happy”.  So be it.    The second funniest joke in Marx’s novel is that during a funeral, the music that is playing is that jazz classic, ‘Don’t Get Around Much Anymore’ by Duke Ellington. 

 “Him Her Him Again The End of Him’ is a ‘ boy meets girl, boy breaks up with girl, boy gets back together with girl after he’s married’ novel all told from the girl’s point of view.  Marx has a Greek chorus of the girl’s friends tell her what they think of this guy, but she is usually too love-struck to follow their advice.  The style is conversational, not at all formal, as if the girl is talking to us readers.

 I think Marx was still learning the basics of character and scene development in novel-writing when she wrote this novel.  Some of the scenes read more like skits rather than being fully developed. The girl, the first-person narrator, comes across as a real person, but the main male character comes across as an unbelievably pompous stick figure. 

 “Bossypants” by Tina Fey is not a novel. It is a series of comedy routines, most of them relating to Fey’s memoirs growing up with her family and working at various jobs she has had up until this time. A lot of the humor is self-deprecating, and it contains much low-key advice.   Listening to the gentle pleasant humor of “Bossypants” is a good way to pass a long road trip.  I probably would have preferred her humor to be edgier, sharper, and meaner, but that will have to wait for a future book.  At this point, Tina Fey’s goal is to win us over, and in this she succeeds.   

Finally here are two quotes from “Bossypants”.

“Photoshop is just like makeup. When it’s done well it looks great, and when it’s overdone you look like a crazy asshole.”

“You have to remember that actors are human beings. Which is hard sometimes because they look so much better than human beings.”

  .