John Hodgman Reading at Brookline Booksmith

We got to hear John Hodgman give a reading from his book, The Areas Of My Expertise, last night in Brookline.  Hodgman is the slightly dumpy, boorish but lovable character who portrays a Windows PC in those ads for Mac computers.  He's also been a guest and a commentator (the "resident expert") on the Daily Show with John Stewart, as well as worked as a newspaper columnist and literary agent. 

His Wikipedia entry, which includes some great mp3 links, is here.

If you haven't checked out his book yet, give it a browse next time you're at the Barnes & Borders.  It's a fictitious almanac of obscure facts and random history (with lots about hobos) that are entirely made up, but sound as if they should be true.  Written with the same dry humor and told with the same straight face as he brings to TV, it also happens to be hilarious.

I think his brand of humor works so effectively because it mocks the generation we are just starting to forget, a generation which is recollected more fondly in joke and parody than in "real" history.  Because the generation just reaching adulthood now - people (gulp) younger than me - have never lived without electronic conveniences, medical and scientific wonders, and handicapped-accessible psychological counseling.  Further, they probably have never personally known anyone that hasn't, either.

And this is a good thing, I think.  Moving towards comfort and rationality has, for the most part, brought a great deal of happiness to the vast majority. 

But our grandparents can remember a time when their grandparents told them about hobos, or impressed upon them a fear of science, or made them memorize and recite something very like the "Six Oaths Of The Virtuous Child"  (which include I will forever make Science my Enemy) - the kind of pure nonsense which, through the power of repetition, came to influence their behavior for the rest of their lives.

And so how strange their grandparents' behavior must have seemed to our grandparents, who could not remember a time before battleships and automatic-transmission automobiles? 

By the time this knowledge came to rest in the rarely accessed portion of our own consciousness (of people like me and younger than me), it took, without our realizing it, the form of this parody of knowledge both extra-old and too-serious.  So when John Hodgman chronicles and points this out to us, it's ingenious.  All he had to do was take a bunch of our preconceptions out of the closet, dust them off, and show us how funny they are.

We're not laughing at hobos so much as we're laughing at how we've always thought about hobos. 

The cozy community setting of a basement bookstore book-reading was the perfect "old-fashiony" venue to share this sort of work.  The crowd was standing room only by the time we arrived, and we were packed down there in violation of several dozen fire codes, but it didn't ruin the atmosphere of a bunch of folk getting together to enjoy the wisdom of a wise but approachable, celebrity.  The presence of a guitar-wielding, coonskin-cap-wearing troubadour added to the old-timey, village gathering feel.

Hodgman shook things up at the end by conducting the question & answer portion of the evening via walkie-talkie.  (Reminding us how absurd that recent technology already appears.)  And his ability to answer any question on the fly with his convincing nonsense, was remarkable.  He's patented his own, wryer and drier version of Stephen Colbert's Truthiness. 

Someone asked him why water, which is odorless and colorless, always darkens the fabric it is poured on.  His answer had something to do with super-sharp molecular prisms, and it segued into the revelation that the earliest silhouette cutouts were created through a technique involving wet fabric.  When he was done, the audience broke into applause at the sight of a master at work.  This man could tell us anything, and we would love to believe it.

I didn't wait around for him to sign a copy of the book - mostly because the store sold out before I got to the counter.  It seems people really enjoyed participating in this nonsense.  It's a form of play we don't have occasion to use very often.  But when someone with a suit and a straight face stands up and tells us it's okay, everyone can have a good time.

 

Comments

[Richard]

"next time you're at the Barnes & Borders"??? Buy it at BOOKSMITH, for gosh sake!

[LizaLS]

Hello!

I was trying to Google the connection between Robert Benchley and John Hodgman and found your spot-on review. Well done, sir!

^_^ Liza