The Thing Is, For Me, As A

I Think Comedy Is So Much Easier To Do On The Page Than It Is In Real Life. When I'm Writing, Comedy Is An Easy Way To Win Over The Reader. You're Automatically More Disposed To Keep Reading, Thinking Maybe, "i'll Get Another Laugh Or Two." I Think It's A Survival Instinct In Me. I Mean, You Don't Want To Lose These Guys Within Five Or Ten Pages. You Want Them To Keep Going. I Think To Some Extent It's A Desperate Measure That I Throw Out There, Because A Novel Isn't A Complete Waste Of Time If It Made You Laugh.

The Whole Time I Was Writing, I Had To Fight My Normal Inclination To Be Funny, To Sort Of Patch Humor In, In Order To Convey All Of The Disruptions Of The Disease To The Family Dynamic, The Loss Of Individuality, The Impact On Professional Life, And The Sanity Of The Main Character. Of Course, That's Not To Say It Never Sneaks In; There's Some Black Comedy In There, Like When He Shows Up To Court Wearing A Bicycle Helmet And Won't Take It Off.

I Know What To Do With My Life. I Just Don't Know What To Do With This One Night.

That's One Of The Things About Comedy - I Think It Works Best When It's Contextualized, As Opposed To Kind Of An Island Of Cleverness.

I Think A Fairly Common Behavior Among Fiction Writers Is That They Want To Help. They're Generally Charitable People. They're Interested In The World. They're Curious, They're Empathetic. They Understand Suffering. They Don't Turn Away From That. But What They Do Is Essentially Useless. Except For The Sake Of The Thing Itself.