It's easy to hate Simon Rich. He's the son of New York Times columnist Frank Rich, he's a former president of the Harvard Lampoon (as if it wasn't enough that he got into Harvard, he had to excel too), he's been published in The New Yorker, Jon Stewart counts himself among his fans, and he's recently released his debut collection of short stories, "Ant Farm and Other Desperate Situations." And he's only 22 years old.
But when someone has the comedic talent of Simon Rich, we have to let go of all that jealousy and just admit that we're inadequate.
From the very first story its obvious this Rich kid has got talent. "The Ride Back to Beersheba" chronicles Abraham and Isaac's trip down from the mountain after God decided he didn't need Abraham to sacrifice Isaac after all. Abraham tries to bribe his son with ice cream and compliments ("Wow, I just noticed that you have huge muscles!") so that he doesn't tell his mother what happened. Civilization has had roughly 3,000 years to make this joke, but Rich got to it first all because of an outlook that is not just slightly skewed and utterly original, but also highly in tune with the shared experiences of his generation.
Rich imbues common childhood memories with a screwball sense of humor: finding out the silent game isn't really a game at all ("This has got to be the craziest day of my life"), the perennial last place finishes in the Presidential Fitness Test (it's really only a way of determining the strongest so they could be sent to the frontlines first), and one of two times high school math is useful (Old Rich Man: "Hello, everyone. I've gone completely insane. Whoever solves this trigonometry problem fastest gets all of the money in my will").
One of the funniest moments in "Ant Farm" comes in what may be the first story ever named after an emoticon, ":(." "My innards R swarming w/ 2morous growths & the pain is excruci8ing," the hepatitis C suffering, AIM-speaking teen says.
If there was a test administered to comic writers this should be the essay question: "There is a young girl suffering from a terminal illness. Her entire family is falling apart watching the disease slowly eat away at her. She has lost the will to live. It is the saddest thing you have ever seen. Write a story about her that makes the essay reader laugh until he or she is laughing so loud other essay readers ask if he or she is all right. And please keep it under 300 words."
In this hypothetical situation, Rich would pass his CATs (Comic Aptitude Test, obviously) with flying colors.
It's impressive enough that Rich is able to accomplish the task of making the reader laugh at a girl whose, "d4med liver ceases to function 4ever," but it's downright amazing that he then sustains this balance between hysterical laughter and uncomfortably dark undertones through out the collection.
Writing about Rich presents a challenge because it's nearly impossible not to revert to transcribing all of his one liners in lieu of a review. Reading and quoting Rich's stories is like riding down an icy hill on a sled with metal runners - once you get going, there isn't really any way you're going to be able to stop.
There's hardly a bad story in the bunch (some of the political ones near the end fall flat, but they're only a page long so don't complain), and each story takes all of a minute to read. Maybe an even better analogy is that these stories are like popcorn. You don't eat one piece of popcorn, you shove handfuls of the light, buttery treats into your mouth at a time.
But you always get a tiny piece of kernel that sticks to the roof of your mouth, sometimes for days. It's this dark little kernel that takes Rich from being a funny comedian to a gifted writer. While you're gorging yourself on Rich's stories, laughing like an idiot in public, images remain in your mind long after you're done reading.
The dying text messaging girl, or the ants of the title story, foolishly, but optimistically, trying to dig their way out of their plastic prison, or the mistreated farm animal who only thinks, "Me eat food in bag. Rest. Sleep." linger as nagging reminders of the collection's sense of underlying insecurity and that the world might be even more terrifying than we previously had thought.
