A disarmingly insightful, absurd and hilarious book from wry comedian Demetri Martin.
Demetri Martin is like the nerdy wallflower from high school who sort of tagged along during your group outings. He sits quietly for a while and listens to your conversation, then unassumingly drops a witticism about whatever you’re discussing that makes you stop, stare ... then slowly smile. Part of your smile comes from the surprise that bashful Demetri is the one to say it. But the much larger part comes from the fact that his observation about your everyday problem is so strange, so unique and so very, very funny.
Reading This Is a Book—a comedic collection of poems, essays, lists, scripts, diagrams, sayings and drawings (some of which we've included here) by Martin—is like hearing and being surprised by those witticisms over and over again. The only common characteristic between the 
chapters is a completely fresh look at whatever is on Martin’s mind—and there’s no knowing what will catch the comedian’s fancy next. An essay called “We’re Pregnant” pokes fun at the plural language couples use to announce the baby they’re expecting (“Week 20: We’re really mad at us for something we’re not even sure we did”). A script from the “Protagonists’ Hospital” features bored nurses talking about their hospital’s endless string of hunky, mildly wounded young men who need a bit of cleaning up before they get right back up to fight bad guys. A graph compares the quality of your GPA to the number of limbs you possess (4.0 is “Good” in both categories; 3.0 is an “OK” GPA and a “Not Good” number of limbs; 1.0 means “You’re Going Nowhere,” academically or physically).
Many of Martin’s strongest sections are the ones based on wordplay, as this is a comedic talent that best shines on the page. Even when focusing on this single brand of comedy, Martin finds a huge variety of ways to surprise and entertain readers. He creates “A Crossword Puzzle” consisting entirely of the letter A, with clues like “Two batteries” and “A very good report card.” (The answers to those clues are “AAAA” and “AAAAA,” respectively.) He writes an essay about a man at a party that’s saturated with color-based adjectives, starting with the common “green with envy” and moving into more unique descriptions such as “Violet with first name,” “black with shiny shoes” and “yellow with being scared.” And he includes his ever-popular “Palindromes for Very Specific Occasions,” which feature … well, palindromes that make sense only under very precise circumstances.
Like every endearingly awkward nerd, Martin’s jokes sometimes fall flat. Some of his longer essays, especially those that focus more on quirky ideas, grow cumbersome without enough breezy syntax. But it doesn’t matter—if one essay bores or confuses you, just skip ahead. A completely different idea is a page-turn away, and the extremely funny chapters more than make up for the occasional missteps.
This Is a Book is what happens when an introvert-turned-stand-up-comedian decides to write his ideas down. Demetri Martin has no agenda besides being entertaining, and he uses his off-kilter point of view, unanticipated crudeness and matter-of-fact writing style to accomplish that agenda with surprising effectiveness. His writings are disarmingly insightful and absurd. Readers will smile and shake their heads as they start seeing ordinary things from Martin’s extraordinary perspective.
Annica Redmond is a student of English at George Fox University. Her writings can be found online at takethezeppelin.wordpress.com.
