Reviews: The Desperate Attempt to Give Colbert Less Than An "A"

This week's review covers Stephen Colbert's first novel, at least since his induction into late-night television godhood, called "I Am America, (And So Can You.)" You might remember this novel back when you read it in October, along with the rest of the world. My excuse is a huge backlog of books at the time, the rationalization that I could just ask for the book for Christmas, as it would make for an easy gift, and then getting seven more books at Christmas, creating another backlog. When you are mentally obligated to keep up with music, television, video games, movies, writing, webcomics, podcasts, and actual employment, you find the amount you can read ever night decreases somewhat.

Nonetheless, I finally got around to the book this last week, and I finished it a few days ago. For those who don't know, let me sum up the book and Colbert's character in the first place. Since he first started working on the Daily Show shortly before Jon Stewart's arrival to the same show, he has almost constantly used a public persona almost completely unrelated to the actual man. This persona, also called Stephen Colbert and sometimes printed in quotations to differentiate, started out as a completely serious yet utterly clueless reporter, starting a style that reporters on the Daily Show emulate to this day. When he got his own show, though, he expanded the concept, essentially becoming a parody of popular right-wing pundits like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly.

This gimmick could become tedious or mean-spirited with time, but Colbert manages to make it work for two reasons. For one thing, he makes the character's motivations tied not to malice, but to general nostalgia-fueled cluelessness, his arguments usually stemming from desperate projections of his own neuroses. More importantly, though, Colbert manages to project a charismatic image, even while playing a clueless jerk, that lends itself well to a cult of personality development. Not only does this match the similar auras of those he parodies, but this wins him fans who would normally disagree with his character's positions and lets him perform actions outside of punditry, as he tries (and often succeeds) at forcing his image to the public at large, even those who never heard of him or don't know his often ridiculous arguments are just an act.

This last part is one of the reasons the book wasn't as good as his show. It was funny, yes, but it can't really capture that second part. There were no audiences to interact with, no guests to rebound his persona off of, no way to accomplish a seemingly impossible public fiasco like his attempts to get a bridge named after himself or his famous routine at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Instead, we got basically a written version of the first kind of humor mentioned above. Watching "Stephen" rail against Hollywood, other religions, etc. in printed form still is humorous, but it misses half the point.

The second problem is by constantly using the persona, it's harder to see the spirit of the book, the heart if you will. Compare it to The Daily Show's own novel, "America: The Book." While that book, like the show, is a parody of news entertainment, both also have a message. They often rile against honesty in politics, the quality of news versus the hunt for sensationalism, and the general value of integrity. To get the message from Colbert's novel, the best you usually can do is take whatever "Stephen" says, and then assume the opposite is right. There is a benefit to the way one subconsciously crafts arguments against his fallacious claims, but it's more smug and less heartfelt.

Nonetheless, all of this is, as the title suggests, just a way to keep the grade from reaching an easy way. The book clearly understands the appeal of "Stephen" and has made efforts to pass some of the show's visual gags into print form. For example, the show constantly references and meta-references its own author, from the exclusive pictures of him in every chapter to the constant self-affirming footnotes. Other captions make a nice counter-point or punch of the regular jokes, just as the "bullet" captions on the show do (or did, pre-Writer's Strike.) And the insecurities of the character are revealed in stories about the characters' childhood. It is remarkable how well Stephen is able to enter this alternate personality and keep it consistently funny. And the novel ends with the transcript of the above-mentioned speech at the Dinner, providing a fresh reminder of that other element that makes his show so popular.

So, I'd give the book a solid B if I gave letter grades here, but it helped affirm one of the points I'm trying to make in this blog regularly. Every artistic and entertainment ideas has its own place where it is at its peak, and while adaptations might be successful, they can't fully capture the spirit. That's one of the reasons my focus has remained on video games. Yes, many of my ideas either started as or could be made into television or movies, but the ideas were created in the language of a different artistic medium entirely. Pretending that the idea can be easily transferred risks killing the spirit of the idea entirely. Indeed, it's hard to imagine how well even Colbert's novel, funny as it is, would do had the show now existed first.