You are about to read Close Reading, a dispatch of literary obsessions, published by Woolgather. Each edition features a guest writer who shares one word, one quote, one poem, one book, and “one other thing”.
This edition is by comedy writer and producer James Colley.
James Colley is a television comedy writer and producer known for his work as Head Writer on Gruen, Talkin Bout Your Gen, Question Everything, The 1% Club, and The Weekly with Charlie Pickering. He has written for Pendleton Ward’s Bravest Warriors and ABC TV’s Beep And Mort and Built To Survive which won an International Emmy for Kids: Entertainment and Factual. James has also written for adult narratives such as Summer Love, Ghosts Australia, and Get Krackin!
He is currently in production with his first feature film, the family Christmas comedy Staycation, as well as the feature adaptation of his romantic comedy novel The Next Big Thing. He may or may not have directed the hit film Jaws.
In this edition, James shares words of criticism, goodness, coffee, and humour.
Illustration by Lachlan Conn
One Word …
Overrated
Sorry to start on a negative here but there are few terms I dislike more. Calling something overrated is vastly overrated in my opinion. I simply do not see the utility in telling people that they are enjoying something too much, or hold it in too high of an esteem. It's lazy writing, intellectually useless, and unworthy of our time. This isn't to say we can't be critical. I love being critical. I am a grump to my core. But your criticism belongs in the text, not in the opinions about the text.
One Quote …
from Kurt Vonnegut
“Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn’t meant to be reasonable”.
Vonnegut was my first favourite author, as required by the White Boys With Big Feedings code of ethics. He is also the author I re-read the most, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. There are stories with a darkness that I wasn’t ready to see but when that happens, the hopefulness becomes all the more impressive, like a weed growing through concrete.
This line sings to me because it resonates with something my four year old daughter says to me:
“It’s hard to be good all the time”.
And I tell her, yes it is, you’re entirely right, and everyone around you knows how hard it is, which is what makes it all the more important to try.
One Poem …
Steps
Oh, how I love O’Hara. He’s so interesting and charming and funny and mundane. As far as I am aware, this is the only piece of art written about New York City, a thoroughly undocumented city, but a perfect setting for a kind of beautiful optimism that comes when you are not looking for good things but rather understand that every thing is good because we are alive to experience it.
the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won
and in a sense we’re all winning
we’re alive
When you’re writing comedy, cynicism is a drug. It’s alluring and feels so very good but it will suck you in and not let you go.
Which isn’t to say you can’t still indulge in a little darkness. Find me a funnier, more evil line than:
even the stabbings are helping the population explosion
though in the wrong country
And of course the ending, one of the most famous in modern poetry, some of the truest words ever put to paper:
oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much
We live in a beautiful world (yeah we do, yeah we do) and the way we say thank you for all the treasures around us is by indulging in a little loved-up hedonism every now and then.
One Book …
Confederacy of Dunces
What an overwhelming question. My gut reaction is to go with Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
This book blew my hair back when I first read it as a teenager. I didn’t know you were allowed to be this funny in books. I didn’t know it was legal. It’s a brilliant, engrossing, hilarious depiction of one of literature’s least likeable characters. I was in love.
Then, the years pass, and this book moves from being hilarious to terrifyingly prescient. Kennedy Toole has perfectly captured the psyche of a certain kind of extremely online person in every single aspect except the part where he didn’t know there was going to be an internet.
It’s a book that has stood the test of time for me in a way that comedy rarely does.
One Other Thing …
Chess
Does Chess help my writing or does it keep me from writing as I play game after game after game?
There’s nothing I enjoy more, when stuck for the next line, to quickly play a bit of bullet chess to check that my mind is still working. Sometimes, the answer is, it’s not and it’s time to hang it up for the day. Sometimes the answer is that I am the world’s most logical genius. Both of these thoughts are related directly to how I went in my previous game and will determine, for better or worse, the mood driving my next few sentences.