One more thing Stories and other stories

Review by New York Times Review

BEFORE YOU DISMISS B.J. Novak's debut fiction collection, "One More Thing," as the latest example of a Hollywood actor's trespassing into the far more glamorous and affluent gated community of short stories, read his humor piece "If I Had a Nickel." The narrator opens this four-page story (the average length of Novak's 64 vignettes) by expressing that if he had a nickel for every time he spilled a cup of coffee, he'd be rich. He then itemizes every expense he would incur in such an operation: coffee supplies in bulk, a work space, staff (and accompanying theft) and, of course, "a waist-high circuitous conveyor belt that would deliver cups of coffee from one side of the room to the other at a speed of four miles per hour." So far, so funny: an inventive comic premise emerging from an unexplored cliché with delightfully detailed elaboration. But the narrator drops in one final "miscellaneous" line item that reveals something larger and darker than is typically found in the arsenal of the feuilletonist: "Psychological counseling to handle the effects of devoting my life's work to this crushingly bizarre and isolating activity of no relevant value or connection to the wider world should run me approximately $750 per week." Perhaps some neurotic comedy writers would add therapy to the narrator's budget, but not all would employ such a well-turned and unexpected phrase ("crushingly bizarre and isolating" is what got me). The melancholy sensibility and verbal élan elevate Novak's book beyond a small-beer exercise in clever monkeyshines and into a stiff literary cocktail, with a healthy pour of vintage Woody Allen and a dash of George Saunders strained through a Donald Barthelme sieve - droll and smart in spades, but often humane and vulnerable, too. Novak, best known for his role as Ryan on the NBC sitcom "The Office" (he was also a staff writer and producer), follows similar formulas for most of these sketches, a number of which have self-explanatory pop-cultural titles ("Wikipedia Brown and the Case of the Missing Bicycle," "Chris Hansen at the Justin Bieber Concert," "The Comedy Central Roast of Nelson Mandela"). But he deviates impressively from these schematic highbrow-lowbrow forays and wades through murkier waters in several longer works, the best of which function as serious short stories with incidental humor. "Kellogg's (Or, The Last Wholesome Fantasy of the Middle-School Boy)" turns the fine-print rules of a corporate sweepstakes into an unsettling examination of fate and family. In "One of These Days, We Have to Do Something About Willie," a clique of recent college graduates attempts to stage an intervention for a hard-drinking friend, luring him to Vegas with a bacchanalian reunion - at which their lives fall apart more than his. (The story also ends on one of the most morbidly funny sentences I've read in a while.) And in "Sophia," a needy sex robot falls in love with her human owner and is devastated by his rejection. Novak is particularly sharp with the non sequitur riff on contemporary customs. In "Dark Matter," the narrator - an anonymous young man, like most of the first-person protagonists here - receives a phone call, in the middle of an important conversation with a scientist, which has essentially no bearing on the story: "'One second,' I said. "'Go ahead,' he said quickly. "'I'll just pick it up to put it on silent,' I said. 'I won't even look at who it is.' "I went to turn the ringer off, but it's basically impossible to pick up your phone when it's buzzing and literally not even look at who it is, and also I knew if I didn't look, it would probably just distract me even more, since I'd be wondering who it was the whole time, and I needed to focus all my concentration on the scientist. So I looked." On occasion, humor is almost completely - and intentionally - absent, as in the sweetly sad "Missed Connection: Grocery Spill at 21st and 6th 2:30 P.M. on Wednesday," which, in a parody of a Craigslist "missed connection," details an intimate sleepover between two strangers that has left the writer bereft: "I kind of fell for you pretty hard & it has been forever since I've connected to anyone like this & my heart is kind of broken in a million pieces." Not all the stories are as moving or entertaining. The Borgesian "J.C. Audetat, Translator of 'Don Quixote'" is less engaging than the other long narratives, and serves mostly to highlight Novak's intellectual cred as a Harvard alum with a degree in English and Spanish literature. And many of the one-pagers don't land firmly on either comic or especially thoughtful ground (like "Heyyyyy, Rabbits"), or would be better off in an absurdist joke book (the two-liner "Kindness Among Cakes"). A substantial portion of "One More Thing" could have been excised to make a more cohesive and consistent collection, instead of a frequently brilliant but sometimes frustrating hodgepodge. "One more thing," Sophia the sex robot says to her beloved when she feels him pulling away; she wants to keep him talking, to connect on the human level that is otherwise denied her. It's no wonder Novak has lent her plaintive entreaty to the title of his hugely pleasurable book; beneath the hilarious, high-concept set pieces and satires here beats a surprisingly tender heart. In one of these stories, a needy sex robot falls in love with her human owner. TEDDY WAYNE, who writes the Future Tense column for Sunday Styles, is the author of the novels "The Love Song of Jonny Valentine" and "Kapitoil."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 23, 2014]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Novak's high-concept, hilarious, and disarmingly commiserative fiction debut stems from his stand-up performances and his Emmy Award-winning work on the comedy series, The Office, as writer, actor, director, and executive producer. Accordingly, his more concise stories come across as brainy comedy bits, while his sustained tales covertly encompass deep emotional and psychological dimensions. An adept zeitgeist miner, Novak excels at topsy-turvy improvisations on a dizzying array of subjects, from Aesop's fables to tabloid Elvis to our oracular enthrallment to the stock market. A master of cringe, Novak imagines a blind date with a warlord, a Comedy Central TV roast of Nelson Mandela, and a mortifying misunderstanding between mega-best-selling novelist John Grisham and his new editor. Writing with zing and humor in the spirit of Woody Allen and Steve Martin, Novak also ventures into the realm of George Saunders and David Foster Wallace. A boy wins a breakfast-cereal contest and discovers a shocking family secret. A sex robot falls in love. A man reveals the heartbreak behind the universally dreaded math problem about the two trains leaving the stations at different times. Baseline clever and fresh, at best spectacularly perceptive, and always commanding, Novak's ingeniously ambushing stories of longing, fear, pretension, and confusion reveal the quintessential absurdities and transcendent beauty of our catch-as-catch-can lives. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Novak's television fame is an instant lure, one that will be pitched far and wide as Novak appears on major talk shows and travels to 20 cities in concert with an immense print and online ad campaign.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Novak's quirky, humorous short stories translate well to audio. And the author's dry, deadpan reading-as if all the book's odd happenings are perfectly normal-makes this audio edition even funnier. The guest narrators perform admirably, with Schwartzman turning in a truly hilarious cameo as a bloodthirsty African warlord on a blind date with a giggly American woman. As the warlord makes small talk with his date, Schwartzman's jovial, booming voice shifts seamlessly from describing his job of murder, rape, and destruction to a Seinfeldian rant about flourless chocolate cake. Fans of offbeat humor with unexpected punch lines in the vein of Jack Handey's "Deep Thoughts" will enjoy this amusing and often insightful potpourri. A Knopf hardcover. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Novak, best known for his work on the American TV show The Office, has written a funny, neatly put-together book that lends itself especially well to audio. The stories are mostly very brief explorations of a central clever idea but are so well executed that they manage to lift off the ground just a bit more than we have any right to expect. Some of the more resonant stories include a sequel to the famous tortoise and the hare allegory, the story of the "Best Thing in the World Awards," and a longer piece about a man who orders a sex robot and ends up with the first artificial intelligence capable of falling in love. The author himself reads most of the stories, and it is delightful to listen to stories read with both the skill of an actor and the understanding of the writer. He has also enlisted quite a few recognizable voices (including Mindy Kaling, Jason Schwartzmann, and Emma Thompson) and generally uses them to good effect. Verdict A very entertaining audiobook, great for lovers of humor but strong enough to appeal to discriminating short story fans as well. ["Contemporary humor aficionados and fans of David Sedaris, Woody Allen, Steve Martin, and Mindy Kaling, Novak's costar and friend, are most likely to pick this one up and should enjoy it," read the review of the Knopf hc, LJ 1/14.]-Heather Malcolm, Bow, WA (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A debut collection of stories, ranging from two or three sentences to 18 or so pages, from Novak, best known for his work on The Office. Given the sheer number of entries in this collection, it's not surprising that Novak has both hits and misses. Among the latter are a few sketches that read like stand-up material, occasionally witty but also occasionally falling flat. Some ideas work better in conception than in execution"Walking on Eggshells (or: When I Loved Tony Robbins)," for example, in which the narrator is blunt about wanting to have sex with the eponymous motivational speaker, or "The Ghost of Mark Twain," in which a teacher objects to the language in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and hopes to see a new edition increasing the number of times Huck uses the "N-word." At other times, however, Novak is spot-on and frequently hilarious. In "The World's Biggest Ripoff," the narrator and his family visit the Baseball Hall of Fame, Niagara Falls and the Guinness World Records Museum and find all of them wanting. The narrator then visits an "incredibly well-executed interactive holographic exhibit on the Bernie Madoff hedge fund scam of 2009" and finds the $100 entrance fee (per person) well spent. The last piece in the collection, "J. C. Audetat, Translator of Don Quixote," is also the longest, so Novak has more space in which to develop his comic ideas. A translator becomes famous translating not only Miguel de Cervantes, but also Leo Tolstoy and Marcel Proustand his final work is a new translation of The Great Gatsby into "modern" English. Novak creates a spectrum of work from the mediocre to the deliciously tongue-in-cheek. If you don't like something, just waita new piece is usually only a page or two away.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Excerpted from the Hardcover edition Chapter 1 No One Goes to Heaven to See Dan Fogelberg Tim, nine years old, leaned next to his grandmother as she lay in her hospital bed. He gently kissed her face around the tubes in her nose. "I love you, Nana," said Tim. "I promise I'll visit you in heaven." The next day, Tim's grandmother died. Sixty-six years after that, Tim died. The first thing Tim did when he got to heaven was look for his wife. He was so anxious and excited to find her that he couldn't focus on anything else--not the fact that he had died, not the fact that he was in heaven, and certainly not his grandmother. "Is Lynn here?" he asked everyone he met. "Yes," they said, but he kept asking. "Is Lynn here?" "Yes," they laughed, "you'll see her in like two seconds!" And there she was, standing beside a park bench in a spring dress, looking at the same time the way she looked when he had known her last, at the hour of her death just under a year ago, and the way she looked at her very most beautiful, the day he married her, when she was twenty-two and he was twenty-five. It was a far deeper and sharper moment of first love than the first first moment of first love, because now, not only was he falling in love, but he was falling in love with someone he loved; and while the first time, he also believed he'd be with her forever, he was too young to consider what forever meant. Now here he was, truly, on the first day of forever. He kissed her for an eternity, which was fine, because heaven had eternities to burn. Then he kissed her for another. "It wouldn't have been heaven without you." He took her hand in his, and they strolled out of the park together. "Oh, and you gotta remind me," said Tim as they walked. "One of these days I have to visit my grandma. Remind me, okay?" "Of course!" said Lynn. "I would love to meet her." But first, they looked up their friends, the ones they had shared for the main length of their life together. They brought to each house a bottle of wine that never emptied, and they visited everyone for hours, laughing late into the night, reminiscing and gossiping about who had died and who hadn't. Then they'd wake up early the next morning, make coffee and French toast, and talk about the friends they had visited and whether or not heaven had changed them. Next they went to see Tim's parents, who were doing very well and were very happy to see both of them. "Have you visited Nana yet?" asked his parents. Not yet, said Tim, but soon. Next, they visited Lynn's mother. "You know your father's here," Lynn's mother told Lynn. Lynn was surprised to hear this. "It would be the right thing to visit him." Tim had never met Lynn's father, but he had heard all about their relationship. Her father abandoned her family when she was thirteen and only saw her once more, when he showed up unannounced at her high school graduation and tried to reconcile, ruining the day for her. She had retaliated by rebuffing him publicly and rudely. She did not want to see him at all, but she could tell it was the right thing to do, and heaven was the kind of place that made you want to do the right thing. "We'll go together," said Tim. "It'll be fine." Lynn's father opened the door to his oversized condominium with a huge grin. Of course he would have a condominium in heaven. "Remember at your high school graduation?" he said. "When you told me to go to hell?" He smiled like he had been looking forward to saying that line for a long time. "What a jerk," she said after they left. "Why did they let him in?" "He must have changed," said Tim. "And then changed back?" "Maybe," said Tim. "Who knows how things work here?" "Well, maybe this is better, because I get to feel mercy, or something. Or close that chapter. Or whatever. I did it. You know?" "That's a good attitude," said Tim. "And it was the right thing to do. Now you can enjoy heaven with a clear conscience." The next day, Tim called Nana. "Hello?" "Nana?" "Who's this?" "Nana! It's Tim!" "Tim who?" "Tim Donahue!" "Eliza's husband? Oh." She sounded unhappy. "Hi." "No, Tim Junior. Eliza's son. Timmy! Your grandson!" "Timmy! Oh, goodness--Timmy, you died? You're just a little boy!" "No, Nana, I'm all grown up! I'm in my seventies now. Was." "Oh, thank goodness. I still pictured you as a little boy! How did everything wind up?" "Well . . . there's a lot to cover, Nana! We want to come visit you. I have a wife now--I want you to meet her!" "Oh, that's wonderful! Wonderful. It will be so wonderful to see you both!" "When's good?" said Tim. "When? Oh. Hm." Nana paused. "I have a bunch of stuff next week. I'm seeing some friends, and there's a couple concerts I want to see . . . How about next weekend? The weekend after this coming weekend, I mean." "We would love that. How about Sunday, for dinner? Like old times?" "Huh?" "Like the Sunday dinners you used to make us, when we were kids." "Oh. Sure, we could do that. Or we could order in. Lot of options. Let's decide closer to then, okay?" "Okay, Nana. I love you. I'm so happy I'm going to get to see you!" "Me, too. I love you, too. See you next Sunday. But not this one--the next one. Bye now." "Nana sounded odd," Tim said after he hung up. "Or something." "Maybe she's upset that you didn't get in touch with her before?" "I don't know," said Tim. "It's hard to tell that stuff over the phone. And also, there's a lot to do here, you know? I hadn't seen you, I hadn't explored heaven--it's not like anyone's going anywhere . . ." "It'll all be better on Sunday," said Lynn. "When we see her." "You're right," Tim agreed. On Sunday, Tim called to confirm. "Nana! It's Tim. Just confirming we'll see you tonight? I'm bringing my wife, Lynn." "Who?" "Lynn, my wife. You're going to love her." "Who's this?" "Tim, your grandson. Timmy." "Timmy! Oh, Tim, gosh, tonight? I'm so sorry, tonight won't work. Can we do next weekend?" "Sure," said Tim. "I guess." "Let me look here. . . . There's something I have to be at on Saturday. And then I'm actually checking out some shows next week--actually, is two weeks okay? A week from next Friday? Can you pencil that in?" "Sure," said Tim. "Perfect. I'll see you next Friday! A week from, I mean." "Okay, Nana. I love you." "I love you, too!" A week from Friday, Tim and Lynn showed up at the door of Nana's house. On the door there was a note: Tim: Tried to call you last minute but no one picked up. So sorry but there's a concert I just had to see with some friends. Won't be back till very late. So sorry. Must reschedule. Talk soon. I love you! Nana Tim turned to Lynn. "Am I crazy to take this a little personally, at this point?" "This is weird," Lynn agreed. "A concert? Again?" "Weren't you two close?" "I thought so. Maybe you're right--maybe she is mad that I didn't contact her before." "But then why wouldn't she just say it?" "I don't know. I guess she would have." "Well, what should we do tonight?" asked Lynn, trying on a smile and finding it fit perfectly. "We're all dressed up, it's a Friday night in heaven . . ." "Yeah. We can go out ourselves, can't we?" "Want to check out one of those concerts?" "Sure!" said Tim. "Why should Nana have all the fun?" Tim and Lynn walked through the streets of heaven at sunset. A breeze blew through the pink-and-purple air. Dogs barked, birds sang. Children with old souls finally laughed lightly. Horses, bicycles, and vintage convertible cars shared the wide streets. As Tim and Lynn got closer to the center of town, they started walking past posters: tonight! bo diddley! free! tonight! bing crosby! free! tonight! nikolai rimsky-korsakov! free! "Look at this!" said Lynn. "No wonder your nana's out at concerts every night." "Ritchie Valens!" "The Big Bopper!" "Curtis Mayfield!" "Sid Vicious?!" "Debussy!" "Is this all really free?" asked Lynn. "Roy Orbison!" Tim pointed to a sign. "Want to check this one out?" It was transcendent: a private concert and an arena show at the same time. None of the things that had kept them away from live-music events before had made it into heaven. No sweat or aggression in their row. No songs from the new album that the musician was overly sincere about now but would be embarrassed by in a few years. No confusion or pressure as to whether they should sit or stand or dance or put their hands in the air. The sound was impeccable. So was the stage design. They could eat, drink, smoke, make out. They had front-row seats. There were no crowds. They were literally the only people there. After a few hits, but still at the height of the show, Tim turned to Lynn with an indulgent idea. "Wanna just check out the next one?" he said. "Why not?" They went to the stadium next door. It was also a private concert in a giant arena. Just as they walked in, John Denver launched into a blasting rendition of "Take Me Home, Country Roads." When he finished, Tim and Lynn gave a standing ovation. "Hello, Heaven!" "This is amazing," remarked Tim. "I know! It's almost even too perfect," said Lynn. "Like, in a way, I would like it if there were a few people here, a little energy, you know?" "That could be the motto for heaven," said Tim. " 'Almost too perfect.' " They snuck out to see the next show. As they kept walking toward the center of the music and arts district, the streets became more and more crowded. They started seeing more of all types of people, occasionally even celebrities. For example, Ricardo Montalban. He was an actor they both recognized from the television show Fantasy Island, but he wasn't being mobbed at all. He almost looked like he wished he would be, or that at least someone would approach him to ask him a question or to pose for a picture. Tim wondered why no one was going up to talk to him and then, to try to figure it out, asked himself the same question--why wasn't he approaching Ricardo Montalban? Probably because there were more interesting things in heaven than Ricardo Montalban. It must be hard being Ricardo Montalban in heaven, thought Tim. As they got within a half mile of the center of the district, Tim and Lynn finally realized why the concerts had been so empty before. "Look," whispered Lynn. "Look." elvis presley! live! free! wolfgang amadeus mozart! live! free! l. v. beethoven! live! free! Tim and Lynn stared in awe as people poured by the millions into stadiums bigger than they could have imagined to see the greatest artists not only of their generation but of their entire generation's consciousness. Hundreds of thousands of people lined up to see Miles Davis; millions to see Tupac Shakur; billions to see Michael Jackson. "We can see anyone," remarked Tim to Lynn. "We can see anyone, of all time." It was almost too much to comprehend. It was a good thing they were already used to love, or they might have fainted from the size of the feeling. They decided on Frank Sinatra, a favorite of both of theirs, and headed into his concert. It couldn't have been any more of a thrill. Sinatra was at the top of his game. He opened with "The Best Is Yet to Come," and a crowd of seven hundred million chanted along. Then a song they had never heard before--"a new one," Sinatra warned, making everyone nervous--but it was as good as one of the classics, and they had heard it first. Then "My Way." Then "Fly Me to the Moon." Then "New York, New York." Then "One for My Baby." "Now, here are a few songs whose artists haven't made their way to heaven yet," intoned Sinatra in the same soothing, ever-knowing voice he'd had in life, made even more poignant here, as he stroked the quaintly unnecessary cord of his microphone. "I hope they won't mind me giving you a little preview, keeping the songs warm for them." And then Tim and Lynn took in the soul-expanding sight of Frank Sinatra covering the hits of Bruce Springsteen, Radiohead, Coldplay, and Beyoncé. Heaven cared not for the limits of era. After five hours and nineteen encores full of more of his own hits, the concert finally drew to a close. Tim kissed Lynn, and she kissed him back. They felt like they were in heaven. They were, of course; but they felt like it, too. Still, even after all that, they didn't want the show to end, and when they looked down, they realized what was hanging around their necks: backstage passes, all access, VIP. "Of course," said Lynn. "Of course we have these." They went backstage. They showed the badges tentatively to the first person they saw in a uniform, who nodded respectfully and walked them to a wide, clean corridor under the stadium. It was a billion-seat stadium, so the hallway was long, but along the way, not a single person second-guessed their right to be there. Tim and Lynn were escorted along the hallway until they were finally left by themselves outside a single, unmarked door. Tim and Lynn looked at each other. "Could it be this easy?" asked Lynn. "It's heaven," Tim said. "No need to guard the door." Tim knocked, but heard nothing. He knocked again, harder, and heard nothing. He tried the knob of the door and found it was unlocked--of course--and swung open easily. And there, leaning casually against a closet door with his eyes half-closed, was Frank Sinatra. And there, on the floor on her knees, was Nana, blowing Frank Sinatra. "You got to understand something, Timmy," said Nana, glowing and gorgeous and angry and mysterious as she closed her robe with one hand and the door to Sinatra's dressing room behind her with the other. "And it's lovely to meet you . . . ?" "Lynn." "Lynn. Tim, Lynn, I'm so happy for you both. And I love you, Timmy, so much. But you have to understand. When I met you, everybody was dead. My husband; two of my kids; my parents, of course; my sister; all of my friends--not everybody, but, yeah, kind of everybody, you know? And I was part dead from it. I didn't know I was at the time. And believe me--I was so happy and grateful for the love I did have in my life, in the form of you and your little sister, whose name escapes me at the moment. Danielle! That was her name, wasn't it? My, what a beauty." Nana smiled at the memory. "She was my . . . I loved you all equally, all so much. That love was real. And it still is. And Lynn, welcome to the family." She hugged Tim again and kissed Lynn on the cheek. "Oh, isn't it exciting? Everyone's here. There's so much going on!" Excerpted from One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by B. J. Novak All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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