Jeff Kreisler: Suspension Of Disbelief

Joy, pain. Sunshine, rain. Birthing a three-headed rhinoceros, followed by gleefully showing off my three-headed rhinoceros. i.e. I’m a writer and a comedian, pundit, speaker, thought-leader (?), TV & radio guy. I stubbornly tackle complex and inaccessible topics, from politics to money to human behaviour. Being a lawyer would’ve been easier.

Never a typical day as a freelance, but a common day is…

Wake at 5:30, work on some writing project until my kids find me around 6:30. Family time through walking to school, back home or co-working space at 9. Then way too much admin – emails, calls, lists, so many lists, lists of lists. If I do something, I write it down on a list just so I can cross it out. I need help. Around 11 I go, “Holy sh*t, it’s 11 am! WTF?” and wish I’d been more productive and done some writing. There’s usually a conference call with someone I don’t want to talk to and their new connection who wants to touch base or circle back or refocus on touching back circle base. Lunch and/or exercise. 2-4pm is the glorious but short window when I really get cooking creatively. Which means I probably have another call scheduled. 4-5 I’m like “Yes, this is it, keep going, omg it feels so good… oh, crap, kids soon.” 5-8 I cook dinner, do family stuff, stare out the window reminiscing about a sex & drug-fuelled past I never actually had. 8 onward either out for stand-up (too rare these days), working (usually admin), or re-connecting with my wife, which means watching her fall asleep on the couch. I go to bed at around 1 am. I also tweet.

The Sellout by Paul Beatty. Saw it won the Man Booker Prize, read about it. Got a reading boner. Can I say “boner?” Probably not. Got a read-rection. Bought it. Love it. It’s so good. Wish I had more reading time.

The Republic by Plato. No, I kidding. I have no idea. Probably something about Dick and Jane.

When I’m done for the night, I lick the page number then press the tip of my tongue against my window. I won’t read again until the next foggy night. This is a fun questionnaire. I actually use random objects as bookmarks then find myself wondering why I can’t find my (random object). I blame my wife.

Stockholm syndrome. I was held captive in a library and eventually fell in love with my captors, the books. This took place in Stockhom. Actually, that’s not true. It was shortly after a nuclear holocaust and I found myself alone, surrounded by history’s greatest books, with nothing to do but read, but then I broke my reading glasses! Oh no! It was in black and white. You know what? That might’ve been an episode of The Twilight Zone. It was when I discovered a pile of 15-20 Peanuts books that I could read on the toilet. I love Snoopy.

Everything by Kurt Vonnegut (I know, cliché, but the man got it right and knew how to tell it), Walden by Henry David Thoreau (take comfort being alone with your thoughts, simplify and the great mysteries will reveal themselves), and the Calvin and Hobbes collection by Bill Watterson (because they’re great).

Cup of tea, comfy but not too soft chair, cool room. Or a beach. Or someplace in the mountains. It really doesn’t matter. Just as long as I have time. I need time!

Zen and the Art of Stand-Up Comedy by Jay Sankey. The Man with the Black Coat: Russia’s Literature of the Absurd by Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky, Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut.

Writing is like jazz. You gotta learn the scales before you can improvise. Sankey’s book outlines the fundamental structures of what comedy is, but without the overselling and intensity of any other how-to-comedy books I’ve read. It’s also pretty chill. The absurdist Russian literature is an extreme shock to the system and a revelation that even in the depths of human cruelty and suffering, even under threat of censorship and exile, writers will always find a way convey their vision of humanity or the lack thereof. Vonnegut’s collection of short stories is just a great study in focus, succinctness and sly social commentary. It’s not his best work, but it reveals the broad range of potential for stories of all kinds

Vonnegut (duh, sorry), Mark Twain, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Tina Fey, and Thomas Jefferson. 5 writers with a grasp of their moments in time. I wonder if Solzhenitsyn might be the funniest of the lot. Either way, I’d need a lot of scotch.

The Influential Mind by Tali Sharot, because I want to get whatever I want. Also, it was recommended to me by someone I trust. I’m into learning about our brains these days.

Time travel. Refocus my mind from production to consumption. Suspension of disbelief. Acceptance and allowing myself to trust another to guide me.

I have a 7-month-old kid. Can I expand the time frame to a year? The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson. Awesome.

You mean, besides The Karma Sutra? On The Road by Jack Kerouac or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter Thompson. I’ve done 5 cross-country drives myself, mostly trying to find my own moments like those. They’d be awesome.

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut. I used to give this out as gifts, because I’m annoying. It’s just a great fun read. Any story on its own might not stand up as genius, but the collection, the direction and the knowledge of what Vonnegut would come to do later makes the book as a whole not just entertaining but inspiring. It’s not at all the biting, colourful Vonnegut of Slaughterhouse-Five or Breakfast of Champions. It’s like a restrained, Saturday Evening Post version of him. And that makes it even better.

We’ve covered Welcome to the Monkey House, right? Walden by Henry David Thoreau, Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. They are all just great, full, perspective shifting, mind opening, others focused journeys.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (not kidding, read this giant book in 3 spring days mostly under one tree on campus, sticks in my mind). Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren, The Stranger by Albert Camus, Candide by Voltaire, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon.

How To Form Your Own Limited Liability Company because this interview is gonna make me rich.