Matt Nagin: Comedian, Actor, Writer

I tell them I’m a professional at collecting unemployment. No, in all seriousness, I taught writing for almost fifteen years so I used to say that. Now I work part-time in real estate management so I sometimes say that. I’m also a travelling comedian, an actor and a writer, so I sometimes say any of those.

I am reading The Humans by Matt Haig. It’s a great book and topical in a way, with the New Jersey Drones story, since the book is essentially about alien interference in our world.

Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. As a kid, I used to read that book again and again. It’s ironic, when you think about it, that there’s a book about a giving tree that was made from other trees.

I wanted to be an NFL Quarterback with a sick arm and the capacity to call great audibles at the line of scrimmage. Someone as talented as Tom Brady. Then I started thinking about being a casino manager. I always liked casinos so I figured I’d be great at that. I actually started my education in Cornell’s Hotel School so I could learn about casino management — they had classes in that — including one with a required trip to Las Vegas —but I ended up not fitting in at all. I ultimately switched to become an English major, which suited me much better.

I think he might be surprised by the strange way my life has unfolded. I never imagined I’d do standup comedy back then. I certainly had no inclination to be an actor and I barely wrote anything other than a grocery list till I was nearly 17. So I think he would be surprised by how my life has turned out, including the fact that I ended up living in Alabama, which, to someone who grew up in the New York City area, would have just seemed bizarre. This is especially because I now own a gun, have tried drag racing, have gone to a Baptist Church service, and have engaged in other southern activities that are extremely atypical where I’m from.

I’m going to have to list a few because one is too tough for me: Bukowski’s Ham On Rye, Emerson’s essay on Self-Reliance, Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and Journey Home by Radhanath Swami. These are just a few of the books that really changed my thinking on various matters and hence were a bit of a guide, a compass, a point in the right direction.

When I used to live in Los Angeles I had friends from Switzerland who introduced me to the work of Brett Easton Ellis, particularly American Psycho. So whenever I read any of his books, or even books of those associated with him, like Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City, I always reflect back on the wild summer we had together out west as well as the ski trip I took out to Verbier to visit them.

In addition to writers I already mentioned such as Charles Bukowski and Brett Easton Ellis, I’d say I’ve recommended sci-fi books such as Robert Heinlein’s Stranger In A Strange Land, satires like Candide, and transgressive fiction like Chuck Palahnuik’s Survivor.

I read both fiction and non-fiction. But I’m more of a physical book person. I really enjoy holding a physical book in my hands. The physical copy makes the whole experience more real, more alive, and, worst case scenario, if I hate it, I can always use the book as kindling.

The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy.

Native Son by Richard Wright. It is not only a page turner but it deals with many issues of great relevance to our contemporary society, such as systemic racism, problems with the criminal justice system, group think etc.

Woody Allen’s Side Effects and his movies in general because he was a big influence on my writing style, and my desire to write comedically, and, ultimately, to go into standup comedy at all.

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Don DeLillo’s White Noise, (I saw him read at Cornell and it was great), Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son.

My latest book is a short story collection titled The Book of Outcasts. It’s fourteen stories featuring dynamic characters in surreal, often imaginative worlds. The stories run the gamut: in one the narrator is stripped of his job, his apartment, and his civil liberties for refusing a brain implant. In another, a compulsive gambler is so desperate to repay his debts that he robs a casino. In a third, a writer, tormented by a pernicious doppelganger, goes to all lengths to exact revenge. It’s a unique book, a fun book, and a book that has a flying saucer, a pyramid, and a crocodile smoking a cigar on the cover. What else could you possibly want?