Review of John Cleese So, Anyway...

John Cleese So Anyway... by John Cleese, all of it, almost every word, New York, Random House, 2014.

I received John’s book (“John” because I feel I know him very well now) for my birthday last November, picked it up last April, and again in May or June (I forget). Then I read a few pages every night until now, when I couldn’t put it down.

The first time I picked it up (racked with guilt because I had delayed so long after receiving such a kind gift) I wondered why I was staying awake--reading all the details about Cleese’s classmates calling him “Chee-eese! etc.” Where was the humor I expected? Why did I care that his predicament was that he was a “very tall little boy.”

The next time I picked it up, I giggled a little and realized I had missed some wonderful dry humor the first time around. It was sometimes subtle, then not, then maybe I didn’t get it. In any case, I kept reading, every night, just a few pages, until I suddenly found myself learning about how comics (namely Cleese and his friends) go about writing humor.

I also learned about persistence and hard work--hours critiquing, rewriting, letting it settle into the pages, then rereading and re-writing, sometime resurrecting old themes or dumping scripts that didn’t work.

In the end of the book, including the index at page 391, after Cleese and cohorts celebrate the Python years, the author includes (for free, because my brother had already bought the book) some scripts (too few!) he found in someone’s dark closet somewhere. I laughed out loud. What wonderful silly fun! Most of their recorded shows had been lost, since the huge old tapes were reused in those days.

Near the end, while unable to put the book down, I ran into one serious comment that reflected a concern that has left me disturbed now for some years. Cleese noted that “...while attitude to swearing and vulgarity have shifted...another set of values seems to be threatening comedy...the life-denying force called political correctness...hijacked and taken ad absurdum...”
We need more comedy these days; it helps us stay real.

Now I know why I kept reading. It wasn’t just the interesting stories about his writing and comedy career, it was his charming take-it-or-leave-it-and squeeze-it-good-when-possible attitude toward life and the English language.