Adult Swim: Celeb-Nerdy with Norm Macdonald

Celebrities got it rough. They brave bright lights, big crowds, and extended periods of time on stage pretending they don't have to go to the bathroom when they probably have to go really, really badly. In Celeb-Nerdy, we give those hard-working saints a chance to sit back, relax, pop their collars, and just unwind and be themselves by talking about something they're truly passionate about but don't get asked about all that often.

Comedian Norm Macdonald joined us in the Celeb-Nerdy satellite space station, and after a luxurious flight of astronaut ice cream, he let loose about his undying love of classic literature. Upon returning to Earth he'll be back in front of crowds acting like he doesn't have to go to the bathroom and telling jokes, just like he does on the recently-released, cleverly titled CD/DVD, Me Doing Standup. Now pay attention; you just might learn something about how Shakespeare is like the Notorious B.I.G. -- really.

So looks like we got ourselves a reader, huh?

[Laughs.] Reading is the thing that I do most of the time. It's not interesting, but I only read classic literature. I don't read anything other than that.

Are you kidding, or no?

No, I'm serious. I'm serious. I don't like any of the other stuff. It's not that I don't like it; it's just that I'd rather read the stuff that are classics. When I finish all the classics -- which I'll never be able to do -- then I would read something modern. But it doesn't make much sense to read something that somebody wrote yesterday compared to something somebody wrote 2,000 years ago that's still going around.

“Reading modern books is like you went panning for gold and had to go through a bunch of rocks to find one single lump of coal.”

Why's that?

Well, because it's already been pre-vetted. Most books back then were awful and most books now are awful. The classics stayed on. Reading modern books is like you went panning for gold and had to go through a bunch of rocks to find one single lump of coal. Or, the way I do it, you just go into the store and they give you big bars of gold from the old days and you read those. [Laughs.]

You shouldn't laugh about it -- that's a pretty spot-on metaphor.

That was a metaphor.

Congratulations on making a successful metaphor.

Thank you. [Laughs.]

Was there a point where you were trying to read modern books but lost interest? What was the last modern book you tried to read?

Well people will sometimes say to me, "You need to read this book," and it's the most god-awful nonsense I've ever read. The last one was this book by this guy Dave Eggers and it was just complete trash. It was the worst, the most subliterate thing you could possibly read.

What are you reading right now?

Right now I'm reading -- well, I read a few things at a time -- In Search Of Lost Time by Marcel Proust and I always read Huckleberry Finn and a bunch of Hemingway short stories. This morning I read "The Short Happy Life Of Francis Macomber."

“A lot of people seem to think bad writers are easier to understand, but they're much harder to understand because they can't communicate to you.”

You mentioned always reading Huckleberry Finn. Do you reread any other classics?

Yeah, I reread everything. I reread all the time because you get more out of it and it's such joy. I try to tell people, and they go, "No, I'd rather read an easy read." And I go, "Well, the classics are the easiest reads of all, because they're the best writers and therefore they're the best communicators, so they're the easiest to understand." A lot of people seem to think bad writers are easier to understand, but they're much harder to understand because they can't communicate to you. You can't understand what they're saying! It's like saying a two-year-old is easier to understand than a college professor. It doesn't make any sense. The real writer, the real communicator, is the one who's very easy to understand.

And he can write with much simpler language and not feel the need, that a lesser writer might, to crack out the thesaurus to impress their audience with fancy words.

Well, that's a big thing, that's like a Faulkner quote, because Hemingway and Faulkner were sort of rivals, you know? Although I think both are great, I prefer one to the other. Faulkner said that Hemingway will never use a word that sends his readers scuttling to the dictionary. He said that in a pejorative way. And then Hemingway replied, "Faulkner thinks I don't know those $10 words, but I do know them. It's just that I know older ones that are simpler and nobler and truer."

Right after he looked up the word "scuttling" in the dictionary to see what that meant.

[Laughs.] He didn't know what "scuttling" meant and had to go to the dictionary store.

But in a way, a lot of stuff about our society and pop culture today is modeled after these old authors. What's the difference, really, between a spat Faulkner and Hemingway had as opposed to Bad Boy and Death Row in hip-hop? It's really the same thing, just different names, dates, and outfits.

[Laughs.] It's amazing, the writers. I guess it's everybody. It's the rivalries between writers always, the greatest writers who have ever lived. It was amazing. I just read the other day an essay Tolstoy wrote about how Shakespeare was a completely useless writer.

How do you feel about that?

I think that's ridiculous, but I know that in stand-up comedy a guy will often ask a great stand-up, like George Carlin, "Who do you like coming up?" He's dead, obviously. But he'll mention a guy and then you'll go, "Really? That guy?" I'm sort of noticing it that they won't mention a colleague or a rival. They'll mention a much lesser talent so it makes them look niche.

It's funny when you see jealousy at the very highest levels. I don't know anything about music, but there was that movie Amadeus -- there is a thing at the highest levels of art where there's a desire not to only to be great, but the greatest of all.

Wait a minute. Are you suggesting some entertainers may be insecure?

[Laughs.] It goes beyond insecurity. There's a delusion by a lot of entertainers that they're good at all, let alone the delusion that they're great.

“School killed me for books. I really believed that school stops people from reading books later in life.”

How old were you when you first became passionate about classic literature? Did you resist it in school like most kids?

I hated everything in school. I think it kills people for books. My kid was having trouble with this book, and oh my God, it was a great book. So I said, "Why don't you try to read it once just for pleasure because you're reading it knowing that you'll be asked questions. You can't enjoy anything then." It's like if you went to a movie and they said, "Oh, there's going to be a giant quiz the next day," it'd be very hard to enjoy that movie because you'll be trying to figure out what questions they'll be asking. Of course the books weren't written for that purpose. They weren't written to be taught in school or analyzed in a literary way or anything like that. School killed me for books. I really believed that school stops people from reading books later in life.

What got you started reading again, then?

I think I was 19 or something like that when I read Huck Finn, and I remember reading it like five times in a row. I read pretty slow, but I read it and was like, "Oh my God, I've never read anything like this before in my life. This is amazing." From that point on I read more and more classics and less and less modern stuff.

Is there one classic book or author you find yourself returning to more than any other?

The one I've read the most is The Old Man And The Sea. I've read that probably like 200 times or something. I'm not exaggerating. Like a novella. But War And Peace is my favorite book. The Russians are my favorite writers.

That's pretty challenging stuff, though, with huge casts of characters and plots that cover big expanses of time.

War And Peace, yeah, I do have trouble with. And Faulkner's like this too, with his large extended families that span different books. But it's not unfair to list and write characters. That's what I do. The thing that bothers me most about Russian literature is I wish they'd just change the names of these guys. Since they're translating every other word, why don't they translate the names? Because it's like, "Alexander Schgmrezkerski went up to Yarckofnski's…" and you, "Which guy is which?" So I translate the names myself.

What kind of names do you give them?

Just like, Harry or Johnson. Bill Mackleroy. Stuff like that. So in my War And Peace, it would read ridiculous because it would say: "Prince Alec Delaney walked into the room." In my War And Peace, which is very dog-eared, I've scratched out all the names of the real characters and put in Anglo-Saxon names. And I wish somebody would do it with Shakespeare, too, because I don't want to read a modern translation, because those things are ridiculous. But someone should teach Shakespeare because that's in Old English, which is another language. That's the one work you really need help with. You can get companion books for Shakespeare, that's the best way to read them.

But you know, here's the interesting thing with Shakespeare, because it always puzzled me: In Romeo And Juliet, the most famous line is, "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?" when Romeo is standing directly in front of Juliet. It was always kinda strange to me that she was asking where he was and also why that was a famous quote, because it's so mundane. Turned out I was stupid, though. I should've consulted my Oxford English Dictionary, because "wherefore" does not mean "where."

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. It means "why."

Oh, you knew? It goes with the rose by a rose by any other name. "Why can't you be any other person and then our love would be…" But the funniest one in Shakespeare for me -- and no one's ever answered this for me -- is why in Julius Caesar, when Brutus is seen as one of the killers in the death scene, another incredibly famous line, he turns and goes, "Eh tu, Brute?" And I've asked Shakespeare guys that teach this can't even answer: "Why does he suddenly speak Latin?" They've been speaking English the entire time! No one's ever been able to answer me that one. [Laughs.]

“I'd talk about books and the vast majority of people were going, 'Stop talking about stupid books! We just wanna hear jokes! Who cares about books?'”

No one on your Twitter book club has been able to fill you in on that?

I don't know how people know this, but I do have a book club on Twitter.

Well, it's my job to know these things.

[Laughs.] What happened was, I didn't know how Twitter worked at the start so I'd just start talking about stuff. I'd talk about books and the vast majority of people were going, "Stop talking about stupid books! We just wanna hear jokes! Who cares about books?" So then I said, "Okay, I'll make another account just to talk about books." Every month we study a new book, and I broke this month and we're doing a modern one because everybody's yapping about it all the time.

Well, hopefully this interview will delight half of your audience and enrage the other half.

[Laughs.] The other half might think it's all a joke.