In You’ll Grow Out of It, comedian Jessi Klein describes a trip to the Chanel counter at Barneys to purchase a blush brush. The brusque salesman, giving her the once-over, asks, “Can I speak freely?” Klein writes, “I hated him but I also felt like he was about to tell me the most important thing any human has ever said to another.” Speaking freely, the salesman declares, “Right now, your priority needs to be your undereye area.” This feedback leads Klein to a fierce rant on priorities — “forget paying your rent and maintaining your relationships. Put off charity work and don’t worry about voting in the general election” — but it also leads her to spend $150 on “a thingy of Chanel eye cream about the circumference of a bottle cap.”
Many of the autobiographical essays in You’ll Grow Out of It give hilarious voice to the ridiculousness of the pressures of femininity — and to how vulnerable many women nonetheless are to those pressures. The funny riffs often suddenly give way to sincere emotion, as when Klein, the head writer and executive producer of Inside Amy Schumer (she has also written for Transparent and Saturday Night Live), addresses her experience with infertility. The book also features plenty of sharp feminist critique. In a piece on why she hates baths, Klein’s jokes about 1970s Calgon commercials and Oprah’s love of bathing build to a clever, Virginia Woolf−inspired analysis, with the author concluding that “getting in the bath is a kind of surrender to the idea that we can’t really make it on land.” I spoke with Jessi Klein about her book and comedy writing via email. —Barbara Spindel
The Barnes & Noble Review: Some of the essays, in addition to being very funny, are unexpectedly moving. Did writing a book allow you to express yourself in a different way than writing for television or doing stand-up?
Jessi Klein: Definitely. One of the things I enjoyed most about writing a book was the freedom to go off on tangents that aren’t necessarily hilarious but represent the kinds of things I think about. I’m a comedy writer and I love watching and creating comedy, but I also like having and expressing other feelings such as anxiety and hunger.
BNR: Writing for television is a collaborative process; writing a book is not. How do you compare the experiences?
JK: Well, being in a writers’ room is usually a pretty raucous, fun environment. Writing a book is more of a lonely slog. That is why I drank white wine through so much of it.
BNR: Many of the essays are about the absurdity of the expectations placed on women. Do you think of your comedy as political?
JK: I think of my comedy as personal, but the personal is political. I think that’s true, right? Yeah. It’s true.
BNR: You had a baby during the writing of the book. Are you interested in writing about motherhood, which, like femaleness in general, comes with its own absurd expectations?
JK: I read a lot of baby books when I was pregnant, and NOTHING prepared me for how bananas the entire experience is. There should be a 1,000-page book whose sole topic is how to deal with the trauma of even just looking at your breast pump for the first time. I’m happy to give it a shot at some point.
BNR: In the essay “How I Became a Comedian,” you reject the idea that you were brave for doing stand-up. But I’d describe some of these essays as fearless because, well, you’re revealing embarrassing things about yourself in a book with your name on it. Do you feel brave now?
JK: Well, I don’t feel brave, but I also don’t feel embarrassed by anything I revealed in the book. Acknowledging that you look at porn isn’t embarrassing. Voting for Donald Trump is embarrassing.
BNR: Did you have any models in mind while writing? What are some of your favorite books by comedians?
JK: I love the writing of Nora Ephron and David Sedaris and Cheryl Strayed. Moshe Kasher is a really funny comedian who wrote an incredible memoir called Kasher in the Rye that I was blown away by.
BNR: With so many women creating amazing comedy, will the debate over whether women are as funny as men die anytime soon?
JK: Oh jeez, I really, really hope so.
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Sig Nordal 