I Read Steven Wright’s ‘Harold’.

“I read the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.”

This is a quote by Steven Wright who has long been a comic genius. He’s been one of my favorites, probably since I first heard some of his stand up in the… whatever… 90s? The dead delivery, the soulless nonreaction, the drab delivery of insight so sharp and so specific that it makes you feel like it has been in your mind for your entire life and someone finally just spotted it with a flashlight hidden under a couch or a dresser. His entire body of work is the brilliant ticker tape of everything your mind has shredded, folded, boxed up and put away, but reframed and composed to make it something completely new. In its new form, Wright changes the benign into the brilliant.

This book has moments of that.

At its core, this is a story of a young boy daydreaming in an elementary school class, occasionally talking with his first crush, occasionally remembering his dreams on the moon, occasionally thinking out loud with his brain that knows way too much. His thoughts are delivered to him via myriad birds that fly through a rectangular window in his brain. The birds have character, but are not characters, though you will often discover their precise species, and sometimes their precise personalities. The birds aren’t important, and in a lot of ways, either are their thoughts. I’m happy that I digested this book in audio format, because I think if I had read it in silence, it might have fallen out of my head quickly. The fact that Wright narrated it gave it the perfect form, the perfect shape. It was like a narrative stand-up performance that lasted just under 6 hours. His delivery is everything.

I would say that over the course of the several hours of this story, there were moments that I found myself trailing off and waiting for the next “big thing” to happen. The next joke, the next event. The scene transition. Anything. But in very specific, very sublime moments, Steven Wright captures something in the human mind that shines brilliantly and resonates with my heart and mind so completely that I wanted to keep going and going. It’s like discovering cave paintings, or a message in a bottle. The things that he says make complete sense but in a way that is utter and absolute nonsense.

If you’re familiar with his work, you’re mostly familiar with this book.

This was like a weird dream to listen to, a peripheral voice that floats alongside you, engaging you if you’d like it to, but otherwise just muttering in some pocket of your mind that roars in the background like someone taking a shower on another floor. It feels like a conversation with a friend under the influence, a story overheard at a diner two tables over. But there is something endearing about it, out of context, out of engagement, that I really liked.

I don’t think I recommend this book unless you are already a fan of Wright and are familiar with his delivery and his style. I can’t speak to the way it was written, but the way it was read was what made it for me. I would say, too, that there is a point somewhere in the middle of the book where he is reading along, finds whatever he was just about to say hilarious, and he breaks character. He starts the sentence, laughs and tries to keep his shit together, goes back to laughing and then goes right back into the delivery. A really cool little behind the curtain moment that I don’t think I personally have ever seen from Wright. Very cool moment.