A boyish 31-year-old, Simon Rich has made serious headway in the lucrative world of US film and television, and indeed was one of the youngest ever writers hired on Saturday Night Live. An impressive achievement, certainly, although Rich’s rarified upbringing and education – he comes from a family of New York Times contributors and attended Harvard, where he edited The Harvard Lampoon – was surely not a hindrance to his rapid ascent.
This collection of hit-and-miss, short, humour pieces is solid, even if the loftier claims on the cover (according to The Guardian, Rich is “the wittiest American humourist of his generation”) are sure to raise a few eyebrows. Some of the author’s ideas are nicely realised, for sure – but others, such as ‘A Day at Unicef Headquarters as I Imagined it in Third Grade’, are as tedious as their titles suggest.
Brace yourself for industrial levels of tweeness.