Considering he’s neither a movie star, nor Cory Booker, Rob Delaney has quite a following: about 940,000 strong.
Now the man Comedy Central crowned “Funniest Person on Twitter” has a memoir, “Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage.”
Not only is it over 140 characters long, but it explores heavy-duty stuff like excess and depression, or, as he headlines them, “Dépression!” and “L’exces.”
Why the French? “Because it’s really pretentious,” he says. “If people want to know what it means, they can look it up.”
The comedy writer started tweeting in 2009. “Just try to say interesting, fun stuff,” he tells those eager to build a following. “Not ‘It’s hot out.'”
Here are four books he loves.
Rosy Crucifixion Trilogy
by Henry Miller
Robert De Niro’s character in “Cape Fear” leaves Miller’s “Sexus” out to entice a teenager, and I thought, Wow! A sociopathic killer using a book to seduce a girl! But there’s very little sex in “Plexus” and “Nexus,” the last two books in the trilogy. It’s the best autobiographical writing by a man I’ve ever read.
Mysteries
by Knut Hamsun
Henry Miller recommended this in his own book — he was wild about it. It’s about a guy who moves to a town on the coast of Norway and affects the lives of everybody he meets. It’s generally considered one of the earlier existential novels, which sounds terrible, but you get into the confusing psychology of the guy, who can be warm and kind and go totally insane.
The God of Small Things
by Arundhati Roy
This is the first book my wife gave to me when we were dating. It’s about fraternal twins in India, a boy and a girl, and how they inform each other and harm each other. It’s rich, layered and beautifully written, the type of book that, if you had to take a book to the moon, this would be it.
Miss Lonelyhearts
by Nathanael West
I was a bellboy in the Hudson Hotel in New York, and one of the other bellboys was reading this book. It rocked me! It’s so badass and dark. People do terrible things to each other in this book but you’re clapping because it’s so well done. I think [West] wrote it in two days while he was on drugs because it’s such a furious unspooling of human evil.