Rich Discusses Comedy Secrets

Simon Rich ’06-’07 knows a great recipe for Brussel sprouts, loves Roald Dahl, and hates dogs. He is also modest.

“I just sit down every day and just write a ton of stuff,” he says. “Most of it’s terrible. I don’t think I’m very funny in person.”

Jon Stewart would beg to differ.

Rich, former president of the Harvard Lampoon (which, due to a rivalry that even Rich doesn’t understand, must now be referred to as a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine), just published his first book, “Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations.” Full of short, comical stories, dialogues, and playlets, “Ant Farm” is gaining Rich praise from many readers, including Stewart, and comparison to another former Lampoon president, Conan O’Brien ’85.

“I don’t think it’s fair to Conan O’Brien to compare him to a 22-year-old guy that’s written one book and lives with his mom,” he says, but with a book that reveals the hilarious side of real life, it may be a comparison that is well deserved.

“I think a lot of the jokes that I love and a lot of my favorite joke writers tend to write about serious feelings and fears that they have,” Rich says. “If a joke isn’t emotionally honest, then I feel like it usually doesn’t make you laugh, so I try to write jokes that are personal and are emotional, because those are the kinds of jokes that I like to read.”

While “Ant Farm” is a book of humor, it has some serious undertones and in some stories, Rich tries to convey very important messages. In “Mating Throughout History,” Rich makes fun of the way a woman will always choose “a guy with really big muscles” as opposed to the scrawny guy, but he also tries to show something else.

“I think, no matter who you are, there are plusses and minuses to the situation. That’s one of the things that I was trying to do in the book, to have a lot of different types of characters from a lot of different species, different backgrounds, to show that all of these characters, on some level, are doomed, and it doesn’t matter who you are,” says Rich.

“Like in [“Mating Throughout History”], the hugely muscular guy gets the girl, but he also is going to die, because he doesn’t have the bizarre genetic mutation that allows him to breathe toxic gas. And the other guy’s going to survive, but he’s going to be pretty lonely. Everyone in that piece sort of has an equally tough time.”

Rich, who signed a two-book deal with Random House, now faces the challenge of following up his debut. He is unsure what form this second book will take.

“I think the contract says that I have to make both books funny,” he says. “But comedy is subjective, so if I hand in a romance novel, they won’t hold it against me.”

Rich assures us that the next book will have jokes in it, but, unlike “Ant Farm”—a compilation of his best pieces over the last five years, some of which were first published in the Lampoon—he only has one year to complete it.

As for the rest of his time spent at Harvard and away from the ‘Poon, Rich—who concentrated in English—enthusiastically admits that he loved his time and classes here.

“I took a lot of religion classes at Harvard. I love it. They were my favorite classes,” he says. “My favorite professor at Harvard was Professor [of the Comparative and Historical Study of Religion Kimberley C.] Patton [‘80].”

And although he swears he loved Annenberg’s food, maybe someday Rich will reveal aspects of his college experience that he wasn’t so fond of. As in “Ant Farm,” many of Rich’s jokes come from his ability to poke fun at himself, or, at least for now, his middle school self.

“I think middle school is a really good source for jokes, probably for most people,” Rich says. “It was humiliating. I feel like I’ve just now gotten to the point where enough time has passed that I can make jokes about it.”

“It’s funny to be 22 and to realize that the bullies that made fun of you in the seventh grade might have been on to something, that maybe a lot of the stuff you did was actually hilarious,” says Rich.

“I wonder how old I’ll have to be before I can start laughing at the humiliations of college,” he says. “Probably another 10 years. And, finally, when I’m 50, I’ll be able to write about my disastrous first marriage.”