Hits and Misses: Stories
by Simon Rich
A little insider info for you, dear reader, but sometimes we get unsolicited stuff from publishers. Sometimes, they’re not really our cup of tea. Instead of reviewing something we’re not too hot about, we skip it. Other times, we get a book completely out of left field that we absolutely love. That book is Simon Rich’s Hits and Misses.
We had no idea who Simon Rich was and the joke’s on us, considering his pedigree. He’s written for SNL for 4 years (and seems to have left right before the terrible turn the show’s taken over the past several years), and the Simpsons. He also created Man Seeking Women, which I haven’t seen, but I’m assuming is about newspaper advertisements. He’s also crazy young considering his work and has the respect of people who would know better than to talk up some garbage (blurbs for this book are by Conan O’Brien, among others).
Hits and Misses is simply a collection of short stories, and not the autobiographical anecdotes we’ve reduced comedians to recently. But Rich seems to be a writer first and foremost so of course he’s up to the challenge of actually writing fiction. What most impressed about this book is how different all these stories were, varying from a writer fetus, to a monk with low self-esteem, to a failed writer skipping through time. It’s borderline absurdist, but just grounded enough to keep you on board. Rich might be a twisted man, or maybe just borderline genius. Or maybe, he’s just really good at what he does.
We are new fans of Simon Rich and will be keeping a close eye on him. This book might be titled Hits and Misses, but honestly, it’s all hits as far as we can tell.
