Curled Up with a Good Book review – “The Geiger Counter”

Curled Up With a Good Book

Being a comedian or a humor writer is a difficult job. We all have different concepts of what is funny. Isn’t responding to a comic writer or actor based on at least a similar sense of humor, and perhaps on a similar view of the absurdities of life?

My two favorite comedy writers are/were David Sedaris and (sigh) Robin Williams. Both have a somewhat slanted point of view; while Sedaris may write about dysfunctional families and oddities of behavior, Williams could be downright raunchy, as he was in his hilarious, fast-paced, off-color performance DVDs. Suggestive, witty, incredibly fast-paced. Often ad lib, seldom about his life.

This comedy writer, Matt Geiger, the author of Raised by Wolves, is not like Sedaris or Williams. Not in the least. (By the way, no one was raised by wild canines here, to my disappointment! But a large dog lives with the author and family, so that almost qualifies as an accepted topic for canine-lovers.) Geiger favors a kind of sweet comedy; not that what he writes isn’t funny–it’s not rude. It’s not off-center. It’s not making fun of people except possibly himself. His stories won’t make you blush or guffaw for five minutes. They’ll make you chuckle or think, “Where has this guy been? Did this truly happen?” He lives at a slower pace in Wisconsin. Think American cheese and white bread. Mind you, I love cheese, and Matt Geiger is not white bread; he just likes a quieter life than might take place in larger, more cosmopolitan places. He wants his wife, daughter and animals to lead a more rural, less stressful life.

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