The Poetic Comedian: Jacqueline Novak

"That's still the whole arc of the show, that desire for more language. It builds and builds and builds, and by the end, it's exploded into this ornate epilogue. It almost sounds metered to me," says Andrea Long Chu to comedian Jacqueline Novak. "It is," Novak replies. More from their NYRB conversation on the poetic in the comedic, found in particular in Novak's one-woman, Off-Broadway show, Get on Your Knees:

Speaking of which, I wanted to ask about literature. You talk about dissociating from a blowjob by imagining that you’re a character in a novel, which lets you move from a moral register into an aesthetic one, such that a bad blowjob could be a good short story. But there’s a sense in which you’re also alluding to the literary frame of the whole show—

Because I am casting myself as a character onstage. I hadn’t even thought about it that way. I’m so buried in every piece of the show. In part, I have to lose myself inside the show, and then I have to step outside of it to assess and make changes.

You have to dissociate.

In the show, when I joke about dissociating, I say, “I know it sounds fucked up. I am well aware of the horror.” And then I make fun of the devastating, romanticized idea of the woman who dissociates as a coping mechanism—the creepy, Seventies horror film version, which I take great pleasure in evoking. I could do that for two hours.

But I also believe that for someone who’s hyper self-conscious and has all the ego that comes with being an insecure performer, all the self-absorption of self-hatred, to dissociate can be a meaningful ego-transcending act. Arguably, it’s another version of mindfulness. Stepping back and observing, not being so attached. That’s why the original title of the show, as I was working it out, was How Embarrassing for Her. If it’s not me, if it’s a character in a short story, then it’s not embarrassing for me; it’s embarrassing for her. 

Which essentially means using language to dissociate, I think. There are two different moments when you’re faced with the blowjob, and the first time, you fantasize a second mouth to apologize for your inexperience, and then in the second case, you imagine becoming a novel that Vladimir Nabokov is writing. Part of the indignity of the blowjob for you is that the seat of speech is being obstructed. And so it’s taking away your ability to dissociate. It’s robbing you of the aesthetic.

Yes! I prefer to both be a thing and get to narrate the thing. I like to do both at once...

Read it all at NYRB.