Norm Macdonald (1959–2021)

Macdonald, Norm. Based on a True Story: Not a Memoir. Spiegel and Grau, 2016.
For me, Norm Macdonald is one of those artists who define postmodernism. There is always a sense in his work that he knows he is pandering to an audience that knows he is pandering to it are willing participants in the idea that the whole enterprise is a joke within a joke within a joke. Thomas Pynchon, David Letterman, Bob Dylan, and Tom Waits are some of the others who have a similar effect on me. When Macdonald show more made fun of Carrot Top on the Tonight Show, everyone there knew that the insult would sell more tickets for Carrot Top than any amount of praise. I am tempted in that spirit to excoriate MacDonald’s novel, but I am too old and traditional to do it. In describing Based on a True Story, Wikipedia calls it a “’semi-fictional’ memoir.” Sorry. But the subtitle is important. The book is a novel that exploits some things people think they know about Macdonald to send up the whole idea of a celebrity memoir. The temptation to find honesty in the story of his years-long fight with cancer, his gambling addiction, or drug use on SNL is something the book dares a reader to do and will thumb its nose at you if you give into it. It's funny. And true sort of. Enough said. 4 stars. show less

This book is mad, surreal, irreverent, and occasionally quite touching. When I started reading it, I thought the key was to separate fact from fiction, but I quickly realised that this isn’t really the point. The opening chapters feel plausible and draw you in, before the book suddenly tips into farce. Probably not a word of it is true, but the sentiment behind the words reveals something about Norm.

If the entire book consisted of nothing but the chapter where Norm goes to prison for attempting to pay a hitman to murder Dave Attell so he can win the love of Sarah Silverman it would still be 5 stars. I’ll leave you with some of my favourite quotes which will definitely spoil some lines worth discovering on your own, I offer them simply as a reminder to those who have already read it that they should promptly reread it. From a child with terminal cancer having the secret wish to club a show more baby seal to Adam Eget jerking off punks and hooking up with a woman who is almost certainly a 6”4 guy in drag, the book never has a dull moment.

“I was born in the Great White North and I remain to this day a Canadian citizen and I will till the day I die. I’ll tell you why. Canada is the country that shaped me, that taught me right from wrong, that turned me from a boy to a man. Also, that American citizenship test is way, way too hard. Trust me, I’ve tried it quite a few times. But no more. You know the old saying: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me thrice, shame on Adam Eget, pretending to be me and failing even worse; fool me four times, shame on the guy behind the desk at the Immigration and Naturalization office, who said he would see what he could do for a hundred clams and then said that he couldn’t do a damn thing but kept the hundred clams anyway; fool me five times, shame on the filthy homeless bum who could rattle off all the presidents in less than a minute but then the moment I gave him twenty dollars to do the test in my stead took off running down the street with a whoop and a holler; fool me six times, shame on me again, for threatening to burn down the federal building in New York City if I wasn’t given citizenship immediately. There would be no seventh time. Nobody ever accused this old country boy of being stupid.”

“I relax in my big hotel bed as I reflect on my life and career. This turns out to be a huge mistake. Anxiety begins to crawl across my motionless body like a spider. So, instead, I begin to reflect on the life and career of Adam Sandler. This calms me.”

“Death is a funny thing. Not funny haha, like a Woody Allen movie, but funny strange, like a Woody Allen marriage.”

“And so it went with Rodney Dangerfield. It reminded me of that line in the Scriptures: “What doth it profit a man if he gains the whole world but don’t get no respect, no respect at all? Are you kidding me?”

“I will say this about the young boy in the tiny white coffin. Despite the doctor’s dire predictions, the boy was too tough, resolute, and courageous to let something as small as a deadly disease defeat him. No, the boy was made of stronger stuff than that and it took much more to defeat him. It took a three-ton municipal bus moving at forty miles per hour and driven by one Cecil Richard Anderson to defeat this boy.”

“Immediately, Adam Eget is on his hands and knees with his head underneath the couch, searching for the amyl nitrite as a swine would truffles.” show less

Most people write their autobiographies in the traditional genre—a chronological, realistic narrative. However, Macdonald, who was always out of the norm when it came to comedy, seemed to have decided to do the same with his memoir as well.

“Hey, hey, you know what might be pretty funny?” Norm seems to have said. “What if I wrote my book like a farce, like a real funny farce.”

“I think that’s amazing, Norm,” said Adam Eget as only Adam Eget can say. “Will I be in

show more

it?”

“Don’t worry, Adam Eget,” Norm waved away. “I will be sure to give you a proper place.”

And his idea is not without precedent. Ancient history and science manuals have been written in poetry. Even the book of Genesis in the Bible is written as long-form poetry. So why not with one’s own memoir in something a little different.

And Norm knew the perfect genre to write it in—the tall tale. It was a genre Macdonald was well acquainted with and exceptional at. If you have ever heard his jokes like the ‘Moth joke’, ‘Dirty Johnny joke’, ‘Jacques de Gautier joke’, you know how it goes. He tells a long-winded anecdote, either real or imagined, with seemingly superficial details that don’t really add to the comedy but which are actually comical and ends with a punchline which is either just a dad joke or a denouement so insanely simple that the entire thing feels like a giant scam.

And so is this book. This aptly named book is not a memoir but is based on a true story. And just like hearing a tall tale, so is reading the book. You do not know when Macdonald is being somber, or cheeky, where he is being philosophical, or setting up a sentiment for a quick laugh. It is all there for the reader to figure out. Macdonald, who is famous for almost never dropping his stage persona, also never drops it in the book. There is truth in the book, truth about the man that a traditional memoir with all the real things would not reveal. Maybe the tall tale was the only way to the truth. However, it is also true that Norm would be fine with you just reading it as a joke. I think he’d appreciate it.

Saying that, I believe all the stuff that happened with Adam Eget. It’s too funny to be anything but. show less