Cool, Calm & Contentious: Essays

I first remembered Merrill Markoe as the head writer for David Letterman's Late Night with David Letterman. She was also in a romantic relationship with Letterman for years. In her collection of humorous essays Cool Calm and Contentious, she recounts in one essay her relationship with an unnamed talk show and how she learned that he had been cheating on her with young staff members. As someone who remembered this scandal, I found how she handled it in the essay brilliant.
She also has essays about her narcassistic mother (oh wow, that woman is something), and maybe growing up with her mother helped her deal with a life in show business, and all the difficult personalities she encounters in her work.
I picked this book up because I saw show more Markoe on HBO's Hacks this season and she is hilarious in her deadpan delivery. It was a good afternoon spent reading it. show less

How someone so unfunny could have been the head writer for the David Letterman show, I will never understand.

There were a couple of amusing moments, but overall she struck me as the kind of a person who could tell what should be a funny story in such a way as to result in only blank stares.

I so enjoy Merrill Markoe's writing style - its like reading a letter from a really good, hilarious friend who you've known forever. She has a way of writing about those moments and periods of time we all go through, like those awkward teenage years and finding yourself in college, that make you relive those experiences all over again. I keep this book in my bag as my go to whenever I have a free moment or just need a pick me up (the dog stories are best for that). I have several of her books - What The Dogs Have Taught Me being my absolute favorite - and cannot recommend her work enough to all of my family and friends!

This collections of essays had some funny parts, but more often than not I was wishing the chapters were shorter. She took a long time to make her point(s) and I became bored with her ramblings. It's possible I just wasn't in the mood for her drawn out story of virginity lost, long rants about bad boyfriends and predictably her mother. The essays where she has conversations with her dogs were somewhat amusing, but the one where she goes white water rafting and spends a lot of time talking to Ashley, who lives in her head, and may not be the only one made her appear crazy.

This is the book where I finally learned that just because Jon Stewart says it's a great book doesn't mean that he's actually read all of it, or worse, that *I* will like it. Jon, love ya, but sometimes your book choices are just wrong. Perhaps if you live on the east coast it's better. Maybe I just expected more than there was...

I found the first few essays in this collection entertaining but they quickly began to feel rather one-note, and it wasn't a note I needed to revisit over and over. I was glad to put this down when I reached the end.

A group of essays written by Merrill Markoe, writer and co-creator of the Letterman Show. She is very candid about her family, finding her style, and her independent adult life. Enjoyable.