Would Everybody Please Stop?: Reflections on Life and Other Bad Ideas

by Jenny Allen

Overview

Finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor

"One of the funniest writers in America."

That’s what The New Yorker’s Andy Borowitz calls Jenny Allen—and with good reason. In her debut essay collection, the longtime humorist and performer declares no subject too sacred, no boundary impassable.

With her eagle eye for the absurd and hilarious, Allen reports from the potholes midway through life’s journey. One moment she’s flirting shamelessly—and unsuccessfully—with a younger man at a wedding; the next she’s stumbling upon X-rated images on her daughter’s computer. She ponders the connection between her ex-husband’s questions about the location of their silverware, and the divorce that came a year later. While undergoing chemotherapy, she experiments with being a “wig person.” And she considers those perplexing questions that we never pause to ask: Why do people say “It is what it is”? What’s the point of fat-free half-and-half ? And haven’t we heard enough about memes?

Jenny Allen’s musings range fluidly from the personal to the philosophical. She writes with the familiarity of someone telling a dinner party anecdote, forgoing decorum for candor and comedy. To read Would Everybody Please Stop? is to experience life with imaginative and incisive humor.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374537777
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	06/05/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Jenny Allen is a writer and performer. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times, among other publications. Her award-winning solo show, I Got Sick Then I Got Better, has been seen in venues across the country and in Canada. She lives on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Would Everybody Please Stop? is her first book.

Table of Contents

I'm Awake 3

Seconds 10

Ask the Answer Lady 21

Canonize Me 28

Me, Flirting 33

How to Tie-Dye 36

Dream On, You Motherfucking Mother 48

Would Everybody Please Stop? 55

An Affair to Remember 58

When I Meditate 61

My Gathas 65

Swagland 71

Nothing Left to Lose 79

Tawk Thewapy 86

I Can't Get That Penis out of My Mind 92

It's About Time 101

Take My House, Please 106

Faking It 116

Can I Borrow That? 119

My Gratitudes 123

My New Feminist Cop Show 128

Scary Stories for Grown-Ups 132

L.L.Bean and Me 147

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow 154

I Have to Go Now 164

The Trouble with Nature 172

Speak, Memory 177

Can I Have Your Errands? 182

How to Take Dad to the Doctor 187

What I Saw at the Movies 193

What I've Learned 198

Salt and Pepper 204

Roger Ailes's New, Enlightened Code of Sexual Conduct 208

Falling 211

Please Don't Invite Me 218

Acknowledgments 223

Editorial Reviews

"A tartly funny and often piercingly emotional ramble through life at a certain age." —Penelope Green, The New York Times

"Observant . . . charming and companionable . . . To read the entire collection is to feel that one has gained an eccentric, generous new friend” —Brook Allen, The Wall Street Journal

"Most of the 35 very short essays in Would Everybody Please Stop? are either hilarious, heartfelt, or both . . . Wonderful . . . Allen can be playful, sarcastic, and astute . . . There's sharp wit and social commentary aplenty . . . As delightful as her humor is, her serious essays hit deeper . . . It's all good." —Heller McAlpin, NPR

"A laugh-out-loud funny debut . . . A comedic celebration of womanhood and growing up, these 35 short essays will have you second guessing why you ever avoided essays to begin with." —Bustle

"The secret to a good monologue—and to being a good monologist, of course—lies in being able to speak alone in a way that a group of other people wants to hear. The author-performer Jenny Allen has made her name over the years both on the page and on the stage as just such a storyteller . . . Fans of Nora Ephron, Erma Bombeck and even the peevish Andy Rooney will find a lot to enjoy in these essays, which are lively and not afraid to be quarrelsome." —Kathleen Rooney, Chicago Tribune

"The essays make you laugh aloud and draw you in with a difficult-to-pull-off blend of wit and pathos. She comes across in print as she does in person: candid, ironic, and earthy yet worldly." —Martha's Vineyard Magazine

"If you can get your hands on Jenny Allen’s new book, Would Everybody Please Stop? you may be tempted to gobble it all up at one sitting, telling yourself, “Just one more, and then I’ll save the rest for later.” But don’t do it. Portion out these deliciously funny essays so that you can have some serious laughs a few days running. . . Some humor writers work very hard to be funny; others, like Ms. Allen, just can’t help themselves." —Martha's Vineyard Times

“A fantastic compilation of her greatest hits . . . Both heartfelt and hilarious” —Tory Daily

"A hysterical essay collection filled with so-called 'reflections on life' and 'other bad ideas' that will keep the tears (of laughter) coming." —Elite Daily

“Like humorist Erma Bombeck, yet for the 21st century, Allen has a conversational but dramatic performer’s voice that comes through in her essays and is a joy to spend time with as she deals with some of the harsher aspects of life . . . These pieces balance out into well-rounded set of writings that should please most humor fans; the lives of middle-aged women deserve more focus, and so Allen’s rich vein of pathos is a welcome addition. Verdict: Lovers of darkly humorous domestic comedy will enjoy this one . . . everyone should be able to find something to appreciate.” —Margaret Heller, Library Journal

"This level of humor is one of the hardest to pull off. Most writers on the Humor shelf don’t even try. In Would Everybody Please Stop? Reflections on Life and Other Bad Ideas, Jenny Allen rarely misses." —Jesse Kornbluth, Head Butler

"Am I permitted to say 'I laughed my ass off?' I was already a Jenny Allen fan, always hoping that every 'Shouts & Murmurs' piece would be hers, so imagine my delight in a collection of these gems. Would Everybody Please Stop? is deeply, wisely funny, with delicious, lovable neuroses on display. I adored it." —Elinor Lipman, author of On Turpentine Lane and The Inn at Lake Devine

"Jenny Allen gets to the heart of things in the most inventive, unexpected ways. And she’s funny. Really, really funny. Wildly funny. And sometimes she breaks my heart." —Delia Ephron, author of Siracusa

"I love this book more than Romeo loved Juliet. Also, it is so much funnier and more fun than that pill Juliet." —Patricia Marx, author of Him Her Him Again The End of Him

"Really it’s too bad that Jenny Allen refuses to drink in any bar with a giant fish tank, never called that raw food restaurant to ask for their insanely good German chocolate cake recipe, and caused the annoying family upstairs to vanish into thin air. Because otherwise Jenny Allen is just plain perfect." —Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Witches

From the Publisher

06/01/2017
Like humorist Erma Bombeck, yet for the 21st century, Allen has a conversational but dramatic performer's voice that comes through in her essays and is a joy to spend time with as she deals with some of the harsher aspects of life. The dark humor includes reflections on illness and mortality, particularly the cancer that formed the basis for the author's 2009 one-woman show "I Got Sick Then I Got Better," and being a single parent of teenagers after decades of marriage. At the other end, one finds the kind of absurdity found in The New Yorker's "Shouts & Murmurs" column, in which Allen's work sometimes appears (think Martha Stewart fleecing a Buddhist monastery). These pieces balance out into a well-rounded set of writings that should please most humor fans; the lives of middle-aged women deserve more focus, and so Allen's rich vein of pathos is a welcome addition. VERDICT Lovers of darkly humorous domestic comedy will enjoy this one. Even though not all of the essays may appeal to all, everyone should be able to find something to appreciate.—Margaret Heller, Loyola Univ. Chicago Libs.

Library Journal

Writer-comedian Jenny Allen narrates offbeat reflections on life. Her clear and lively voice moves quickly from one observation to another in a peppy stream of consciousness. Allen emphatically spits out the profanities that are scattered throughout her narrative and maintains a mostly deadpan delivery of sarcastic one-liners in her observations of culture and trends, such as the use of made-up words or the pretentiousness of overusing certain words. For the more heartwarming stories—such as how she dealt with people’s concern about her chemotherapy and her weight issues as a child and continued love for food as an adult, Allen’s modifies her tone to bring out a tenderness while maintaining lightheartedness in her delivery. Her imitations of crows and of Elmer Fudd talking about a certain “wabbit” “waffing” at him are just plain funny. M.F. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

2017-04-18
Would an Erma Bombeck of the 21st century have subscribed to the New Yorker? If so, she might have written, or at least identified with, this debut essay collection by a writer who has appeared in that magazine and elsewhere but whose topics have resonance beyond the metropolitan parochial.As she notes, like all mothers, Allen (The Long Chalkboard: and Other Stories, 2006) experiences parenting problems, such as the one detailed in "I Can't Get That Penis Out of My Mind," when she discovers that some boy has emailed her teenage daughter a photo of the title offender and she vacillates between rueful amusement and horror. "Just as grieving has its stages, I now enter a new stage of reacting to seeing a penis picture in your daughter's email," she writes. "I have passed through Shock, Panic, Hilarity, Pity; now, finally, I enter Outrage. My God, it is not all right to send a picture of an erect penis to a thirteen-year-old. What effect has it had on her?" Such problems give way to empty-nester issues, underscored in the aftermath of divorce. "I live alone," she begins the next essay, "It's About Time." "These things happen. Your children grow up, your husband leaves, and then you are one. This is a happy story, I promise, but I do need to say this: Get ready. You may be next." Throughout the book, Allen's humor never approaches the belly-laugh level, like some of her New Yorker pieces; these are more in the vein of bittersweet, wry observation. And sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying, as when the subject shifts to cancer and chemotherapy ("Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow"). Allen has toyed with mindfulness and meditation, and she plainly has the Twelve Steps lingo of AA down pat, but she writes like the woman next door, even if the next door isn't in Manhattan. These essays will resonate most strongly with women of a certain age and economic status.

Kirkus Reviews