Iliza Shlesinger - All Things Aside: Absolutely Correct Opinions

by Margaret Cho

As you hold this book, know that you are in the mind of an exceptional author. Iliza lives her life critically and without illusions, and that clarity is hard-won from experience. I wish I was younger and had Iliza to guide me, but I still learn from her, even as someone whos older than her. Ive learned that you dont have to quit when you are in pain, that you can write your way out of the suffering. That here is beautiful truth to be unearthed from the depths of despair. That the stupid can be smart, and that we put ourselves through hell for nothing. In her work, Iliza often casts herself as an Everywomanand I understand that inclinationbut the truth is, we would all be lucky if we were more like her. Every woman has something to gain from the Everywoman that Iliza presents in her hilarious and astute worldview.

Oh, I wish I had thought of that! is the thing that I think a lot when watching Iliza onstage. That is pretty much the highest compliment I can give. Or any comic can give. You cope better than me. That is what that statement is saying. That is jokes. Coping. Complaining. Competingwith one another, but mostly, really, with ourselves, or the notion of ourselves. We have it sort of figured out, but even if we dont, it is entertaining nonetheless. And that is all that really matters.

Heres why I wrote this book this way and why I wrote this book now.

Onstage, I love a verbal parenthetical. I love a btw, and I love clarifying the previous with hyperspecific details and references and staying in the pocket on a joke. I love revealing that I, deep down, dont actually fully agree with what I just posited, but I didnt have enough room in that sentence to convey that, so heres the reality of it all. The problem is, in print, all the funny asides that color the story can be distracting. Too many commas and footnotes are annoying to read, right? Like, who really wants a clever footnote? That means you have to...

Read the sentence.

Keep your place on the page.

Then scan to the bottom.

Then retrace where you were on the page and mentally get back into what you were reading.

Its too much mood shifting for a silly aside that wasnt so important that it needed to be included in the body of the text but was important enough to be included on the page and ruin your reading flow.

I say, if the information was worth writing down, give it a proper place on the page. So I thought, What if I just formatted my book differently?

What if the structure of the book is built around how my brain really works? The bones that support the essay are there, but the meat, the tasty meat of it, the comedy and purpose and reflection, are in the indented asides;

the deeply personal anecdotes, the confessions, and the context that give my point of view its color are all right there for you to see.

Plainly put, I wrote the type of essays that I would want to read. I give myat times sentimental, but always honest and hopefully funnyperspective on everything, macro to micro, all-encompassing topics like aging, miscarriages, social decency, nostalgia, having it all, and, finally, I confront the most important question of all, one that I wish more people would ask themselves: Am I actually an annoying person?

But Ill be honest, this book didnt pour out of me. A few chapters were easy, but I wrote those, and then I found myself avoiding writing this book for months on end. It wasnt writers block, it was self-imposed fear. I started to feel like I had nothing to say on the page. Like the weight of my views and opinions wasnt heavy enough to push against the weight of pain the world was in, that the gravity of what I had to say would be rejected because I wasnt, in a funny book, acknowledging the oppression, repression, and horrific situations people everywhere were and are dealing with.

The fear of being canceled by the Internet, the saccharine and often performative wokeness of pop culture are a constant threat to comedy. The endless sophistry of telling someone they cant have an opinion because they didnt consider everyone elses opinion wrecks progress and levity.

I cant stand when they automatically put a plastic straw in my water.

Dont drink any water; were in a drought!

Oh, so you dont want Black Lives Matter protesters to have water?

Why are you posting about BLM when Israel is under attack?

Why are you even typing the word Israel? Do you hate Palestinians? Are you Islamophobic?! Educate yourself.

If you love being Muslim, why do you eat pork?

Why are you cutting out pork when its red meat from cows that produce methane emissions? Do better.

Oh, so you only care about cows but not trans lives?

So trans lives matter, but my right to have a gun in my home doesnt matter? SMH. Do your own research.

Not everyone can afford a home; stop glamorizing unattainable wealth!

Why are you anti-glamour? Makeup matters! Be better!

WHAT ABOUT THE LIVES OF THE BUGS THEY CRUSH UP TO MAKE THE MAKEUP?! SAVE THE BEETLES, EAT THE RICH! Educate yourself and be better and do your own research, and Im still SMH but also laugh crying and triggered!!

But that anger, that fear of being misunderstood and ruined over it, is very real. And I was afraid anything I said would deliberately be taken out of context and used by someone who had no real agenda other than just making noise to cancel me.

I became scared and overwhelmed by all these external factors. I delivered the first draft of this book in September of 2021. So that would be the fall after about a year and a half of the world, specifically the US, being an absolute fucking Gong Show. Just a huge mess. Everything was so heavy all the time. Every Internet check became endless doom-scrolling through bad news tempered by only slightly less bad news. Reality was bleak, online rage and righteous indignation were rampant, people were on higher horses (Clydesdales?) than ever and angrier and more scared than Id seen in my lifetime. Personal agendas took the place of civil discourse, conversations, and even scientific facts. Whatever you were politically or socially was wrong depending on who decided to observe you that day.

However you felt was discounted because whoever you were, you were blind to someone elses misfortune and, therefore, a bad person. Everyone was an expert on race, disease, the Middle East, and environmentalism, and almost everyone was right and wrong at the same time, all the time.

The paralysis many people felt due to the constant inundation of bad news was numbing. It is numbing. But, as an artist, I always try. Its my job to make comedy out of tragedy and toget ready to clutch your pearls, folkshave a point of view and make people laugh.

Every time I sat down to write, I would get hungry or tired. At around twenty-one weeks pregnant, sure, a woman is always hungry and a little tired, but this wasnt about the baby. It was like I had mini depression but only when I opened this Word doc. This was about me giving in to the idea that anything you say either can and will be held against you or discounted simply because it isnt important enough. In 2021, the world was not a great place, and what I didnt want was for that to affect my writing and then you pick this up for a fun beach read in 2022, and its all coronavirus/ global warming/public outrage and other clickbait thats actually about something serious.