Before his life-altering appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart on November 16, 2005, author and humorist John Hodgman logged time as a literary agent (for Bruce Campbell, among others) and as a freelance writer, editor, and/or reviewer for publications as diverse as McSweeney's (for which he wrote the absurdist column "Ask A Former Professional Literary Agent"), The Paris Review, Wired, Time Out New York, and The New York Times Magazine. But after he was invited to appear on The Daily Show to promote his first book The Areas Of My Expertise, his eccentric and hilarious almanac of fake trivia, he quickly became, in his words, "a famous minor television personality." For the two years running, Hodgman has been a semi-regular correspondent on the show, turning his super-elite "Resident Expert" persona on topics such as net neutrality, art authentication, the "staycation" (or "holistay"), the plague of diseased immigrants, and mixed martial arts. He's also gained recognition as the PC in the "Get A Mac" commercial series with co-star Justin Long, contributed frequently to This American Life, and scored bit roles in the film Baby Mama and the upcoming season of Battlestar Galactica.
Hodgman's new book, More Information Than You Require—the second in a planned trilogy—picks up right where The Areas Of My Expertise left off, issuing bogus information on U.S. Presidents, gambling tips, predicting the future with a pig's spleen, dealing with common (and uncommon) infestations, and a definitive list of mole-men names and occupations. Hodgman recently spoke to The A.V. Club about hobos, Sarah Palin, and why appearing on The Daily Show makes him want to vomit.
A.V. Club: Was the idea of writing history with lies as you do in The Areas Of My Expertise and the new book inspired in some part by the current era of "truthiness"?
John Hodgman: My heart was hurt and lifted when Stephen Colbert coined that term, because it describes far better in a single word what I attempted to describe in 250 pages. The idea that something that feels true is more important than it being true, and the delights and the dangers that go along with that. And I would certainly say my primary goal with The Areas Of My Expertise was to entertain and to write a book of trivia, in that order. But certainly as someone who had been a freelance magazine writer who was forced on a monthly or weekly basis to become an expert in any given subject that might be thrown your way, from hot dogs to hangover cures, the cellular process of aging, and to present yourself as such an authority with utter fraudulency and a completely straight face. And then to dump all that information out of your brain and start again, that was the erosion of the concept of expertise that both amused me and was what I wanted to explore. As I wrote my advice column for McSweeney's, "Ask A Former Professional Literary Agent," I was often asked questions to which I did not know the answer, such as, "What is the cause of my chronic knee pain?" I realized that even in a world of proliferating media venues, online and in print, and on TV and on countless cable channels, the idea that I could be considered an expert on chronic knee pain was I think troubling for society, but very exciting for me.
AVC: The new book picks up where you left off with the previous book. You even have the pages start with 237. Do you have a grand plan for all three of them and the way they might kind of interact?
JH: My hope when I wrote the first book was that I would get to do it again. But it was not entirely clear that that would happen. Indeed, it was never made more clear that it might not happen than in the great city of Chicago, where I found a small audience of people who really enjoyed the book, and were dedicated, and may I also point out very small. Not physically small—they were normal-sized humans. It seemed very possible the book would reach an extremely niche market composed of me, the people that I know, and the very few people in the world that I was able to convince to listen to me. And so we had a lot of fun at those early Chicago readings. [Hodgman's admission that Chicago exists is a reversal of a stance taken in an earlier interview. —ed.] I knew from the beginning that the possibility of this catching on could go either way. My hope was only that I would get to write another book of fake trivia. And that hope was realized only because Jon Stewart put me on television and sort of said, "It's okay, he's not completely deranged. It's okay to like this." And apparently a lot of people watch television, and those who watch The Daily Show actually go out and buy books, which had been a rumor in book publishing for some time, but not something I was necessarily prepared to believe until I saw it in action. And that's unique to The Daily Show. Not only is it one of the only shows that has book coverage these days in any sort of meaningful way, on the sort of late-night comedy circuit, but it actually has authors on the show. And the audience goes out and buys those books and reads them.
So that enabled me to then start thinking, "Well, what can I do next?" And very quickly the proposal for the second book crystallized in my mind. And that proposal was basically more of the same but twice as long. And that's where I got with the second book. It's not quite twice as long, but it is considerably and needlessly longer, and that is something I really like. But for the third book, which will be called That Is All, I am somewhat less locked in as to what it will contain. I feel that obviously the idea from the beginning is that it would not be three distinct books but, like The Lord of The Rings, one complete work of fiction that's published in three books. So the third book will obviously follow the same format with the page numbering, but I want to afford myself a little freedom to push and explore the format a little bit and find things to do within it in a way that might be refreshing to the reader as opposed to just sort of numbing. [Laughs.]
I think to some degree—and I'm sort of speaking sadly sincerely now—I'd written a lot of new fake trivia for the second book before I realized I had to adjust the voice of the book dramatically to accommodate and to take into account what had happened in my life since I wrote the first one. I mean, they were never designed to be autobiographies in any sense, but I do refer to myself. And most of the references to myself are, if not precisely true… I never lived in a gigantic observatory on the Upper West Side, but that's closer to the truth than you might think. And by the time I was writing the second book, my life had changed rather dramatically, thanks to the intervention of television, and I needed to find a way to discuss that. Otherwise the big, fake book would not be true on some level. So it veers to some degree. There's certainly plenty of lists on how to get rid of common household pests like mice and Scottie dogs. But there are also longer, listy sections of sort of more essay-like derangement. So what will happen in the third book is something of a question mark, but one I find intriguing and I suspect the answer will present itself once I really begin to fight with it.
I think that by the time I start writing the third book, of course, I will be President Of The United States, and that also will have something to do with it. I'll probably have to acknowledge that somehow.
AVC: Your star will rise exponentially. Each book will make you more and more famous.
JH: It is no less likely that that will happen than what actually happened to me after the first book.
AVC: How did that first appearance on The Daily Show come together? How did you get that slot?
JH: Well, I have to give a lot of credit to friend and colleague Sarah Vowell, who is a friend of that show and who brought my work to their attention. But I also have to give some credit to I think Jake Gyllenhaal, who the rumor I heard cancelled at the last minute.
AVC: I thought you were going say he loved your work.
JH: No. I don't know if this is true. This is a rumor I'm too fearful to confirm and I don't even remember where I heard it. But there was a sudden opening that only Hodgman could fill. At the time, I was in Chicago and sort of thinking, "What if this is the only book of fake trivia I get to write?" The audiences here are passionate but small and that was certainly one possibility that I expected could happen: it would reach a small group of fellow travelers and that would be it, and sort of coming to terms with that. And when I landed in Boston, I had a voicemail saying The Daily Show wants to know if I can go on in November and I said, "Okay." And that changed everything. It's very rare to have something actually change overnight that dramatically, for that to actually happen.
AVC: Did you think that was going to be a possibility? Did you know the stakes were going be pretty high for you, this was going to be a very important moment for you?
JH: I looked at it as an amazingly fun and plausible opportunity because I was a big fan of the show. I thought it could not get stranger than to be able to be a guest on one of your very favorite TV shows. If you're asking me if I freaked out, absolutely. But I don't think even I anticipated how dramatic the fortunes of the book would change and veer towards my absolute best imaginings for it until after the show was done and I was back on the road to Seattle getting texts from my publisher saying, "People are buying your book." Because I did feel that what I was writing had kind of a wave particle duality. It was so personal and weird and esoteric that I could just see a situation where it was reaching me and my friends and that small group of similar lunatics I had yet to meet out there in the world. Or it could just hop over and become a wave. It could become a particle or it could simultaneously hop over and become a wave. And enough people would talk about it and get into it that they would eventually… even if they did not automatically share my derangement, they would find it appealing. My hope from the beginning was for that to happen. Anyone of conscience could come look at my book and see it as an esoteric oddity or be intrigued by it. It could happen either way on a thousand different little decisions each individual might make. And I think that Jon Stewart essentially saying, "This is not a particle, but a wave," helped that to happen. And it would not have happened otherwise. It completely transformed my life. Literally overnight. And that was just the beginning of a bunch of success clichés that sort of occurred to me, to my embarrassment, exactly as literally as the cliché says it. Do you know what I mean? Plucked from obscurity. Literally overnight. It's been a surreal experience.
AVC: Do you think your appearance that night and your subsequent appearances on the show helps people get a better handle on the tone of the book itself and how it should be read?
JH: Yes, absolutely. It's like a letter of introduction. It's like I came to America's doorstep wearing a cheap blazer spouting a bunch of lies and looking crazy, but I had a letter with me that said, "Let this man in. He's not just crazy. It is all just an act. Signed, Jon Stewart."
AVC: The Book Of Lists is obviously a pretty big influence on this enterprise. Are there any other lists books or almanacs that have served as your guideposts through this project?
JH: The short answer is yes. The Book of Lists was a big influence on me as a kid. There are other influences that I was conscious of when I started writing, including William Poundstone's trilogy Big Secrets, Bigger Secrets and Biggest Secrets. Cecil Adams' column The Straight Dope was a big inspiration. I'd discovered him long after I'd actually stopped writing the "Ask a Former Professional Literary Agent" column. I read it and felt an immediate kinship and sadness that I didn't know about it earlier, that sort of thing. That intense, polymathic expertise on all things plus a weird contempt/affection for the readership was definitely inspired by Cecil Adams in the Straight Dope. And then there were references that I had that were really important to me but I had forgotten about them until after I'd written the book and sort of rediscovered things, like the book Gnomes. Do you remember the book Gnomes? In 1977 or so, a couple of Dutch dudes [Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet] came out with a lavishly illustrated coffee table book on the life and habits of the gnome. And there were these little dudes in red hats that had been garden decorations forever, and they basically imagined this whole cosmology of the gnome life cycle, and their culture, and the way they built their houses. And you know, what they do all day, and what they use for medicine. It's really pretty exhaustive and it really invaded, at least in New England, everybody's mind for a while. There was even a Gnomes TV special. It was a big deal, a couple of sequels. And it sold lots and lots of copies.
It was one of these creations that kids found fascinating, but it was written for adults, very strange adults. And kids liked it, but it wasn't for them, because there's an awful lot of gnome boobage in the book. It has a European sensibility towards the body that would probably not make sense as a kids' book.
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