Normally, when an Academy Award-nominated actor decides to write fiction, alarm klaxons go off in the sensible reader. Is this a privileged yahoo convinced that talent in one area will translate into artistic skill in another medium? Luckily, Jesse Eisenberg isn’t trying to write the great American novel. He’s writing short comic pieces—which, if you’ve been fortunate enough to read them in The New Yorker or McSweeney’s, you know are damn entertaining. He possesses a droll wit and a gift for economy with his language, sketching funny portrayals of insecure loners and over-caffeinated go-getters alike, not to mention the occasional reimagined scene from history.