Allison Silverman

(Excerpt from Allison Silverman interview)

You’re one of only two humor writers I’m interviewing from the South—the other is David Sedaris. My southern friends and teachers aren’t going to be too happy.

I grew up in Gainesville, Florida, which is a university town. But, yes, it’s very much the Deep South. When I was growing up, I never looked similar to my classmates—or that’s how I felt, anyway.

What did the others look like?

It was mostly an environment of blonde cheerleaders, football players, and quintessential Americana. When I was young, I received a lot of questions about where I was from. I remember being told I would eventually be going to hell because I was a Jew. This was mostly in elementary school, before the students realized what they were saying. But by the time I was in high school, fellow students found my Semitism a little exotic.

Do you think your upbringing affected your humor? Did you go inward and become more introspective?

I guess I felt like a bit of an outsider, but I don’t think that’s too different from how most humor writers feel about their childhoods. I was an introspective person by nature. I was a happy kid, but I did have terrible nightmares. I’d turn on the bedroom lights and spend the rest of the night reading—usually the same few books over and over again. I must have read A Wrinkle in Time [by Madeleine L’Engle] fifty times.

Do you remember any of your nightmares?

Dreams about nuclear war, mostly. This was in the early eighties, and I had just learned that Gainesville was high on the list of nuclear targets, because there were a lot of hospitals in town. I also remember a classmate telling me about the nuclear explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and how the shadows of the victims were forever burned onto the pavement.

I also had many dreams about being poisoned, and my accidentally poisoning others.

[Laughs] What type of kids were you hanging out with?

I can’t blame it all on them—I think I had O.C.D. as a kid. I would have recurring thoughts that were mostly uncomfortable to think about.

That’s another similarity between you and David Sedaris—and perhaps most of the writers I’ve interviewed for this book. O.C.D. is a very common theme.

Starting at around the age of nine or ten, I would suddenly feel the urge to stick to a very strict routine. I had to do all these very specific tasks before I felt comfortable enough to do much of anything.

I was obsessed with death and with order. My mother once showed me a biography of Albert Einstein and told me that he didn’t wear socks. And she said, “See? This is one of the greatest minds of all time. And he didn’t wear socks! He wasn’t perfect, so you don’t have to be either.”

Did that help?

I remember it, so it had some kind of impact.

Do you think this preoccupation with death was a Jewish trait?

I think it might have been, actually. With Judaism, there’s very little discussion of the afterlife. I was told that I wouldn’t die for a very long time, but then once I did, there would be nothing.

Did this preoccupation ever ease up?

In the late eighties and early nineties, by the time I attended Yale, the nightmares and O.C.D. had improved a bit. Most of my attention was focused on school-work, and on an improv group I was involved with called the Exit Players. There were about four improv groups at Yale, but this one was the oldest, and still is.

How did the Exit Players differ from the other groups?

I thought they were the flat-out funniest. There was another group that performed long-form material, but I didn’t really understand that method until after I graduated.

In retrospect, I prefer long-form. But, at the time, short-form was my preference.

What’s the difference between short- and long-form?

Long-form improv was most famously taught by [Second City’s] Del Close through his “Harold” method—that’s what he called it. Essentially, a group of performers receive one suggestion from the audience and then create a whole piece around that subject. There are three acts, each with three scenes. This method teaches that you shouldn’t go for the immediate and easy punchlines. Short-form, on the other hand, consists of more gags…