Clown Around and Find Out: A Guest Post by Kristen Arnett
Bask in the blistering Florida sun in Kristen Arnett’s (With Teeth) latest. A struggling clown works the Orlando birthday circuit and grapples with questions of art, identity, love and grief in this zany read. Kristen has penned an exclusive essay for us on what made her want to write Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One, down below.
Hardcover
$25.00
$28.00
Stop Me If You've Heard This One: A Novel
Stop Me If You've Heard This One: A Novel
In Stock Online
Hardcover
$25.00
$28.00
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things, a sparkling and funny new novel of entertainment, ambition, art, and love.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things, a sparkling and funny new novel of entertainment, ambition, art, and love.
Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve loved making people laugh.
Jokes are the absolute best. I thrill for the donkey-like guffaw a person makes when I get off a really good one. I’ve spent literal years on the internet making some of the dumbest puns imaginable simply because I like being funny. It’s a treat to revel in all that joy. In a world of hurt and pain, getting in a laugh has become a heartfelt pleasure.
When I set out to write STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE, my ultimate goal was to craft a genuine clown story. Not just “clown” in the physical sense – the greasepaint and the comically oversized shoes, the iconic red nose and fluffy neon wig – but also “clown” in spirit. Comedic timing, slick performance, the well-earned punchline: all of this comes with the clown. Even people who are afraid of them have to acknowledge that they’re deeply embedded in our society. Clown as metaphor for bad boyfriends, terrible politicians, and even present in the way we talk about truly great friendship. We clown on each other. We’re down to clown. It’s the mask we wear when need to behave a particular way for a certain audience. These clownish behaviors sit inside all of us.
Growing up in Orlando meant becoming deeply familiar with performance culture. We’re a tourist town, which means that people come down to our neck of the woods specifically looking for entertainment. The type of art we make is myriad and sprawling, much like our landscapes, which span the gamut from strip mall to natural springs. We’ve got dancers, singers, painters. Acrobats and aerialists. I consider myself a place writer, and writing a book that not only tackled Central Florida but also the culture of art in a place that outsiders consider tacky spoke to me in a deep and meaningful way. What does it mean to caper and perform for an audience that refuses to take you seriously?
Cherry, my main character, is an amalgamation of everything clown: the light and the dark, the gleeful smile and the heartbroken wail. Clowns hold a funhouse mirror up to our lives and ask us to seriously consider what we actually know about ourselves.
I love Florida. It’s deeply messy, wildly feral, exasperating at times, but also undeniably thrilling. I’ve always said that we’re a lot of things, but one thing a Floridian will never be is boring. I love that I got the opportunity to craft this clownish world, and I hope that you will get just as much joy out of this very Orlando story as I got out of writing it.
It’s truly an opportunity for readers to clown around and find out.