Kevin’s Comments (group member since Sep 21, 2011)

Kevin’s comments from the Ask Charles Yu! group.

I loved the meta aspects of your book, like the description of what it takes to be a protagonist in the "attachment coefficient" section as a job description/variable breakdown.

Was it difficult or challenging to break down emotional assessments, like what it takes to be a "hero" into specific measurable terms?

I also really enjoyed pouring over things like the "Partial Map of CY's Time Loop."

When you include things like that in books do publishers threaten to break your kneecaps, or did that only happen back before computers were in charge of printing things? How much research did you put into creating your charts?

Charles wrote: "How about you? Any recommendations for funny things to read or listen to or watch?"

I'm a huge fan of Dave Barry for written humor. Most people who are lauded as funny fail to make me laugh as consistently as he does. I also just found Calvin Trillin who is similarly humorous.((Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin))

Then I scour the internet for random funny sorts of things, like the "Intermediate Killer Shark Genre." ((http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-...))

As far as spoken humor goes Mitch Hedberg and Steven Wright are fantastic. I've recently found you can make a "comedy" station on Pandora, based on comedians and that's been consuming me as of late.

Yay conversations!
-Kevin

Do you want to know what kind of toothbrush Charles Yu uses and if it helps him write better? I'm not sure he'll answer, but ask here!

Any questions about the book itself and characters and specifics could go here. That will be nice.

Here readers can ask questions about the author's motivations and learning processes and other fun how-he-writes-things.

@one big thread monster problem. We could always break down your responses into different threads entirely, so as to have a more cohesive structure?

Like a, "Charles Yu's inspiration"
and maybe, "Pertaining to How to Live..."
also with, "Miscellaneous, about the author!"

Then you could go more back and forth with people too! Conversations. We could leave general far-reaching questions here. I'll make the threads, you do what you feel is right, with any question askers too!

So am I allowed to quote the book here?((I'm uh. I'm going to do it regardless)) Because my favorite excerpt is,

"She says that is exactly what she's crying about. That everything is all right. That the world isn't ending. That we'll never tell each other how we really feel because everything is okay. Okay enough to just sit around, being okay. Okay enough that we forget we don't have long, that it's late, late in this universe, and at some point in the future, it's not going to be okay."

It states so well an aspect of our society. I feel like I need extreme circumstances to break out of the mundane, but realize that those days happen rarely if ever. It was well delivered.

((Incoming Question))
I enjoy your writing style a great deal, and was curious as to whether you were ever intentionally funny, or it just happened? It just seems like it would be difficult to cultivate humor and speak eloquently together.

((Another))
Do you have any favorite humorists?/humorous pieces?


What's a proper closing remark for this sort of thing,
-Kevin