“Material” is the stuff out of which something else is made. Material also refers to a comedian’s bits, the stuff they deliver to audiences to make people laugh.
Camille Bordas’ new novel, “The Material,” mines both of those meanings to deliver an entertaining and perceptive story that somehow manages to bring us close to half a dozen (or more) characters in a novel where the action spans half of a single day.
Bordas brings this ensemble together under the umbrella of the first fine arts masters program for stand-up comedy at an unidentified downtown Chicago university. We are introduced to the faculty: Kruger, a successful comic who has recently made a turn as a dramatic actor in a Meryl Streep movie, and Donna, the only woman on the faculty, with a long and successful career as a touring comic who has never managed to take the next step to stardom.
The students include Olivia, who is suffused with ambition, and whose self-loathing translates to a sardonic misanthropy, and also Artie, a sweet-natured young man without an apparent edge who worries he is too good-looking for comedy, a fear his classmates and professors are only too eager to reinforce. Artie has a crush on Olivia. Olivia has no time for crushes.
There is also Murray Reinhardt, a super successful older comedian who is scheduled to join the faculty as a visitor, but is also going through a period of scandal that may make him toxic.
The stand-up MFA is clearly modeled on graduate creative writing programs — a milieu I know well — where the intersection of ambition, unrealized talent, jealousy and insecurity can lead to significant angst and self-doubt. Making the students stand-ups rather than writers turns the volume on these emotions to eleven, as the students see part of their work rise above their peers. There’s a reason why a comedian who has done well is said to have “killed.”
There is very little plot — the primary locus of action moves from a student workshop in the afternoon to a performance at the Empty Bottle in the evening — but Bordas still manages to create story tension simultaneously around everyone’s fate as a performer (their comedic material), and what is revealed about the characters (the material of one’s life) through incredibly fluid use of close third person narration that manages to move seamlessly from character to character even inside the same scene.
Every character has something weighing on their minds. Kruger’s father, who is living in a retirement home in the suburbs, has recently fired a gun in a bar, an incident Kruger has paid to cover up. Olivia’s twin, Sally, is on her way to Chicago that evening, and Olivia fears her sister will throw an emotional wrench in her plans to impress Murray Reinhardt. Reinhardt is dealing with the fallout of his scandals and lamenting the separation from his ex-wife and son Augie, who is a law student in Chicago, and the reason he has accepted the teaching position. Artie’s brother is a heroin addict who has gone missing… again.
“The Material” is primarily a novel of questions: What is the line between comedy and not comedy? How do we figure out what lives we’re supposed to live? What is the right way to love another person?
Is improv comedy an abomination as compared to the art form of stand-up?
What I ultimately appreciated about the book is that Bordas does not seek answers to these questions. Instead, they are probed, held up for scrutiny through different angles and different characters.
Because how could there be answers to these questions? In truth, our lives will always serve us more material, at least until our inevitable ends.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder” by David Grann
2. “Seven Steeples” by Sara Baume
3. “The Hunter” by Tana French
4. “Chenneville” by Paulette Jiles
5. “North Woods” by Daniel Mason
— Mike C., Chicago
This is a gritty one, but I think Mike can handle it: “No Country for Old Men” by Cormac McCarthy.
1. “Exit West” by Mohsin Hamid
2. “Roman Stories” by Jhumpa Lahiri
3. “The President is Missing” by James Patterson and Bill Clinton
4. “West with Giraffes” by Lynda Rutledge
5. “Boundary Waters” by William Kent Krueger
— Carol B., Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin
It’s been a while since I recommended one of my recent favorites, so that’s what I’m doing for Carol: “Mercury Pictures Presents” by Anthony Marra.
1. “The Women” by Kristin Hannah
2. “The Last List of Mabel Beaumont” by Laura Pearson
3. “One Year After You” by Shari Low
4. “The Nightingale” by Kristin Hannah
5. “The Measure of a Man” by Gene Getz
— Suzanne O., Mt. Prospect
For Suzanne, I’m recommending the understated romance and deep feeling of Kent Haruf’s “Our Souls at Night.”
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.