On April 19, 2023, I posted the following review on Goodreads: “hilarious book. had me laughing out loud in public & getting weird stares from strangers.” The book in question was A Very Punchable Face, a memoir by Colin Jost, an award-winning writer and comedian best known for his role as co-anchor on the iconic Saturday Night Live segment “Weekend Update.” Because my junior year of high school feels like an ocean away, or maybe more accurately, like a trauma-blocked dungeon with a sign that says, “CAUTION: AP Tests, Crippling Self-Doubt and Tumultuous Road Trips Upstate to Tour Colleges,” I hadn’t thought about Jost’s memoir in almost two years. That was true until several weeks ago when, walking down Ho Plaza, I saw a poster of Colin Jost’s smiling face, announcing his stand-up show on March 23, sponsored by the Cornell University Program Board.
My thoughts were as follows:
NO WAY. HE’S MY IDOL!
How does this compete with Jojo Siwa’s visit to Brown?
Wait, I read Colin Jost’s memoir a while back. It was good. I should reread it.
Thus began my journey of revisiting A Very Punchable Face. When I first picked up Jost’s book two years ago, I expected to chuckle at a few jokes and learn about some SNL secrets. While Jost definitely delivered on these fronts, he also surpassed all of my expectations. I put down his book feeling completely and utterly seen. In A Very Punchable Face, Jost remains fiercely genuine and honest while recounting a vast range of stories, from the pivotal (e.g., being interviewed by Lorne Michaels before getting hired at SNL) to the peculiar (e.g., falling asleep in a Finnish graveyard). Like a modern, less Irish and more self-deprecating James Joyce, by sharing formative moments spanning from his infancy to adulthood, Jost organically depicts universal truths of growth and self-discovery that, I believe, can comfort and inspire my college peers.
I have a confession to make: I lived in Staten Island for the first ten years of my life. This is actually the only success I have over Colin Jost because he had to live in Staten Island for over twenty years. Take that, you wildly talented multi-millionaire!The thing about Staten Island is that everyone—including Staten Islanders and Jost himself—loves to hate it. In one of my favorite chapters of the memoir, “Wait, You’re from Staten Island?” Jost hilariously feeds into the preconceived notions many have about the borough while also discussing the ways in which his hometown shaped his identity.
Jost begins his memoir with the ultimate underdog story. He could not speak until he was almost four years old. After his parents sent him to the Staten Island University Hospital for speech therapy, Jost swears that he “sounded like Carmela Soprano”, but because he “wanted to fit in other places [than New York],” he trained himself to “sound like an Ohio weatherman.” This impressive yet arguably unfortunate feat (as I think everyone could benefit from a little Italian mob wife flair) exemplifies Jost’s conflicting relationship with Staten Island. While I understand Jost’s feelings of doubt about his place of belonging in his hometown, I appreciate that he makes sure to emphasize the many great, hardworking, family-oriented people he grew up knowing. As someone who also knows my fair share of incredible Staten Islanders, I wholeheartedly agree that they make the borough beautiful.
A Very Relatable Lesson #1: The places we come from may not be perfect, but then again, neither are we. We can grow in tandem with our hometowns by noticing and cherishing the especially good parts.
In the later chapters, “What Is Harvard Like?” and “Fools in a Castle,” Jost offers an incredibly candid survey of his collegiate experience in the Ivy League. Not only did Jost feel immense inferiority to the many smarter, sportier and wealthier students he met, but he also stood idly by while the future plot of The Social Network casually unfolded on his campus. While Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook, Colin Jost tirelessly wrote eighteen months' worth of rejected comedic pieces for The Harvard Lampoon, a college humor magazine. By juxtaposing himself with Zuckerberg, Jost masterfully immerses the reader in the very common collegiate experience of feeling insignificant and unsuccessful in comparison to one's peers. Still, the Lampoon ultimately proved highly significant in propelling Jost to a highly successful comedy career.
A Very Relatable Lesson #2: Do not feel inferior to the Zuckerbergs you may meet. Follow your own paths and passions, even if no one but you understands them.
When Jost became an anchor for Weekend Update, he received major criticism online, which caused feelings of extreme doubt and stress. However, from his often self-deprecating tone to his retelling of some incredibly personal, embarrassing stories, there seems to be a part of Jost that uniquely embraces the negativity. If hundreds of people posted hate comments about my face, I would’ve just cried; Jost used them as inspiration for the title of his memoir. I truly admire this fearlessness, which fosters unapologetically honest and vulnerable writing. Eventually, Jost learned to become comfortable on Weekend Update by ignoring outside opinions and instead focusing on his own excitement and passion for comedy.
A Very Relatable Lesson #3: Every new step is a new period of adjustment. Stay true to yourself and your instincts to grow past the difficulty.
The fourth and final lesson I learned from A Very Punchable Face is to play the long game. Colin Jost was slow to speak as a child, and now his verbal ability brings laughter to millions. Even though Jost’s comedy writing was rejected thousands of times, he never stopped practicing and improving. Jost went through many challenging moments transitioning onto SNL, and now he’s downright indispensable to the show’s magic. Colin Jost is witty, humble, hardworking and incredibly inspiring. I look forward to celebrating his excellence this weekend at what will surely be A Very Funny Show.
SophieAnn DeVito is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, She can be reached at sgd56@cornell.edu.
