To me, the combination of literature and laughter seems like an antidote for our fraught times. In a November 2024 OLLI Blog post, I recommended three humorous books and named the list in honor of Groucho Marx. The books were The Fortunes of Jaded Women, by Carolyn Huynh, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, and Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto. Three new recommendations mark the return of the Groucho Marx Book List. As Groucho once said, “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” Reading books that make us laugh out loud during a time when watching television news is likely to make us not laugh seems like a good prescription for balance of mind and spirit.
An audaciously comic memoir: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
Seeing the comedy of the human condition in a country of apartheid staggering towards post-apartheid might seem impossible, but Trevor Noah demonstrates 20-20 vision in this regard. His memoir is at once hilarious and harrowing. Noah was born in South Africa to parents for whom it was illegal to marry. Being half-black and half-white with light skin put him at constant risk of being outcast by everyone else, dangerously so. Poverty multiplied his challenges. Yet Noah’s single black mother Patricia was a life force who raised her son with a unique combination of insane brilliance and brilliant insanity. On the one hand, she was ferociously strict, bluntly telling her son what not to do, under threat of physical punishment. On the other, she took her son with her to places where he saw the possibilities for what he could do — if he were as inventive as she was. Patricia, for example, eked out the gas in her car by coasting downhill to their destination wherever she could.
As his mother’s child, Noah developed two super powers: the cultural dexterity to cross boundaries in a restrictive, violent, hyper-racialized world and the comic insight to recognize and navigate its absurdities, the least of which was the government’s classification of Chinese as colored and Japanese as white. His mother Patricia, Noah recounts, wanted me to be “beholden to no fate . . . to be free to go anywhere, do anything, be anyone.” Improbably, the two of them made this vision into reality.
A deliciously funny social history (and travelogue): Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Food by Jennifer 8 Lee
In 2005, the 29-state Powerball lottery offered a jackpot of $84.M. Officials expected only three or four second-place winners and one jackpot winner. Instead, there were 110 second-place winners, 30 times the expected number, well outside statistical probability. A comprehensive investigation into possible fraud was conducted by lottery officials. They found no evidence of gaming the system. However, the officials did identify one curious common denominator among the winning ticket holders: 104 of the 110 second-place winners had obtained their numbers from fortune cookies served to them in Chinese restaurants. Intrigued, NY Times reporter Jennifer 8 Lee embarked on an odyssey to identify the factors underlying this incredible phenomenon. Among her fascinating discoveries was this: There are more Chinese fast food restaurants in the United States than the combined number of McDonald’s, KFCs, Burger Kings, and Wendy’s. It seems there is nothing more American than eating Chinese takeout!
Lee journeyed through restaurant industry practices, the Gold Rush, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Chinese cuisine in China, kosher food, and the worldwide Chinese diaspora — to name just a few of her stopovers. She found that fortune cookies aren’t Chinese, the location of the greatest Chinese restaurant in the world is not China, and the result of “the greatest culinary prank that one culture has ever played on another” is a popular item on Chinese restaurant menus that isn’t Chinese. You will be able to win a Jeopardy contest on food trivia if you indulge in reading this rollicking book!
A hilarious mystery soon to be a film: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
I dare to add this book to Groucho’s new list even though my guess is that the majority of OLLI readers have already laughed their way through the ingenious plot and developed affection for the charming and clever cast of septuagenarian characters who reside in a retirement community. They live comfortably, but comfort is not what they seek. They solve murders. What is the modus operandi of these amateur and not-so-amateur detectives? It’s genius teamwork, a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts.
We can look forward to the characters Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim, and Ron to be portrayed respectively by Helen Mirren, Celia Imrie, Sir Ben Kingsley, and Pierce Brosnan in a forthcoming movie to be produced by Stephen Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment. Richard Osman, the book’s extraordinarily witty author, will serve as an executive producer. And, of course, in the meantime, we can enjoy reading three sequels to The Murder Club: The Man Who Died Twice, The Bullet That Missed, and The Last Devil to Die.
Linda Wing, Ph.D., is an OLLI @Berkeley member and volunteer who spent more than 45 years working to transform public schools in order to enable students in the nation’s cities to learn and achieve at high levels.
The OLLI Blog showcases the voices and perspectives of the OLLI community (members, faculty and staff) as well as news from and about OLLI.
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