We turned to the subject of the performance artist Brother Theodore and that helped connect the dots to Martin Olson‘s new book, The Conquest of Heaven, which I’ve reviewed in my previous post. It’s an intriguing and hilarious exploration of the addled yet persistent mind of the Lord of Darkness himself. On one level, it’s a very funny book. On a deeper level, it’s every bit the satire on what we humans let ourselves believe and what can pass for reality. Serious followers of comedy will most likely already be familiar with Brother Theodore. I kick myself now, because I can’t say I knew about him until recently and that’s only because I found out about him from Martin.
My introduction to this comic is this clip from The Merv Griffin Show. I can’t say that I was ever a big fan of Merv Griffin. He seemed to be the sort of talk show host that was easily parodied by other comics, like Martin Short. But now I come to see that Merv Griffin was pretty hip to groundbreaking comedy as he was an early supporter of Brother Theodore. If you are new to him and you view this clip, you can’t help but think that Andy Kaufman was taking notes….
So, if you view the clip, this will make more sense. In a nutshell, here you have one of the early wave of nontraditional comic artists. Brother Theodore was weird but that was the whole point of his act, to express the utter absurdity of life. As Martin points out, it’s nihilistic material that you make your way through to a redeeming payoff. And so I see some of that going on in Martin’s new book with Satan as the main character, an outrageous creature saying the most offensive things, but alternating with some poetic whimsy. Anyway, I wish I’d taken my search a little further and viewed the more recent clips of Brother Theodore in the ’80s on Late Night with David Letterman. Ah, that would have been more recent material to talk to Martin about. The thing is, this was simply a potential question I had pinned to the back of my mind. As it is, I did get a wonderful response regarding the above clip which includes Martin recalling what it was like for him as an impressionable 10-year-old to see this crazy and weird humor.
For those who are fascinated by the writer’s craft, we also chatted about the great science fiction writer Robert Sheckley. In fact, that’s just before we dived into talking about Brother Theodore. In the case of Sheckley, this is another mad genius who loved quirky humor. There’s a nice moment during our talk when Martin recalls Sheckley’s guiding principle in keeping his stories rich and alive: “Sympathize with all things!” And so Martin finds a way to even sympathize with the Devil!
Okay, that seemed a perfect place to stop but I need to just add that, having read both books in the series thus far, I can confidently say that one compliments the other. To hear Martin confirm that there will indeed be another book to fulfill the trilogy is wonderful news. Martin has, by turns, found himself creating his own universe upon which to comment on the human condition and the like, essentially having endless material to play with on the less than stellar condition of the cosmos. All this brings to mind Douglas Adams, and he did pretty well for himself as I recall.
For more on Martin Olson and his work go right here.
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