JACK REVIEWS NOVELS to DISTRACT HIMSELF from the INEVITABILITY of DEATH: Stay Up with Hugo Best by Erin Somers

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Have you seen Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip? The answer is probably no, unless, like me, you're very susceptible to Aaron Sorkin's distinctive charms. For better or for worse, I am like me, and I am very susceptible to Aaron Sorkin's distinctive charms. As such, I have both seen and enjoyed Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, though it's one of his more flawed works. The concept of the show is this; Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford play a writer and a producer respectively, hired to revive the flagging fortunes of Studio 60, which is a thinly veiled Saturday Night Live. Despite both of them being difficult people in their own way, their revamped version of the show is a big hit. This enables both to stick around long enough to get involved in the sort of scrapes appropriate for a comedy drama written by Aaron Sorkin.

Now, here's the problem with Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. The idea that Perry and Whitford are these flawed geniuses, capable of turning round a failing American comedy institution, is undermined by the fact that none of the sketches they produce are funny. They're clearly meant to be, the show tells us often how highly regarded they are, but every time we get to witness excerpts from this revitalised program they're helming, you just cringe. And not in the good way that comedy sometimes makes you cringe. It's an irritating problem that almost ruins the series. Basically, Aaron Sorkin came up with a handful of shit sketches, and then based a show around how brilliant they are. It's outright obnoxious. There are plenty of examples of comedies about comedy that are funny, but when they misfire, they're fucked. It's a thin tightrope, and it's impressive how well Erin Somers walks it in her sparkling debut novel, Stay Up with Hugo Best. In Stay Up... characters do stand-up comedy, it actually sounds like stand-up real human beings would do, and the audience reactions are broadly in line with how funny the stand-up is. That's no mean feat.

There are novels that are funny, novels that are sad, and the best novels are those that are both. Some of my colleagues at the book shop I work at were under the impression that Stay Up with Hugo Best was a much lighter novel than it actually is. I don't blame them. It's hard to get a read on the book from its blurb and its front cover, which is vibrant blue, and has an approving quote from Vogue and a massive picture of an inflatable swan on it. Certainly, Stay Up... is a very accessible read, thanks to its crystal clear prose and steady stream of excellent one liners. But it's also a thought provoking book. It's about sexual politics, and watching your heroes grow old. It's funny, smart and jaded. I enjoyed it a whole lot.

The story is told from the perspective of June Bloom, a writer's assistant on the titular late night show. Hugo Best is ageing and bored and the show's ratings are slumping, so Hugo is shunted aside for a younger host. Wondering what to do with her career now the show is over, June performs a stand up set in a depressing comedy club. She's surprised to find Hugo waiting for her after her set, and even more surprised that he invites her to stay with him in his Connecticut mansion over Memorial Day weekend. The two of them barely know each other, and Best is a notorious womaniser. Yet his offer intrigues Bloom, not least because she adored his stand-up as an adolescent. So, against her better judgement, she accepts.

What unfolds over the course of the book is a fascinating cat and mouse game. Sometimes Hugo is the cat, and June is the mouse. Sometimes vice versa. No matter what, we're the mouse and Erin Somers is the cat. She toys with our expectations. She creates textured characters who never quite let their guard down and rarely behave entirely the way you'd expect them to. Most impressive is her portrayal of Hugo. The comedy circuit is hardly lacking in lecherous old white men, and it would have been simple to write him as one of them. Of course, Hugh is to an extent a lecherous old white man, but never to the point where he's a cartoon villain, or completely unsympathetic. He's a melancholic character. He's achieved everything he wanted to with his life, and now he's in his mid 60s, and it hasn't fulfilled him. His motivations for inviting June to spend the weekend with him seem less rooted in sexual desire, and more in the hope that she'll validate him by engaging in deep conversations on the art of stand up comedy. The most excited he appears in the book is when he asks if she wants to be his support act on a stand-up tour in the new year. There are some superb smaller details with him as well, like his love for Richard Pryor. I hope it won't come as a terrible spoiler to learn that, yes, he does use this love in a 'how can I be racist when...' way, but again, it doesn't feel like Somers is beating you round the head with his awfulness. Hugo is never malevolent. He's just a bit lost.

June Bloom is an excellent, and finely balanced narrator. Since June was a child, she has admired Hugo. She devoured his early stand up recordings, and working on his show was a huge source of pride for her, even if she's aware that it was well past its sell by date by the time she joined. For her to witness the ennui that has consumed Hugo is a warning of what might await her in the future. The message of Stay Up... is that you should never meet your heroes – not because they're bad people, but because they're normal, fucked up people. And if those we consider the best of us are messy and moderately unhappy, what hope is there for the rest of us? Through June's voice, Somers channels some lovely, understated, unpretentious writing. Her description of Hugo's fading good looks is particularly nice; 

“what wrinkles he had appeared calculated, left intact so he'd look like a reasonable facsimile of a gently aged human being.” 

She's also really funny, even during her bleaker moments; at one point, overwhelmed by the reality of a whole weekend with Hugo, she remarks

"you know how things aren't fun?... how everything that seems like it's going to be fun ends up being tense and sort of terrible." 

But her best line, maybe the best line in the whole book, is her description of what Best in his prime represented to her;

"here, for the first time, was a way of living. You could move to New York, be urbane, wry, ironic. You could be a wit and hover above the whole sad, gasping fracas."

It's not a radical idea to suggest comedy exists as a defence mechanism, but this is one of the best ways of phrasing it I've ever read. It's shot through with defeat. Hugo's defeat is June's defeat is all our defeat. We're all doomed to live in the fracas. Stay Up is a novel about coming and not coming to terms with it.

There's a nice supporting cast as well; one of the simpler pleasures of this book is its commitment to its world. Somers has put thought into everything. We get the name of the host who's replacing Hugo Best, a brief description of his comedy style, and how it differs from Hugo's (more contemporary, more political). We get hints of the utter contempt Bony Suarez, the band leader on Hugo's show, holds him in. There's an enjoyable riff on Cruise Ship, a movie of questionable quality that Hugo starred in in the 90s. We hear about Hugo's love of cars. We hear about his short lived TV show, Car Hunt. We hear about his co-host Jazz Sherman, whose complete lack of knowledge about cars charmed audiences and led to her hosting the show on her own. None of this feels gratuitous, like Somers is filling us in on background details because she doesn't have anything else to say. As I've already mentioned, everyone who needs to be in this book is a layered and believable character. These little glimpses at the alternate universe entertainment industry they inhabit makes them even more plausible.

What I would say, for all that Stay Up... has to offer, is that it's a book you can read once and be done with. Going through it a second time for this review felt a bit more of a dull process than it does for some other books I've written about. Its insights into the machinations of the entertainment industry are on full display, and once you've taken them in, that's it. That's not a terrible thing though. There are lots of books in the world. I'm almost suspicious of people who find the time to re-read in a world of limitless choice, where there are an endless array of novels to be curious about. Stay Up... tells its story and gets the heck out of there. In a way, it's admirable.

There was a brief period in my life when I thought I could be a stand-up comic. At the age of 18, I did three gigs. The first took place in the backroom of a pub, and went astonishingly well. I left feeling completely elated, like I had found my life's calling. My second gig was in a LGBT+ bar, which I thought would be the natural home for the aggressively politically correct humour I was a fan of at the time. I wrote a new set which was much worse than the first one, and bombed. The people at the bar were polite about the disaster unfolding in front of them, which was the only thing which makes the memory tolerable. The third gig was in the same backroom as the first, and went OK. I gave up performing immediately after. TL;DR, my experiences in the comedy world are limited at best due to my complete lack of resilience. Yet even I found something resonated with me about Stay Up with Hugo Best. I suspect that's because it's just a truthful novel. Truthful about embarrassment, social awkwardness, regret, being young, growing old. It's a book that might be doomed to be slept on, but it really shouldn't be. Anyone who has existed in the 21st century should find something of value in Somers' fine debut.