‘A crazy time’
HOW TIG NOTARO GAINED THE WORD AFTER LOSING IT ALL
I’m Just A Person
By Tig Notaro Ecco 256 pp; $33.50
In March 2012, comedian Tig Notaro was hospitalized after collapsing with debilitating pain. She was diagnosed with and eventually lost 20 pounds from Clostridium difficile ( C. diff ), a potentially fatal condition in which bacteria attack the intestinal lining. A week after leaving the hospital, Notaro discovered that her mother had fallen and hit her head, and was in a coma — shortly after which she died. Soon after her mother’s funeral, Notaro discovered a lump in each of her breasts.
“I went in for my mammogram feeling I was being quite thorough in my preventative care,” Notaro writes in her new memoir, I’m Just A Person. “I didn’t feel as if I was waiting to hear if I had cancer. I felt as if I was waiting to hear I didn’t have cancer.”
She was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer, and was informed by her doctor that she would need a double mastectomy. All of this happened amidst a painful breakup with her girlfriend, a series of incidents spanning a short four months that Notaro sarcastically summarizes as “a crazy time” ( in her signature deadpan, now translated to print, with no less dryness).
Days after her cancer diagnosis, Notaro performed a now legendary 30- minute set at Largo, a Los Angeles nightclub, where rather than her usual routine, she chose to regale her audience with a taste of her very bad year.
“Good evening. Hello. I have cancer. How are you?” she said to open her set, leaving the audience unsure of how to respond. But as she went on, her tone livening the tragedy of the material, the crowd began to laugh — uncontrollably. “This is f---kin’ amazing!” one man called out during the performance.
Later, Louis C. K. asked if he could sell a recording of Notaro’s Largo set on his website so the world could hear it. Notaro reluctantly agreed, leading to a Grammy-nominated special called, simply, “Live,” (with a short “i”) as a demand to herself to survive.
“In 27 years doing this,” C. K. tweeted at the time, “I’ve seen a handful of truly great, masterful stand-up sets. One was Tig Notaro last night at Largo.” The album sold 6,000 copies within hours of being made available for sale.
Suddenly, Notaro went from being a little-known comedian with bit parts on her friends’ shows, to headlining stand-up gigs and having her own HBO comedy special. Her supporting roles got larger as she appeared on Comedy Central’s Inside Amy Schumer and HBO’s Transparent. If tragedy begets the greatest comedy, Notaro was resurfacing in a spoil of riches.
Last summer, Netflix released Tig, a documentary about her year, while touching on her growing relationship with actress and now wife Stephanie Allynne (whom she met on the set of friend Lake Bell’s film In A World) and the couple’s difficulty conceiving a child through a surrogate.
A month later, HBO premièred Boyish Girl Interrupted, her latest comedy special, in which she performs part of the show barechested, showing her cancer scars to the audience as she chose not to have reconstructive surgery after her double mastectomy.
Despite the exposure, Notaro writes, “I always considered myself a private person — both on stage and off — who made way more observations about the world around me than the one inside me.” But having used her worst personal pain as a source for laughter, Notaro is finally in her element.
I’m Just A Person starts off swinging with the first chapter, Over My Mother’s Dead Body. The pair shared a deeply close bond: In the moment that her mother died, Notaro was sitting by her bed, rubbing her feet and speaking with friend and fellow comedian Kyle Dunnigan on the phone about her. “I think my mother just died,” she said to him, realizing that she “wasn’t even crying; I was still waiting for what came next.”
Unlike others who experience great tragedy, there is no cloud of sadness engulfing Notaro or her book, as one might expect. Instead there is a sense of resolution — it’s over, what comes next? These are the words of someone who has not only told this story again and again to a crowd but also to herself, attempting to make sense of it.
“I imagined the aerial view of myself as a red target focused on top of my car, as if there was a helicopter searching for lonely people with bad news,” she writes, digesting the series of painful events that have struck her.
The red target is finally gone, and what comes next is children for Notaro and Allynne: twins via surrogate, in fact, because when it finally rained, it poured. Her next project is starring in One Mississippi, a new Amazon series based on the “crazy time” in Notaro’s life. Written and executive- produced by Notaro and Diablo Cody and executive-produced by C.K., it’s yet another mining of her past and her greatest resource.
While I’m Just A Person offers emotional padding — the meat to the skeleton of her Largo show — and more of Notaro’s deliciously subversive knack for retelling a painful story, the memoir doesn’t offer much not covered in her Netflix doc or HBO special. But it’s fair to say that if you do pick up this book it’s because you’re a fan of Notaro’s, and while it may be the same story yet again, this is a comedian who knows how to tell a story most would shy away from or not feel comfortable responding to, selling out entire shows with fans hoping to hear more of it. If you can handle tears through your laughter, give Notaro a read. Because as most great comics go, she’s a hell of a writer.