What do Burning Man, Alcoholics Anonymous, Hasidic Judaism, deaf culture, raves and stand-up comedy have in common?
They comprise the six most important chapters of Moshe Kasher’s life, and, in turn, of his new book, “Subculture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes.” In it, the stand-up comedian and recent Emmy winner presents essayistic histories of the subcultures that shaped him, drawing parallels, both said and unsaid, between six seemingly disparate communities.
“I know for sure that AA lent itself to my comedy career, because that’s where I learned to stand up in front of a crowd and use words to elicit laughter and emotion,” Kasher tells PvNew via Zoom before the book’s Jan. 30 publication. “And I know Burning Man helped develop my sense of humor and performance.”
Similarly, Kasher, whose mother is deaf , believes his experience as an American Sign Language interpreter (both in his personal and professional life) informed his comedy. “I think my processing of language and my ability to use facial expressions came from signing before I could talk,” he adds.
“Being born into a deaf world is such an interesting experience as a hearing person, because you’re at once insider and outsider. You are hearing and always will be hearing, but you’re a CODA, so you’re welcomed,” he adds, then, naturally, steers into a joke. “It’s like being born white in Wakanda, and they’re like, ‘You can hang out here, you’re a Wakandan too, but you don’t get to wear the Panther suit.’”
Kasher discusses his research process for the book (which comes 12 years after his first memoir, “Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16”) and explains how the internet killed the subculture. He also reveals the one joke he wishes he could cut from the book.
When researching the various subcultures of your life, was there a revelation you found particularly shocking?
The part that was personally, emotionally shocking to me was when I was writing about the great houses of Hasidic Judaism. I know the Skver Hasids and the Satmar Hasids because those are my family. There’s Chabad, which is the one most people know, and then the ones my family came from, then there’s the lesser houses, and then there were the dead houses — the ones that disappeared from history. There are like 20 great houses and 10 lesser houses, and there were 60 or 70 of the disappeared houses. It hit me like a ton of bricks. It’s an interesting experience being up late writing, doing historical research, and having things blow a hole through your soul. These houses disappeared not because people stopped being interested in going to those temples but because they were destroyed in Europe. They never made it to Ellis Island, they never made it out of the war. They just got blotted out and mostly forgotten.
Were you worried about trying to encapsulate the history of Judaism, which dates back more than 3,000 years, as well as your own Jewish identity, in just 40-or-so pages?
I have a degree in Jewish history, and in some alternate universe I was going to be a Jewish Studies academic, but that just never happened. I decided to go with the incredibly non-Jewish career path of stand-up comedian. I loved writing that history, and comedy has this lubricating power which allows me to deliver things and make them fun and also cheap in other ways. I can write the 3,000-year history of the Jewish people in one chapter of a book because comedy is the delivery mechanism. That chapter starts with a six-page history starting with Abraham and going to the modern day. It was daunting but also a lot of fun.
I also want to say, the Jewish history is obviously soaked in tragedy, but I think if anything this book is a really hopeful story. It’s a story of survival — for both the Jews and the deaf — and defying the odds. I don’t know if I have an optimistic view of the future, but I have an optimistic view of the past.
You mention comedy as the system by which you deliver the history in “Subculture Vulture.” As someone whose typical platform is live comedy or podcasting, were you ever worried about the humor in the book being more easily misinterpreted? Did you get notes from your editor about certain jokes that didn’t work on the page?
Definitely. If I have one weakness as a writer, it’s that I was trained as a stand-up comedian. I throw a lot of jokes at this stuff. I love the synthesis of comedy and history — I love Sarah Vowell, Bill Bryson, stuff like that — but there is actually a joke that made it all the way to publication that I regret. I wish I could take it out. It’s at the end of the AA chapter, it’s a callback to an earlier thing within this list of things I learned from AA and carry with me. [In the passage, Kasher lists valuable lessons — including “Be honest,” “Pause when agitated,” “Apologize when I hurt someone” — and, facetiously, slips in “Never admit when I cheat on my wife.”]
I remember that joke. It was a sincere passage with some sarcasm sprinkled in.
If we do another printing, I think I’ll take that joke out.
It’s interesting that normally you’d workshop comedic material in front of an audience, but with the book…
You have an audience of one. It’s your editor. I have a really great editor, Ben Greenberg at Random House, and he has a really keen comedic mind and is really smart. But writing a book is the opposite of stand-up. It’s much more meditative and monumental. It’s not feedback-based, it’s just you. I really like that, but it’s nice to be able to get onstage and know if a joke works or not.
Were there any subcultures in your life you wanted to write about that didn’t end up working out?
There are other subcultures I’ve lived in that I don’t think I have as much expertise in. I thought about doing surfing. That’d be a fun history, but I’m not a good enough surfer to justify writing an entire segment on it. I also thought, “What if I wrote a segment about white people with identity crisis, who thought that they were not white?” And then I thought, “Well, I don’t think there’s really an appetite for that in the market right now. I don’t think we’re there.”
In the AA section, you do write a little bit about going to a majority-Black school and wishing you were Black growing up.
It’s in there. But it would have been biting off more than I could chew. [Laughs] We’re not really interested in that these days.
In the epilogue, you argue that the internet has kind of killed the subculture. That idea alone seems like it could be the premise of a book.
The epilogue is maybe my favorite part of the book. There was this talk I went to by the poet Mandy Kahn, who said that culture had become “collage culture.” The DJ Girl Talk had a big mix CD [2010’s “ALLDAY”] that had all these mashups [mixing rock, hip-hop, dance and other genres], and it was the most popular mix CD of that year. It signaled the end of the walls separating cultures. By the way, there are positive parts to this — the fact that artists can borrow from one another sonically and fashion-wise and every other way is really cool. But it also signals the end of these secret worlds. A lot of the universes I wrote about you would go into almost through an accident in history. You meet a skateboarder under a bridge, now you’re a skater. You accidentally go to a punk show, now you’re a punk. Now, punk will have a techno beat and Nicki Minaj will rap on an Ed Sheeran song. There’s no separation anymore because the internet has taken culture and swallowed it whole, then regurgitated it to people who get it delivered to them.
So, the book is sort of a love letter to what was, but I hope it doesn’t come across as me shaking my fist and what it’s become. The internet has also created smaller, mini-subcultures. My friend Drennon Davis is a comedian, and he does these videos of his cat “talking.” He has these meetups with 40 or 50 people — Drennon Davis’ cat-talking community! That is a subculture that was created by the internet. It’s a teeny, mini, micro subculture. So, the internet has swallowed culture whole, but maybe it’s also created a back door to other subcultures as well. Also, listen, if you’re gay and born in a rural community, it’s great to be able to go on the internet and see, “Wow, there’s 100,000 people at a pride parade. That’s awesome.” Or if you’re the one hip-hop fan in Des Moines and find your community online, that’s opening access to people. But there was something really cool about the accidental, analog experience of stumbling from world to world that people of my specific age group had to go through.
As the internet has changed the way people consume comedy, has it in turn changed the way comics write and perform, knowing that a certain joke might get clipped on TikTok or be taken out of context in a review?
There’s no question that the internet has affected the way comedians perform — at least some comedians. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I know a lot of comics are frustrated by the “clipification” of comedy. But there’s an inevitability to the world changing and affecting the thing you love so much. It happened in the rave scene, it happened in Burning Man. Every single community I’ve been a part of has been affected by the internet. I remember this hacky joke that road comedians used to tell about cyberbullying — it’s an old guy on stage saying, “You’re getting bullied on the computer? How’s this for an idea: log off!” And it would get a laugh. But what they don’t understand is that there is no “log off.” We don’t live in “log off.” The world is the internet now. It’s all one thing. Kids are literally going to school and living their life on the internet. There’s no separation between the internet and the analog world now. It’s sad but it’s also beautiful in this other way. You can try to lament, but the only thing to do it adapt.
Now that we’re in awards season, I wanted to get your take on the monologues. With Jo Koy being decimated by the media for bombing in his Golden Globes opening, it seems like nobody wants to host these shows.
The consensus theory in the comedy community is that this is a thankless job, and the odds of failure are so high. The magnifying glass is completely unfair. All a comedian ever wants to do ever is entertain. The odds that you’re going to piss somebody off are so high, I get why people aren’t interested or excited about doing it. That’s sort of why people liked Ricky Gervais at the Globes so much. He was naked about his aspirations — he was like, “I’m here to throw some grenades.” At least he was an honest agent in that. That’s why his monologues, though infinitely more offensive than the non-Gervais monologues, are not as scrutinized — because people weren’t shocked.
Would you accept an offer to host the Globes?
Jeez. It’s hard to say no because the young comedian in me could not imagine saying no to something like that. But it’s hard to say yes because I don’t want to be under that magnifying glass.
“Subculture Vulture” feels perfectly suited for a six-episode Netflix adaptation. I was curious if you had any interest in pursuing something like that, and if you ever explored adapting your first memoir, “Kasher in the Rye,” for the screen.
I didn’t just think about scripting “Kasher in the Rye.” I sold it to Showtime and wrote my favorite script I’ve ever written in my entire career. We got very close. But as you know, you’ve never seen the show. What do they say in Hollywood? Everybody’s working on their second-favorite script. My book now, I definitely see what you’re saying. I think that would be a really fun and cool show, about a young, newly sober person with deaf parents who’s trying to make it in the rave scene and going to early Burning Man and figuring out stand-up. Who knows what the future brings, but I can definitely see this thing on screen. From PvNew’s lips to God’s ears.
