![]() But the New Yorker humorist whom Rich most reminds me of is Frank Sullivan, whose satirical pieces expertly punctured Manhattan’s social landscape. “The fact that The New Yorker would let me publish a story about a talking condom or a lovesick caveman is incredible to me.” The magazine has a long history of publishing unconventional, idiosyncratic humor, going back to James Thurber, in its early days. “My stories are usually totally irrelevant,” he said. When he was starting out as a humor writer and began pitching to The New Yorker, Rich was surprised that his esoteric subjects found an audience. Screenwriting, of course, is quite different from writing fiction. “I always imagined that if my ancestors could meet me, they would find my life frivolous, immoral.” Part of the appeal of “Sell Out” is how Rich subverts expectations so that the reader begins to identify with the old-fashioned Herschel rather than his modern descendant (who, it must be said, is a bit of a nightmare). ![]() ![]() “I’ve lost touch with so many aspects of my heritage,” he said. The role of Judaism in daily life is a recurring theme in Rich’s work. My great-grandparents probably endured more in one day than I have in my entire life.” When Herschel encounters his great-great-grandson in “Sell Out,” he is indeed baffled by his relative’s laissez-faire attitude toward life, work, and, especially, faith. In contrast, my life has been outrageously privileged and easy. “My ancestors were hardscrabble Eastern European Jews who immigrated to the United States to escape from oppression and poverty. “The story was born out of a lot of self-loathing,” he told me recently. Rich began writing “Sell Out” when he was twenty-seven and working at Pixar. He has published nine books, including “ Spoiled Brats,” and is the creator of the TV comedies “Man Seeking Woman” and “ Miracle Workers.” He has published thirty pieces in the magazine, including one of my personal favorites, “ Guy Walks Into a Bar.” Rich was one of the youngest writers ever hired on “Saturday Night Live,” where he wrote for four years before joining Pixar as a staff writer. Rich began contributing humor pieces to The New Yorker in 2007. “This place has these amazing gluten-free ginger thingies.”) It is the interactions between Herschel and his offspring that provide the novella and movie their off-center humor. ![]() (“How about Thai fusion?” the younger man suggests, during their first meeting. The twist is not the time travel but the fact that, once Herschel awakens, he encounters his great-great-grandson, who personifies all of the bourgeois hipster qualities that would be anathema, one imagines, to an earnest immigrant from the early nineteen-hundreds. The novella centers on Herschel Greenbaum, an immigrant worker at a pickle factory who one day falls into a giant vat and is miraculously preserved in brine. The series has now been adapted into a film, “ An American Pickle,” which was released Friday and features both Seth Rogen and a screenplay adapted by Rich. How would you survive? What artisanal profession would you pursue? And, most important, what would you think of your modern-day descendants? That is the premise of Simon Rich’s comic novella “ Sell Out,” which appeared in four installments in The New Yorker at the beginning of 2013. Imagine falling asleep in Brooklyn and waking up a hundred years later to find the borough completely changed.
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