“The problem of writing about comedy is that it’s like trying to hold a gas,” Conan O’Brien told John Ortved during an interview for “The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History” (Faber and Faber). “The tighter you squeeze, the more it dissipates.”
Despite that warning — and the refusal of many key figures behind the series to cooperate with him — Mr. Ortved set out to write an inside look at the longest-running comedy series in American television history, which has just begun its 21st season. Mr. Ortved, 29, a self-described “comedy nerd,” who says he likes to laugh “more than the average person,” first pitched the idea of an oral history of the show when he was a 26-year-old editorial associate at Vanity Fair.”
Continue Reading...