Nate Bargatze Shared Some Hilarious Thoughts on Reading to A Literacy Foundation
Stand-up superstar and fan-favorite Saturday Night Live host Nate Bargatze is about as unlikely an author as they come, considering that the Nashville native once complained that “every book is just the most words.”
The throughline of Bargatze’s lauded career in comedy is that, despite his slow monotone voice and his insistence that intellectual pursuits have never been for him, the comedian has a much sharper mind than what his stage persona would suggest. Like many comedians, Bargatze mines ample material from what he feels to be his own educational shortcomings, but for a man who famously dropped out of community college, his literary rigor has significantly improved since those early school day mornings dissuaded him from academic endeavors
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Today marks the release of Bargatze’s first book, the self-deprecating Big Dumb Eyes: Stories from a Simpler Mind. During the publicity tour for his collection of reflections, Bargatze spoke at the 31st annual “A Celebration of Reading” summit in front of the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation, telling the esteemed group of Texas educators, “Reading is… just a hard thing. I really do want to do it. I love the idea of it.”
During the speech, Bargatze read anecdotes from Big Dumb Eyes and lamented that he didn’t have such an organization as the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy when he was developing his non-reading habits, telling the laughing crowd, "I probably could’ve used some of the help.”
In an interview with USA Today at the event, Bargatze admitted that he is as surprised as his fans at the fact that he is now a published author after mocking his own reading habits onstage for years. “I never really thought I’d be writing a book,” Bargatze said of his burgeoning literary career, warning fans not to expect War and Peace from him on his first try. “We’re not a book that’s better than anybody. We’re the one that just sits there, and it’s a fun read. And then after us you go back to the books that you’re actually going to learn something from.”
And, as Bargatze revealed on a recent TODAY appearance, he’s following through on one of his most unusual literary stances: Big Dumb Eyes features several completely blank pages for readers to take a quick break from the whole reading thing, just as Bargatze always wanted from his books. “I told them when we were writing it, I said, ‘We have to put blank pages in it,’” Bargatze recalled of the conversation he had with Grand Central Publishing. “And most publishers, they disagree with that. But I stuck true!”
“I had someone ask me, they thought I was doing a kids’ book for some reason,” Bargatze said of his improbable authorship. “I think my book reads like a kids’ book.”
Clearly, that person made the mistake of assuming that Bargatze’s Southern drawl and constant digs at his own intelligence indicated that the comedian actually is as simple as the title of his book would suggest. However, for all Bargatze’s self-deprecation, only a brilliant mind could craft the kind of comedy that made Bargatze a star — and, if Big Dumb Eyes was a kids’ book, those blank pages would have pictures.
