Chapter 95: Bess Kalb on kvetching over koans and kindling comic kinship

<p >“Why are women, who have the whole male world at their mercy, not funny? Please do not pretend to know what I am talking about.”</p> <p > </p> <p >So begins a 2007 Vanity Fair article by Christopher Hitchens called “Why Women Aren’t Funny”.</p> <p > </p> <p >College student Bess Kalb picked up a copy of the magazine, read it on her train ride from New York to Rhode Island, and, in her words, “became radicalized.” She decided then and there to drop out of school and become a comedy writer. She scored an internship with The Colbert Report and then...