A Very Punchable Face

Colin Jost's memoir traces his unlikely path from a speech-delayed child on Staten Island to head writer and co-anchor of Weekend Update, the fake-news desk segment on Saturday Night Live (SNL), weaving together stories of childhood injuries, academic ambition, professional anxiety, and hard-won self-discovery.

Jost opens by explaining that writing has always come more naturally to him than speaking. He could not speak until nearly four years old, and his parents sent him to a speech therapist at Staten Island University Hospital who helped him form his first words. The frustration of that early silence left a lasting mark: Jost describes himself as someone who lives inside his own head, constructing conversations mentally that rarely make it out loud. Performing and writing became his outlets for reaching other people.

He grew up on Staten Island, New York City's most Italian borough, where his family had lived since at least 1890, with his parents next door to his grandparents and relatives across the same block. When Jost finally learned to speak, he sounded like a character from The Sopranos, an accent he later trained himself to shed. He describes the island with affection and ambivalence, noting its tight-knit immigrant communities alongside a voting record that went nearly 70 percent for Donald Trump, and admits he has always felt he does not fully belong anywhere.

Childhood on Staten Island was physically perilous. Jost recounts six facial injuries sustained over the course of his life, from slamming into a metal table in kindergarten to being clawed by his younger brother Casey during a backyard fighting game to being struck by another surfer's board at age 33. These episodes establish a pattern of reckless momentum followed by blunt consequences that recurs throughout the book.

At 14, Jost gained admission to Regis, a prestigious free Catholic high school in Manhattan that required a 90-minute commute each way by bus, ferry, and subway. His grandfather, a fireman who worked four jobs, impressed upon him the value of education, telling him to "Protect your brain!" Jost joined the school's Speech and Debate team, competing in events including Original Oratory, a prepared persuasive speech he treated essentially as a stand-up comedy set, and Lincoln-Douglas Debate, a one-on-one argumentation format. He qualified for national championships in five categories, finding validation in speech competition after starting life unable to talk at all.

Jost arrived at Harvard and spent a disorienting freshman year rowing crew alongside the Winklevoss twins, two Harvard students later famous for suing Mark Zuckerberg over the founding of Facebook, before falling into depression. By summer he needed a community, and he found it at the Harvard Lampoon, a humor magazine and semi-secret society housed in a castle-like building financed by media magnate William Randolph Hearst. Jost wrote 30 pieces his first semester and was rejected, then 50 the next and was rejected again. After 18 months, he finally made the staff, calling it the happiest moment of his life. He published more than 100 pieces and was elected president in his junior year, learning that comedy could be a career, a revelation for someone from a family of firefighters with no connection to show business.

The memoir's emotional center is the chapter about Jost's mother, Dr. Kerry Kelly, who served as chief medical officer for the New York City Fire Department for 24 years, the first woman in the role. Jost's first day back at college for sophomore year was September 11, 2001. His mother drove to lower Manhattan, treated the first firefighter to die that day, and survived the collapse of both towers. She set up triage centers, only to learn that 343 firefighters had been killed. In the years that followed, Dr. Kelly testified before the U.S. Senate, helped secure funding for 9/11 first responders, and created counseling programs, retiring in March 2018.

After graduating with no job prospects, Jost moved back to his parents' house, then took a night-shift editing position at the Staten Island Advance before quitting after five months to pursue comedy. He applied to every television show he could find; only the Late Show with David Letterman responded, and he was not hired. He took a writing job on a Nickelodeon cartoon called Kappa Mikey before an SNL associate producer called. After interviews with head writers Tina Fey and Andrew Steele and a meeting with creator Lorne Michaels, he was hired and told to start the next day.

Jost was 22 when he began at SNL. He got a sketch on air in the first slot after the monologue on his very first show, a rare achievement for a new writer. He describes his early years as the happiest of his professional life, with senior colleagues mentoring him: Head writer Seth Meyers helped rewrite sketches, cast member Amy Poehler invited him to collaborate, and producer Erin Doyle advocated for him with Lorne. In 2013, Jost became co-head writer, a role he compares to being promoted from monkey to assistant zookeeper at a zoo he does not own.

The transition to Weekend Update in 2014 proved harrowing. Jost's first eight episodes alongside co-anchor Cecily Strong were a blur of fear and paralysis. Critics savaged him, the show lost 1.5 million viewers, and he considered quitting. That summer, he was forced to audition for the job he already held, and he and Michael Che were eventually paired as co-anchors. Che proved essential, challenging inherited processes and rejecting mediocrity. Cast member Leslie Jones also helped, forcing Jost out of his head with her energy. A turning point came when Jost decided he would rather be fired for doing what he believed in than for diluting his voice.

Between extended accounts of his SNL career, Jost intersperses comic misadventures. A summer in St. Petersburg, Russia, on a grant to translate a short story devolved into solitary depression; he returned with none of the translation completed. He broke his hand at a bachelor party the night before a career-important taping, was pelted with tomatoes by French teenagers in Paris and with potato salad by Czech teenagers in Prague, and contracted a parasitic infection in Nicaragua involving botfly larvae. He recounts the week Trump hosted SNL in November 2015, noting that Lorne's greater worry was that Trump might drop out of the race before airdate. He describes co-hosting the 2018 Emmy Awards with Che, which Variety called the "Worst Emmys Ever." He also traces his development as a stand-up comedian, from early bar shows to opening for comedian Dave Chappelle at Radio City Music Hall.

In the epilogue, Jost identifies his deepest fear: mediocrity. He has pursued multiple projects as an emotional escape hatch, avoiding the risk of discovering his best is not good enough. When he asked his father whether he regretted leaving a beloved factory job for a role that fell apart, his father said it was the best decision he ever made, because it led to 25 years of teaching. After 15 years at SNL, Jost writes that he wants a life compatible with the family he is building with his wife, Scarlett Johansson, whom he first met when she hosted the show during his first season. He describes SNL as highly addictive and says he is preparing to leave in the near future, adding that whatever comes next could be better in ways he never expected.