December 22
Anthony Jeselnik
On this date in 1978, comedian Anthony Jeselnik was born in Pittsburgh, Pa. He set out to write the Great American Novel, earning a bachelor’s degree in English from Tulane University, but laughter intervened. Moving to Los Angeles, Jeselnik pursued stand-up, but it was not until two years into his career that he discovered his niche after delivering a joke with a dark twist.
Jeselnik began writing almost exclusively material of that ilk, adopting a deliberately offensive stage presence. Jeselnik was named one of Variety’s “10 Comics to Watch” in 2008. When his Comedy Central special premiered in 2009, Jeselnik was named one of the network’s breakout comedians of the year. That same year he worked as a writer for “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,” showcasing his stand-up there as well.
In 2010 he released his debut comedy album “Shakespeare.” Soon after he began writing for Comedy Central and roasted Donald Trump, Roseanne Barr and Charlie Sheen. In 2013 he created and hosted a show on Comedy Central, “The Jeselnik Offensive,” which aired for two seasons. His first hour-long special, “Caligula,” received critical acclaim.
Jeselnik has also had two comedy specials air on Netflix: “Thoughts and Prayers” (2015) and “Fire in the Maternity Ward” (2019). In 2018 he returned to Comedy Central with a deal that included a weekly podcast, “The Jeselnik & Rosenthal Vanity Project” featuring Gregg Rosenthal and Erica Tamposi of the NFL Network.
“I was raised Catholic. I rejected it later on. I’m an outspoken atheist now. People say, ‘Oh, it’s a negative thing to be an atheist.’ I don’t agree. I think it’s more optimistic to think that there is no God, no afterlife. I’m the only one in my family who feels this way.”
— Jeselnik, Parade magazine interview (July 2, 2013)
Compiled by Noah Bunnell; photo by CarlaVanWagoner, Shutterstock.com
© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.
Percival Everett
On this date in 1956, professor and author Percival Leonard Everett II was born to Dorothy (née Stinson) and Percival Everett at Fort Gordon (now renamed Fort Eisenhower) in Georgia, where his father was a U.S. Army sergeant.
The family moved shortly thereafter to Columbia, S.C., where his father practiced dentistry and Everett graduated from high school, then earned a B.A. in philosophy with a minor in biochemistry from the University of Miami.
After enrolling in a doctoral program at the University of Oregon in Eugene, he left after two years and received an M.A. in fiction writing in 1982 from Brown University in Providence, R.I. “Suder,” his first novel, was published in 1983. It was the first of his books published across a wide range of subjects and genres, with the American West as a recurring theme. Included as of this writing are 24 novels, four short story collections, six books of poetry and a children’s book. Everett is also an accomplished painter and jazz guitarist.
After teaching stints at the University of Kentucky, the University of Notre Dame and the University of California-Riverside, he joined the faculty at the University of Southern California in 1998, where he has served as English department chair and director of the doctoral program in literature and creative writing.
He met his second wife, Francesca “Chessie” Rochberg, a scholar of Assyrian history and astronomy at UC-Riverside. They bought an acreage near Banning Pass east of Los Angeles and raised roses, horses, donkeys and other assorted flora and fauna, including Everett’s pet crow named Jim, which he nursed back to health after it fell out of the nest.
The New York Times named his 2001 novel “Erasure” as one of the 100 best books of the 21st century and it won the 2002 Legacy Award for Fiction from the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation. His novels “Telephone” and “The Trees” won the award in 2021 and 2022. “Erasure” was adapted for the acclaimed film “American Fiction” in 2023, directed by Cord Jefferson and starring Jeffrey Wright.
Everett’s 2024 novel “James” reimagined Twain‘s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” told from the perspective of the escaped slave Jim. It was a finalist for the Booker Prize and won the Kirkus Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction.
James tells his daughter after she asks him about God setting up slavery “with them as masters and us as slaves”: “There is no God, child. There’s religion but there’s no God of theirs. Their religion tells that we will get our reward in the end. However, it apparently doesn’t say anything about their punishment. But when we’re around them, we believe in God. Oh, Lawdy Lawd, we’s be believin’. Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.”
In a 2024 interview, Everett said the book that made him fall in love with reading was Vonnegut’s ”Slaughterhouse-Five” and the book that changed the way he thinks about the novel was Laurence Sterne’s “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy” (1759). He said the Booker winner everyone should read is J.M. Coetzee’s ”Disgrace” (1999). (The Booker Prizes interview, Aug. 15, 2024)
Everett and his wife Danzy Senna, an essayist and novelist, have two sons, Henry and Miles. His three previous marriages were childless.
PHOTO: Everett at the 2024 National Book Awards in the NYU Skirball Center in Manhattan; public domain photo by Phibeatrice under CC 4.0.
“My grandfather was an atheist, my father is — was — an agnostic and I am what I call an ‘apath.’ I simply don’t
— Everett interview, François-Rabelais University Press (May 3, 2005)
care. And so, I don’t fit the stereotype of the black American church-going gospel-singing person.”
Compiled by Bill Dunn
© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.
