There's a scene in Phil Callaway's latest book where he speaks to a group in Hong Kong. He dusts off some moldy opening jokes which evoke vacant stares. After a few false starts, he begins telling stories of what a bonehead he has been in his travels (buying a knock-off Rolex in a public market, for example) and suddenly he's the Elvis of comedy.
I really wanted to like To Be Perfectly Honest: One Man's Year of Almost Living Truthfully Could Change Your Life, No Lie. I thought it had the makings of a terrific book. But to be perfectly honest (you knew I had to say it, didn't you?), TBPH:OMYOALTCCYLNL is less than the sum of its parts. It may even be less that its initials.
The premise is simple and full of potential. An editor challenged humorist Phil Callaway to live an entire year without telling a lie. The structural concept—put yourself in an awkward or ridiculously demanding situation for a year and fight your way out of it—is a well-worn path. Julie Powell's Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously and A.J. Jacobs' books The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible and The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World are recent examples of the form, but the lineage can be traced to George Plimpton's 1964 book Paper Lion and beyond.
However, To Be Perfectly Honest: One Man's Year of Almost Living Truthfully Could Change Your Life, No Lie is as labored and plodding as the title. I hoped for a slap-you-silly story of how honesty can be a dangerous thing, wrapped around a few nuggets of spiritual insight. What I got was a book that really isn't all that funny nor particularly insightful.
Don't get me wrong—Phil Callaway isn't totally without skill. Many of the anecdotes are fine, but should have been in some other book. Passages about an ailing parent are genuine and moving. Callaway is intermittently amusing, tells a good clear story, and when he describes family situations (especially with his wife), the book snaps to life. But the humor has all the bite of pabulum, and is just about as tasty.
The book sinks into the mud in its willingness to easily abandon the original provocative idea. Callaway chases rabbits so often the "honesty" theme gets hung up in the briars. I suspect the day-by-day "diary" format has something to do with this—the entries fade in and out of the promised theme like road signs in a fog. After a while, one gets the feeling that the title was expected to sell the book all by itself, with little help from the book's actual content.
I'll admit, my disappointment may be my own fault. The premise aimed my expectations for the moon, but never made it off the launch pad. After reading humorists like David Sedaris, Simon Rich, John Hodgman and Sarah Vowell, witty, sharp, each with a wicked (yes, even irreverent) sense of humor and an original point of view, I pictured a much better book than Callaway delivered. Most of the time, TBPH:OMYOALTCCYLNL acts like its prime directive is to be inoffensive—a plague that is often the downfall of Christian humor. Not that I think Christian humor requires controversy. But Christian or not, uncomfortable, toothless restraint is the kiss of death for laugh-out-loud hilarity.
Unfortunately, To Be Perfectly Honest comes apart like a Hong Kong Rolex. The Elvis of comedy hasn't just left the building; sorry to say, he never showed up.
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