Girl Logic, Iliza Shlesinger

As much as stand-up has changed over the years, one of its staples is still the observational comedian. The sharpest of these performers do more than watch people and make it wacky; they think about what they see. Sometimes at one end of that process is enough coherent thought that a clever and talented person can present it as a book. In 2017, comedienne Iliza Shlesinger distilled some of her work from her first decade working into just such a volume, Girl Logic.

One of the key themes of Shlesinger's comedy has been the way that men and women think differently and process situations differently. This isn't necessarily new ground, but as she explored she tried to highlight and examine some of the reasons women do and think that way. In Girl Logic, she digs deeper than comedy specials and standup routines allow and with some more directed purpose. As Shlesinger sees it, some of the "girl logic" comes from the biological differences between men and women. Even though modern civilization has smoothed some of the circumstances that make those differences stand out, human beings have been the way they are for most of their history and the old habits resurface easily.

But some of the "girl logic" also comes from pressures society places on women to conform themselves to preselected or predefined roles. So sometimes women will make decisions that men will not understand, and that even women themselves may decide make little sense when they reflect on them from a distance. But according to the girl logic those decisions make perfect sense.

Girl Logic itself is pretty heavily autobiographical as Shlesinger connects the dots between what her experience has taught her and what she has reflected. It's a book by a comedienne, so a reader's not going to find a rigorously argued philosophical treatise even though it's clearly the product of an intelligent person who likes to think about things. The fact that it also drew from her business does make the book funny, even if people who are familiar with her comedy routines will have heard a lot of the material before.

Some of the extrapolated additional material is as funny as her regular material but some of it isn't, and not all of the biographical recollection works at the same level.

Anyone who follows Shlesinger knows she's clearly one of the harder-working people in show business, branching out into acting, show production, podcasting and probably several other fields that I've missed. Girl Logic shows that she can manage a book, although it could have benefited from a more rigorous construction and a more ruthless trimming eye.