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Comment by defen | Hacker News Reader

It's worth noting that Norm was a committed fabulist (I say this as his #7 fan). He would lie about anything and everything, to the point that it's impossible for an outsider to tell what is the real Norm Macdonald and what is the character "Norm Macdonald". He has at least 2 "meeting Bob Dylan" stories that are completely different.

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The joke here is that this is something he only told by text, that was initially on his Twitter account, and it was a long-winded, typed story that ended with "don't be fooled by typists."

His "I'm a deeply closeted gay man" bit was hysterical. He had Larry King completely confused when he did it in one of his interviews.

See also: Moore's Paradox.

Note that the bit could also have alluded to the fact that he was a deeply closeted cancer patient. There's almost a decade of Norm content that has to be totally recontextualized.

Two things that indicate for me the fabulism.

  1. Book of Job favorite book?  Not impossible but. ...
  2. References to the "original" Book of Job.  No such think AFAIK.
  3. The three friends in the story match the three others in the book of Job.
  4. Elihu possibly matches the old man with the funny story.

due to the seemingly incomplete ending of the book of job, many people suspect the original ending was too extreme and was omitted later. how extreme and in what direction has been debated for a long time.

I’ve known a few people like this and I always got the feeling that it was a defense mechanism and they were deeply afraid of people finding out who they really are as a person.

I think it's a different story when you're a professional comedian.

I think you misunderstand the art of storytelling.

It's not about trying to give an accurate historical account, the focus is primarily entertainment.

It's been like this for thousands of years.

To the great frustration of Historians.

The trick for that is to realise that what actually happened millennia ago isn't really too important most of the time, and that yarns and fables reveal extremely important cultural information beyond what could be gleaned from a dry factual account.

Hell, even in the modern era there's loads of things that absolutely unequivocally did not happen, and everyone understands and agrees with that, yet collectively goes "but it's better if we pretend it did though".

There's some old adage about truth and good stories...

I’m actually writing a book about this in the context of MMORPGs and the generation of “real” story and narrative. Can I reproduce this comment, it’s just too on the money to ignore.

I know this is a weird question, but I’ve been having fun playing around with the idea of exposing the workflow and research behind the book as opposed to restating context from others (and limiting my area of generation to the novel arguments.)

I’d read that book. Can a sign up for news on its release somewhere?

> Can I reproduce this comment

Sure.

Except when the fabulists are historians. Have you ever read Herodotus? It’s hilarious.

Norm was an entertainer, yet a very private person. I half think all of his misleading was an attempt to keep people from knowing him too well. The other half thinks it was just a joke to him...like his age. Every time he mentioned his age it was incorrect in one direction or another.

We're talking about a guy who didn't even tell anyone (that we know of) that he was dying of cancer. He went so far as to say that doing so would be narcissistic, as it only burdens other people. Pretty interesting take I think.

I could be generously described as a fabulist when talking amongst friends and I definitely just view it as mental practice. Being forced to think on your feet on a regular basis is a great way to improve your public speaking ability, your creativity, and your general knowledge (as you need to learn and retain all kinds of nonsense to come up with some plausible-sounding excuse for whatever absolute bullshit you last said).

That it muddies the waters of "who I really am as a person" is probably true, but that's mostly just an unintended side effect. It's just that my real person is definitely way less entertaining than a well-constructed yarn or joke.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story"

Reminds me of Frank Abagnale, Jr. ('Catch me if you can') who despite making up the story of his life is actually a security consultant and has made millions out of his 'life story' https://whyy.org/segments/the-greatest-hoax-on-earth/

I’ve always wondered about this after seeing him recite his story a couple of times. A talk for Google is on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU81p6RN6b8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEVjYb5HkG0

Yeah that’s why everyone says now “I didn’t even know he was sick” – Norm couldn’t really tell anyone even if he had wanted. No one would believe him. I also clearly remember him saying “I’m 68 years old now” in one of his standup, getting a round of applause in return.

That happened with Andy Kaufman, too — long after he had passed, many people maintained that the cancer was a long-con put-on and he was in fact still alive.

Norm MacDonald made a dumb joke where "I didn't even know he was sick" was the punchline. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVswkvCK6_0

This is not true.

Norm has said publicly in a radio interview that he thought that talking about cancer in a stand up act was the height of narcissism.

In regards to Norm's age, Norm incorrectly listing his/others' ages has been a recurring bit over the past three decades in many, many appearances in both his standup sets as well as television appearances. It's a meta joke poking fun at the idea that the specific age even matters.

if you listen to the conan podcast where they reminisce about norm, the producer indicates that norm actually did stay with bob dylan and hang out at his place. so this could be true and removed at dylan's request. what's up in the air is whether or not the producer got his info from norm / real events, or twitter/entertainment news...

This was the point of his book (one of?) that he wanted to tell some stories but probably legally couldn’t, so he sprinkled some truths in and called the whole thing made up. It’s pretty practical way to be a celebrity IMO.

I asked him about this once. The primary reason it was structured the way it was, was that he wanted to write a novel but couldn't get any publishers to take him seriously as an author. They only wanted a memoir, so he published a metafictional one.

He also claimed at one point on twitter to be writing a novel under a pen name. Wonder if that's true and if it'll ever be outed, if so.

Similarly, he once met 'with the world's greatest novelist', 'He sees noone', but wouldn't say who: https://twitter.com/normmacdonald/status/899367320006443008?...

It could've been Thomas Pynchon or it could've been Cormac McCarthy, and now we might never know.

https://twitter.com/normmacdonald/status/953794118139826176 (Terence Keane was the "ghostwriter" of his novel)

There's no reason to doubt the veracity of his story. As Norm has said before: "It’s not facts, but it’s truth."

It's like he understood how the Internet would work, before there was an Internet. :)

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