Kevin Lux is a twenty-two-year-old comedy writer from Luxembourg. He writes comedy articles about all sorts of subjects and is always looking for different ways to make people laugh with his words.
He studies philosophy at the University of Luxembourg, his choice of studies motivated by a fascination with the way philosophers look at the world.
Interview: Kevin Lux, Comedy Writer
Tell us more about you and your love for Comedy.
The reason why I love comedy so much is that it is the only craft that is solely devoted to making people laugh. And what makes laughter so special is that it’s an entirely involuntary, uncontrollable response. Whether or not you want to, you laugh. You can try to control your laughter once it is there, but it is quasi-impossible to stop yourself from cracking up when you find something really funny.
Then there’s also the fact that laughter is an incredibly powerful means of catharsis. There’s nothing that distracts from negative thoughts, or any thoughts for that matter, quite like laughter does. It’s just not possible to be unhappy when you’re laughing. You may be unhappy just before and a while after laughing. But, for a couple of seconds at least, your thoughts do not dictate how you feel, and that is one of the main reasons why comedy has such a special place in my heart.
Can you tell us more about your book? Where can we find it?
I’ve published two books so far (a third one is on its way). They’re both part of a series entitled Puerile, Possibly Satirical, and each book consists of a handful of comedy articles. To give you an idea of the sort of things I write about, here are all the topics I covered in my most recent book: Sigmund Freud, T-shirts, chocolate addiction, Quidditch, otherkins, The Matrix, Buddhism, reality TV, TED talks, WD-40, breasts, a dog, and escalators.
I hate to come across as self-congratulatory, but I really think I’ve nailed it with the series title. If you read my articles, you will find a fair amount of masturbation jokes, but I like to think all the puerility is pretty decently counterbalanced with more mature, satirical considerations of societal and political matters.
You can find the books on Amazon (both paperback and Kindle versions are available).
Would you mind sharing a high, a low or something special you experienced writing this book?
For the sake of keeping this interview light-hearted, I thought I’d share a positive experience.
The biggest high was definitely the first time someone told me how much they had been laughing about something I’d written. That experience was both mind-boggling and unbelievably rewarding. It wasn’t just that they thought my writing was good, but it actually made them laugh. I caused within them this curious bodily response I described above. That was just amazing to me. All of a sudden, not writing had stopped being an option.
English is also my fourth language. The fact that I seem to appreciate the complexities of the language to the extent that I can manipulate it in a way that triggers laughter in others makes me incredibly happy.
What advice would you give a new writer?
Although I am still a relatively inexperienced writer myself, I think I do have some valuable advice to give, which is: [tweet_dis]If you want to be a writer, write.[/tweet_dis] You will not get better at writing unless you write. Writing, in this respect at least, is no different from any other craft or activity. Improving requires doing.
As for finding your voice, I tend to think that the best path to self-discovery is to read as many books as you can. You need to learn about different styles of narrative and writing. Quite often when exposing yourself to others’ work, you end up thinking “This is great, but wouldn’t it be funny if…?” Or “I really like this, but I think the story would be more interesting if…”. That’s where you begin to create something that is authentically yours.
Besides writing, what do you enjoy most? Can you tell us something about what you do outside of writing?
Well, I read one of your other interviews as preparation, and the interviewee answered this question by saying she enjoyed eating out. And I was going to agree, but then it turned out what she meant was going to restaurants.
The serious answer is that I spend most of my spare time talking to my girlfriend, playing guitar, reading, and watching comedy (shocking, I know). I also like cooking and going for long walks. Nothing too exciting really, but there you go.
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