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BIBLIOFILE Rob Delaney has penned a whopping 17,000 tweets. Stand Up Guy TWITTER COMEDY KING AND MARBLEHEAD NATIVE ROB DELANEY RELEASES HIS FIRST BOOK. BY JESSICA LANIEWSKI "Any good pithy tweet can be the tip of an iceberg. Twitter has helped me understand how individual words might elicit a certain feeling." 82 through something, you should share it. It would have been monstrous of me not to talk about it. In your book you describe growing up in New England. You once drove a launch boat, easily the preppiest of summer jobs. RD: Growing up in Marblehead was like when Odysseus is in one of the happier chapters of Homer's Odyssey; my childhood was spent exploring the water on a little boat. My first job was teaching sailing at YMCA camps and then at the Boston Yacht Club. I later got the jewel of all jobs, which was driving a launch boat. We would respond to emergencies because we could get there before the Coast Guard. It's said that writing a first book can be like birthing a child—it's painful and exhausting, but in the end you forget all about that and have another child. Do you see yourself writing another book? RD: Writing a book is harder than most things in life. It was harder than having one kid, but not two. Having two kids is way harder. When I was writing the first draft I would regularly say, "I will never write a second book," because it's so lonely. But once my publisher and editor read it and had questions, then it became fun, and I started to entertain the idea of a second book. As far as my autobiography goes, though, I'm no longer interested in myself. BC PHOTOGRAPHY BY IMEH AKPANUDOSEN/GETTY IMAGES (DELANEY) F orget Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart; the true sign of making it as a comedian these days is killing it on Twitter. With 1 million followers and counting, veteran funny man and new author Rob Delaney has reached superstar status. The graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts has racked up 17,000 tweets (he even managed to send off a tweet during our interview) and won the award for Funniest Person on Twitter from Comedy Central in 2012, thanks to daily quips such as, "When I see someone pushing a dog in a stroller I understand why the news is filled with murder." In his new memoir, Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage (Spiegel & Grau; $25), Delaney delves into his time growing up in New England—including raucous Friday night family dinners at Regina Pizzeria and his brief career as a thief (he stole cassette tapes from the now-shuttered Bradlees department store). The book was released on November 5, and Delaney performed at The Middle East in Cambridge as part of his book tour on November 7. Do you use Twitter to test out your comedic material? Rob Delaney: Any good pithy tweet could be the tip of an iceberg. The stuff I do onstage is a lot more conversational and story-based, but I think that Twitter has helped me have a better understanding of word choice and how individual words might elicit a certain feeling. On Twitter and in your book, you've been very candid about your struggle with alcoholism. Was that difficult to share? —ROB DELANEY RD: I was always an extrovert, and once I got sober and dealt with depression, it was very difficult. Success is not guaranteed. I made it through rehab and things worked out for me—and it would not have been my style to keep it to myself, since I blab so much. If I didn't incorporate it into the book, it would be out of character. If you become equipped with a skill set to get BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM 082_BC_SC_BiblioFile_Holiday_13.indd 82 11/1/13 11:15 AM