It’s time we stop calling Louis C.K. a disgraced comedian.
To be clear, the comedian’s past conduct, which includes multiple accusations that he masturbated in front of or on the phone with female comics (which he confirmed) and whose manager discouraged the victims from coming forward (which his manager denies), makes him fully deserving of the label disgraced, but now that title needs to be updated to disgraced comedian and novelist.
In November, BenBella Books released C.K.’s first novel, Ingram: The story of a destitute boy in East Texas sent to fend for himself in a strange world. It’s been called “bleak,” “inauthentic,” and “dull.”
The author was in San Francisco last week, appearing at two shows at the Masonic and a signing at Book Passage in the Ferry Building on Dec. 12 at 6 p.m. There were no public remarks planned, but attendees were told that C.K. would do a “meet-and-greet with photo opportunity” provided they purchase a book-bundled ticket.
On Friday night, an impressive crowd of 400 or so braved temperatures in the mid-40s to stand on a line snaking outside the Ferry Building for a face-to-face moment with the new author.
Despite murmurs of a protest being discussed online in the subreddit devoted to C.K., the signing was ultimately a drama-free affair. The only sign of protest, entirely silent, was a display of Gabrielle Stanley Blair’s book Ejaculate Responsibly that one imagines a Book Passage staffer might’ve delighted in leaving near the signing table.
The demographic of those who attended skewed young and male, with many using their moment with C.K. to solicit advice for their own burgeoning comedy dreams.
Dressed in a black hoodie, blue jeans, and white sneakers, C.K interacted with fans in a way that seemed genuine, including being reminded that he’d previously taken a sculpture class with one attendee. C.K.’s tour manager was also sent, with the comic’s credit card, to take orders for hot beverages for those at the back of the line outside. At least 20 people are confirmed to have taken C.K. up on his offer.
“How cool is that?” enthused Travis Klein, 24, of Oakland.
Klein had seen C.K. at the Masonic the previous night.
“He killed last night. It might have been his best stuff to date,” Klein said. “He’s very funny — one of the best — and I wasn’t going to miss this chance to see him perform,” he continued. “And now he just bought me a hot chocolate.”
If comedy is what Klein and his 400 or so fellow line waiters are looking for in Ingram, he may be in for a disappointment when he cracks the cover.
Ingram is, indisputably, an excruciating read, but more depressing than its horrendously dull prose is the fact that the work is even seeing the light of day in the first place.
Arriving nearly eight years after public revelations about C.K.’s predatory behavior, Ingram is part of the comedian’s attempt to return to the spotlight.
The C.K. of 2025 isn’t so much as moving on from his sordid past as he is accepting it as part of his overall deal. In a November interview with John Jurgensen of Wall Street Journal, C.K. defended several passages in the book that depict his young protagonist, Ingram, discovering the pleasures of stroking his “spitgot” (as the author painfully opts to phrase it). “It’s just part of life, so I didn’t see any reason to avoid it,” he said. (Sure, but can’t we avoid it?)
Beyond titling his post-scandal special Sorry (2021) while conveniently omitting any material about his misdeeds, C.K. edged towards a comeback, one might say, affording him the chance to return again to spill some ink about his favorite subject.
The novel reads like a large language model was prompted to write like Cormac McCarthy but make it as tedious and soulless as possible. The prose could be called turgid if it wasn’t so limp, as in this dismal attempt to describe the main character’s hunger that winds up sounding a lot like a bad joke your dad probably made a hundred times: “I was hungry. In fact, hungry is all I was. If you’d asked me what I was or what my name was, I would have said hungry.”
Adding to the bafflement is the fact that readers will initially suspect this novel is set during the Great Depression until it’s revealed, late in the third act, that Ingram resides in a dystopian future (he got us!) where towns are once again segregated by race and people take leisure trips to the Moon. None of this will matter in the slightest to the book’s, um, climax, which again, is all but non-existent.
With its self-serious tone and subject matter, Ingram seems wildly at odds with the interests of C.K.’s remaining fanbase who probably expected a comic novel closer to Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) than a sub-M. Night Shyamalan “twist” movie treatment written by a horny John Steinbeck. But there must be more than a few interested readers out there: The week of its release (so to speak), Ingram briefly made the (extended) New York Times bestsellers list.
Well, as they say, different strokes for different folks.
