Nora Ephron, John Hughes, and Other Comedy Influences: Best Men at The Strand

My brother’s girlfriend– and good personal friend of mine– Mikaela came up to the city for a few weeks. We kicked it off by going to The Strand to watch author Sidney Karger in conversation with his own good personal friend, Anderson Cooper, about his latest novel Best Men, a queer romcom about two men who meet as part of a wedding party. They fall in love, hijinks ensue, and they live happily ever after from what I can tell, in proper romcom fashion. I’ll tell you one thing: Anderson Cooper is much funnier when he’s not reporting the news to me.

Cooper and Karger had a really charming conversation, striking the balance between chatting as friends and discussing his debut novel. There was much talk of Nora Ephron, John Hughes, and other comedy influences, much to my enjoyment. They commented on the ways in which queer literature has come a long way, that there is now romp and enjoyment in queer stories, and that they don’t all end with one of the characters getting AIDs. This novel is an example of that.

Krager was kind enough to answer Mikaela’s brilliant question about the lightning speed with which he churned out this book, having written it within a year.

Cooper commented on how he always believed that writing a book was the greatest thing a person could ever achieve and I realized that he’d articulated what I’d always believed myself. Writing a book *is* one of the greatest things a person can achieve since it is absurdly difficult to do, as I had the misfortune to learn.