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In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks
by Adam Carolla

I approached this book with a lot of caution. As it turns out, that caution was merited.

Don't get me wrong; I'm a big fan of Adam Carolla, having listened to his radio and podcast work since the late '90s. Carolla is a funny guy, and no one in the field of comedy can quite match the accomplishments of his unique oeuvre. But he has famously declared himself an enemy of the written word, and profoundly lazy to boot. Mix those ingredients together, and you can only expect a book by that same man to be something of a disappointment.

That said, In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks is a decidedly mixed bag. As a long-time listener, I am more than familiar with many of his "greatest hits"--subjects that the Ace Man brings up again and again, a penchant for repetition that is part single-mindedness, part radio production habit. Anyone who has heard Carolla rant on perennial subjects will expect this book to rehash many of those tirades, and that expectation is met spot on. They're funny rants, mostly, but we've heard them all before. There is very little new territory covered here, and intelligent long-time followers will have trouble avoiding the feeling that they were suckered into shelling out hard earned cash for content they've already heard ad nauseum.

I avoided that pitfall by checking the book out from the library. Score one for me.

Beyond the "old hat" problem, In Fifty Years... also stands as a notorious example of self-fulfilling prophecy, and perhaps as a monument to everything that is wrong with the publishing industry.

Addressing the former, as noted above Carolla is notoriously not a fan of literature, having even gone so far as to refer to himself as illiterate. Given that starting point, it comes as no surprise that reading In Fifty Years... can be a trial for anyone who is a fan of the written word. True to the man's spoken words, the text stands as a forest of bad grammar, bad usage, poor word choice, faulty syntax, even a misspelling or two. The botched writing almost serves as a badge of authenticity; you'd expect a book Carolla wrote on his own to be this poorly written.

Except that he didn't write it on his own; Carolla has expressed copious thanks on his podcast to his associate Mike Lynch, who was so important to the production of Adam's book that, as the acknowledgements section states, the book "would never have become reality without his involvement." One suspects, on that very sound evidence, that Lynch did a lot of the heavy lifting as far as writing this book goes (and bears some of the blame for the stylistic problems). Oddly though, Lynch does not get a co-author credit here. There isn't even an "Adam Carolla (large type) with Mike Lynch (small type)" credit--just a slice of gratitude in the acknowledgements. That ungracious lack of full credit where it's due seems beneath the good guy reputation that Carolla has maintained throughout his media career.

Of course, there is an explanation for that implied slight: this book was contracted to be written because Adam Carolla is a...I almost want to gag just from typing the word..."celebrity." He has been a fixture on TV and radio for years. He is a "star" whom many have seen dancing on a very popular competition show. He has built a broad audience with his very successful podcast. Simply put, In Fifty Years... reached the printing press solely because the name on the front cover was a ready-made marketing point. Whether or not the famous author's collaborator got any credit was irrelevant right from the start. Only the celebrity factor, and how that could be used to market a book, mattered to the publisher.

That, of course, points towards that second problem noted above: what's wrong with the publishing industry. And that problem is an exclusive interest in books that will sell themselves through name recognition to an already existing market--the quality of the product is aggressively irrelevant.

One might expect an Adam Carolla book to be poorly written. But in fact, the book is not just poorly written, but poorly edited--or perhaps not edited at all. Many of the textual inadequacies of In Fifty Years... could have been easily rectified with a minor amount of careful and attentive editing. Clearly, the text as it stands shows that that did not happen. Doubtless, if the publisher were asked, the lack of editing would be explained away with the lame excuse about not wanting to dilute the author's natural voice, of wanting to retain as much as possible Carolla's speaking style in the written word.

But that bullshit just doesn't fly. Moving from audio show to written work means moving from medium to medium, a shift designed to reach a new audience. And that new audience will be, for the most part, unfamiliar with the Ace Man's idiosyncratic voice. Longtime listeners forgive Ace's verbal deficiencies. But a new audience of readers, meeting Carolla's work for the first time, will contain many who will see these poorly written pages and simply conclude that the Ace Man is an idiot. Carolla himself probably has no problem with the book's lack of editing, but a little careful revision would have served to make him look better in the readers' eyes. The author will lose some of his potential new audience, people who could have added major numbers to his listenership, because they will make a dismissive judgment about him based on that lack of careful editing.

Of course, perhaps Carolla and his publishers have no concern about growing his audience. In that case, In Fifty Years..., with its repetitive rehash of old radio rants, serves as little more than a swindle designed to preach to the already sewn up choir--and to get them to shell out money for content they've already heard over and over again.

That, then, is the dilemma delivered by In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks. What is the intention with this book? To reach new audiences? If so, the poor quality of the text undermines that goal. Or is the goal to fleece the suckers? In that case, the book will probably succeed on those terms, and the quality of the writing is irrelevant. But if so, that bodes ill for any future literary efforts by the Ace Man. A true American Genius, Abraham Lincoln, knew that you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Adam Carolla should keep that in mind as he prepares this volume's sequel--make it good, and make it new material, or the returns will diminish in a big way. In that latter case, whether or not we all turn into chicks, in fifty years few people will be paying much attention to the works of the Ace Man.