Jesse Eisenberg — the actor best known for his memorable portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network — is coming to Madison.
Conor Moran, director of the Wisconsin Book Festival, confirms that Eisenberg will appear as a late-breaking entry to the fest.
The actor/playwright/humorist will read from his new collection of essays, Bream Gives Me Hiccups, on Oct. 28 at 7:30 p.m. on the third floor of the Central Library.
Eisenberg’s off-kilter essays have been appearing in The New Yorker for several years. He experiments with form to hilarious effect, often writing in dialogue or experimenting with twisted versions of history. A Sept. 1 piece, “My Nephew Has Some Questions,” is a one-sided dialogue, containing a lifetime of philosophy and soul-searching. “Men and Dancing” is a series of imagined conversations throughout history.
The title, Bream Gives Me Hiccups, refers to Eisenberg’s “Restaurant Reviews from a Privileged Nine-Year-Old,” which are published in McSweeney’s.
This is the first line from the essay, “The Ashram and Mom:”
“Over the weekend, Mom took me to an ashram, which is a place that stressed out people go when they’re rich.”
And here, the nine-year-old talks about his school’s new “healthy lunch initiative.”
“The first thing was called ‘Arugula Salad with Roasted Beetroots.’ This was like a salad, but instead of lettuce and tomatoes, there were bitter leaves that made us all want to puke right there at our tables and beets, which are dark red balls that kind of look like bloody feces and which I have recently discovered produces just that.”
In addition to acting in such noteworthy films as The Squid and the Whale, Adventureland and Zombieland, Eisenberg will play a super-villain son of Lex Luthor in the 2016 Batman vs. Superman flick.
