Colin Jost's memoir makes him appear to be a solid dude: funny, self-effacing and a good storyteller

Slate

"On-camera Jost is an impenetrable wall of centrist politics and apparent self-satisfaction," Willy Staley writes on the SNL "Weekend Update" co-anchor's new memoir A Very Punchable Face. "That persona is a foundational part of the current 'Update' dynamic: earnest, cautious, privilege-oozing Jost vs. laid-back and eye-rolling—but prickly—Michael Che. Book Jost is different. For one, he possesses interiority, quite a bit of it in fact, and this quality can frustrate even the most committed hater. He takes pains to convince the reader that his path wasn’t as preordained as it seems, but was actually psychologically and emotionally trying. And, as the Russian sojourn suggests, he presents as someone with a measure of artistic integrity, however deeply buried it may be under his thick lacquer of jockish contentment. In fact, he even blames his arrogant on-camera demeanor on his raging insecurities, which prevented him from feeling present in his early 'Weekend Update' days: 'I would get nervous and my reaction was to smile or laugh on camera,' he writes, 'which was unnatural and probably came across as smug.' Though the pro-Jost politics of Punchable are obvious, this doesn’t render his pleading any less earnest. A true snake would never turn belly-up like this."