Celebrating the Colbert Bump
One of the many people who helped say goodbye to Stephen Colbert during his finale show on Thursday was an author he often refers to after making an indelicate remark, “Once again, my apologies to Doris Kearns Goodwin” as well as an author he’s had on the show three times, George Saunders.
Colbert has been very, very good to books and authors, from shining a light on Amazon’s strong-arm tactics against publisher Hachette to featuring an average of two authors per week on the show.
New York magazine dubs him “Late Night’s Most Passionate Book-Nerd,” in an article that gives insight on what it was like to get the Colbert treatment. Poet Billy Collins compares it to getting a spinal tap, ” … it’s actually completely painless, but the anticipation of it is nerve-racking.”
The big question is whether the book nerd in Colbert will make the transition to broadcast TV when he replaces David Letterman on CBS’s Late Night.