David Remnick: Now, sex jokes have been around since forever. You may know the old one about the women who decide to withhold from their men until they knock off fighting a war, the Peloponnesian War. The men get in a huff, they walk around and let's say an extended state of agony, and finally, they cave in. The war ends a great celebration ensues. That's the plot of the comedy Lysistrata, a play by Aristophanes from 411 BC. It's a pretty great political joke, political and sexual at the same time. Now, a few millennia later, comedian Jacqueline Novak works a similar groove, but she's created something entirely original.

Her debut on Netflix is a show called Get on Your Knees. It's a comedy special sure, but not at all a string of setups and punchlines. You can get that anywhere. Novak's performance is a rant. It's blazingly fast, full of illusions and sly jokes and political potshots that go by so quickly that you'll sometimes miss a few of them and want to watch again. It's about sex, power, the dilemmas of women, the vanities of men, not to mention the absurdities of anatomy.

Jacqueline Novak: Well, it's tender, it's responsive, you know it's like-- it springs up under certain conditions. That's why I think has the soul of an artist. It sees something that intrigues it, sort of-- it fills with inspiration. It is a filling to me. It is a filling to me much more than it is a erection. I think erection's a little architectural for what's happening there. I don't think anyone should go in that building, I don't think it's safe. It's not up to code. Unlike a building it doesn't topple it withers, it dies on the vine. It blooms and it withers.

David Remnick: Novak is deeply aware of the embarrassments that go along with sex and of just being alive, being human, and that really came through when we spoke. The narrative core of her show is an attempt at oral sex, and yet, I wouldn't call it raunchy, not in the usual comedy way. There's barely an F-bomb to be heard. Nevertheless, the work is about sex, and there's some slang that isn't bleeped on our podcast, just so you know.

For an hour plus there's more material crammed into this space than I would think any other comedian's two hours or three hours, and it has to be something that you wrote and wrote and worked and worked and rewrote and rewrote. What's the precedent for this? I can't think of an exact or even remotely exact precedent for you. Who are your heroes in this, or who are you looking toward, or are you just dangling out there on your own?

Jacqueline Novak: Well, I always wanted to be like Chris Rock. I wanted to stock the stage and to have a rabid enthusiasm about things that I've desire to desperately communicate with other people.

David Remnick: How did you begin to conceive it and construct it?

Jacqueline Novak: It comes out of me trying to take a huge swing, like funny girl going in like Mr. Ziegfeld, here I am. Then could I do this thing that's this blowjob show, but then it's this other thing or this other thing, but can I still convince him I'm doing standup? I'm very consumed with, I guess, being understood, just in a core wound way or something like that.

David Remnick: Were you concerned that what you were doing before was too limited or derivative or anything like that and this is the real you, and I'm going to try to hit it over the wall.

Jacqueline Novak: The late-night set, for example, you're this guest. To me, it feels like, "Okay, I got to go out. I'm going to sing a little tune in the tradition of standup comedy." There's something satisfying and fun about doing it on its exactly its own terms versus almost, I don't know, going out there and being a star in five minutes in this ragged sort of way that it's like there's something in me that wants to fulfill the assignment.

David Remnick: Was there a moment where you thought of a line, an idea, a word, anything that you go, "Ah, that's what this is going to be about, and that's why it's going to be both funny and original."

Jacqueline Novak: In college, I wrote an essay, and the essay was very much elements of this narrative of going from remembering this first time that I heard about the blowjob, and then my evolving thoughts about it through the years. That in combination with standup and things I've been working on in the standup context in a very simplistic way like, "Okay, I've stumbled on doing these jokes about the penis, which I still, I don't even like saying it." I'm like, "I can't even believe that I've ended up there." That is not the plan. When other people make a joke about the penis or something, I'm like, aargh, I don't mean to be talking about these things.

David Remnick: How many times did you perform it before the Netflix taping?

Jacqueline Novak: I wish I knew this number. Because it's like I remember getting to 100 shows back at during the first run, but then I toured it and that was probably another 50 shows. Then I did another run, so that was probably another 100 shows.

David Remnick: Up to 300.

Jacqueline Novak: I weirdly don't know. I guess someone could do the math. I'm like, 1,000, or is it 260? No clue.

David Remnick: I noticed that you wear a uniform for this show. That's not necessarily your usual uniform. You wear jeans, a baggy gray T-shirt, and sneakers. In other performances you've dressed up more. What was behind that decision?

Jacqueline Novak: It was the attempt to completely neutralize, and you're going to never neutralize the body or the fetal form or anything. It just made sense to where the thing that let me be as close to a mind for me, which is-- that might be something else for someone else, but for me jeans, a t-shirt, sneakers, I basically forget my body, which is the goal.

David Remnick: You want us to as well.

Jacqueline Novak: I take the stage, you show up, you get to look, and fair enough, fair enough, but it is a nightmare for an intellectual like myself. No, I like to keep it moving on stage because I know how you people operate. I stand still for too long. You see something you like, you take a mental snapshot, who knows what you'll do with it later. I prefer to keep things moving. Keep them blurry. Thank you very much. Try to take a mental snapshot of it. Nothing but a gray blur. Simple self-preservation.

David Remnick: What's it like to perform it? I finished watching it a second time. I thought this must be physically and mentally both exhilarating, but exhausting. Really hard to do.

Jacqueline Novak: There's a sense of filling myself up, gearing up, winding myself up, and then letting it all unfurl and left with nothing at the end. It would be lightly fasting during the day, but trying not to have nothing, not to be completely depleted by the time, but nervous. Just the nervous thing, and then ritual meal after, which is just the greatest. Such a huge part of the physical experience of the show.

No, no, you need to just do it. Well, you're not a 'just do it' person. Do you even listen to yourself? I don't care. I don't care if you're an overthinker who wishes she had a second mouth to narrate her every experience. Everyone'll know I know she knows. It's about jingle, jangle in this life. Awareness, awareness. No, you need to find the way. Well, Nietzsche said there is no way, there's only my way. Then find Nietzsche's way. Then find your way. I have to find a way.

David Remnick: Let's talk about the speed. There's obviously an idea behind the speed. I think you paused for breath twice to grab the most spartan glass of water off a little teeny shelf in the back of the theater.

Jacqueline Novak: I opted for the shelf.

David Remnick: It's just nothing.

Jacqueline Novak: I struck the stool and opted for the shelf.

David Remnick: What's the thinking about the speed because I think for some listeners it can be too fast. You're missing stuff the way you might-- a complicated piece of music.

Jacqueline Novak: Well, it worked for me as a live show in that people would come back and go, or after they'd say, "I want to read it or something." I do think it basically comes out of some version of insecurity. It's, "You didn't like this. Well, don't worry. I'm moving off it." It's like we got to get through this because I have a lot to say. I have this grand theory of everything in my mind that I'm building towards, and in order to get you there I have to take you through this journey with this specific thing because I need to give you these details.

Along the way, wait, I need to explain. You probably think, I think this about this and I need to explain, I actually think this, about this. There's some compulsion in there. I need to be tilted forward into the wind running. I'm leaning against the wind. It's like I'm using all of my struggles or my focus stuff like, "Ah, don't interrupt me, I won't be able to hold the train of thought. I can't look at you, I just have to keep moving or drown or whatever."

I'm letting those flaws, struggles, whatever. I'm allowing them and letting those be perceived as my style. It'd almost be like, "Oh, well, your style is neurotic." It's like, "No, I think I'm preaching." The neurotic is just coming in against my intentions. It's not like I wore a neurotic hat because I thought wouldn't it be fun to be a neurotic act or something? I don't even say I'm neurotic, just as an example.

David Remnick: Jacqueline, you spend at least 20 minutes talking about the penis and at one point call it, and I love this, a drama queen.

Jacqueline Novak: The penis is the sensitive. The penis is the nag. The penis is the drama queen. I mean, the ultimate drama queen. Just one minute, life of the party, and then the very next just flopped over and sulking on the fainting couch-- that is the inner thigh, just waiting for someone to notice that frankly, she's upset.

It really comes down to my obsession with how things we take for granted like metaphor, and in language, our choices, even if made unconsciously and by the group over time. That is just compelling to me. I have a permanent irritation with the way that it's forgotten that those were choices. That everything's literary in some way. I'm talking about this irritation that I was unable to totally understand at the time, but looking back, I can go, "Okay, I was expected to accept this idea of the penis as this just male, this fearsome object."

I wasn't able to quite realize that contradiction at the time. It's like more later, I'm like, "Yes." I felt like I was expected to act like the penis was this one thing, while also doing the opposite thing. I was also dealing with this serious fear of the toothy blowjob and it's like, "Wait, this thing that I'm being expected to do is like putting it at risk massively. It is not strong." It's the one part on whatever the boyfriend, in my case, that I don't want to accidentally elbow. It's literally the tender area. It's weird.

David Remnick: Carrie Batten, who wrote a wonderful profile view in The New Yorker recently said this, "Shame is the root of most comedy, but Novak prefers to grapple with shame's more free-spirited and familiar cousin: embarrassment."

Jacqueline Novak: Yes. I enjoy identifying embarrassment. I've always felt like I have a meter for it, a really sensitive ear for embarrassment. What's the word? When people have-- oh, perfect pitch. They can hear it, the ear. Anyway. I've always felt like just this, oh, that's embarrassing, and let me tell you why. In the context of the show, when I do this, all the energy I've expended to coddle your ego, so to speak, poeticize your flaws, that's on me, I did that, I did that. I enjoyed it even.

David Remnick: A lot of comedians or at least some comedians, lately have been obsessed with cancel culture. They see as a burden, or at least they're obsessed with the sense that it's harder to tell jokes. Now you hear this with Ricky Gervais, you hear it with Dave Chappelle, and is that an issue for you or some subjects?

Jacqueline Novak: No.

David Remnick: No, tell me about that.

Jacqueline Novak: I just think it's like we're artists, we're fine. You know what I mean? To me, choosing to make art of any kind is this self-appointment, no one's asking you to do it. It's weird for me to get into a mindset as though you're owed any comfort. It's not like you were forced into being an artist and the conditions aren't what we were promised. That's never the case. That's how I feel.

David Remnick: Did you think they feel critique of Dave Chappelle was and is wrongheaded or legit? When it comes to trans jokes and all--

Jacqueline Novak: To me, it's all just try. Despite being willing almost to talk about my own comedy, there's something to me commenting outside of comedy about comedy in this way, I'm very resistant to it.

David Remnick: Why is that?

Jacqueline Novak: It's just then I'm no longer the artist. I guess anything where it's like it used to be easier to be a X or Y kind of artist or something like that, whatever it is. It's like, "What? What are we talking about here?" It's not a job anyone's guaranteed, it's acting like the culture is responsible for the artist's experience. It doesn't even make sense to me.

David Remnick: Jacqueline, there's a part of the show where you compare the men in your life to toddlers, miming the act of placing bumpers around the house that they don't injure themselves. Male fragility is a big theme. The idea that men need to think of ourselves as potent and impressive, and we'll have a meltdown if anybody suggests otherwise.

Jacqueline Novak: I completely own that it's a projection. It was really important to me and John Early when we were working on the show-

David Remnick: John Early was a collaborator of yours in developing it.

Jacqueline Novak: In that section where I'm saying, "I do this and I do this, and I bend over backwards to make sure that you don't feel embarrassment or whatever," I don't actually like that. I don't want to come out here and stand up and say, "Male fragility." I'm really not trying to do that, but it happens sort of. Any headline about the show if it said something about male fragility, I'd be like, "No," or if it were like trolls the penis, I'd be like, "No." It's like any of these statements, and I always feel this way, it's like if you could say what the thing meant, you wouldn't have had to say the thing. It's in the form.

David Remnick: If you could summarize it, you wouldn't be--

Jacqueline Novak: Then why write a show? Yes. The summary is this lie that maybe gets people to go then experience it, and experiencing it hopefully in all of its tensions and-

David Remnick: Oh, that's well said. Yes.

Jacqueline Novak: That sends them back into the fray where it complicates again. Yes, that's really it.

David Remnick: Jacqueline Novak, thank you so much.

Jacqueline Novak: Thank you.

David Remnick: Jacqueline Novak's comedy special is called Get On Your Knees. It's showing on Netflix. There's a terrific profile of Novak in the magazine by staff writer, Carrie Battan, and you can find it at newyorker.com.

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