Modern Romance: Stand-up Sociology

As a devoted fan of Parks and Recreation, it was a foregone conclusion that I would be reading Aziz Ansari's debut book, Modern Romance. I had seen him discussing it in interviews and heard good things about it from various reviews, but nothing could prepare me for the experience of actually reading this book. I sat down with it last Saturday and devoured it over the course of the day, unable to understand how a stand-up comedian was able to write a shockingly profound book that is basically a sociology dissertation. Of course, credit is due to co-author Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at NYU, who clearly mapped out the research and data that would be most pertinent to this book. But Aziz Ansari has taken that research and crafted a shockingly easy-to-read book that is eye-opening, honest, and hysterical.

The central concern of this book is to investigate how people find love in the modern age. And to investigate how this is different from previous generations. This is already a very broad and unwieldy topic so Ansari is quick to note that this research predominantly reflects heterosexual, middle-class relationships, as factoring in further nuances would require an astronomical page count (though I can only hope he writes some sequels). He begins at the very beginning, looking at how people's romantic expectations have changed. A few generations ago, people didn't really consider "romantic love" to be a priority. If you married someone you loved, you were lucky, but most women still considered marriage a way of gaining some freedom from familial restrictions. And almost everyone married someone who lived close by.

Now look at present day, where everyone wants to find a soulmate. People are marrying later and later, embracing a new stage of life called "emerging adulthood," where you can find yourself and become your own person before you find a partner. Women can get educated and live unchaperoned, they don't need to get married to have new experiences. And while this is great, it also poses significant dating challenges that never existed a few decades ago. People don't marry their next-door neighbor anymore. The world is huge and interconnected and when you're on a quest to find your perfect soulmate, you're not going to settle for the guy across the street. The world of online dating and hook-up apps provide endless choice and the key is to not get bogged down in all those choices but figure out how to filter through the Internet noise and decide on how you're going to make an actual human connection.

There are hilarious chapters devoted to the art of texting, romance in other cultures (Japan, where people aren't having enough sex, and Argentina, where people are having way too much), tips for a perfect online dating profile and first date, etc. This is both an informational handbook and an instruction manual for the lovelorn. And it is written in Ansari's trademark style so you can almost hear him reading this book to you. (I'm already waiting to listen to the audiobook because I've heard he makes that an even more fantastic experience.)

Modern Romance is a wildly ambitious and thoughtful book that beautifully breaks down a topic that is of interest to almost everyone. Even if you're in a happy, committed relationship, you can get plenty of advice to understand how to keep the romance alive. Or you can learn about the angst your single friends are enduring and dispense some sage tips about what kind of profile pic will attract more people on Match.com. If you think you have zero interest in sociology or this topic, think again. This is a funny book that will subtly nudge you into caring deeply about its subject matter. It is refreshing to see a comedian write something other than a memoir, and if Aziz Ansari wants to drop everything to go pursue a sociology degree, that's perfectly fine by me. Just as long as he writes more books like this one.