Steve Martin will be on campus at Princeton University Dec. 8 to give the Spencer Trask Lecture. (Publicity photo.)

By Matthew Kassel
Although Steve Martin still considers himself a comedian, don’t expect his upcoming lecture at Princeton University to be a standup act.

Martin quit stand-up comedy 30 years ago, and he has no intention of going back to it. Since that time he has moved on to become an accomplished actor, essayist, playwright, novelist, and recently, touring banjoist.

In 1978, Martin won the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album with Let’s Get Small, in which he incorporated short musical segments on the banjo, among other gags. But since then, Martin has put his instrument to a perhaps more serious use: his 2009 release, The Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo, won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album.

In the past 15 years, Martin has written two plays, a children’s book, assorted screenplays, a collection of stories, two novels, a novella and a memoir. His most recent novel, “An Object of Beauty,” about the art world, was published last year to critical acclaim.

An avid Twitter user (@SteveMartinToGo), Martin announced in October, in the typically oblique fashion that made his stand-up so funny, that he is coming out with a book based on his tweets.

On Dec. 8, at the request of Joyce Carol Oates, Martin is set to give his first lecture at Princeton University as part of the school’s public lecture series. He will discuss his memoir, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, about his rise to and eventual abandonment of stand-up comedy fame, published in 2007.

Mercerspace interviewed Steve Martin on Nov. 11 about the upcoming lecture, his involvement in the literary world, playing bluegrass, appearing on David Letterman, his new book of tweets and more.

Mercerspace: Do you know Joyce Carol Oates?
Steve Martin: Yes, I do. Very nice, very kind, obviously an incredibly talented and astute and intellectual person.

M: Having written all these books within the last couple of years, were you more a part of the literary world before, or have you gotten a lot more into it now that you’ve written these books?
SM: Well, I’ve been writing books since about 1995, maybe even a little bit earlier, and I’ve been writing for The New Yorker since, I’m guessing, probably 1993. So it’s been a long time that I’ve been around the literary world. And I really like it. All your friends just can’t be from show business.

You know, actors are actually quite smart. I count Tom Hanks and [Martin] Short as good friends who are also very smart people. And I won’t go on name dropping friends. But then I have art world friends, I have literary world friends, I have music world friends. I’m very lucky that way, because the world of artists is a great world to be in, because they can amuse you and stimulate you in so many different ways.

M: Do you still consider yourself a comedian?
SM: Oh, yeah, very much. I mean, I’m on Letterman tonight. We taped it yesterday and there’s no way to view myself not as a comedian. If you watch the show, I’m a comedian.

M: You’ve mentioned that you take your SNL appearances very seriously and you prepare a lot for them and you find them very stressful. Do you feel that way when you go on David Letterman as well?
SM: Well, when I say they’re stressful, there’s different kinds of stress. It’s stress in the world of what you do. It’s not like stress at home. It’s kind of work stress. So, it’s fun, you know, it’s fun. But when I say you take it seriously, you take it seriously like you take writing seriously, or you take music seriously. You don’t want to fail.

You know, just because the end result is laughter doesn’t mean you’re laughing all the time while you’re doing it. Actually, as you prepare it, if you find yourself laughing, that’s a good sign, and that often happens. So I didn’t mean to put out an image that it’s just all worry and worry and work. It actually is quite fun.

M: Well, that might have just been my interpretation.
SM: Like on the show tonight, I did a pre-taped bit with Marty Short, and that was nothing but fun. You’ll see it tonight if you watch it.

M: Can I ask you about your book of tweets [called The Ten, Make That Nine Habits, of Very Organized People. Make That Ten]?
SM: Sure.

M: What motivated your decision to do that?
SM: I started to notice that responders were actually quite funny, and between me and them, certain runs had a kind of unity. In a lot of cases it was only me who was seeing the whole thing, so when I first started, it was just me because I wasn’t really paying attention to what people said. I didn’t really know how it worked.

So as time went on, I started reading what people were saying, and then I started to save them, to save the best of them. And in some cases you develop a—I don’t want to say rapport, you don’t get a rapport with individuals—but you get a rapport over a subject with people. Like I would do a Christmas sing-along and people would supply last lines of songs. Like I’d sing: Rudolph the red-nosed blank, and then send in the last line, and I’d create the whole song that way. And it just seemed like there was something there. So that’s what it came to, and it’s for charity.

M: Which charity is it for?
SM: It’s for my charity, the Steve Martin Charitable Foundation, which supports the arts. I like to fund it any way I can.

M: How long have you been on Twitter?
SM: It was a year last Labor Day. About fourteen months.

M: For celebrities, I look at their Twitter accounts sometimes, and I wonder actually if it’s their tweets that they’re writing, because I know that it can be quite busy managing all of this stuff. But I was surprised when they said that you were coming out with a book of your own tweets.
SM: Yeah, they’re all mine.

M: I see that you write messages to your other friends, too, like Norm Macdonald I think I saw.
SM: Yeah, every once in a while, we communicate that way; it’s kind of fun.

M: It made me think that it does actually bring people a little close together, even if it’s still on the Internet.
SM: Yeah, that’s true. Like I had never met Stephen Fry, but we had a little funny communication and now, if I ever met him, I would say: Hey, how’s it going? [laughs] You know, I wouldn’t have to take any time to get to know him.

M: Where do you feel your career could go next?
SM: Well, I really don’t know. I’ve never planned my career. Like this whole banjo thing was kind of an accident. Truly, it started because a friend of mine asked me to play on his double banjo record. And I said: Well, it doesn’t do me any good just to be able to play “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” I have some songs I’ve written, so I played a song for him, and he said: OK, let’s play that. So we played that and then it became kind of a little hit in the bluegrass world.

Then I thought: Well, I have these other songs; maybe I should put out a record where I would be sort of a host of my favorite banjo songs and banjo players and maybe record four of my songs and let other people play their songs. Then I realized I had enough for a record and I thought: Well, I’m not getting any younger; I might as well record these songs. So I did, and then the album became a hit. Then I realized I had another dozen songs.

So that’s the way it developed. And then my agent said, after I released my first record: You know, you have to go on the road. I said: I do? And then I got with a band and I’m on the road playing the banjo.

M: Back on the road. Has it been a while since you’ve been on the road?
SM: Oh, I haven’t been on the road since 1981.

M: How do you feel about it?
SM: I kind of like it, and it’s also sharpened my comedy as a performer. So it’s been good.

M: What has been a memorable performance on your banjo touring?
SM: I guess the most memorable was playing on the Capitol Lawn on the Fourth of July, for the PBS show on the Fourth of July. We played for half a million there live, and then it was broadcast to like ten million more people. So that was a pretty big deal for us.

M: About the movie you’re in, The Big Year, are you a birder?
SM: No, I’m not, but it was fun to be around them and it’s a really good subject, I think. It was fun to do the movie; I met the character I play—he was a very nice guy.

M: Are there any essays or anything you’re working on for The New Yorker or any publications?
SM: No, I’m not really writing anything right now. I’m writing some music and that’s kind of enough.

M: Do you feel like either is more taxing: writing music versus writing prose?
SM: No, it’s all actually kind of fun, if you have a good subject. I like to write prose. I wrote a little introduction to the tweet book the other day and that was fun.

M: Do your tweets sort of just come naturally? I have a Twitter account and sometimes I sit there for a little while thinking about what I’ll write.
SM: I’ve gone through a lot of different stages. One where I didn’t really know what to do and I’d sort of write three or four of them for the week, and sometimes I’d just spontaneously do it. And other times I’d just make a series, like I’d tell a little story and then think of the next bit. You know, it’s been all over the place.

M: So what do you look forward to the most about giving a lecture?
SM: Well, I guess having it be over. I really have no idea what to expect so I want it to be right at about an hour, not too long. I’m going to talk about creativity and how it works for me. You know, being a young person, and having no idea how to be creative. How I figured it out for myself. How it works for me. So that’s going to be my topic, and I hope to maybe get somebody to have them do it themselves.

General admission tickets (maximum of two) will be available at the Richardson Auditorium box office Dec. 1 from 6–7 p.m. Thereafter, public tickets will be available at Frist Campus Center’s University Ticketing Office Monday–Friday from noon–6 p.m. while supplies last.