Jack Handey's Thoughts Get Deeper

"A world ruled by dinosaurs? It didn't make any sense! I could understand a world where dinosaurs had some say but not rule," he says.

With absurdist musings such as these, Handey has established himself as the strangest of birds: a famous comedian whose platform is not the stage or screen, but the page.

It's been years since his "Deep Thoughts" was a staple on "Saturday Night Live." Since then, longer but equally surreal works by Handey have become commonplace in the pages of The New Yorker and other magazines.

After a series of "Deep Thoughts" paperback collections (a 1994 edition was titled "Deepest Thoughts: So Deep They Squeak") and a "Fuzzy Memories" compilation, which collectively have sold more than 1 million copies, Handey is releasing his first book of longer form material.

"It does feel like an accomplishment, kind of going to the adults table with a hardback cover," Handey said in a recent interview. "It does feel like, OK, this is playing with the big boys."

"What I'd Say to the Martians and Other Veiled Threats," published by Hyperion with a first print run of 25,000 copies, contains a few of his favorite "Deep Thoughts" and a handful of "little tiny stories," such as the dinosaur tale. But the meat of the book is shaped by short pieces such as the title story in which a caged narrator rants to his alien captors.

"So are we so different? Of course, we are, and you will be even more different if I ever finish my homemade flame thrower," he says.

Handey, 59, lives in Santa Fe, N.M., with his wife, Marta, who is also his editor. But that is a much too specific existence for many to accept. For years, some fans assumed he was only a character, a disembodied voice that soothingly read "Deep Thoughts" in the guise of the implausibly named "Jack Handey."

Handey, though, hasn't exactly discouraged this perception. In one of his "Martians" pieces "How I Want to Be Remembered" he eulogizes himself: "Jack was an expert in so many fields, it's hard to say what he was best at: the arts, the sciences, or the businesses."