"But to do it professionally is a quantum leap difference and my father had to be persuaded by these kind of Ivy League professors that I should go to the Yale Drama School, another one of the stories in there"
About this Quote
A “quantum leap” is the kind of overkill phrase comics love: it turns a personal career choice into a sci-fi event, then immediately undercuts itself with the mundane reality of getting Dad on board. Robert Klein isn’t just describing a turning point; he’s staging the classic postwar American drama where “professional” doesn’t mean “good,” it means “legible” to the people holding the family’s anxiety. The joke hides in the friction between performance as instinct and performance as credential.
Klein’s subtext is that talent isn’t what needs convincing. Respectability does. His father has to be “persuaded,” and the persuaders aren’t managers or working comics, but “these kind of Ivy League professors” - a phrase that carries both awe and a light sneer. “These kind” signals a social type: polished gatekeepers who can translate a risky, unserious-sounding dream (comedy, acting) into something that passes the parental sniff test. Yale Drama becomes less a school than a permission slip.
There’s also a generational power shift tucked into the syntax. The father, the old authority, yields not to the son’s desire but to institutional prestige. Klein frames it as “another one of the stories,” implying a larger memoir logic: family myth-making where the funniest moments come from negotiations over status, class, and what counts as a real job. Comedy, here, isn’t only the endpoint; it’s the method of exposing how America launders ambition through elite validation.
Klein’s subtext is that talent isn’t what needs convincing. Respectability does. His father has to be “persuaded,” and the persuaders aren’t managers or working comics, but “these kind of Ivy League professors” - a phrase that carries both awe and a light sneer. “These kind” signals a social type: polished gatekeepers who can translate a risky, unserious-sounding dream (comedy, acting) into something that passes the parental sniff test. Yale Drama becomes less a school than a permission slip.
There’s also a generational power shift tucked into the syntax. The father, the old authority, yields not to the son’s desire but to institutional prestige. Klein frames it as “another one of the stories,” implying a larger memoir logic: family myth-making where the funniest moments come from negotiations over status, class, and what counts as a real job. Comedy, here, isn’t only the endpoint; it’s the method of exposing how America launders ambition through elite validation.
Quote Details
| Topic | Father |
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