Big Dumb Eyes

Book Reviews

Jun 8

Big Dumb Eyes: Stories from a Simpler Mind
By: Nate Bargatze

[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2025]

I usually start my book review with a quote from the book that I like. I didn’t do that with this one: 1) because I decided to just read it as if I was sitting at one of his shows, not wanting to be distracted by writing anything down and 2) it’s so anecdotal that to reduce it any of his bits to quotes feels like you miss too much.

If you’ve seen him live or watched one of his Netflix specials (do it) then reading this book will feel a lot like the show. You can hear his voice and delivery as you read, the same straight-faced humor about weird jobs, his dad being a clown, the dynamics between him and his wife, and his love of McDonalds.

I think my favorite part of the book were the blank pages he included to give us a break every now and then. In one of his bits about how ‘books are the key to smart,’ he mentions how he wished books had more of that so I applaud that he got to see that dream come to fruition.

This book is part memoir, part funny story-telling. He says from the very beginning that there is not really an overarching message:

“This book is never trying to say anything even close to important… you can open it to any random chapter you want and you’ll be just fine. There isn’t any real order. No rhyme or reason behind much of anything.”

And I would say he delivered on that. In a good way! It’s an easy, enjoyable read that will make you smile. It’s something you can come back to and read part or all of again whenever you just want something light and funny to escape from the chaos of the day.

There is a little bit of overlap with what has been in his shows but there were lots of new stories or details and background to previously mentioned moments that kept it fresh. There are even pictures— although I wish they would have been in color so you could see them better.

The first time I watched Nate Bargatze was with friends when he performed at our local comedy club, The Funny Bone. There were like 50 people there. The second time was a slightly bigger audience in the college town of Ames, Iowa. The third was a bigger audience at a bigger venue, and the last time was the Wells Fargo Arena— the biggest venue in Des Moines and it was packed.

It’s been fun to see his success and his audience grow. What’s even better is that he did it without resorting to using profanity, sexual innuendo, or controversial material. It’s just relatable stories about his life that connects with people and allows us to watch his comedy with our families.

I wish more comics had the same principles because it shows that you don’t have to be raw, raunchy, or explicit to be hilarious!

I’m surprised by people who give this negative reviews if they’ve seen his shows before. If you haven’t, then you might be underwhelmed by the book. If you have, you should understand that the underwhelm is part of his schtick. He’s not dramatic or over-the-top or super expressive or loud. He’s just a normal guy talking about normal stuff. He’s just a friend pointing out the humorous parts of ordinary lives.

It appears that the main qualms people have with this book, other than if they thought it was boring (it wasn’t), were basically two-fold:

First, he talked about God and faith, mostly in relation to his dad. I just read Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (the Olympian)’s book and people were upset she talked about faith too. Which is really wild to me. For Sydney’s book it was the primary objective. What Nate does with it is not even close to how explicitly Sydney delivers the gospel and yet people’s feathers are ruffled by it. As if a comedian isn’t allowed to ‘bring religion’ into anything. For a culture obsessed with identity a lot of people really want to limit what can be allowed to shape a person.

Second, he mentions his dad’s abusive mother and her deathbed scene where he apologizes for not being a better son or trying harder to include her in the family. It’s a very short part but readers who had experienced abuse were really turned off by the way it was described as if he was the problem, not the abusive mother. I can see how that puts a bad taste in your mouth when you’ve dealt with abuse and manipulative people— why should he be the one to apologize?

I’m not entirely sure why he included that in the book— perhaps to share the tenderness of his father’s heart and his desire for reconciliation in his life?— and I think it could be argued that this wasn’t the right place to put it. I’m sure there is a lot more to the story and information that wasn’t shared that may speak into the dissonance for us. He chose not to go into all that, which makes sense to me, and I’m not going to use that moment to tear apart his entire book.

I will say that the chapter on Vanderbilt threw me a little bit. Maybe if I listened to his podcast more I would have heard him mention Vandy more— it hasn’t really been in his shows that I can remember. So to hear his passion for Vandy and read an entire chapter about it felt like seeing a new facet of Bargatze that I hadn’t known was there— the sports fanatic Nate.

I can see how some might not care about that and you wouldn’t really be missing much to skip over that one. That’s the freedom of the book— you can pick and choose what you want to read when you want to read it.

I think it’s cool that Nate decided to write a book. It’s an accomplishment, especially for someone who’s never read one before. I mean there’s part of me that laments how easy it is for famous people to get a book published when all of us nobodies are sitting on a story we can’t get in front of anyone, but I am happy for him and his success.

It looks like he’s most likely stepping off the stand-up track to pursue movie-making. I would venture to guess that his time will be spent wrapped up in that rather than more book writing, but I believe this book achieved what Nate wanted it to achieve. I’m pretty much here for anything he does or will do because I think he’s a funny guy and a good dude and I appreciate his willingness to hold the line of clean comedy even when he gets pushback about it.

Stay strong, man!