The first thing you may wonder about Steven Wright is whether he sounds the same offstage as he does onstage.

Wright, the poet laureate of standup, is noted for his minimalist approach. He's a comedian of few words, with a spare, almost stark pace. His methodical delivery is full of word-play and vocabulary twists and turns. Wright exemplifies cerebral comedy at its finest.

In a phone interview prior to his 8 p.m. Sept. 20 appearance at Sands Bethlehem Event Center, Wright sounds exactly like he does onstage.

And if his onstage stance projects unapproachability during the phone interview he is anything but aloof.

The interview began with me having the temerity to tell Wright a punchline word I had just made up.

Noting a news report about alleged Russian hackers accessing gigabytes of financial and personal data from JPMorgan Chase & Co., I mention the alleged hacking was believed in retaliation for United States' government sanctions over Russian policy in the Ukraine conflict.

"At this point, concerning the alleged Russian hackers, it's all hackusations," I say to Wright.

"That's good," he replies.

The interview ice-breaker melts to a question about topical material.

"I would never talk about politics," Wright says. "I would never talk about a popular television show, a big popular social thing like McDonald's. I don't have anything against television because I watch television. I go to McDonald's.

"I follow the news. I follow what's going in the news in the world. But I don't talk about it on stage," says the Burlington, Mass., native who graduated from Emerson College.

Wright developed his philosophy of funny at Ding Ho's Comedy Club and Chinese Restaurant in Cambridge, Mass.

"I wanted to talk about everyday things that people really don't notice. I mean they notice, but they don't talk about ... like a coaster for a cup. Everyday things, physics things. cars, and the speed of light, contradictions in words. All that stuff interested me to talk about on stage."

Details, details

I mention to Wright that the late columnist William Safire once keenly observed in a 1989 New York Times "On Language" column: "God, or the devil, is in the details."

For Wright, comedy is in the details.

"All art is about observing the world and then something comes back out of you So, you're reacting to the world.

"You know what a mosaic painting is?" he asks. "You know the tiny squares that make up the information? That's what comedy is like: tiny squares of information. And sometimes you can take tiny squares of information ... You can see one little piece of information over there and move it to another piece that has some kind of connection that's not usually connected."

Wright then gives a journeyman journalist a real treat. He tells a joke and analyzes it.

"I had an old joke about a store. The sign said it's open 24 hours. And I go there and the guy's locking it up. And I said, "I thought the sign said it's open 24 hours?' And he said, 'Not in a row.'

"When you hear 24 hours, you make that in your mind that it's 24 hours in a row. But that's an assumption we make. So, the assumption is broken.

"Now mind you, this is all happening at once in my head like 'Bang! There's a joke.'"

Bare essentials

Wright got his first big break Aug. 6, 1982, on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" when he was invited back for the following week. Appearances on "Saturday Night Live," "Late Night with David Letterman" and other shows followed.

He received Grammy nominations for his 1985 debut album, "I Have A Pony," and his 2007 CD, "I Still Have A Pony," had his first HBO Special, "A Steven Wright Special," in 1995, had a one-hour Comedy Central special, "When The Leaves Blow Away," in 2006, and received an Academy Award for Best Short Film for the 1989 film he cowrote, "The Appointments of Dennis Jennings," in which he starred.

Wright's movie roles include those in "Desperately Seeking Susan," "So I Married An Axe Murderer," "Natural Born Killers," "Mixed Nuts," "Speechless," "Canadian Bacon," "The Muse," "Half-Baked," "Coffee and Cigarettes" and "The Aristocrats." He voiced roles in "Reservoir Dogs," "The Swan Princess" and "Babe 2: Pig in the City."

Last year, Wright received The Johnny Carson Comedy Legend Award (past recipients include Dick Cavett, Cloris Leachman and Ed Asner).

Wright's standup is stripped down to the bare essentials: one-word takes, distillations of the seemingly mundane. He's a revealer of the obvious.

Wright doesn't tell jokes exactly. More to the point, his observations are like Zen koans of comedy. Wright is the observer-teacher. We, the audience, are his eager students.

I mention to Wright that I would describe him as the poet of the punchline. Efficient. Succinct. To the point. Each. Word. Counts. Very e.e. cummings, even to the lower case.

"I learned early on to get right to the point," says Wright. "Because words are time on stage. You don't want to waste time."

Paraprosdokian

When I tell Wright that the word paraprosdokian pops up in the first paragraph of his Wikipedia profile, he sounds surprised.

"I never even heard of that word," says Wright, adding that he'll have to check the profile.

A paraprosdokian is a rhetorical term for "an unexpected shift in meaning at the end of a sentence," often used for comic effect.

That's Wright. He's the pope of paraprosdokian.

In addition to doing standup tours, Wright is a consulting producer on the FX television series, "Louie," which won an Emmy this year for Outstanding Writing For A Comedy Series for its star Louis C.K. for the controversial "So Did The Fat Girl" Episode 3 from Season Four.

Says the lanky Wright of "Louie":

"I consulted on all the story lines. He [Louis C.K.] wrote all of that show [Episode 3]. I don't know if he bounced that one off of me. But the thing that he had that woman [actor Sarah Baker] say was genius. I think that was never expressed that clearly before. Louie's a genius. I'm very fortunate to be working with him."

Reluctantly and dutifully, I asked Wright for his reaction to Robin Williams' death.

"I don't believe that cliché that comedians are more down than people. I know that theory exists. It's a tragedy what happened to him [Robin Williams]. It's very, very sad and disturbing.

Wright said he couldn't fully understand Williams' death or process it.

"He was a very nice person."

And so is Steven Wright.