James's review
Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
by Steve Martin
James's review
Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life by Steve Martin
James's review
rating:
recommended for: Everyone.
This probably gets an extra star for my undying love for Steve Martin.
When I was a kid, I had three heroes: Han Solo, Kermit the Frog, and Steve Martin. Two of them are fictional, so only one can tell his life story, and damn, he f'n did it. It's a story of perseverance, and how to persevere under what I would call whelming odds. Not overwhelming, but enough that you might see where he would want to pack it in. Sometimes.
I love his approach to this book. He doesn't really write too much about personal matters, he writes mainly about the work that it took to make him an overnight sensation. From 15, he's taking notes on what jokes were working and what jokes weren't, he pares away at jokes that he loves for the sake of the audience, which grows from nothing to success (3,000 people for a comedian, pretty f'n good) to enormous success (25,000 people--the population of many major cities in the 70s). All the way through it, he maintains that certain guilelessness that makes...more
When I was a kid, I had three heroes: Han Solo, Kermit the Frog, and Steve Martin. Two of them are fictional, so only one can tell his life story, and damn, he f'n did it. It's a story of perseverance, and how to persevere under what I would call whelming odds. Not overwhelming, but enough that you might see where he would want to pack it in. Sometimes.
I love his approach to this book. He doesn't really write too much about personal matters, he writes mainly about the work that it took to make him an overnight sensation. From 15, he's taking notes on what jokes were working and what jokes weren't, he pares away at jokes that he loves for the sake of the audience, which grows from nothing to success (3,000 people for a comedian, pretty f'n good) to enormous success (25,000 people--the population of many major cities in the 70s). All the way through it, he maintains that certain guilelessness that makes...more
