A modest account of an eventful comedy career.
Mason (The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ventriloquism, 2010) looks back over his life and career as a ventriloquist in this debut memoir.
Sometime in the 1960s, when the author was a young boy, he took a sock and pulled it over his hand, trying to mimic the famous ventriloquist Shari Lewis and her puppet Lamb Chop. His grandmother, a seamstress, added eyes and hair to his puppet—and thus began his lifelong fascination with ventriloquism. In this memoir, he recalls his childhood in Illinois, during which he describes himself as “a pudgy, piano-playing, puppet-loving, scared-of-the-bullies dweeb.” Later, he found himself to be a natural “hitter” on the football field, and he went on to play college football at the University of Illinois, where he also performed stand-up comedy at frat parties. Mason brought ventriloquism into his act and began cutting his teeth at Chicago comedy clubs. In the 1980s, he says, he crossed paths with other budding comedians, including Jerry Seinfeld and Richard Lewis. Some of his peers disparaged ventriloquism, but the author remained steadfastly committed to his art, developing a successful career that saw him perform at Carnegie Hall and even open for Tina Turner. The strength of this memoir lies in the transparency with which Mason describes the development of his act, from his various puppets—including a life-sized sumo wrestler, which some readers will find offensive—to serendipitous moments, as when a secretary gave him performance advice. Mason’s writing does possess an endearing, straightforward honesty: “My little trick is to advance by failing. I’m falling upwards. I write and perform so many jokes that, sooner or later, something is going to work.” He effectively demystifies how comedians hone their sets, with an apparent aim to encourage others. His prose isn’t laugh-a-minute funny, but there are many amusing moments, as when Mason wins over a tough crowd at a Warren Zevon concert by playing a piano. The memoir will prove a delight for Taylor’s fans, and informative for those starting out in the comedy industry.
A modest account of an eventful comedy career.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-984569-66-0
Page Count: 358
Publisher: XlibrisUS
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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