A fresh topic explored in a unique, satisfying manner.
Marie Claire contributing editor Kohen uses Christopher Hitchens’ infamous 2007 Vanity Fair article “Why Women Aren’t Funny” as her pivot point for exploring the obstacles faced by women in the male-dominated comedy business.
The author traces the path of female comedians beginning in the 1950s with Phyllis Diller, “the prototypical female stand-up,” and “the mother of sketch comedy,” Elaine May, through the current lineup of popular female comedians such as Sarah Silverman, Tina Fey, Chelsea Handler, Aubrey Plaza and Emily Spivey. Kohen successfully weaves the stories into an entertaining timeline illustrating women’s increasing presence in American comedy. Writers, talent agents, club managers and comedians discuss a range of subjects, including the evolution of comedy styles, the role of TV, especially Saturday Night Live, and the different types of venues (including YouTube) and individuals who have helped or hindered women’s rise in the business. Kohen notes that during the 1970s, the hiring of female TV writers led to lively female characters, such as the women of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. This shift fostered a period of mentoring of women writers by “the powerful men who spent the decade transforming the sitcom,” including Norman Lear, Garry Marshall and Carl Reiner. Taken together, the interviews provide an inside look into the sometimes-turbulent relationships among the stand-up and sketch comedians, club owners, writers, producers and TV executives. Kohen intersperses illuminating bits of narrative among the oral history accounts, adding context and depth to her subject. “Stand-up is arguably the hardest form of comedy,” she writes. “There are no props, magic tricks, partners or music to fall back on. It’s just the comic, alone in front of the microphone under the spotlight. When they fail, they ‘die,’ when they succeed, they ‘kill.’ ”—as does this book.
A fresh topic explored in a unique, satisfying manner.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-374-28723-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
