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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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