You might have noticed the new “Now Reading” section at the top of the sidebar. These are simply the books I’m reading right now. Some of them are new, some old, some are free, some are eBooks. As i finish them, I’ll take a moment to talk about them here.
It’s hard to overstate just how popular Steve Martin was when I was a teenager in the 70s. Everyone knew all his routines by heart. Everyone watched his every appearance on Saturday Night Live. For a few years, his anti-joke brand of comedy perfectly matched the times.
At the height of his fame, he stopped doing stand-up comedy. Most of us look at the slow downward spiral of his career since then and wonder — what happened?
It could be all part of his plan.
“Born Standing Up” follows Martin from his youth, demonstrating magic tricks at Disneyland, to doing vaudeville and slapstick at Knott’s Berry Farm, spending the sixties honing his “ob-lique” brand of comedy at small clubs around the country, often to audiences who just couldn’t figure him out, to his sudden, skyrocketing success in the mid-70s, and his decision to quit at the top.
Martin’s books are well-written and short. If you were a fan of his in the 70s and have any curiosity at all about where he came from or why he quit — this is the book.
1 thought on “Now Reading… Born Standing Up, by Steve Martin”
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It’s IM-POSSSIBLE….to stick a cadillac up your nose! It’s sim-ply IM-POSSSIBLE!