Bookpusher

I first discovered stand-up comedy in the early 1980s, when my parents were hosting a party and George Carlin’s “Carlin at Carnegie Hall” was playing on HBO in the living room. I wasn’t allowed in, of course, being about eleven years old at the time, but after a while I wandered in under everyone’s radar and stood leaning against the wall, watching, transfixed. I was thrilled with the exposure to naughty words – being Carlin, there were plenty of them – and I could only understand about half of his routine, but he talked about silly, nonsense stuff, too, like dogs . And I loved it.

Terminally shy, with wit that only came to me after the bullies left, I understood immediately there was power in the ability of making people laugh. One guy standing in front of a brick wall with a microphone, no soundtrack, no band, no partner, no nothing, convincing complete strangers to like and accept them, just by making them laugh. I knew I didn’t have the confidence in doing this myself – thus derailing a surefire comedy and sitcom career into librarianship – but I did spend a large part of my teens buying comedy tapes, playing them endlessly, memorizing routines and repeating them to my friends. George Carlin quickly led to a host of others, and I developed my personal Stand-Up Album Pantheon. Along with “Carlin at Carnegie”, there were Bill Cosby’s “Himself”, Stephen Wright’s “I Have a Pony”, Robin Williams’ “Night at the Met”, Sam Kinison’s “Louder than Hell”, and Richard Pryor’s “Wanted: Live in Concert”. Oh, and Eddie Murphy’s “Delirious”, too. These were, in many ways, the soundtrack of my teens.

All this was my background going into Richard Zoglin’s “Comedy at the Edge”, a study of the emergence of the stand-up scene during the late sixtes and early seventies, starting with the legacy of Lenny Bruce and moving through Carlin, Richard Pryor, Robert Klein, Andy Kaufmann, Albert Brooks, Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, and a truckload of others. Ground Zero of the stand-up explosion were the scenes in New York and LA, with comedians working out their inner demons on stage or angling to get a shot at sitting on the couch with Johnny Carson. Zoglin knows his stuff, spending years honing his skills as a feature writer for Time magazine. His extensive interviews gives depth to the performers, placing them in a social context. The book comes off almost as a verbal history, similar to Shales and Miller’s “Live From New York” about the early years of Saturday Night Live. Essential reading for anyone who loves pop-culture history or stand-up comedy.

I’m about a third of the way in and I’ve been struggling with it for a while, and I’m afraid I’m going to just have to cut bait. It took me longer than it usually does to make this decision, since I really really really wanted to like this one. The book would at first blush seem right up my alley: a true story about a charmingly rogue scientist who stretches across different scientific disciplines and creates an entire new theory of how we recognize smells, but his research is sabotaged by the scientific community because he’s a rulebreaker and doesn’t kiss enough ass.

That description has it all: a new scientific principle concerning something we deal with every day, a fun and engaging scientist who’s struggling against the establishment, and a peek inside the multi-multi-million dollar prefume industry. The problem with the book is that there’s too much sdamn cience involved. You see, I consider myself a fairly well-read person and for the most part I enjoy science writing. However, I am an English major and need scientific principles explained to me as one would explain them to a hyperactive fifth-grader. Burr starts off reasonably enough, talking about the chemical bonds between molecules, but soon plunges headlong into electron tunneling and making diodes out of proteins and pretty soon I’m completely over my head. When Burr switches back to the narrative, I’m fully locked in, but within a few pages I’m drowning in the science again, and I start to slog.

So yeah: I’ve got to bail. For those more patient than me, and who are able to follow the science, this is a completely engaging book. A good buddy of mine who can bring the science, the Rambling Rover, would probably love it. But it’s not for me.