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Ebook395 pages6 hours
Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-up in the 1970s Changed America
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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About this ebook
When Lenny Bruce overdosed in 1966, he left behind an impressive legacy of edgy, politically charged comedy. Four short years later, a new breed of comic, inspired by Bruce's artistic fearlessness, made telling jokes an art form, forever putting to rest the stereotype of the one-liner borscht belt set. During the 1970s, a small group of brilliant, iconoclastic comedians, led by George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Robert Klein, tore through the country and became as big as rock stars in an era when Saturday Night Live and SCTV were the apotheosis of cool, and the Improv and Catch a Rising Star were the hottest clubs around. That a new wave of innovative comedians, like Steve Martin, Albert Brooks, Robin Williams, and Andy Kauffman followed closely behind only cemented comedy's place as one of the most important art forms of the decade. In Comedy at the Edge, Richard Zoglin explores in depth this ten-year period when comedians stood, with microphone in hand, at the white-hot center of popular culture, stretching the boundaries of the genre, fighting obscenity laws, and becoming the collective voices of their generation. In the process, they revolutionized an art form. Based on extensive interviews with club owners, booking agents, groupies, and the players themselves, Zoglin traces the decade's tumultuous arc in this no-holds barred, behind-the-scenes look at one of the most influential decades in American popular culture.
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Author
Richard Zoglin
Richard Zoglin has spent more than thirty years as a writer and editor for Time and is currently the magazine’s theater critic. His book Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America is considered the definitive history of that seminal era in stand-up comedy. Zoglin is a native of Kansas City, Missouri, and currently lives in New York City.
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Reviews for Comedy at the Edge
Rating: 3.7499972727272723 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
22 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Decent book wish it was longer
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Loved it! A fascinating look at how certain comics made an indelible impression to those who grew up in the 1970s (and 1980s).
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5My husband was a stand-up comic during the 80's heyday, and he thought this book would be a good addition to what he likes to call my "comedy education." The book traces the major shifts in stand-up from the sixties through Seinfeld by detailing the lives of the important players involved. Though I grew up listening to Carlin records and trying to follow Steve Martin's instructions how to fold soup, I had little awareness of how the changes in comedy reflected the upheavals in the political and social landscape of the times. Zoglin's book provides an interesting overview of the interrelationship between what was happening on stage and the greater world beyond it. All of the major names in 70's comedy make an appearance here. As clichés would suggest, the life of a comic off-stage is not all fun and games, and the chapter on Richord Pryor's drug abuse and violence was particularly hard to read. But the author does a good job of highlighting the very fierce battles Pryor and other comics fought to bring stand-up out of the safe, predictable niceties of the mid-century and into a form that had such social and political relevance that at least one comic found himself shadowed by Nixon's FBI. Though Zoglin liberally quotes the trademark bits of his subjects, the book bears much more of the tone of the reporter who wrote it than the comics he’s writing about. Since stand-up is a live art form, it makes sense it doesn't really translate onto the page; one can only imagine how funny Albert Brooks’ bad mime impression must have been to those fortunate enough to actually see it. Those looking for laughs will therefore likely find the tone a little dry. But anyone interested in a broad social history of stand-up comedy should find plenty of interest here.