There have been an awful lot of books released lately about comedians and comedy writing and just, in general, being funny. Back here, I recommended William Knoedelseder's book, I'm Dying Up Here, which is all about Comedy Store and about the 1979 strike that occurred there.
I would also recommend The Second City Unscripted by Mike Thomas, which is an oral history (i.e., a buncha interviews) with performers and writers who passed through the portals of the Harvard of improv comedy. There have been other books of this sort but this is one of the best…and being the most recent, it includes Stephen Colbert and other recent superstars of the Second City style of mirth. There is much to be learned herein by actors, even if they never venture into improv, and about how to play well with others.
And I'd also recommend Last Words, the posthumous autobiography of George Carlin. I dunno how much of it was written (or dictated) by Mr. Carlin before he left us and how much was the work of his co-author, Tony Hendra, who completed the work after. It's a pretty seamless whole though, and a nice insight into the life of the gent I think is the best stand-up comedian who ever lived. My one little quibble with it has to do with George's legendary Change of Life — the point in his career when he shifted from being a short-haired comedian entertaining the Merv Griffin audience to a long-haired one aiming at a younger audience. No doubt it was wrenching and courageous and ultimately satisfying for the man…but I always thought he was a bit of a pretentious bore on the topic, treating it as a major turning point in American culture. Since he was never pretentious or boring about anything else, it really stood out, and this book gives it a bit more importance than I think it deserved. But hell, he was George Carlin and he did plenty to erase pretension and fraud from our lives.
Lastly, I have less enthusiasm for Twenty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss, the autobiography of Tom Davis, who with Al Franken was a charter writer (and occasional performer) on Saturday Night Live. I always liked the man's work (or at least, the team's work) but his book rambles and it skips over vast gaps of his life and you can tell it was written by a fellow who did an awful lot of drugs. That is, you could tell if he didn't mention it on almost every page. His recollections of certain events are at odds with what has been reported elsewhere. Compare, for example, his account of the death of comedian Steve Lubetkin to what is said about it in the Knoedelseder book. Starting with his title, Davis makes a joke of how much he doesn't remember and then proceeds to prove it, even to the point of sharing e-mails he sent to Franken asking him to refresh his recollections. If you're interested in the early days of SNL, there are some good anecdotes and insights but it's one of those books where you want to reach in, tap the author on the shoulder and ask a lot of follow-up questions.
I have a whole pile of other books on comedy to get through. Watch for a follow-up post one of these days.