The Last Laugh: The World of Stand-Up Comics

Very possible the best book ever written about the history of stand-up comedy. Better on the 1960s than the more modern chapters, but a great read all around.

A strange, nervous little book that I picked up at a bus station to have something to read on the journey and found myself engrossed by. The device is simple - Berger starts with the career of one obscure comic and follows it, weaving in and around it the careers of endless other comics - an initially obscure Lenny Bruce among them - and the book just goes on in one long series of anecdotes and bits and gags to tell the history of the business from mid-century or so and towards the present day. The book has a slightly antiquated, out of date feel to it - it's definitely about the era that preceded today's comics and the people they watched on TV - but it does capture something of the DRIVE of these people and their compulsiveness. Not a book to browse, a book to listen to like a long, long monologue. Full of the sweat of comics long ago shut down and gone to Florida to sell aluminium siding. Yes - that's one of the good things about this book - it's not a glam bio and tells it like it usually was - long, and difficult and here and there quite funny as well as painful.