That's Not Funny, That's Sick: The National Lampoon and the Comedy Insurgents Who Captured the Mainstream
We all know the success of Second City and its offshoots, including the long-­running Saturday Night Live (SNL). But there’s another comedy story that hasn’t been given its proper due, until now. In 1969, history was made when recent Harvard graduates Henry Beard and Doug Kenney moved to New York to edit a new magazine, the National Lampoon. Within a decade or so of its founding, the Lampoon’s absurdist and subversive humor would not only enter the mainstream, but it would, for all intents and purposes, become the mainstream, which led, ultimately, to South Park, The Daily Show, 30 Rock, and the Onion. Journalist Stein offers detailed portraits of the people behind the magazine’s success in a seminal time when politics and comedy intertwined with incendiary results. Many of the big names are here (Bill Murray, John Belushi, Harold Ramis, Gilda Radner), but it is the untold story that resonates the most, the secret history of a profession that, like the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield, doesn’t get the respect that it deserves. A serious treatment of a funny topic. --June Sawyers