Lenny Bruce (Author of How to Talk Dirty and Influence People) edit data Lenny Bruce, born Leonard Alfred Schneider, was a controversial American stand-up comedian, writer, social critic and satirist of the 1950s and 1960s. His 1964 conviction in an obscenity trial was also controversial, eventually leading to the first posthumous pardon in New York history. Learn and talk about How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, 1965 books, Lenny Bruce, Show business memoirs, Works about freedom of expression First edition (publ. Playboy Press ) How to Talk Dirty and Influence People is an autobiography by Lenny Bruce , an American satirist and comedian , who died in 1966 at age 40 of a drug overdose. At the request of Hugh Hefner and with the aid of Paul Krassner , Bruce wrote the work in serialized format for Playboy in 1964 and 1965. Shortly thereafter it was released as a novel by Playboy Publishing. [1] The book details the course of his career, which began in the late 1940s.

In it, he challenges the sanctity of organized religion and other societal and political conventions he perceived as having hypocritical tendencies, and widened the boundaries of free speech . The title is a parody of the 1936 bestseller How to Win Friends and Influence People , by Dale Carnegie . References[ edit ] ^ 7 essential books about comedy by comedians · Inventory · The A.V. Club Share Tweet 1. Groucho & Me, Groucho Marx (1959) Comedy, it has been said time and time again, is a serious business.

Julius Henry “Groucho” Marx echoes that sentiment in the opening sentence of his memoir about the meager beginnings of the Marx brothers, when he observes, “The trouble with writing a book about yourself is that you can’t fool around.” It should come as no surprise to Groucho fans that he goes on to spend at least as much time offering up one-liners as he does delving into the history of how he and his brothers—Leonard (Chico), Arthur (Harpo), Herbert (Zeppo), and, in the early years, Milton (Gummo)—slowly but surely worked their way through the vaudeville circuit, eventually becoming the toast of Broadway before transitioning to film and taking Hollywood by storm. In spite of Marx’s lack of interest in linear storytelling, and his desire to get laughs rather than give specific details, Groucho & Me nonetheless provides an invaluable first-hand look into the process of creating comedy for the stage and screen during the first half of the 20th century. 2.

How To Talk Dirty And Influence People, Lenny Bruce (1965) Given Lenny Bruce’s reputation as one of the most controversial yet significant stand-up comedians of all time, he could hardly have selected a more appropriate title for his book than one which parodies Dale Carnegie’s classic self-help tome , if only because—as Bruce clarifies repeatedly within his writings—his tendency to talk dirty won him far more enemies than friends. Originally published as a series of articles in Playboy, Bruce’s reminiscences of his childhood and his early pre-comedy careers (he worked as a farm hand and served a stint in the U.S. Navy) reveal that his nonconformist tendencies began well before he ever set foot on a nightclub stage, but the book also provides Bruce with the platform to describe the evolution of his act, plus his personal philosophies on sex, drugs, religion, and government.

Inevitably, the topic of freedom of speech is explored in detail, with Bruce getting specific about his court battles over obscenity charges, but his occasionally satiric look into how much he suffered for his art helps clarify how he helped blaze the trail for today’s stand-ups to speak their minds onstage, making it a must-read for fans of filthy comedy. 3. Going Too Far, Tony Hendra (1987) The British-born Tony Hendra got his start as half of a “moderately successful” comedy team with Nic Ullett, doing “bargain basement Beyond The Fringe” material. After he became one of the heavy hitters at the National Lampoon, this experience was enough to qualify him as the magazine’s de facto show-business guy; in this capacity, he helped spearhead the Off-Broadway revue Lemmings and played John Lennon on the standout track on the Lampoon’s first comedy album, Radio Dinner. He later achieved big-screen immortality as Ian Faith, manager of Spinal Tap.

At the center of his book Going Too Far is a fascinating account of life at the Lampoon during its great days in the early ’70s, with detailed profiles of such cult legends as Michael O’Donoghue (with whom Hendra formed a tight friendship that went very bad), Doug Kenney, and Henry Beard. It’s wrapped inside a sharp critical history of how the smart-sophomoric humor favored by the ’60s generation infiltrated and took over the culture, through Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad, groundbreaking stand-ups like Lenny Bruce, and Second City. Hendra celebrates these artists as cultural guerrillas, while also detailing the ways some of them, such as the San Francisco group The Committee, fell apart through pressures and complications brought on by chasing the largest possible chunk of the mass audience. Those same pressures eventually destroyed the Lampoon, and Hendra, who saw the magazine as providing “an alternative to television,” was not thrilled to see it displaced by a TV show, Saturday Night Live, that he accuses of sucking up to the very audience he thinks his heroes sought to challenge. 4.

It Only Hurts When I Laugh, Stan Freberg (1989) Stan Freberg grew up dreaming of joining the ranks of the great radio actors and comedians, only to arrive in Hollywood just as that kind of radio was dying at the hands of television and rock ’n’ roll, two cultural phenomena he never comfortably embraced. He got his start doing cartoon voices alongside such living legends as Mel Blanc, then moved on to writing and performing the Time For Beany puppet show on TV. (He says the show’s creator, Bob Clampett, was so cheap, he used to “borrow” other people’s parked cars to use as office space.) Freberg finally hit it big by creating his own genre of comedy records that parodied current trends in music and entertainment, but the radio show he got out of it was unable to revitalize a dying medium, and CBS’ offer to give him his own TV show did not survive the executives’ first look at his pilot script.

Freberg may have had his biggest influence on the culture at large when, after satirizing advertising in such records as “Green Chri$tma$,” he started his own ad agency and redefined the art of seducing consumers by making them laugh; if he sees anything painfully ironic about this, he keeps it to himself. His autobiography overflows with good stories, but it adds up to something more: a portrait of the artist as a scrappy young man who doesn’t fit into any of the trending media patterns of the day, but who is funny, and who proves that sometimes, that’s enough. 5. Daddy’s Boy: A Son’s Shocking Account Of Life With A Famous Father, Chris Elliott (1989) Former SNL cast member and David Letterman writer Chris Elliott is no stranger to bizarre multilayered comedy. Befitting his surreal work in Get A Life and Cabin Boy, his autobiography Daddy’s Boy is a faux-memoir in the style of Mommie Dearest, a tell-all by the bitter child of a famous parent revealing dirty secrets behind the jovial and likeable public face.

Chris Elliott, the son of Bob Elliott from the comedy team Bob and Ray, writes exaggerated scenes of comedically abusive parenting: being forced to dress exactly like his father (bald wig and gold-toe socks included) and a birthday party centered around audience participation, Chris’ least favorite aspect of comedy. Bob also contributes chapters, which stand as rebuttals, but then devolve into describing his summer vacation in Maine, entirely ignoring his son’s outlandish claims. It’s both a show-business memoir and a wry satire of cashing in on unknown revelations. 6. Born Standing Up, Steve Martin (2007) For a man synonymous with the words “wild” and “crazy,” Steve Martin is a famously shy, quiet, intensely personal figure. So part of the appeal of Born Standing Up, Martin’s essential 2007 memoir, lies in the novelty of one of comedy’s most brilliant and enigmatic figures opening up his life and career to public scrutiny. While Born Standing Up is an unmistakably personal book, it’s personal in a meticulous, controlled way. It is above all else an exploration of the birth, development, and eventual death of a stand-up act and persona that changed comedy.

To outsiders, Martin’s ’70s-era shtick must have erupted out of nowhere in an avalanche of happy feet, wacky props, banjo vamping, and deliberately bad jokes, but Born Standing Up illustrates how all of the seemingly random elements of Martin’s act emerged meticulously over time through practice and an almost scientific approach to reading an audience’s emotions and instincts. What appeared from the outside to be a manic burst of inspiration was ultimately as controlled and choreographed as a Russian ballet. Beyond exploring the craft of postmodern comedy deeply and intelligently, Born Standing Up offers a fascinating, though limited, glimpse into Martin’s psyche. The book is haunted by Martin’s pervasive loneliness: at not being understood by his father, at being a boy dreamer practicing magic tricks in a sad bedroom, and, ultimately, at achieving massive but empty success. That sense of emptiness ultimately inspired Martin to leave the field, but first, he gained the experiences and the insight to write one of the definitive books on comedy. 7. Bossypants, Tina Fey (2011) Tina Fey’s comedy writing doesn’t really lend itself to confessionals.

On 30 Rock, her avatar, Liz Lemon, is specific enough to be well-drawn—and vaguely autobiographical. But the show put laughs above intimacy, to great effect. In her memoir Bossypants, Fey gets more personal, relating her life story in fits and starts with humor, insight, and a gratifying willingness to state her mind. The book follows Fey’s career from socially awkward, gay-friendly high-schooler to socially awkward, romantically struggling college student to YMCA receptionist, and then to the heights of Second City and beyond. As a career primer, Fey’s book offers practical advice in everything from dealing with a male-dominated writer’s room (they keep pee in jars) to handling photo shoots (enjoy them! and you don’t get to keep the clothes) and creating a critically lauded cult show while trying to make a wildly successful crossover hit. Fey also includes anecdotes about her childhood, her marriage, and an ill-fated sea voyage. Funny, thoughtful, and curiously heartwarming, Bossypants manages to work its lessons in on the sly, and Fey’s clear love for the world she’s invested her professional life in comes through clearly on every page.

Her straightforward descriptions of what it takes to get sketches on the air when working for Saturday Night Live offer a glimpse into the show’s inner workings, and remind aspiring comedy writers that perseverance and patience matter as much as the rare flash of genius. In one of the book’s highlights, Fey walks readers through the history of one of her biggest contributions to pop culture, showing how a mild physical resemblance to a controversial vice presidential candidate led to one of the biggest satirical coups of SNL’s storied career. The main takeaway from all this is that Fey has worked to get where she is, making the most of opportunities that came her way, and refusing to let other people’s expectations hold her back. It’s good advice. For five essential books about TV, five essential books about film, and five essential books about popular music, see our book Inventory . Hollywood Progressive Hollywood Progressive I’m not a comedian and I’m not sick. The world is sick and I’m the doctor. I’m a surgeon with a scalpel for false values. I don’t have an act. I just talk. I’m just Lenny Bruce. It’s impossible to believe: Lenny Bruce died fifty years ago tomorrow.

It’s even harder to consider that he’s been gone from this earth ten years longer than he walked it. His was a life too short. He was only two months and ten days shy of his forty-first birthday when, alone and in despair, his career as an entertainer destroyed, he stepped into eternity. Think about it: If someone as young as Lenny was on August 3, 1966 had died today, that person would have been born one month after Pink Floyd released their Wish You Were Here album. Damn! That’s not a very long life at all! That’s way too young, Jim. Sitting in the back seat of my father’s station wagon, heading for New York City in the late summer of 1972, I noticed a paperback book on the floor with what had to be the most peculiar title I had ever seen in all of my fourteen years: “How To Talk Dirty and Influence People” by some guy named Lenny Bruce.

The memory is as clear as if it was yesterday: Sitting in the back seat of my father’s station wagon, heading for New York City in the late summer of 1972, I noticed a paperback book on the floor with what had to be the most peculiar title I had ever seen in all of my fourteen years: “How To Talk Dirty and Influence People” by some guy named Lenny Bruce. As it turns out, the book had been accidentally left in the vehicle by a hitchhiker who Dad had picked up. He was always picking up hitchhikers, a trait he passed along to me. The kid had even printed his name on the front page of the book; I can still remember it: “Terry Malone”. Examining the photographs and reading bits and pieces of the text, I got the understanding that the subject of this autobiography was a comedian, and that he had been in trouble with the law due to the nature of his material. I wondered to myself, Why would anyone arrest a comedian for doing his act? I could also see from the epilogue at the book’s conclusion, written by his friend Dick Schaap, that the subject had since passed away. By this time Lenny had only been gone for six years.

“Dad?”, I called out to my father at the wheel, “Who was Lenny Bruce?” I’ll never forget his answer as long as I live. With a sad lilt to his voice, he replied: “Oh, he was a some mixed-up comedian.” Hmm, I thought to my self, Dad doesn’t approve??? This is something that must be looked into! He was always referring to me as “a mixed-up kid”, maybe this Lenny Bruce character was a kindred spirit. As it turns out, he was, but for entirely different reasons. I put the book out of my mind and went on with my life. Not long afterwards – it might have been about a month – I was watching the Ten O’Clock News on Channel 5 (this being back in the day when it was the best local news program in New York) when, lo and behold, there was the movie reviewer, Stuart Klein, giving his critique on a new documentary called, Lenny Bruce Without Tears. Klein’s review contained archival film of Lenny doing his act and, so help me, the man was a screaming riot!

A few days later I was at the Book And Record store at the long-gone Orange Plaza Mall in Middletown with a few bucks to spend. I headed straight for the comedy section to see if they might have any LPs in stock of this Lenny Bruce guy (I was a comedy nerd even at that early stage). Not only was he in stock, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that they had an entire LENNY BRUCE section! The old adage tells us never to judge a book by its cover; that’s not true when it comes to comedy records. The one I chose was called “The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce” with a morbidly hysterical photo on the cover of Lenny enjoying a pleasant picnic – in a graveyard! Later that night, my father stopped by the house to check on things (my parents were separated). When he noticed the Sick Humor LP sitting next to the stereo, he attempted to put his foot down. “Oh, no you don’t!”, he told me, “I don’t want any dirty comedians in my house!” “But Dad”, I said to him, “He’s not dirty. HE’S FUNNY! I’ll prove it to you right now!

Just listen!” I then proceeded to play for him the “Non-Skeddo Airlines” bit, the one about a guy who blows up an airplane. I’ll never forget the sight: Dad roared with laughter. Other than the time ten years later, when I played him a videocassette of Fawlty Towers, I never saw him laugh so hard or so loud in all the years I knew him. Here’s where the story gets interesting: Several months later, in around May of 1973, the nun who presided over my eighth grade class, Sister Elina, informed her charges that, for our final book report of the year, we had to do an autobiography. “Any autobiography?” I asked, trying to look as innocent as possible. “Yes, Mr. Degan”, she responded condescendingly, “any autobiography.” “Hmm”, I said. Let it be noted here for the record that I said “Hmm” an awful lot in those days. I was that kind of a kid. I guess I don’t need to tell you what direction the story goes from here. Sister Elina was a woman legendary for lacking anything even remotely resembling a sense of humor.

Apparently “How To Talk Dirty and Influence People” was not quite the subject matter that the old gal had in mind. Not only was I suspended for several days (a first for that school), I was banned from participating in the graduation ceremonies the following month. That was fine by me. I wasn’t quite jumping for joy at the prospect of donning one of those silly caps and gowns. In the autumn of ’73, after a disastrous two-month stint at a Catholic boarding school (St. Francis Prep in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania) my mother brought me to be enrolled at John S. Burke Catholic High School in Goshen, where I was promptly refused admission. The principal, a nice woman named Sister Margaret Phillips, referred to “the Lenny Bruce incident” as grounds for that refusal. I just couldn’t be expected to integrate properly into the hollowed and holy grounds of their beloved Burke High, a school which wasn’t named after a saint, by the way, but for the president of Bloomingdale’s. How’s that for hypocrisy? “He’s a troublemaker”, she told my mom in my presence. So, now you know: The blog you are reading is not my introduction to controversy.

I spent the rest of my high school years (or what were left of them – I dropped out in 1975) attending public school, the only member of my family (cousins included) to do so. For good or ill, I have Lenny Bruce to thank for that. The guy had an impact on my life, no doubt about it. It bugs me when people, to this day, (serious writers even) refer to Lenny Bruce as “a dirty comedian”. He wasn’t that at all. In fact, it is my belief that Lenny was the closest thing American humor has ever produced to being a free-form poet. That he was profane there is no denying. When one’s vocation is to call attention to the sick society we all still inhabit a half century after his death, profanity is unavoidable; in fact, It’s essential. Lenny might have been the “surgeon with a scalpel for false values”, but sadly, he was never able to provide us with a cure. Fifty years later, we look out upon the landscape to find that this sick society has only gotten sicker in the ensuing decades. “People should be taught ‘what is’, not ‘what should be’.

All of my humor is based on destruction and despair, and tomorrow, if the whole world became tranquil, without disease or violence, I’d be standing on the bread-line, right behind J. Edgar Hoover and Jonas Salk.” I know a lot more about Lenny Bruce today then I did in that long-ago summer of 1972. I have spent over forty years closely studying his life and career, more so than most of his biographers perhaps. I know that he was, at heart, a kind and gentle man who was known for his generosity. All of the people he was close to attest to his decency – and to his loneliness; Lenny was, in many respects, a very lonely man. I also know that, despite his reputation as the ultimate hipster of the American night, he was somewhat conservative in his personal views. In his memoirs, Frank Zappa tells the story of the time Lenny refused to autograph his draft card, gently admonishing him that it was “government property”. Lenny Bruce was a paradox. I also know that Lenny was a troubled soul who, I don’t think, was always comfortable being who he essentially was.

It isn’t possible to expect a man who sees society in all of its stark, hideous reality (as Lenny Bruce obviously did) to be at peace with himself or the world around him. And although there is no denying that, at times, he could be his own worst enemy, the persecution he endured for many years in the pursuit of his art is inexcusable and shocking in hindsight. “In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.” The greatest humorist of the twentieth century spent years being hounded by law enforcement agencies across the land like a common criminal. In the end his persecutors would render him a broken man. He gained a great deal of weight during his last two years – and this once-thriving, ambitious, movie-star-handsome, well-dressed man – began to take on the appearance of a haggard and dark mystic. On his fortieth birthday, October 13, 1965, he would undergo his final humiliation by having to legally declare himself a pauper. Offers for work had virtually dried up; old friends stopped calling and tried to avoid seeing him all together.

Fellow comic, Dick Gregory once commented on seeing Lenny Bruce at the end of his life: “It was just so sad.” On the morning of August 3, 1966, the last day of his life, he received in the mail a foreclosure notice on his home from the Bank of America. On top of that, he was at that moment desperately attempting to appeal a four-month jail sentence for a New York obscenity conviction. The despair he must have felt in the end would had to have been soul-consuming. And then there was his struggle with substance abuse…. When a friend found his lifeless body later that afternoon, the electric typewriter was still humming in his office. The final words he typed were an unfinished sentence: “Conspiracy to interfere with the fourth amendment const….” Constitutes what? Did a sudden realization of the hopelessness of his situation dawn on him then? Did he give up at that moment? Or had he intended on finishing that sentence? We’ll never know the answers to those questions. When the Los Angeles Police Department finally arrived at the scene, they felt they needed to humiliate him in death as they had while he was alive.

Against the protest of his friends – and his mother – they allowed photographers and TV cameramen to step up and record images of his dead, bloated body lying naked on the bathroom floor. They never would have done such a disgusting thing thing to Bob Hope. I used to have a reoccurring dream about meeting Lenny Bruce. It always took place in front of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City – which is weird because that building wasn’t constructed until years after Lenny died. In the dream, it is early in the evening. and he’s waiting for a cab to take him to a gig. While we’re waiting, we just talk – and it’s a pleasant conversation. I always awoke thinking for a few seconds that it had been real – it was so vivid in my memory. I no longer have that dream. Perhaps he has told me all he feels I need to know. If only I could remember the damned conversations…. I’m grateful to Terry Malone – a guy I never even met – for inadvertently leaving that book in my father’s station wagon all those years ago. I know I would have discovered Lenny eventually (that was inevitable) but it might have taken another two or three years.

Yeah, Lenny Bruce had a profound influence on my life, you’d better believe it. He taught me, very early on, that visualizing the world through the rose-colored lenses that were the fashion staple of his day – and ours – is not only futile, it’s foolish. The story you are reading is more his legacy than anyone else’s. This coming October 13 would have been Lenny’s ninety-first birthday. He would have made such a hip old man. It’s just so sad. Tom Degan Bleepin' Comedians: 7 Stand-Ups Who Pushed the Envelope - Biography.com Celebrity Bleepin' Comedians: 7 Stand-Ups Who Pushed the Envelope On George Carlin's birthday today, we're taking a look at the comedian and some fellow edgy comics who flipped the script on funny. Avatar: Social count: 10 On George Carlin's birthday today, we're taking a look at the comedian and some fellow edgy comics who flipped the script on funny. 10 0 Happy f**ing birthday, George Carlin !

Too bad you’ve been dead since 2008, but “why do we celebrate the birthdays of dead people?” seems like a setup for one of your routines, so, here we are. Speaking of routines, “Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say on TV” was your most famous, so to commemorate your 79th (minus eight) birthday, here’s a look at seven comedians who’ve turned the air blue—and changed the culture with their frank and funny observations. Lenny Bruce A photo of Lenny Bruce being arrested in 1961. (Photo: Examiner Press photo (RR Auctions) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons ) Labeled a “sick comic” for his brazen remarks, Lenny Bruce ’s humor went viral in the counterculture of the late 1950s and '60s. Married to stripper Honey Harlow, he emceed at the clubs she worked at, and forged his down and dirty act there.

Transforming himself into what biographer Albert Goldman called an “oral jazzman,” Bruce shocked and delighted audiences with lines like “take away the right to say ‘f**k’ and you take away the right to say ‘f**k the government.’” Officialdom, however, objected to being f**ked around by the author of How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, and Bruce was arrested on obscenity charges from San Francisco to Chicago. (Other cities simply banned him from performing.) The comedian doubled down, making his legal woes part of his act, and he was convicted of obscenity in New York in 1964. The conviction was overturned, but Bruce, dead at age 40 from a drug overdose, didn’t live to see his vindication, nor the generation of comics, like Joan Rivers , who stormed through the doors he broke down. George Carlin George Carlin poses for a photograph at 'A Conversation With George Carlin' presented by The Paley Center for Media at The Paley Center in 2008.

(Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images) Carlin was once arrested with Bruce, and in his 1972 routine adapted his seven dirty words from nine that landed Bruce in jail on one occasion, omitting “ass” and “balls.” Carlin himself was arrested for performing “Seven Dirty Words,” part of his image-changing Class Clown album, in Milwaukee that year. The uncensored radio broadcast of a variation on the routine in 1973 set in motion a chain of legal challenges that culminated in the 1978 Supreme Court decision FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, which defined the Federal Communications Commission’s power over regulating the broadcasting of indecent material. But Carlin had by then found his niche on HBO and pay cable, which let him say “piss,” “shit,” “tits,” “c**ksucker,” ‘c**t,” “f**k,” and “motherf**ker,” as much as he liked. (Younger viewers innocent of his ribald specials heard him as “Mr. Conductor” on several seasons of Thomas the Tank Engine.) “When you’re born, you get a ticket to the freak show.

When you’re born in America, you get a front-row seat,” he commented—but he might be pleased to know that in 2012 the Supreme Court ruled that the FCC could no longer impose fines and sanctions on verbal obscenities and indecency. Richard Pryor Richard Pryor does a stand-up routine on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1966. (Photo by CBS Photo Archive via Getty Images) Richard Pryor reigns at No. 1 on Comedy Central’s list of all-time greatest stand-up comedians. Watered-down movies and one rough patch after another in his personal life, including near-immolation while freebasing cocaine in a notorious 1980 incident, didn’t dilute the impact made by profanely hilarious albums and concert movies like the Grammy-winning …Is It Something I Said? (1975) and Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (1979), an HBO staple in its era. Pryor was the maestro of the “n-word,” titling two of his bestselling albums with it, but following an inspirational trip to Africa in 1979 he abandoned its use. “I went to Zimbabwe,” he recalled.

“I know how white people feel now—relaxed! Cause when I heard the police car I knew they weren’t coming after me!” Andrew Dice Clay A still from Andrew Dice Clay: Indestructible (2013). (Photo: LOL Comedy from Hollywood [ CC BY-SA 2.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons ) Stand-ups like Bruce, Carlin, and Pryor used dirty words pointedly, to take on sacred cows like politics, religion, and “proper” American values. Andrew Dice Clay was a shock-for-shock-sake’s kind of guy, who let it hang out so alarmingly in his Madison Square Garden-filling heyday that MTV banned him in 1989 (“Little Bo Peep f**ked her sheep” began his “adult nursery rhymes” routine) and Saturday Night Live cast member Nora Dunn and musical guest Sinead O’Connor , appalled by his misogyny, boycotted his 1990 guest-hosting stint.

(He cried about the episode on The Arsenio Hall Show that year.) Clay, who has said he was an actor playing the part of a shock comic, showed impressive dramatic chops opposite Cate Blanchett in Woody Allen ’s Blue Jasmine (2013), and revived his crude “Diceman” persona for Showtime’s currently airing Dice. Roseanne Barr Roseanne Barr at the Hard Rock Cafe in Maui in 2010. (Photo: Leah Mark (Flickr) [ CC BY-SA 2.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons ) Best known for her brash “domestic goddess” persona on the Emmy-winning sitcom Roseanne, Barr made headlines in 1990 for a hellacious rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner before a Padres and Cubs baseball game in San Diego, one that no less than president George H.W.

Bush deemed “disgraceful.” (“I just thought it would be funny,” she said.) Barr’s not in the limelight so much these days but she does make controversial use of her allotted 140 characters on Twitter, posting George Zimmerman’s address in the wake of the Trayvon Martin killing, telling singing sensation Adele to “stfu” about her “endless heartbreaks” (“Jazz it up chubby”), and zig-zagging from anti-Zionist views to anti-Muslim ones. “A car wreck,” AlterNet called her. But she’s forever unrepentant. “I love colorful language,” she says. “I used to get my mouth washed out with soap by my mom for doing it. So of course I never did it around her too much. I did around my friends. It’s so free.” Wanda Sykes Wanda Sykes at the 92Y in New York City in 2015. (Photo: Michael Priest Photography) “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our p**ssies were detachable?” muses Wanda Sykes in one of her sexually charged routines.

“We could go for a jog late at night and if a man jumped out of the bushes we could say, no, sorry, we left it at home, got nothing on us!” Sykes is a classic foul-mouthed foil for Larry David on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, calling him on his BS, but she’s best when she’s keeping it personal, as when she talks about being prepped to host the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (“Did they really think I was gonna say ‘f**k’ to all those ‘f**ing dignitaries?”), and discusses her race and her lesbianism. “It’s harder to be gay than black. I didn’t have to come out black,” she says in her Emmy-nominated HBO special I’ma Be Me (2009). “I didn’t have to sit my parents down and tell them about my blackness.” Sarah Silverman Sarah Silverman at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2007. (Photo: Joan Garvin (kirby10011) (Flickr) [ CC BY 2.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons ) Don’t be fooled by her Jewish girl-next-door wholesomeness— Sarah Silverman has claws.

But she uses them sweetly. Take her scene-stealing punchline in the 2005 documentary about the world’s dirtiest joke, The Aristocrats—it’s all very matter of fact, as she frames it as autobiography, candidly describes one lewd act after another, and brings TV host Joe Franklin into the telling. (Outraged, he considered filing a defamation suit against her.) She carried over that same ironic detachment to the potty- and genital-fixated Sarah Silverman Program on Comedy Central, wrote a book about her bedwetting, and in 2008 won an Emmy for an ode to infidelity she penned for then-boyfriend Jimmy Kimmel ’s talk show, “I’m F**ing Matt Damon.” “I don’t set out to offend or shock, but I also don’t do anything to avoid it,” she says. Tags 9 Must-Read Autobiographies by Legendary Stand-Up Comics :: Comedy :: Lists :: Paste 9 Must-Read Autobiographies by Legendary Stand-Up Comics By Amanda Wicks | June 23, 2015 | 3:45pm Share Tweet Submit Pin It takes a certain kind of personality to get up onstage and talk about life.

Whether from personal experience or general observation, stand-up comics produce valuable and necessary insight into the oftentimes ridiculous moments that comprise a life. Those who succeed at it do so not because of pleasant childhoods or positive life choices. Stand-up comedy’s legends are exactly that because they’ve managed to stare down life’s dark moments and somehow come out laughing. Here are nine autobiographies that examine the lives and careers, both painful and comic, of some of stand-up’s greatest comics. 1. The Other Great Depression by Richard Lewis Bring up the term “neurotic” in a conversation about stand-up comedy, and chances are Richard Lewis’ name isn’t far behind. Although he’s not the first comic to exhibit a confessional style touching on his neuroses and the many life experiences that contributed to them, he was one of the industry’s major stars in the 1970s and 1980s for exactly this reason. Not shying away from the truth, Lewis takes a stark look at his stand-up comedy career, his alcoholism and subsequent sobriety in the almost conversational The Other Great Depression. 2.

Bouncing Back: I’ve Survived Everything…and I Mean Everything by Joan Rivers From self-help books to the laundry list of things she hates in the world to a diary about her daily existence, Joan Rivers has penned several works over the years. Still, it’s her look into the difficulties she faced in her professional and personal life (including her husband’s suicide) that explores the comedienne’s career. With a self-help bent, and her usual self-deprecating humor, Rivers doesn’t shy away from topics that would take a ten-foot pole for most others to touch. 3. Pryor Convictions: And Other Life Sentences by Richard Pryor Pryor’s title alone signifies just how advanced he was when it came to language’s comedic force. With the help of co-writer Todd Gold, Pryor recounts his life growing up in Peoria, Illinois and the darker moments that contributed to his sharp comedic style. In the last few years, Pryor has been the subject of two biographies and yet it is his own work that makes Pryor Convictions such a compelling read. Pryor delves into his past sometimes honestly, sometimes evasively, but always irreverently. 4.

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin Many comics have a knack for writing thanks to their profession, but Martin takes that skill to another level. A prolific writer of plays, novellas and even children’s books, Martin proves he has a talent for language beyond his comedic stage work. Detailing his meteoric rise in the late 1970s and almost immediate exit in 1981, Born Standing Up is more than an autobiography about a comic; Martin allows readers an insightful glimpse into the 1970s stand-up comedy scene. 5. Love All the People by Bill Hicks Released ten years after Hicks’ death, Love All the People isn’t an autobiography in the traditional sense. Hicks didn’t sit down to write out his life, but the book does collect many interviews, performance transcriptions and his personal writing to produce an uncommon autobiography steeped in the comic’s remarkable voice. With Hicks’ trademark witty scorn stamped all over the pages, Love All the People provides fabulous insight into this one-of-a-kind voice taken far too early. 6.

Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse: My Life in Comedy by Phyllis Diller Beginning her career in the early 1950s, Phyllis Diller never played it safe even as a woman in a man’s industry. Concentrating on her life as a bored housewife, she made audiences laugh with her raucous sense of humor and even more colorful stage presence. Behind so many comedians lies a pain driving them to work through their past by looking at it comedically. In Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse, Diller and co-writer Richard Buskin go behind the scenes to examine her life’s darker moments, like growing up in the Great Depression, and how they contributed to her groundbreaking comedy. 7. Nigger: An Autobiography by Dick Gregory Influential and groundbreaking comic Dick Gregory became one of the first African-Americans to perform stand-up for entirely white audiences. Where other African-American comics had to temper their act depending on audience, Gregory displayed a bold, honest voice that didn’t shy away from discussing race and racial politics no matter who occupied the seats.

Gregory has written numerous works over the years, including another autobiography, but it’s his 1964 book co-written with Robert Lipsyte that stands out as an important glimpse into this innovative stand-up comic and the myriad challenges he faced throughout his career. 8. How to Talk Dirty and Influence People by Lenny Bruce Stand-up comics today exhibit a freedom of speech that would have landed them in hot water back in the early 1960s. That’s exactly what happened with Lenny Bruce, who was arrested several times beginning in 1961 for obscene language and convicted of obscenity in 1964. In many ways, Bruce paved the way for contemporary comic’s relative freedom. Onstage. Told in the comic’s own truthful, if coarse, voice, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People looks back at his life, beginning with his childhood and the often indecent conversations he overhead his mother having with close neighborhood friends.

Review: 'Self-Help Messiah,' By Steven Watts : NPR by Steven Watts Dale Carnegie and Success in Modern America Author Independent Booksellers "Make the other person feel important." "Let the other fellow feel that the idea is his." "Make people like you." Those are some of the peppy commands that have sent generations of Americans out into the world, determined to win friends and influence people — oh, and make big bucks. Dale Carnegie's book How to Win Friends and Influence People came out in November 1936 and has gone on to sell more than 30 million copies worldwide — making it one of the best-selling nonfiction books in American history. Despite taking knocks from the likes of Arthur Miller, who mocked its upbeat worldview in Death Of A Salesman, and Lenny Bruce, who titled his 1965 autobiography How To Talk Dirty And Influence People, Carnegie's blockbuster is still in print and still sells in the six figures yearly. Contemporary prophets of positivity like Oprah, Jack Canfield of the "Chicken Soup For The Soul" series and televangelist Joel Osteen, to name but a few, owe much to Carnegie's brisk gospel of sunny reinvention.

Carnegie is the subject of a new biography by Steven Watts, who has chronicled the lives of other American cultural dynamos like Henry Ford, Walt Disney and Hugh Hefner. To be ruthlessly honest (which is not a conversational style that Carnegie ever recommended), Watts' book, called Self-Help Messiah, is a tad lumbering. We readers are treated to way too much background information about, say, the genesis of the YMCA and the ethos of The Lost Generation. Watts might have profited by adopting some of the perky anecdotes and canny sense of audience that characterizes Carnegie's own writing style. Article continues after sponsorship But Carnegie is such a pivotal figure and his life story such a compelling testament to the power of positive thinking (and good luck) that the overstuffed feel of this book is an irritant rather than a deal-breaker. Carnegie was born in Missouri in 1888; his parents were dirt-poor farmers. As a teenager, Carnegie enrolled in the tuition-free Missouri State Normal School for teachers, where he was humiliated by his ragged clothes and jug ears until he found distinction in the debate society.

His "people skills" were subsequently honed on the road as a meat products salesman and by a stint at acting school in New York City. As Watts depicts him, Carnegie seems to have been one of those people born with a bedrock optimism and belief in their own potential. He finally found his footing when he began to give workshops on public speaking to aspiring young businessmen at YMCAs along the Eastern Seaboard. The descriptions of those classes, in which sweaty, young middle managers would buckle at the knees and even faint out of fear of public speaking, are poignant. As Watts shows, Carnegie's emphasis on projecting a sunny personality was part of a larger shift away from a Victorian concern with character and self-denial to a modern fascination with advertising, consumerism and self-promotion. Carnegie's teaching promised to pay off in self-fulfillment and fat wallets. Alison Reynolds/Courtesy of Other Press Steven Watts' other books include The People's Tycoon, Mr. Playboy and The Magic Kingdom.

Alison Reynolds/Courtesy of Other Press In How to Win Friends and Influence People, which was derived from those early YMCA classes, Carnegie wrote that he'd asked "thousands of businessmen to smile at someone every hour of the day for a week and then come to class and talk about the results." Carnegie proudly reported a stockbroker's comments: "I find that smiles are bringing me dollars, many dollars every day." Other businessmen who attested to the success of the Carnegie method were Walter Chrysler, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan. Watts shows how particularly attuned Carnegie was to the psychological needs of Americans beaten down by the Great Depression, who needed to hear that positive thinking would garner positive results. It's easy, of course, for we contemporary readers to dismiss Carnegie's teaching as mere boosterism and Babbittry, but his self-help legacy has endured well beyond his own death in 1955, and flourishes in our own age. Of all the anecdotes about Carnegie's far-reaching influence that Watts cites, one especially stays with me.

During the 1960s, radical Youth International Party — Yippie — leader Jerry Rubin read How to Win Friends and Influence People to overcome his own fear of making public political speeches. He faced off, ideologically speaking, with President Lyndon Johnson, who had been a Carnegie method instructor in his youth in Texas. Sometimes truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

Question: ‘How To Talk Dirty and Influence People’ is the title of which US comedian’s autobiography?
Answer: Lenny Bruce