| Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-up in the 1970s Changed America | 
 enlarge | List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $6.23
You Save: $18.72 (75%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $4.93
Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 15 reviews)
Sales Rank: 115271
Category: Book
Author: Richard Zoglin
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Studio: Bloomsbury USA
Manufacturer: Bloomsbury USA
Label: Bloomsbury USA
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 1582346240
Dewey Decimal Number: 792.7
EAN: 9781582346243
ASIN: 1582346240
Publication Date: January 22, 2008
Release Date: January 22, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
What Peter Biskind did for filmmaking, Time magazine critic Richard Zoglin does for comedy in this meticulously researched and hilariously readable account of stand-up comedy in the 1970s. In the rock-and-roll 1970s, a new breed of comic, inspired by the fearless Lenny Bruce, made telling jokes an art form. Innovative comedians like George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Robert Klein, and, later, Steve Martin, Albert Brooks, Robin Williams, and Andy Kaufman, tore through the country and became as big as rock stars in an era when Saturday Night Live was the apotheosis of cool and the Improv, Catch a Rising Star, and the Comedy Store were the hottest clubs around. In Comedy at the Edge, Richard Zoglin gives a backstage view of the time, when a group of brilliant, iconoclastic comedians ruled the world?and quite possibly changed it, too. Based on extensive interviews with club owners, agents, producers?and with unprecedented and unlimited access to the players themselves? Comedy at the Edge is a no-holdsbarred, behind-the-scenes look at one of the most influential and tumultuous decades in American popular culture.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Unfortunate omissions mar overall quality January 6, 2009
Although "Comedy at the Edge" is well researched for the most part, author Richard Zoglin does make some startling omissions in this attempt at chronicling stand-up comedy in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. How could he fail to mention such luminaries as Cheech & Chong, while devoting numerous pages to little-known lackeys of the omnipresent Mitzi Shore? While detailing the falling out between Joan Rivers and Johnny Carson, which involved Rivers hosting her own talk show, why not at least mention Arsenio Hall, who was also a pioneer of late night: the first African American to host, and on one of the upstart new networks to boot? If it were not for the single sentence mentioning Brett Butler, no Southern comedians would be present in this book at all -- where is Jeff Foxworthy, who has sold at least as many comedy albums as Steve Martin in his heyday? Other lapses include short shrift for Latino comedians other than Freddie Prinze (George Lopez and Paul Rodriguez are not mentioned); no discussion of the touring-in-groups phenomena such as the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, Kings of Comedy and Queens of Comedy; and too little attention paid to women comedians (although Zoglin acknowledges there were few of them who were as hugely successful as the men, he could have beefed up the chapter on women comedians by doing more than just listing the names of many, rather than providing the needed depth to appreciate their contributions). This book is a nice start to the study of the stand-up era, but there is plenty of room for additional scholarship.
 Superb Writer, Truly Interesting, Read This Book!! July 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Richard Zoglin has taken a period of our lives, when laughing at ourselves and the world we live in, was something we just expected, enjoyed and used in our own everyday conversations---"excuuuuuse me". The comedians we thought we knew so well that we used their material to get our own laughs.
Comedy At The Edge tells us what a serious, sometimes heartbreaking business comedy is. Zoglin interviewed every living comedian, producer, writer and entertainer that was part of this piece of history--and researched those who weren't. He shows us how comedy has evolved to the point of the modern intellectual stand-up routines we have now come to expect. How the performance bar was raised and how each comedian struggled to become who they were. Who made it, who didn't and why.
Their comedic talent came across so effortlessly. I didn't and probably most in our generation, who laughed their way through the 70's, did not understand what a gift it was.
Zoglin has made all the pieces fit. The continuity and connection to real life, each comedian and their effect on each other, how they perfected their craft, their place in history and how it all related to current events of the times is flawless. He has taken an entire decade of our lives, organized it, given us new insight into what was really going on and keeps us laughing all the way through.
Richard Zoglin, himself, is very funny. His writing is superb and you want to keep turning the pages just to find out what happens next. But what makes it even more interesting is that you were there--some of the things Zoglin writes about you go 'oh yeah, I remember' and then he gives you information that puts a whole new spin on what you thought you knew.
I've recommended this book to everyone I know--and I'm recommending it to you.
Entertaining History of Comedy June 30, 2008
And in the US, the 70's was the start of the modern era of comedy. The post war guys were reacting to Vietnam, Watergate, Civil Rights and reacting against the vaudeville era Henny Youngman stuff. The books starts off with the late George Carlin and Richard Pryor and works it's way up til Jerry Seinfeld.
Couple of the things I learned: Comics went on strike once against the Comedy Store, what happened to the careers of Robert Klein and Richard Belzer, Robin William's managers once got a court stenographer to transcribe a gig cause he was so freestyle that was the best way to help hone it. Lots of good stuff about the comics, that for me, really were the Beatles and Rolling Stones of the form.
If you like reading about comedy, you should like this book. The author has good taste and writes well. My only quibble is that the book is a little over 200 pages. I'd bet it could have been expanded to 400 pages or so. It was fun to read and I wanted more.
Clunky but interesting May 28, 2008
Like most books about stand up comedy, Comedy at the Edge is fascinating but awkwardly written.
 Sock opening, no finish March 30, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
A successor-in-interest to Gerald Nachman's Seriously Funny (duly listed among the sources), this book is neither as well-written nor as factually error-ridden as that work.
Richard Zoglin attempts to do for comedy of the '70s what Nachman did for the '50s and '60s. But the book's like a comic with a sock opening, 25 minutes of so-so material, and no finish.
The sock opening is the chapter on George Carlin. A well-reported book on Carlin is long overdue, and this chapter is the closest we've had so far.
Sad to say, the so-so material starts with the next chapter, on Richard Pryor. There's just no kick to it.
This may not be Zoglin's fault, or at least not *just* his fault. I've noticed that the shadow Pryor cast seems to defy tracing in print. (Surprisingly, Roger Ebert may have come closest in his interviews with the late comedian, and reviews of his concert films.) Even Pryor's co-written memoir seemed--you should pardon the expression--"whitewashed."
After that it's just a spotty history of the comedians of the decade with one or two glaring omissions.
By the finish, Zoglin is trying desperately to tie everything to the present day by passing through the last 30 years of stand-up in three pages.
This means he has to lump together comics like Bill Hicks and Chris Rock, who deserve books of their own, with Sarah Silverman, who doesn't yet but might someday. Zoglin devotes little more than a sentence to each. Worse, he elevates a poser like Dane Cook by mentioning him on the same page as Albert Brooks and Steve Martin.
Finally, the book fails to make the case that it was from the world of small comedy clubs that our cultural sensibilities emerged, by focusing on that world obsessively to the exclusion of other factors.
Zaglin asserts that '70s stand up made us more cynical and suspicious about our leaders and authority in general. I think scandals from Watergate to Iran-Contra to pedophile priests to the current Iraq war might have had something to do with that.
Certainly, more so than a bunch of guys, and a few gals, who were willing to do anything for a laugh.
|
|
|
