Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life by Steve Martin
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Book Reviews of Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
Book Review: What am I missing?
Summary: 2 Stars
Having just finished Steve Martin's "Born Standing Up" I can't for the life of me understand the 5 star rating that so many people have given it. His breathless staccato writing style is a far cry from great literature and reads more like a fleshed out resume than an actual autobiography. I found it mildly interesting but kept waiting for it to get better. I'm still waiting. Mercifully, at least it's a slim volume and I bought it used so not much time or money spent. I can neither recommend it nor caution one to stay away. Just don't pay retail.Book Review: highly recommended
Summary: 5 Stars
I've read complaints about the length (of lack thereof). I found the book to be compelling & very well-edited. It's an insightful look behind the scenes of a comic's life & shatters the myth of the overnight success story. It's well worth your time.Book Review: An insider view of a meteoric rise
Summary: 5 Stars
Finding someone in this country who doesn't know of Steve Martin would be a chore that I'd prefer not to attempt to undertake. What's the point of finding someone who has been living under a rock for the last thirty years?
Being the age that I am, my introduction to Steve Martin was most likely through an appearance on The Muppet Show. Not long after, I found that my father had a Steve Martin album, A Wild and Crazy Guy, which concluded with the memorable "King Tut." Thus, before I really understood that there was such a thing as "stand-up comedy," I was vaguely aware that the Steve Martin I would soon begin to see in movies was a performer of some sort.
Born Standing Up is Steve Martin's memoir of his years as a stand-up comedian: "not an autobiography but a biography, because I am writing about someone I used to know." The narrative begins in the summer of 1965, when Steve Martin was just about to begin his life as a performer.
We're then taken back to 1950, when the Martin family moved with five-year-old Steve from Waco, Texas to Hollywood. We're then given a view into life at home and especially the cool and complex relationship between Glenn Martin and his son.
At age ten, Steve Martin secured a job selling guidebooks at Disneyland, where he could study performers plying their craft daily. Securing a position in a magic shop at Disneyland proved crucial. The hours spent demonstrating magic tricks to tourists stopping in the shop led to the development of some skill that led to performances. Changes in the magic shop proved fortunate, helping to move Steve Martin in the direction of comedy.
It has long been said that fortune favors the bold. Fortune has indeed smiled upon Steve Martin. He was bold, developing an act that was hardly conventional even for a time when unconventional was the standard convention for performers. To this, we see more added, the sort of effort and attention to detail that I would sum up succinctly in the word professional. He recorded himself for later listening. He paid attention to himself, how his props, body, and words went together. He watched how different material would work for various audiences. And he practiced, taking on a grueling schedule, show after show, day in an day out.
Finally, Steve Martin made the bigtime. It was then that he decided that he was going to get out of stand-up comedy. The thought is perhaps incomprehensible to some: why leave what you love doing when you're able at the top of the game? Another question is raised: does it follow that you wind up doing what you love simply by virtue of finding success in doing what you love? Put another way, if you love to be bold and original, can you be bold and original when most of the country is repeating catchphrases that come from your act?
Steve Martin is a man of many talents. That writing is among his talents helps to make Born Standing Up a pleasurable read, one that like much of his work also leaves room for reflection after the initial response has subsided.
Book Review: Martin Takes A Very Serious Look Back and Doesn't See Much Funny About It
Summary: 3 Stars
Steve Martin has written a surprisingly sad look back at his life that glosses over most of the major things he is known for while focusing on his dysfuncational family, his inabilities with women and his bad relationship with his father. The book is not very funny, a bit depressing and not as revealing as you would hope an autobiography would be.
The book is very short--at 200 double-spaced pages it takes only a couple hours to read--and the first half of the book is devoted to his life to age 22. He then quickly goes through his early TV years without really telling any stories about the famous people he worked with, then doesn't get to his movie career until 20 pages before the end. He doesn't mention his marriage--but doesn't once alude to his divorce. And doesn't mention anything about family except his distant parents and sister.
It sounds like he just look through some old scrapbooks and started writing his minimal recollections of what happened 40 to 50 years ago. There aren't a lot of details and little insight into how he developed his comedy. Jerry Seinfeld writes on the back cover that it's "One of the best books about comedy and being a comedian ever written," but that is so far from the truth that it's doubtful that Seinfeld even read the book.
There are a few interesting tidbits--like his continued crush on his first girlfriend, who turns out to be Christian prayer book author Stormie Omartian. And some of the photos in the book are great inclusions. Plus Martin opens up about his serious anxiety disorder, which leads him to come across as aloof when he is being interviewed on talk shows.
But this is not a book about his entire career--it's a book about his recollections of being a stand-up comedian decades ago, so there is almost nothing in it from the past 30 years. If you are looking for inside stories about Saturday Night Live or Sonny & Cher or his movie successes you won't find them here--just a rather sad story of a man who never really got his dad's approval, who concludes that true comedy is really very serious.
Book Review: a wonderful look at the magic of comedy
Summary: 3 Stars
this book was a delight, a fascinating look at the way Martin developed his craft. For anyone who loves comedy or anyone who does public speaking it is a great primer.
Martin is a gifted writer and observer of life, and this book reflects both of those gifts