A Bag of Dicks and a Few Chicks

Get ready for some information overload!  

The Comedians:  Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy by Kliph Nesteroff (Grove Press, 2015)
Comedy is not pretty, and self-described "comedy nerd" Kliph Nesteroff wants to make sure that you don't miss one ugly inch.  His exhaustive and fascinating tome (400+ pages, with footnotes and index), comes at you rapid fire, leaving you feeling like you watched a Laugh-In marathon.  There is just so much here, and yet there is something vitally missing (more on that later).

Starting with the early 20th century, Neteroff shows us the roots of stand-up comedy, beginning with Frank Fay, a vaudeville comic (later actor) who eschewed pratfalls and slapstick,and instead stood in front of an audience and told straightforward jokes. (But that's not where the term "stand-up comedian" originated...and I ain't tellin'.)  He moves on to the likes of Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Groucho Marx, et al, and rather than fawn over their comic genius, Neteroff prefers to show how each comic screwed the others, or were screwed by others.  From stealing jokes to stealing the spotlight, one comes away feeling that they will never look at these adored luminaries in the same way, or will feel a little twinge of guilt when they laugh at their jokes. 

Now, here's the missing stuff:  

My first beef is semantical.  The first half of the subtitle is quite accurate.  However, I would have preferred that Nesteroff called the book "a history" rather than "the history," as it does not cover anything before the 20th century, and I'm sure funny stuff was going on in the country prior to 1900 (except when the Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock.  They were real buzzkills.).  Even better, he should have called it "a history of stand-up comedy."

My other beef is where are the women?  With the exception of a few paragraphs devoted to Pearl Williams (an early "dirty comic"), Joan Rivers, Jean Carroll, Moms Mabley, and Lily Tomlin, plus some discussion of Mitzi Shore, the evil queen of The Comedy Store, women are essentially missing.  The contribution of the likes of Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Phyllis Diller, Sarah Silverman, Sophie Tucker, et al, are pretty much non-existent.  Women, if anything in this book, are just names.   Aren't women part of the history of American comedy, too?  They're certainly part a huge part of its future.

Despite its flaws, this is a must-read.