Sometimes, as I wander through the aisles of the bookstore, I see something I can’t pass. Something that looks to entertaining to miss. One of those was Born Standing Up by Steve Martin…
Born Standing Up, by Steve Martin
As I got older, he left stand-up and moved to acting. Nothing he did was offensive but it always had a slightly subversive element. I have no doubt that he had a major effect on my sense of humor: slightly serious and silly all at the same time. (Unlike his, mine flops.)
So you would think that an autobiography by Martin would fall someplace into the continuum that he created. Silly and absurd? Touching and warm? Serious and insightful? Factual and dry would be very unlikely…right?
It’s an unlikely combination from Martin, but most of the book falls into this latter category. It’s a great book for Martin fans who want history and details. For me, it’s passable but a disappointment.
Why? I read biographies and autobiographies because I want to know how the subject of the book faced the complex situations, difficult decisions, and unexpected challenges life presents. Facts are important for context but facts are not the story. The story is what we think happened in their head: the insights, the trade-offs, the agony and ecstasy. Without this, I find the genre to be trivia and gossip.
Skip the first 80 pages…
So, if you are like me, skip the first 80 pages. It’s trivia. It’s a series short anecdotes of his youth, working in entertainment related roles at Disney, Knott’s Berry Farm and an endless list of coffee houses. There is no insight by Martin about how this shaped his personality or gave him a specific insight that would vault him to fame. There are numerous stories about how he read a book on showmanship, learned how to deal with live crowds, and other such things…
The important details? He had a difficult relationship with his father. The amount of text devoted to this? A few lines in this third of the book and a little more spread across the remaining pages of the book.
Page 81 and on…
The book improves. In the last 2/3 of the book, Martin describes his evolution from amateur musician and magician to work on television comedy shows to his leap into a role as a full-time stand-up comedian. He describes the years he worked on the Smothers Brothers, the gigs got on variety shows, of leaving a steady paycheck to go on the road. At the end, he recounts the experience performing in front of stadium sized crowds.
For a book written by a man who has entertained millions of people, who wrote several books and plays and who has (repeatedly mentioned) a degree in philosophy…it’s an emotionally empty retelling. It’s a road map of his journey. He explains the sign-posts he followed, but doesn’t explain much more.
The best insights we get are represented in this passage from page 112:
What if there were no punch lines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension? Theoretically, it would have to come out some time. But if I kept denying them the formality of a punch line, the audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation. This type of laugh seemed stronger to me, as they would be laughing at something they chose, rather than being told exactly when to laugh.
I find that paragraph fascinating and I’m sad that there wasn’t more of it. Part of me wonders if the book is just what he describes here: a joke that requires us to decide where to laugh or to grow angry.
If you are fan, you’ll enjoy the book. I like Martin and it was interesting to learn his role on the Smothers Brothers shows and other events in his life. So, I’m not upset at getting it…I just hoped for more…
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