| Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life | |
|---|---|
Front Cover |
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| Author(s) | Steve Martin |
| Cover artist | Design by John Fulbrook III and photograph by Bobby Klein |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Memoir |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group[1] |
| Publication date | November 20, 2007[1] |
| Published in English |
November 20, 2007[1] |
| Media type | print (Hardcover, Paperback); Audio Book |
| Pages | 224 (hardcover)[1] |
| ISBN | 9781416553649[1] |
| OCLC Number | 153578765[2] |
| Dewey Decimal | 792.7/028092 B 22 |
| LC Classification | PN2287.M522 A3 2007 |
| Preceded by | The Pleasure of My Company (2003) |
Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life is a memoir, released November 20, 2007[1], by Steve Martin, an American author[1], actor[3], comedian, executive producer[3], playwright[4] and screenwriter[3]. It chronicles his early life, his days working for Disneyland, working at low tier coffee shops and clubs as a comedic act, his later days of the Bird Cage, his relationships, his eventual fame, and the reason why he quit standup altogether in 1981.
Contents |
The book examines Martin's childhood, his first jobs at the Southern California theme parks, Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm. It includes his later stand-up comedy career, which lasted until 1981. In that year, Martin retired from stand-up comedy for four reasons.
1. The first reason he cites was due to his feeling that he had pinnacled his stand-up performance.
2. The second was his feeling that his routine had become bloated and old.
3. The third was that he was now also starting to become an actor in movies.
4. And the fourth was to pursue his new film career full-time.
Martin goes into detail about his act, how people viewed his act, and how that he managed to barely draw in more than a couple of people a night, to when he would be performing in front of tens of thousands of his fans.
Through Martin's slight explanations, the reader comes to understand his love for magic, his early gags like the "happy feet," and why he would wear a three-piece white vested suit on stage.
The book also deals with Martin's estranged relationship between himself and his family, especially his father. It goes on to relate how he eventually got to reconnect with each of his parents better, and learn more about them than he had known for his entire childhood. In addition, it goes into detail about his parents's deaths, and how he managed to deal with, and get through, both of them.
Though the book is primarily based on Martin's life and stand-up career, an interesting side story is his observations of how the world was changing completely around him, from his early days of hippy-esque "peace and love" culture, to something of which he was unsure, and something he had to work his act to agree with.
An excerpt from the book was published in USA Today.[5]
Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life received mostly favorable reviews.
Lev Grossman, Time book critic, ranked the book number 6 on his 2007 "Top 10 Nonfiction Books" list.[6]
Fellow comedian Jerry Seinfeld praised the book, calling it "one of the best books about comedy and being a comedian ever written."[7]
The audio-book version was excerpted on The New Yorker's website.[8]
The audio-book version, read by the author,[9] (and also released November 2007[9]) was nominated for a 2009 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.[10]