"Honesty and wit are so rarely combined."
353005
The characters of "Ridicule" walk a tenuous line in a setting where wit is the only currency. They lead lives filled with shallow hypocrisies and carefully planned jokes. Every pleasantry is two-faced; earnestness is shunned in favour of irony. They exchange scathing bon mots and comebacks, ridiculing each other in order to be accepted. They embark upon passionless affairs to climb socially. Gravitas is frowned upon, and there is always the knowledge that one day they will lose their sharpness or go too far, and be ridiculed themselves.
Gregoire Ponceludon de Malavoy (Charles Berling) comes to the court of Versailles to see the king. He needs money to drain a disease-riddled swamp where his people work and die. His chances look slim until it turns out that he has a quick tongue. He is taken under the wing of an elderly courtier, Monsieur Bellegarde (Jean Rochefort) and trained in the ways of the court (never laugh at your own jokes, never laugh with your mouth open - and never pun).
Ponceludon is soon captivated by Bellegarde's beautiful daughter Mathilde (Judith Godreche), who has plans of her own - she is designing a diving suit and marrying a rich old man to finance it. Meanwhile, Madame de Blayac (Fanny Ardant), an affluent widow of the court with great social placing, spots Ponceludon herself and they embark upon an affair of mutual convenience. His only desire for her lies in the fact that her bedroom leads to the king, and therefore to financial gain for his project. They both know this, and there is a scene where she laughs at him and tells him, "Learn to hide your insincerity so that I may yield without dishonour".
Beautifully shot and wonderfully acted, "Ridicule" is a treat for the senses. Fanny Ardant in particular is outstanding: she is a captivating actress who should be seen more often here, and to better advantage. The film itself is perhaps a little like the French version of "Dangerous Liaisons". Filled with sharp wit that isn't necessarily coming out of the mouths of the characters, it serves as a reminder that perhaps we have more in common with the shallow butterflies of this film that we might care to admit.
2243930
Ayelet Waldman has a sharp intelligence which carries through into her writing. Therefore, she's often quite amusing to read. The problem is that this busy brightness is often employed to fudge over her rather obvious defects as a mother. She seems unable to keep in mind, for example, that her children will be reading her words someday. In one notorious essay, she worried that one of her children might be "deformed" or genetically damaged in some way because his chin was very pointed. She has also explored her suicidal thoughts in public--before revealing them to her husband.

I suspect that Waldman sees what is essentially irresponsible in herself as charmingly unprogrammed. She's "letting it all hang out," when what she should do is cram a lot of it back in.

The entertainment value of this book is also damaged by what seems to be an embedded mean-spiritedness toward any whom she sees as encroaching on her absolute proprietorship of her husband, Michael Chabon. She reports with some glee that, with careful calculation, she managed to disrupt Chabon and his mother's long-standing custom of having lunch together. I didn't see a word that indicated Waldman ever considered that these lunches might be important, even precious, to both of them.

Waldman has sons. How would she feel, in twenty years, if some jealous daughter-in-law knowingly set out to disrupt her relationship with a son?

Waldman has said that mothers should forgive themselves more, and pass judgment less. Actually, she should forgive herself less, and pass judgment more.
2500948
Ideal is a short story written by Ayn Rand. She wrote the story as a response to a particularly difficult period in her life; lack of success, dwindling savings and duplicitous friends causing despair.  As any writer would do, she took her disillusionment to paper, penning Ideal.

Ideal is the story of a famous actress in Hollywood who pulls a prank on the world in an attempt to test the mettle of a select group of men who claimed to have honor.  The tale ends with the ruse itself backfiring, resulting in the death of the only man of character.  It is a short story, not heavily edited and which she turned into a play after she realized that format would work better; a play which itself has never been produced.

For me the story is interesting because it shines a light on Rands state of mind when things were not going very well  when she was not at the top of her game.  And it highlights the creative, perhaps natural frustration in the mind of a woman who has become one of the world champions of humanism, as she is forced to interact with real people.  Rand was never a fan of idealists  in her philosophy a person must live out their beliefs in their daily life; else those beliefs were shown to never really have existed in the first place.  Words were never enough.  Nevertheless  as Ideal attempts to portray  for too many people, words do seem to be enough.  For too many people, the hard reality of living their convictions is too often cast aside for the expediency of the moment, justified by a greater good or a lesser evil.

This book highlights well Rands disappointment in men who fall short of their own soaring rhetoric.  Ideal is perhaps the antithesis to We the Living; while the latter is a story about the triumph of a woman against the odds, Ideal is a recognition of the occasional futility of life.  If for that reason alone you should read it.
3882754
This is a goldmine of conversations between Judd Apatow and successful people in the entertainment industry (mostly comedians). I enjoyed seeing how decent and hard-working the majority were. How much they slaved to get to where they are. How smart they are. Some of it resonated for me as a writer, to see how another creative person works.

What I liked the least: when interviewees recited their job histories.

What I liked the most: when they spoke about the bigger issues about life. Here are a few examples.

Harold Ramis: "...youre famous. Now what? Now it becomes a measure of character, growth, and development. Who do you want to be from that point on?...Growth is hard...When you're almost sixty years old theres got to be something more going on. What are the challenges of being a grown-up in the world?" (Lynne: I loved this, because I'm all about rethinking things when you're around 50, 60, and older).

Jerry Seinfeld on being a dad: "...my son (insulted me) even worse than that. We were making up words as a game at dinner one night and I said, 'You know, I've made up a lot of words that people actually use as words.' And my son said, 'Uh, really, like what? UNFUNNY?'"

Larry Gelbart: "I don't worry about what (the audience will) get. I write for myself on the assumption that there are a number of people who have similar sensibilities and will appreciate what it is..."

Lena Dunham: "There are always people telling you that your experience doesnt matter, that its navel gazing or unnecessary. 'We don't need to hear about twentysomething girls who feel like they're ten pounds overweight. We don't need to hear about forty-year-olds getting divorced.' But we do need to hear it, because...it can be the difference between someone feeling like they have a place in the world and someone feeling they dont." (Lynne: I write for people who are 60-something, so thank you for the validation, Lena.)

Louis C.K. on not being chosen for gigs: "I'm glad I didn't get it. I'm glad for every single thing I didn't get."

Great interview question: Judd asks, "Who's voice is in your head that's wise?"

Mike Nichols: every scene is either a fight, a seduction, or a negotiation.

Judd: "When your parents behave in ways that make you feel unsafe, you think, 'Oh, I guess Im in charge of myself.' And when you're fourteen, thats not a great thing. It kind of never goes away. As a producer, Im always assuming things are going to crash and Im trying to figure out what could go wrong before it happens. Its helpful for work. But its a terrible way to live your life." (Lynne: amen, brother.)

I could go on, but you get the idea. I think Judd Apatow poured his considerable heart and soul into this book, and I recommend it.
4660763
A very amusing and poignant read told by someone at a pretty similar stage in life as myself, making the situations and dialogue oh so familiar. Only the other day I said to my wife, "if our marriage ever gets boring at least we won't ever run out of AA batteries!" The book is littered with such witticisms and is perhaps better than One Day.
3281059
I am surprised, every time, by the dialogue. it is brusque, and witty - like real interactions between people who know one another
2805379
Bridget Jones is a woman who is so ordinary that she is extraordinary. And therein lies her appeal: Helen Fielding has created a character that practically every woman can relate with. Bridget's problems--a lack of appreciation in her job, an often-disappointing love life, a never-ending struggle with her weight--are the problems of a tremendous variety of women at some point in their lives. The fact that Bridget is a highly relatable character, however, is not enough to make her compelling; it is the manner in which Bridget faces her problems--with flair and yet an utter lack of grace--that makes "Bridget Jones' Diary" so hard to put down.

I must praise Fielding for the way that she styles her characters. All of the major characters in the book--Bridget, Mark Darcy, and Daniel Cleaver--fit a specific type: the everywoman, the gruff-yet-lovable romantic hero, the rogue. None of these characters, however, fall into the one-dimensionality that generally curses stock characters. All three feel real and true, yet they have enough general characteristics that the reader is able to take Bridget, Darcy, and Daniel as placeholders for real-life acquaintances.

I do think that "Bridget Jones' Diary" contains a few minor flaws worth noting. First, although the major characters feel fleshed out, the minor characters--particularly Bridget's group of friends, Sharon, Jude, and Tom--aren't as able to break free of the stock character curse.

Second, a large part of the charm of "Bridget Jones' Diary" is that Fielding throws Bridget into situations that are ridiculous; how Bridget handles this makes her who she is. However, Fielding sometimes pushes Bridget into circumstances that go beyond ridiculousness and enter the territory of the absurd. In those instances, Fielding undermines her own character. Bridget is fascinating because, as an everywoman, she enters situations as a real-life person, but as the hero of the book, she proceeds to deal with them in a way that most women only dream of doing. In order for this to work, the events in the book must remain grounded in reality. Thankfully Fielding largely avoids this pitfall in "Bridget Jones' Diary"-though she walks right into it in "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason."

However, as I said before, these flaws are relatively minor. Overall, "Bridget Jones' Diary" is a witty, engaging book centering on a very memorable character. I have read the book through a good half-dozen times, not to mention the numerous instances that I've read a few pages at random, in search of a quick pick-me-up-which "Bridget Jones' Diary" never fails to provide.
4788353
If, as Joseph Epstein writes, friendship can rest on nothing more or less than liking someone enough to see him again, one wonders how he can elsewhere say that spouses or romantically engaged people aren't really friends, at least in the early days of their relationship.  I'm sure this is true for many people (who may in fact never be good friends and require other supports), but it is certainly not true for the rest of us.  Early married friendship as friendship may have its deficiencies, but surely those deficiencies vary in number and gravity with each couple; and on his own showing, friendship itself has deficiencies.  Aiming too high or asking too much may mean that one doesn't have friends at all.

But that raises another question:  is friendship a thing in itself, with standards or criteria that must be met in order to be friendship, or is it something that we can squeeze and shape and reduce as opportunity or lack thereof requires, a sort of Procrustean thing?  In other words, friendship may be swell, but maybe the real thing is just rare, and no amount of longing can make it less rare.

An interesting question, also (for me at least), is how Epstein's friends have received this book.  Epstein makes it clear, in different places, that he has more friends than he really wants; he is someone presented with a huge chocolate box of friends, but he really only likes the hazelnut ones, and then even these must have hard centers.  All his friends must be wondering:  am I the hazelnut with the hard center or the mint one he could do without?  And if so, can I do without him?  He may be the only person in history that has written a book not to make more friends but to have fewer.

So, if Epstein is unlike most people in that instead of wishing that he had the right sort of friends, or real friends, or more friends, he is not very needy of friends, does he shed light on what gives a person that lack of neediness?  Not directly; but it seems as if some of the very qualities that make one a good friend are the same qualities that make one not very needy of friends.  An interesting paradox, perhaps, pointing to quality over quantity.

Further, Epstein's self-described ability to draw people to him, and to flatter them that he likes them more than he does (a revelation that itself is very unflattering), raises the question of why, other than vanity, he has persisted in the same behavior for so long.  If (at least before publishing this book) he has ever answered the phone and smiled down it audibly, as customer service people are sometimes trained to do, did he genuinely smile in each case or did he know that he was doing his customer-service thing, his people-love-me-because-I'm-so-lovable thing?  I'm not saying this to "go after" him, but these questions come up in the course of reading his book.  In other words, can one really have "a lot" of friends, however defined and whatever the number, if one doesn't really want them?  Expose, indeed.
1816553
One might expect that a book with a mix of characters affected by one or all of marital strife and infidelity, constant debilitating pain from illness or injury, and the blockage or erosion of academic or creative energy would be explosive or tragic. But there are few fireworks here. The author almost suggests that working through such difficulties is just part of academic life.

The arrival of eccentric, egotistic, arresting, and cultish poet Delia Delaney as a visiting scholar at Corinth U brings out issues that Alan MacKenzie, an architectural historian, and his wife Jane have been having over the last year. Jane, the administrator of the center for humanities that invited Delia, has seen her planned, idyllic marriage turn sour as she has had to wait hand-and-foot on Alan after he suffered an unremitting back injury. Jane, ever practical, immediately perceives that Delia is a user of people and, in fact, is unlikely to fulfill her obligations to the center. But at this point, Delia shares more with Alan than does Jane. She suffers from excruciating pain when her weekly migraines hit, but more importantly she sees and encourages Alan's creativity. The limited sexual entanglement of Delia and Alan merely hastens a rearrangement of affairs.

The book is brief; there is not much plot; and the characters are minimally drawn. It just seems to be a low-key look at the possibilities of long-term relationships for eccentrics and academics as they proceed through life.
3875896
"The Life and Opinions..." is perhaps impossible to really classify.  It purports to be a biography of the fictional Tristram Shandy, but I don't think you can call something a biography when it only covers a year or so of the subject's life!  I would say that more than half of the novel actually falls into the "Opinions" referred to in the title.  The rest consists of short stories on Tristram's father, uncle, and a couple other minor characters.

I have never in my life read so many digressions from the topic at hand, most of which were utterly irrelevant but the charm of it is that Sterne *knows* they're irrelevant, but mockingly expresses his license of authorship in forcing the reader to go off on these sidetracks.  His attitude is: "If you can't wait a chapter or two to get back to the story, well, go take a flying leap, I'm the author."  Sometimes the digressions are exasperating.  Very unlike Victor Hugo's signature habit of digressing, say when a certain main character in Notre Dame decides to enter the Paris sewers, Hugo takes thirty or more pages to give a history of the design and construction of the Paris sewer system.  At least Hugo's digressions have *something* to do with the story.

Well, maybe that's the problem.  There isn't a main story in this novel.  It's not a storybook.  There are many short stories nested within the main framework, but there is no real protagonist or overarching theme of any sort.  Indeed, the end comes abruptly and there is absolutely no resolution of any conflict.

It's not trying to teach anything, really.

So what is it?  I'm not sure.  More a comedy than anything else.  Right up there with Dickens' "Pickwick Papers" in terms of humor, but lacking the story.  Maybe funnier than Dickens and just as clever.  I was rolling in the aisles so many times I lost count.

I read the Penguin edition, edited by Melvyn & Joan New.  The back cover does a better job than I could ever do in providing a sense of what you're getting into when you pick this one up:

"No one description will fit this strange, eccentric, endlessly complex masterpiece.  It is a fiction about fiction-writing in which the invented world is as much infused with wit and genius as the theme of inventing it.  It is a joyful celebration of the infinite possibilities of the art of fiction, and a wry demonstration of its limitations."

It's a large work, it will take a while to work through.  It's worth it.  There are passages I want to go back to and make copies of to tape to the walls, they're that brilliant.
2192544
Unfortunately poets aren't always the best readers of their work. Still even a poor reading of good poetry is rewarding.  The words soar even if the voice doesn't.
4345566
There is a saying that there are only 50 actors in England. One could say equally well that there are only 50 intellectuals of any particular variety, including philosophers. One difference between a continental nation such as ours and one that shares a middling island with two others is that any profession becomes a very small community.

In 1946, two philosophers, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, both Austrian Jewish migrs, had a legendary encounter during a meeting at Cambridge University. During this encounter, Wittgenstein either gestured with or threatened Popper, the speaker, with a fireplace poker, and stormed out of the room.

This incident is the unlikely subject of a book, Wittgenstein's Poker, which I recently read.

Wittgenstein, born super-rich and turned ascetic, was a forceful personality and either an enfant terrible or a self-absorbed boor. In any event, he acquired a reputation as an iconoclastic genius and the promoter of linguistic philosophy, which posited that many of the traditional philosophical problems are meaningless, and reduced philosophy to so many linguistic puzzles.

Popper, on the other hand, was a bourgeois type who made contributions on more traditional philosophical issues. He was the author of The Open Society and Its Enemies, an anti-totalitarian work, and developed the concept of falsifiability, which holds that meaningful scientific propositions are those capable of being shown to be wrong by empirical observation or experiment.

David Edmonds and John Eidinow, the authors, have created a well-crafted and engaging book out of a series of riffs on the poker incident, Wittgenstein, Popper, their backgrounds, the world of Cambridge. It might seem that the subject would be like the famous book that told the schoolboy more than he wanted to know about penguins, but much of the book fascinates as much as any account of a human milieu in some ways like our own and in others quite different.

Today's world of grants, junkets, and the academic system of field marshals and grunts is recognizably related to the world in which Wittgenstein and Popper lived, but it has changed. This book includes biography, history - notably of pre-World-War-II Vienna, and a portrait of an era. If you are of a certain perhaps uncommon bent, this book is a good read. And the clever cover of the paperback edition alone makes the book worth picking of the shelf at a bookstore.

This book is NOT a systematic exposition of philosophical issues, but a portrait of a certain milieu, time and place.
4709478
WIT is an uncompromising look at death by cancer - and the therapy designed to cure it.
Emma Thompson is Vivian Bearing, a Doctor of Philosophy and an aloof professor of 17th century English poetry. Her special interest is the metaphysical verse of John Donne, to which she's dedicated her scholastic life at the expense of human relationships. Now, at 48, she's diagnosed with stage-four metastatic ovarian carcinoma. There is no stage five. Her oncologist, Dr. Kelekian (Christopher Lloyd), recommends an aggressive, 8-month regimen of treatment with an experimental drug - at full dose. Because of the expected onerous side effects, he challenges Vivian to show fortitude and perseverance, and, never a slacker, she promises a stiff upper lip.
Much of the film is comprised of a series of monologs by Bearing as she addresses the camera, and the audience, with reflections generated by her dry WIT about the chemotherapy's appalling toll on her person and the process by which it is being exacted. At one point, after Kelekian and a train of acolytes visit Vivian in her hospital room, a medical teaching ritual known as Grand Rounds, she wryly observes that the exercise was:
"... full of subservience, hierarchies, gratuitous displays, sublimated rivalries. I feel completely at home. It is just like a graduate seminar."
WIT is a pointed indictment of the generalized insensitivity of medical caregivers to the terminally-ill patient, who comes to represent little more than a specimen cup, a form covered with scribbled observations, or, at best, a career-enhancing article in a medical journal. Jason (Jonathan Woodward) plays the shallow, research-minded physician completing a clinical fellowship under Kelekian's direction. Bearing asks what his reaction is to patients who express apprehension or fright. His clueless response: "Of whom?"
As the course of Vivian's treatment - or is it torture? - draws to its conclusion, her only source of human warmth and sympathy becomes her primary care nurse, Susie (Audra McDonald), and her only pleasure the eating of a popsicle, the lone "food" tolerated by a GI tract ravaged by the anti-cancer drug.
One of the most heart-wrenchingly poignant scenes ever put on celluloid has to be one near the conclusion when Vivian is visited by her aged mentor E.M. Ashford (Eileen Atkins). I'm not ashamed to say that my eyes teared.
WIT isn't an easy film to watch. I suspect any person undergoing cancer therapy can relate to it, and should therefore be seen by anyone providing oncology care. Viewing WIT should be absolutely mandatory in every medical and nursing school in the country.
This performance by Emma Thompson is an Oscar-caliber tour de force. It's a sad commentary on the film industry and the audiences it feeds that WIT's producers had to release it as an HBO movie rather than one for the Big Screen because it would have otherwise been steamrollered at the box office by the mindless thrillers that appeal to the masses.
1418293
This book seems like a mixed bag of occasionally contradictory advice...

Some parts seem to espouse adopting a certain level of pretentiousness (always carry intellectual books with you; be able to spout Romantic era poetry on cue, tell jokes only 0.05% of the people will understand, learn and [occasionally] use truly enormous words) while other seem to decry pretentiousness (don't drop Latin into casual conversation, don't quote Shakespeare [or only quote him sparingly], don't use your brain as a club [hypocritical much?]). Other bits seem a bit contradictory: "enjoy popular culture" vs "hide your love of action movies" & "Don't quote from bestsellers." Which is it to be, my dear sir? Thou hast verily confused me!

It's not always clear why some pretentiousness is encouraged while other pretentiousness is discouraged... A lot of it seems to be the author's personal preference? Maybe I'm wrong.

And, to me at least, a number of the entries seem to be more "how to APPEAR to be an intellectual" rather than how to actually "BE an intellectual." "Arrange your desk area to SUGGEST pure brilliance?" What, even if you're NOT brilliant? Again, a bit of aesthetics over actual talent. God forbid that in your apparent "brilliant-looking" desk space, someone should ever see you playing Angry Birds. Suddenly, the illusion will be lost forever. Looks fade; stupid is forever. ;) (Mostly kidding.)

It just feels like in a few instances there is less emphasis on actually becoming the intellectual and more emphasis on just presenting yourself as one. And while "perception is everything" in some circumstances, if the intent of the book is the "BECOME an intellectual," mere window dressing is insufficient. "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," as they say.

Gripes aside, there is some mildly amusing content and there are some good suggestions for expanding one's mind into intellectual or pseudo-intellectual realms that may just help you grow as a person or become a more well-rounded individual. More of a coffee table book than a "guide to life," though. Albeit, that was probably its intended purpose. Another one of those window dressings, a little eye candy to toss out and appear intelligent. Anything with "Intellectual" on the cover, in big bold letters, sitting on your coffee table, must make you simply brilliant! (Else, why would you have a book about BECOMING intellectual on your; ohh wait, you mean you're not quite there yet?)

Not a necessity, but a reasonably fun read. I'll give it a 4 of five. Overall I 'liked' it, though I didn't 'love' it, but I also wasn't ambivalent about it either (does that count as an 'enormous' word? No, I suppose not...).

As an aside, if you need to enormous [and obscure] words (of the bombastic and high-flown variety), I highly recommend&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Weird-Words-A-Lovecraftian-Lexicon/dp/0982429649/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon</a>,<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Thinker-s-Thesaurus-Sophisticated-Alternatives-to-Common-Words/dp/0393337944/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Thinker's Thesaurus: Sophisticated Alternatives to Common Words</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Describer-s-Dictionary-A-Treasury-of-Terms-Literary-Quotations/dp/0393312658/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Describer's Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations</a>, several of my favorite big, obscure word resources! Let the intellectualism begin!
4929003
As The Humor Code notes several times, humor can't stand to be examined. It falls apart and fails, like magic does when you explain a trick. That said, the authors fly off around the world, looking at comedy and humor and what makes them tick in different societies. From their Denver base, they get to visit with New York admen, Palestinian sketch satirists, Japanese standup students, and eventually take all they have learned and demonstrate it at the Just for Laughs festival.

Suffice it to say comedy gets to keep its secrets. There is no universal formula. Different jokes appeal to different folks. Different societies take offense at different things. American standup filth doesn't play as well in say, Yemen.

Many societies have moron jokes, poking insults at some minority or other country: Irish jokes in England, Okie jokes in the USA, Newfie jokes in Canada, Polish jokes in North America (in the sixties). That's about as universal as The Humor Code gets.

There is so much they miss, it is criminal. They visited Tanzania to learn about laughing disease, but never mention the infectiousness of laughter. That the top selling record in the USA was once just laughter. People listened and couldn't help laughing. They miss the printed word entirely: the setups of Robert Benchley, the knife twisting of Celia Rivenbark, the Dementia Praecox of SJ Perelman. And most strangely, they don't examine delivery and timing - how one person can make reading the telephone book funny and two people telling the same joke get entirely different reactions. How Peter Cook could keep people howling all night without ever telling a joke, and no one could remember a thing from the experience except their sides hurt all the next day and they had the time of their lives. (They do mention Henny Youngman's signature line in passing.) But then, none of that would fit in their theory anyway.

What I found most interesting was their time with the cartoon editor of the New Yorker. They put together a list of the approaches that make for a winning caption: finalists' entries didn't waste words on obvious visual elements, did not use excessive punctuation like question marks and exclamation points, and at 8.7 words, were a word shorter than the rest. Also, they did double duty. Being the funniest isn't enough; they have to make a point. Oh.

We are left with a travelogue, filled with bad drivers, missed connections, too much alcohol and not much new data. The stories are backfilled with references to academics and studies that follow references out onto tangents.

If you know going in they weren't going to discover the holy grail, it makes the Humor Code much more readable and enjoyable. It's just a romp in comedy around the world.

David Wineberg
68694
I would have enjoyed more witty Trenchent dialogue.
2007511
He writes with deep honesty and an excellent style, but this is not a funny book.  Instead this is a story of his comedic process, warts and all.