Recensioni
The transcript of his "Content Provider" performance is a welcome respite at the end, although it's humour is slightly stunted on page compared to on screen/in performance.
The footnotes are the best part, as ever in Lee's books, detailing the level of craft in his writing and performance.
As a result of reading this I've added both seasons of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle to my DVD rental list! I look forward to them.
Of course, he uses extreme flattery throughout - only clever and learned people will "get" his comedy. and of course I want to be in that category. I particularly liked the appendix on the character Jonny Vegas for its (albeit short) glimpse into the creation and persistence of such a character, and how we, the general public, like mostly the bits that are familiar and think he goes over the top when he stretches things further.
This one includes even more reflective introductory materials, footnotes and appendices, so the actual routine is presented alongside the convoluted thought processes of the man who came up with it, including details of where the jokes came from, what he was worrying about at the time, how he was hounded by the Mail on Sunday, and general details of what appears to be a protracted mid-life crisis for the fat Terry Christian. This routine is particularly navel-gazing because in part it's about the nature of comedy itself, and how British stand-up is becoming polarised between the extremes of Michael MacIntyre (twee, uninventive ‘have-you-ever-noticed’ style mass comedy) and Frankie Boyle (hate-filled ‘rape-and-child-abuse’ shock comedy) – although it has to be said that what annoys Stew most about these two is probably their financial success.
It's impossible to quote, because Stew's jokes nowadays take half an hour to set up and don't pay off until an hour later, but if you're interested in stand-up comedy as a form and as a social indicator, this is great. Also he makes me piss myself laughing more intelligently than anyone else I know, and he definitely doesn't ‘exude an aura of creepy molesty smugness’.
1 
Widsith | 1 altra recensione | Jul 7, 2014 |
Widsith | 1 altra recensione | Jul 7, 2014 | Anyone expecting an, er, autobiography, or a memoir, or even something wholly accurate and, um, truthful, is quite likely to be disappointed with this book.
Not that it is a disappointment when one goes in with no, or even, er, low, expectations, quite the contrary, this is one of those books they have these days that can make you laugh out loud on public transport, possibly causing people to tut because you are enjoying yourself and you don’t even have an iPhone, or your knob, in your hand.
Essentially, er, this is a book. Well obviously it’s a book. But it’s a book that’s made up of pages. Well, look, obviously it’s got pages, unless you have the Kindle edition*1. But what it is, is basically the transcripts of three of his gigs, with lots and lots*2 of footnotes*3. The footnotes are very important, because if you have read something and don’t find it funny, you can read the footnote and the footnote will explain why you should have found it funny, then you can re-read the line and laugh in a smug way because you are both entertained and now just a bit smarter than the man next to you eating crisps.
Stew adds the footnotes to show you how funny and clever he is, which he is, with or without the footnotes. But mostly with.
In addition, each of the routines has a couple of chapters before it which give the context for the routine*4 and a couple of chapters afterwards which make you feel guilty for not laughing more. Or at all.
Ostensibly*5 this book records a decade long period in Stew’s career when he got ill (which is, joking apart*6 very unpleasant sounding) and got famous by upsetting a lot of Christians. Thrown in are plenty of, er, anecdotes, about life on the road for a stand up comic. He drops names and, once you have Googled them to find out who they are, it appears he’s moved in circles that have shaped what comedy is today*7.
It’s an interesting and thought provoking book, the main thought being, shall I read the top half first and then re-read it with the footnotes*8? The use of footnotes, the sometimes academic tone and the way he dresses in the author’s photograph all suggest Stew might have a career as a supply teacher if the comedy doesn’t work out.
But given how bloody funny the book is, that’s unlikely. This is not a celebrity autobiography (he settles too few scores and comes across as genuine and likable), but a fascinating insight into the workings of comedy.
*1 Do Kindle editions have pages? Possibly not and in a decade the ‘term’ page will be consigned to the analogue dustbin of words we never use any more, like ‘dial’.
*2 And LOTS!
*3 Stewart Lee loves footnotes. At the park near his house there’s probably a tree with ‘SL hearts footnotes’ carved into it. And he’s probably put a ‘*’ after ‘footnotes’ and added a footnote, the tree-vandalising bastard.
*4 This has the combined effect of educating you, the reader, about the forthcoming transcript of his gig while simultaneously making you anticipate the start of the ‘gig on the page’ even more keenly. This is absolutely no substitute for the keenness with which one anticipates an actual gig, because a gig that starts of time finishes on time meaning you can get to the next show at the Fringe, which features somebody who is currently on telly on a regular basis.
*5 On Googling this word to see if it was right to use in this context I discovered a) yes it is and b) there’s no ‘b’ in it.
*6 Like a lot of his routine these days.
*7 So it’s the fault of him and his showbiz chums that Michael Macintire played the O2?
*8 Read the text then read the footnote, I won’t comment on whether the book would be worth a partial re-read but will say that having to flip backwards and forwards adds to the reading time and hence provides a sensation of better value for money.
I think to really understand and appreciate this book you need to already be familiar with Stewart Lee's more recent stand-up routines. You also need to have good patience with his style of writing which uses the main narrative as more of an inconvenience that has to be put up with, while hanging on it the longest 'footnotes' ever known. But if you tick both of those boxes, it's a great book both for interest and laughter.
How I Escaped My Certain Fate
Read the full review at my blog
The Sun calls Stewart Lee: "The worst comedian in Britain, as funny as bubonic plague."
If you needed any further reason to love him, consider also that one critic described my favourite comedian's act as being aimed exclusively at "atheist, comic book reading, Morrissey fan nerds."
Now I resent that remark. I'm not an atheist. I'm an agnostic. There's a big difference.
How I Escaped My Certain Fate is a book that may only be of interest to the group described above, but deserves to break out of that ghetto and take over the world. It consists largely of heavily annotated transcripts from the three big comeback shows Lee toured extensively in the latter part of the noughties, leading to his TV return on Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. I've seen all three shows live, and on DVD, so I know the material pretty well by now. And seeing it written down obviously loses much of the humour that comes from the Lee's desert-dry delivery. He even admits, "the text of a stand-up set should be so dependent on performance and tone that it can't really work on the page, otherwise it's just funny writing". And yet, I loved this book. Not so much for the jokes, but for the fascinating peek behind the jokes - the insights into how comedians build sets, where jokes come from, and how performers struggle to hold an audience's attention, or even sometimes willingly sacrifice that attention in order to make winning it back more of a challenge.
Questo sito utilizza i cookies per fornire i nostri servizi, per migliorare le prestazioni, per analisi, e (per gli utenti che accedono senza fare login) per la pubblicità. Usando LibraryThing confermi di aver letto e capito le nostre condizioni di servizio e la politica sulla privacy. Il tuo uso del sito e dei servizi è soggetto a tali politiche e condizioni.
As a stand up comedian i think Stewart Lee is really good and very enjoyable to watch: if you're a person of lower intelligence then you will probably disagree with that statement, that's fine, really, we can't all be part of the liberal intelligentsia.
But as a newspaper columnist, he pretty much sucks donkey balls. So why did i buy this book when, after all is said and done, it's just lots of his newspaper columns regurgitated with foot notes? Because i don't read newspapers and had no idea that he sucked so badly at writing columns for them. But i do now.
To be fair though, it's hard to ridicule and take the urine out of a bunch of narcissistic psychopaths and sociopaths -- the career politicos of our age -- when they themselves revel in being caricatures of their own urine, faecal and menstrual stains and happily parade their utter incompetence across all public realms for all to see: which bizarrely does actually encourage middle england to eagerly clamour and queue to vote for more. Why even attempt this satire and/or parody or whatever it is? Because the newspaper offered him money to make the attempt because David Mitchell wasn't up for it and he'd have been a fool to not take said money: he's got a mortgage to pay after all.
So i got 11% into this and mostly got utterly fed up going back and forth to the footnotes that explain the minutiae of every column that no one really cares about other than broadsheet newspaper readers just in case these things become part of a clue in the cryptic crossword the next day.
So if you are one of those broadsheet readers then this might amuse you, or not, i don't really care. After 11% i'm done with it as i have many other more interesting looking books clamouring for my reading hours. The problem with brexit now is that there's nothing more to say or read on the matter that hasn't already been said or read -- all we've so far achieved is the creeping erosion of our legal rights and a trade deal with Japan that's worse than the one we had when we were in the EU -- all the other trade deals we were promised have not emerged. The NHS is a complete mess, the economy is in tatters, unemployment is sky rocketing, Boris is determined to spend 100 billion to create 20,000 jobs building a new toy train set for the rich and wealthy while the old, decrepit, poor-people's trainset's franchises are all handing their franchises back to the government and are merrily washing their hands of the whole affair: the post brexit future is exactly what every remainer said it would be -- but oh, thank heavens for corona virus, at least the leave camp have something else to blame for the mess we're all in.