Owen Phillips’s Reviews > The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy > Status Update

Terrible ending. Misplaced focus in the back half of the book. From start to middle, the 1910s through the 1960s takes up about eighty percent of this book. Half of the people on the cover are never named. Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David feature prominently in the back half, but Seinfeld and Curb are never once mentioned, nor is Friends or Veep or pretty much any tv outside of variety shows. Very telling about Kliph

Oh Christ Jesus Lord please save me from an entire chapter about 9/11

Over three hundred pages of a half decent book and he’s done a poor job of describing the ascent of anyone other than the white guys the worst twenty year old you know worships. He’s giving a half decent crack to Black performers but women, gay people, anybody currently under forty? Zip. The section on Joan Rivers couldn’t fill a post it, and she’s on the damn cover! He didn’t mention Phyllis Diller at all!

So cruel to mention it but not show us a picture

Why are so many of these psychos carrying revolvers in leather satchels

This messy queen dragging Lorne Michaels good for you Kliph

Don’t care for the characterization of women in comedy at all. Also, we’re not spending nearly enough time talking about them. Phyllis Diller is on the cover and I’m two hundred pages in and not a word

I would kill for a nightclub to open. A jazz lounge are you kidding id be the number one patron

I hate when books like this aren’t a tell all. The least you could do is imply Johnny Carson was gay