The Legacy of the Wisecrack: Stand-up Comedy as the Great American Literary Form Paperback – Import, 31 March 2009

Stand-up comedy as an art form is always puzzling to a lot of people considering the simplicity of it. So when the author begins the book by comparing Pryor's Live at the sunset strip to Dante's divine comedy it immediately piques your interest. A very well researched and will written book which not only looks at stand up comedy from a historical perspective but also gives an idea of how sacrosanct the core idea of the medium is throughout generations.

This was quite an exceptional book, perhaps the best I've read on what humor and stand-up comedy is and what it can do. It's a very serious and deep book and is only book I've really seen that talks about the spiritual dimensions of humor and the comedian. This author has an incredible background, that of literature and creative writing professor, and also a New Testament scholar. I loved this book because it treated comedy and humor as important topics worthy of serious study. This book forces you to work, but enriches you for your effort, I have to give a listen to Steven Wright soon after reading the chapter on him. There is a recognition and respect and honor paid by the author towards the subject of his study. This book is a scholarly work, but it's not written in esoteric, dense foggy language, but in understandable terms. This is not only a book about comedy, it's about the joy and rewards of reading and thinking, the power, beauty and mystery of words to communicative subjective meaning and how comedy fills a special niche in the use of language. This is an important book, not only in terms of comedy, but about life in general. Something tells me this author could probably lay down a pretty smoking sermon himself! Preach on brother! I wish we had more professors out there like this author willing to share his gifts of insight and analysis with his students and the rest of the world instead of the barren wasteland that academia has been for ages.

Eddie Tafoya's THE LEGACY OF THE WISECRACK combines history, Freud, postmodernism, and the little-known science of "fartology" to make a thought-provoking study of stand-up comedy. His discussion of comedians of diverse backgrounds casts humor in a cross-cultural perspective while bringing to light important but lesser known comedians such as Charley Case and Moms Mabley.The essay on the parallels between Richard Pryor's show "Live at the Sunset Strip" with Dante's INFERNO underscores the book's central argument that stand-up comedy is an underappreciated literary art form.A brief discussion of why Jewish humor became America's dominant humor left me wanting more on this interesting topic.Tafoya's trenchant observations animate the pages from start to finish, making THE LEGACY OF THE WISECRACK absorbing and fun to read. We're left marveling at how humans have managed to survive tough times by wit alone.

This book gives a deep look into why stand up comedy should be considered literature. Plus it looks at stand up comedy, what else could be more interesting? Overall, great book.