Final Words of the Class Clown

Book reviewed:



Last Words, by George Carlin. Free Press, 2009. 294 pp.



It's been close to two years since we lost George Carlin, who, along with Richard Pryor, took the baton from the original generation of maverick stand-up comics (Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, Nichols and May, Mort Sahl) and proceeded to pass it to the tamer Letterman/Seinfeld generation (with force-of-nature exceptions like Bill Hicks and Dave Chapelle). Although he briefly had a sitcom on Fox and hosted Saturday Night Live and shined in occasional memorable cameos in movies (Dogma, for instance), Carlin's primary artistic canvas was the stage (and the comedy album), his brush the single microphone, and the pallette his intelligence, his skepticism, his disrespect for authority and groupthink, and his ever-present, acerbic wit.



Within days of the announcement of Carlin's death, one of the comedy channels on XM satellite radio, of which I have been a subscriber for many years now, played nothing but Carlin's routines for 48 hours straight. As my daughter will bitterly attest, with eyes rolling, I play the satellite radio constantly (although, curiously, I don't have it on right now; rather, I'm listening to a Sonny Landreth cd [enough with the navel-gazing already, Parker!]), so I was able to immerse myself in the all-you-can-think buffet of Carlin's genius, often listening to the same insights two, three, four times: stuff, the seven words, baseball and football, shell shock to post-traumatic stress disorder. From the sublime to the banal, and back again.



Last Words is a self-described "sortabiography," co-written with Tony Hendra, that fills in a lot of biographical details, and provides an intimate look at the inner workings of a comedic artist. Neither aspect disappoints. Carlin identifies himself as the product of a union between his alcoholic "shanty Irish" father and his "lace-curtain Irish" mother, with the obvious class differences implied by the terminology. New York in the 1940's and early 1950's is described with vivid affection, a vast playground accessible by subway (which Carlin started rising by himself at the age of seven), abounding with opportunities for adventure, pranks and petty theft.



Rather improbably, Carlin joined the Air Force, ending up stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, Louisiana, "across the Red River from Shreveport, Louisiana, which, according to my friend Jose', was 'the fucking armpit of the fucking nation'" (p. 60). It also happens to be this blogger's hometown, and his portrait of mid-1950's life in that area, in the Air Force, is fascinating. He spent most of his time with black airmen (in the very segregated Deep South)(did I mention this was the 1950's?), relating one story of being arrested with a black friend and a white friend for no reason and ending up in the Bossier City jail, in segreagated but adjacent cells for the different races: "I had three joints in my sock and they hadn't searched us. So we smoked pot all night, in 1955, blacks and whites together, in the Bossier City jail. Blew the fucking smoke out the fucking window. That felt good!" (pp. 61-62). Okay, now let that sink in, because I believe we have the revolutionary importance of George Carlin in a nutshell in this one anecdote. Sure, he wasn't being attacked by police dogs or taking his life in his hands registering black voters in Mississippi. But the man was in jail, sharing a consciousness-altering and very illegal sacrament with men considered inferior by the local mores and institutions, and sharing it inside the underbelly of that white supremacist power structure. All this while serving in a branch of the United States military, in the thick of the Cold War and just two years removed from the Hot War (excuse me, police action) in Korea. And the man came out the other side, having served a crucial apprenticeship in radio and having survived two court-martials and various other disciplinary actions. By the way, he also was asked to leave 11 months early, with no repercussions.



What follows is a fairly conventional early comedy career for the time, with stand-up appearances at nightclubs leading to t.v. variety and talk shows, imbibing the innovations of Bruce and Sahl without fully embracing them, honing an act designed to please the Ed Sullivans and Merv Griffins and their legions of gray flannel-suited admirers. Eventually, after much soul-searching, he rejected those trappings and blazed his own trail, with classic comedy albums and HBO specials, hosting the very first episode of Saturday Night Live, and finally settling in as a best-selling author, despite multiple heart attacks, drug addiction and some financial miscues along the way.

There are occasional observations about other comedians and performers, but much more attention is given to the evolution of Carlin's art (a brief, rather mild dismissal of Billy Crystal is notable for its uniqueness in the narrative), with frank self-criticism where appropriate. All in all, a fascinating account of an individual who truly changed the culture around him, even when he was stuck in a jail cell in Bossier City, Louisiana in the mid-1950's.