Born Standing Up

Customer Reviews

• Wonderful book, a must read, thank you Steve Martin!!!  Nov 22, 2007 (53 of 65 found this helpful)

  My pre-ordered copy from Amazon arrived the day before Thanksgiving. I tried to explain to my son who was home from college for the break how much I looked forward to reading Steve Martin's autobiography. He thought it sounded about as interesting as reading the autobiography of Chevy Chase.
  
  But to anyone old enough to remember Steve Martin's sensational, if seemingly brief, career as a stand-up comic, this is a fascinating book, not to be missed. There is much here that was new to me. I had no idea, for example, that he appeared so many times on the Tonight Show before becoming really famous, or that he had appeared as a bearded, long-haired comedian before adopting his famous clean-cut 3-piece white suit look, or that he suffered from debilitating panic attacks just as he began his career as a writer on the Smothers Brothers show.
  
  For the first 80 pages or so I thought his life story was a bit humdrum, almost like a parody of Bob Dylan's "Chronicles". Martin grew up 2 miles from Disneyland, and the fact that he became an entertainer seemed almost inevitable. But the book really takes off as he recounts the early days of his career making the transition from magician with a few funny bits to a full-blown stand-up comic. Not that Steve Martin is the colossal genius that Bob Dylan is, but it's interesting that much as Dylan describes how he became a songwriter because he realized he could never succeed as a virtuoso guitarist, Martin writes how he became a comic because, well, who doesn't want to be in show business?
  
  At the height of his career as a stand-up comic Steve Martin was the funniest man in America. One of the joys of this book is that he appreciates how funny he was and delights in retelling the same jokes that amused us then and amuse us now. For the generation of Americans who came of age in the Seventies, Steve Martin's routines remain an important part of our lives. For example, for me personally, on the night in September 1978 when I finished my first day as a microprocessor programmer I recalled his profound insight: "...and the most amazing thing to me is: I get paid for doing this." I am very grateful that Steve Martin has taken the time to write this book.
  

• The sad man behind the crazy guy  Nov 24, 2007 (34 of 43 found this helpful)

  Steve Martin calls this a biography instead of an autobiography, because "I am writing about someone I used to know." His ability to stand apart from his career makes for a sometimes impersonal book, but one full of fascinating details and anecdotes.
  
  The book covers Martin's stand-up comedy career over 18 years. It starts early, when Martin was a young boy of 10 working at Disneyland selling guidebooks. His stories of learning comic timing from the Golden Horseshoe Revue, mastering magic from Merlin's Magic Shop in Fantasyland, and finding unused "A" tickets on Main Street U.S.A. are vivid and interesting.
  
  The middle section recounts his rise through comedy clubs and being asked to be on the Johnny Carson show. His success on Saturday Night Live and as a concert draw leads, ironically, to him leaving the stand-up life forever. Throughout the book is the cold and critical voice of Martin's father, who was never satisfied with his son's success or choice of career. Photos from Martin's family albums and personal scrapbooks are spread throughout the pages.
  
  At the end you end up feeling sorry for Martin, who seems like a sad man, an intellectual who chose to play to the masses and didn't get much happiness from it.

• Refreshingly candid & heartfelt  Oct 1, 2008 (10 of 11 found this helpful)

  With a number of hit movies under his belt, it's almost easy to forget that Steve Martin first earned fame doing stand-up comedy. In the late 1970's he was selling out large arenas, appearing regularly on Saturday Night Live and the Tonight Show, and spinning platinum comedy albums excerpted from his act. He made it look easy and was wildly successful until he walked away in the early 80's. In this book, he takes a look back at the path that led him toward all that fame. While he begins with childhood, he limits himself to events that were formative to his career. The narration is honest and concise. Whether he talks about failures in himself or others, he adopts a matter-of-fact tone that deftly avoids dips into self-pity or bitterness.
  
  As the book continues, we learn all of his major stepping stones from Disneyland to the Bird Cage theater at Knotts Berry Farm, and so on. Martin traveled a winding road to stand-up success and is brutally honest about how much he had to learn for so long early in his career. Yet, with each step, you can see the progress as he figures out how to create his own unique comedy voice and make it work.
  
  There are many things that could be said in favor of "Born Standing Up." From my perspective the most important are these two. First, I felt like I knew Steve Martin better when I finished reading than when I started. That may seem an obvious result of any biography but it can only be said if the author is genuinely candid. The second thing is that I both like and respect him more as a result. Not because he paints a perfect picture of himself, but because he is honest about his shortcomings and how he dealt with them. It was a true pleasure to spend this time in his company and I hope he writes a sequel someday covering the experiences of his movie career.

• Stand-up Comedy--A Brutal Calling  Dec 31, 2007 (12 of 14 found this helpful)

  This offering takes us from Steve's childhood through his last stand-up act in the early 80s. On the verge of quitting in the mid-70s, he suddenly broke through bigtime, finally burning out a few years later and moving on to films. He was certainly my favorite comic at the time.
  
  The book can be painful to read, especially before he hit it big. Constant travel. No money. Estranged from family. Silent (or heckling) audiences. Rejection. Loneliness.
  
  The writing is first rate and some of his insights are profound, especially his take on Johnny Carson. The main problems I had with the book are the amount of space he devoted to unknowns he met along the way and his cerebral and overly analytical approach to his stand-up comedy. To me he was funny not because of what he said or did, but HOW he said or did it. In other words, body language is his genius. Strangly, he doesn't seem to recognize that.
  
  Make no mistake. This is not a funny book. It is a serious, sometimes sad, memoir of his dues paying years in the business. Often interesting (I read its 200 pages in two sittings), but not especially compelling.

• Good book  Jan 23, 2008 (6 of 6 found this helpful)

  You are not going to learn everything about Steve Martin. This is more like sitting with Steve Martin in a bar and him telling you a story. Its a gift really, some guy sits down and tells you he was once the biggest comic in the world. As you listen to the story he goes off on a little tangent once in a while but it is a nice conversation and when you finish you realize you might have just met the smartest guy you may ever know.