"A stand-up comedian recalls some of his darkest moments and traumatic memories from childhood on stage in front of a live audience."--

Our discussion of this book was actually quite short, as we were all basically on the same page. We liked the idea of the book: that the story could be told in a real-time-seeming two hour block as a comedian's monologue, but no one thought the execution worked. The comedy writing just wasn't funny, to start with. We weren't sure if that was because the writer failed at the task of writing comedy, or that it's impossible to write stand up in a book that way (although Nick argued that DeLillo does a pretty good job with Lenny Bruce in Underworld.) Also, the depiction of the judge was weak -- he was basically a cipher with a very crudely depicted set of expositions about his grief for his wife. The structural elements were in the right place to make an interesting experiment, but the failure to use more engaging and sophisticated depictions of feelings and the lack of a believable comedy setting dragged this book down.