Review for I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Standup Comedy's Golden Era : This book is incredible, I have never been so frightened reading a book and yet so riveted that I couldn't stop reading. I loved this book. It grabbed me from the first page and I had trouble putting it down. Read it, you won't be disappointed.
I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Standup Comedy's Golden Era info
I'm Dying Up Here chronicles the collective coming of age of the standup comedians who defined American humor during the past three decades. Born early in the Baby Boom, they grew up watching The Tonight Show, went to school during Vietnam and Watergate, migrated en masse to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, and created an artistic community unlike any before or since. They were arguably the funniest people of their generation, living in a late-night world of sex, drugs, dreams, and laughter. For one brief shining moment, standup comics were as revered as rock stars. It was Comedy Camelot but, of course, it couldn't last.
In the late 1970s, William Knoedelseder was a cub reporter assigned to cover the burgeoning local comedy scene for the Los Angeles Times. He wrote the first major newspaper profiles of Jay Leno, David Letterman, Andy Kaufman, and others. He got to know many of them well. And so he covered the scene too when the comedians—who were not paid for performing at the
