Comedian and author Charles Demers reviews 3 books about funny people
This interview originally aired on Jan. 22, 2022.
Charles Demers is a Juno Award-nominated comedian and author from Vancouver. He is also the author of the novels Property Values and Primary Obsessions.
Like many stand-up comedians, Demers had to sit out much of the pandemic while live venues were closed. During that time, he had the chance to read — or re-read — a few memoirs by some of the comedians he admires.
He spoke with Shelagh Rogers about three of his favourite comedy memoirs: Based on a True Story by Norm Macdonald, Born Standing Up by Steve Martin and Pryor Convictions by Richard Pryor.
Based on a True Story by Norm Macdonald
"Based on a True Story is a memoir by Norm MacDonald. In the beginning of the book, Macdonald describes a moment in his childhood where he's staring at a painting. He wills himself to see the paint in the painting. He wants to see the artifice to convince himself that this painting that he's looking at is not actually a painting of what it is, but just a series of artfully assembled falsehoods.
"The more he looked at the painting, the more he saw what the artist intended to place there. He then does essentially what the artist did, but with a memoir that we come — slowly, and then very quickly — to realize is really not remotely the story of Norm Macdonald's life.
It's a very funny book, and it's and it's very well-written.
"There are all of these things that start coming into the picture that you realize this didn't happen. The story begins to pick up this fevered quality, and you realize we're reading a book of fiction that has a few passages where we see, through a kind of hazy gaze, the story of Macdonald's life in comedy — but mostly sort of hung on this grim work of a completely made-up, very funny story. It's a really, really wild book.
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
"Born Standing Up is great if you're looking for a comedy memoir that tells the story about a comedian's life from the larval stage through to ultra-fame. Its definitely not as experimental or as anarchic as Norm McDonald's book, but it's just a brilliant, beautiful exploration of what the comedy life is all about.
It's a brilliant, beautiful exploration of what the comedy life is all about.
"It's written in prose and it's not particularly fancy or adorned. This is not 'wild and crazy' Steve Martin — this is Steve Martin reflecting on what made him a comedian and then going on to become sort of the first 'stadium comedian,' where he's doing shows to 15-, 20-, 25,000 people.
"The reason that he started famously wearing his white suit was so that people who were sitting in a stadium built to watch football in, essentially, could keep their eye on him."
Pryor Convictions by Richard Pryor
"With Pryor Convictions, as you're reading the stories of Richard Pryor's life and his childhood, you're thinking, 'How can this possibly be real?' The other thing that's really neat about this memoir is that he weaves in the bits from his act that were based on or reference these moments from his life.
As you're reading the stories of Richard Pryor's life and his childhood, you're thinking, 'How can this possibly be real?'
"The honesty of it and the pain that he's expressing — which is so much like what he did on stage — is just so present as a first-person account of just the humiliations of racism, both petty and enormous, and these victories of community and of an individual's will to succeed despite those challenges.
"It's also about the ghosts that haunt him right up to the very highest echelons of success. There are utterly unbelievable details in this book, and from anyone else, they'd be hard to believe. But from Richard Pryor, they're just rendered with such honesty that this feels real."
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
