The Comedians [Hardcover]

John L'Heureux (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this collection of stories and one novella, L'Heureux ( A Woman Run Mad ) explores the possibilities for faith and redemption in a secular age. Suffused with a religious, almost supernatural vision of life's mystery, his Flannery O'Connor-like moral tales expose the perverse secrets hidden in our hearts and capture the irreversible moments in which lives are forever changed. A creative writing teacher in "Poison Girls" suddenly sees himself through the eyes of three students who despise him--and is ruined; in "Comedians" a pregnant stand-up comedian hears her deformed fetus singing. As a character in "Themselves" explains, faith "isn't something you choose, it's something you're given, except that in a way you have to want to choose it." L'Heureux, Lane Professor of Humanities at Stanford, lightens his profoundly serious spiritual load with witty, buoyant prose and an ironic, urbane sensibility.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In one of the brief lives that make up this collection, an aging choreographer obsessed with the memory of her abusive parents resists "the dark temptation to explore her own soul" in her final work, a period piece celebrating Lizzie Borden's ax murders. In another story, the envious director of a writers' workshop unaccountably forgets the titles of Iris Murdoch's books when introducing her to the class as "the most truly wicked" and exciting writer alive. In fact, L'Heureux himself is a moralist very much in the Murdoch tradition. Trendy topics--everything from the Argentinian "disappeared" to the boom in stand-up comedy--are dragged onstage like unwieldy props in a costume drama. The writing is elegant and assured, the witticisms deft and pithy, but the profundity is pretty much an illusion.
- Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First edition. edition (February 13, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670829188
• ISBN-13: 978-0670829187
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,486,529 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Suffering and Redemption, May 11, 2009

By 

Bonnie Brody "Book Lover and Knitter" (Port St. Lucie, FL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Comedians (Contemporary American Fiction) (Paperback)

This is a very interesting collection of short stories by John L'Heureux. I believe that the crux of this book can be summed up in his statement as follows:

"And to that history, which he cannot alter, he brings his own mystical belief: that from all this suffering there must eventually come some kind of redemption".

Suffering and redemption play a large thematic role in this collection. Of note, are the following stories:

1) Comedian: A Stand-up comic becomes pregnant with a baby who sings but will be born dumb. This is a poignantly beautiful story.

2) The Expert on God: A priest doubts the existence of love and God. Yet, through faith, he tries to conjure love.

3) A Gift: What makes a real person - his true goodness or his meanness of spirit.

4) Father: An artist disappears into his painting. Again, the question arises, what is real?

5) Rejoice and Be Glad: A woman dying of uterine cancer tries to make a deal with herself. Her hope is to assign more meaning to the ending of her life.

6) The Terrible Mirror: A Novella: An artist and his wife live lives neither balanced nor synchronous, yet intertwined.