Customer Reviews

A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever

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The title "A Futile and Stupid Gesture" is, of course a quote from "National Lampoon's Animal House", one of the most beloved, successful, and influential films of the past 30 years. Doug Kenney helped write that movie and played the role of "Stork", as well as writing the almost-as-adored "Caddyshack", along with being one of the first and most powerful editors of the legendary magazine "National Lampoon". Josh Karp's book is both a biography of Kenney and a history of the whole "Lampoon" scene, which because of the sway of the quasi-spinoff "Saturday Night Live", becomes a social history of American comedy during the 1970's. And that decade was to comedy like the 1960's was to rock--a time which transformed show business and culture not just in the U.S. but in the whole Western world. The irony is that, as a woman who worked with the almost all-male writers of that scene said of them, "they were the most miserable bunch of guys I've ever known."

Karp's book is astoundingly thorough. He has interviewed pretty much everyone involved with the epic story and read encyclopedic amounts of social history so he can present the whole Lampoon cultural revolution in its widest context. Kenney was like the Forrest Gump of comedy in that he met almost everyone during that time, so you get sharply etched portraits of the SNL gang, Michael O' Donoghue, Harold Ramis, P.J. O'Rourke, Tony Hendra, Anne Beatts, and a whole constellation of stars that came into contact with the Hollywood-Lampoon axis. Karp is a smooth, novelistic storyteller so the book is as fun to read as the old magazine itself. And there are large chunks of the Lampoon excerpted, so you get a rich taste of what the publication was like at its best.

Karp is also a competent historian, so you also get a suprisingly objective and rationally considered picture, especially about the above-mentioned personal misery of Kenney and his crew. Karp is unsparing in writing about the drug abuse which may have eventually wrecked Kenney's life, and about the misogyny and darkness of much of the comedy produced at the time. At this late date it's still hard to know whether Kenney's death was an accident or suicide, but his demise was a signature event of the era, not unlike the more famous passing of John Belushi 18 months later. It was a signal to "come inside and join the adults at the table", as O'Rourke would put it. Anyone who wants to have a fuller understanding of American cultural history in the twilight of the 20th century should consult Karp's excellent book.

Ever since Esquire published their cover story on Doug Kenney, "Life and Death of a Comic Genius," many years ago, I've been hoping for a book like this to appear. Mention the name Doug Kenney to your co-workers and see what sort of reaction you get until you start talking about National Lampoon and Animal House.

As a comic novelist who was deeply inspired by the take-no-prisoners attitude of the Lampoon, I feel indebted to Kenney (as many other writers and comedians should) and hope this book brings wider attention to his comic genius and important contributions to the history of modern comedy.

Josh Karp does a wonderful job of weaving the interesting life of a magazine, with the interesting and tragic life of Kenney. This could have easily been an on-the-fly trash bio, but Karp approaches his subjects with intelligence and obviously did a lot of homework, interviewing key people related to Kenney and the Lampoon.

I have some misgiving about the cover. I understand the choice, given that Rick Meyerowitz was a key artist in the development of National Lampoon, but it makes the book seem just a bit slighter than what it is, which is a really thoughtful, intelligent biography. That said, I hope I'm wrong and the book get all the attention it deserves.

I'm incredibly happy that I read this book, but I found it a ragged read.

Karp's research appears to be fabulously comprehensive. Cobbling together all these recollections and many years of social and cultural history into a unified whole must have been quite a job. The result is a book that never quite decides if it is biography of Kenney or of the magazine.

Karp is at his weakest when moves away from reportage he enters into analysis of Kenney. He lacks the insight and the prose of a sophisticated biographer and for every insightful chunk of prose, there is a clunky deposit of pop psychology.

Still, the book is an utter success at creating much of the present-at-the-creation of the magazine and its many children (radio projects, theatre projects, films, tv...)

Say the name "Doug Kenney", and you're likely to draw blank stares and numerous "who"s from the average comedy fan. But say "Animal House", "Caddyshack" or "National Lampoon", and they'll likely know what you're talking about. That's the time to tell them why the first name is so important.

Doug Kenney was a shadow figure in the history of comedy, a magazine writer and co-founder of the Lampoon's national version who managed to write some great articles, the scripts for two legendary comedy classics, and numerous other artifacts of his time all before his death in 1980, of an apparent suicide or accidential fall from a cliff in Hawaii. The fact that he died so young and so unheralded outside the insular world of comedy is a shame, especially considering what a legacy he left.

In Josh Karp's book, Kenney is even a minor character in his own life story, as whole portions of the book focus on the hangers-on at the Lampoon (various writers and other talents whose lights shined more brightly than that of Kenney or his co-founder, Henry Beard). But this is not a fault of the biographer: Kenney's own story is inevitably tied to the magazine and entertainment empire he helped found, and which owes him more than the current crop of "direct to DVD" releases and smarmy Paris Hilton cash-ins currently under the banner of "The National Lampoon".

Kenney's gift and his curse was his talent, one which produced masterpieces like "Animal House" and Nancy Reagan's "dating tips" but also let him down when it came to writing his "great American novel" of TACOS (Teenage Commies From Outer Space). Karp gives us a peek inside the mind of this elusive character and reveals a man of deep contradictions whose short, happy-sometimes-sad-othertimes life was offset by the impact he and his cohorts made on the world of American humor in the Seventies.

If you're an admirer of the Lampoon's golden era, or simply curious thanks to Animal House or Caddyshack, do yourself a favor and get this book. Whereas Tony Hendra's memoir of his time at the magazine (Going Too Far) is grandiose and self-congratulatory, this book offers a great history of one of the leading lights of American humor, and a man who arguably should be listed with the greats.

The first book I have read straight through in a LONG time, and I read lot of books. Very acute social history of the period--having myself been a bright Midwestie (from Dacron, Ohio) in a an elite east coast college circa 1962-6, I could fully understand Kenny's insider/outsider conundrum and Beard's drive to succeed on his own terms. The mix of types and personalities on the the creative side was well deliniated, and their continual tension with the business end--but for whom they would not have had careers--was the heart of the story. The book appears to be thoroughly researched and clips along nicely. The "what happened in the year" intros to each segment were seriously useful. Anyone who watched SNL when it was funny or looked at the parody yearbook and mistook it for his or her own MUST read this book.

"The Life & Death of a Comic Genius"...so said the October 1981 cover of Esquire magazine about its story about Doug Kenney. As a huge fan of National Lampoon, "Saturday Night Live," and NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE, I was just starting my freshman year of college and looking forward to living my own Toga Party.

Doug Kenney died in August of 1981. Then John Belushi died of an overdose in March 1982. The party was quickly racking up a death toll.

But American humor would never be the same.

If you were a fan of anything I've mentioned, you should enjoy this book. As sad as Kenney's story ultimately is, I still found myself laughing at the memories of Lampoon stories. The 1964 NATIONAL LAMPOON YEARBOOK parody is one of the funniest things I've ever seen (fortunately, a reprint is available and I definitely recommend it).

I really didn't get too much more than I did from this book that I already got from the Esquire article. Kenney's novel "Teenage Commies from Outer Space" didn't survive and he obviously spent a lot of time alone so there are a lot of pages chronicling the bickering and backstabbing at the Lampoon offices while Kenney ran off to live in a tent or make millions of dollars in Hollywood.

There have been millions of laughs in the years since Lampoon and ANIMAL HOUSE...it's just too bad Bluto and the Stork weren't here to hear them.

Josh Karp's biography of Doug Kenney is as meaningful as it is engaging. He ressurects the memory of the almost forgotten humorist Doug Kenney. Mr. Kenney, perhaps most easily recognized for playing Stork in ANIMAL HOUSE, was also one of the principle authors of said film and a comedic giant in his own right. Karp's biography chronicles the many ways in which Kenney shaped American comedy in the late 20th century and then thoroughly recounts the mysterious circumstance surrounding his untimely death in 1980. The book is a must read for any student or devotee of THE HARVARD LAMPOON, THE NATIONAL LAMPOON, SECOND CITY, SNL and of course ANIMAL HOUSE.

Thank you for this long overdue story of this brilliant and complicated man who brought us so much joy in the form of unbridled laughter.

More information than I never knew existed about National Lampoon. The extraordinary detail that Josh Karp uncovered to put this book together is absolutely amazing.

If you're under 60 years of age and have a sense of humor*, you'll absolutely love this book.

*you appreciate National Lampoon, SNL and Second City sensibilities

Ultimately cocaine could be considered the villain in this book that made it impossible for personal greatness to last a lifetime. I sympathize totally with Doug Kenney being able to understand any book as a concept that he could identify from a single page and write himself in a continuation of what was on that page. I had limited access to books for much of my life because I spent my college years following equations on blackboards for science, math, engineering, plus singing in a church choir in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 40 years ago when I was in Vietnam, I was carrying more books than anyone I ever met out in the bush. Having my picture taken with a book in Cambodia in May, 1970, in an attempt to look intelligent the morning after being rained on in the puddle that was also in the picture I sent to Walter Kaufmann in 1980, shortly before Doug Kenney and Walter Kaufmann died, I can appreciate how those times were a bummer for anyone who had a lot of books on his mind. I liked rock and roll so much that I was able to use information in this book to locate a video of John Belushi singing that it is lonely at the bottom of the barrel for a National Lampoon show called Lemmings.

There are an incredible number of people meeting each other in this book. Doug was not afraid to tell someone to get on a plane and fly back to Hollywood so the people who were filming Caddyshack could continue filming for a few more weeks. Doug was disappointed that Caddyshack did not turn out to be the best movie ever because key people did not have the experience it took to make Animal House such a big success, a big hit movie seemed to reach everybody. I spent as few weeks reading this book because it heads in so many different directions that I wanted to be able to think about many of the situations described before jumping into a whole new cast of characters. Chapters that started with a summary of what happened in years like 1976, 1977, 1978, and 1979 reminded me of the awful truth.