Customer Reviews

Lenny Bruce: The Making of a Prophet

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I first saw this book for sale, I was very keen on getting a copy as soon as I could (I was on a kind of Lenny Bruce book-finding mission--and still am). After going everywhere to try to find a used copy and could not, I put out the 27 bucks. Anyway, here's why I, with much reservation, give it only three stars (should be two really). It's not about Lenny Bruce! In fact, at best, he's a bit part in a not-so-interesting story about this Thomas guy (Lenny talks about him a little in his writings here and there, but he's just another guy in the life of Lenny). If you're interest in the author, get the book. If you're interested in Lenny Bruce, there are a least ten books that you should read before this, mostly, non Lenny literature.

This fairly thin book is a first hand account of the time the author spent with Lenny Bruce. Probably the best part of the fairly pricy book are the photographs which were taken by the author.

I passed on this book because of tepid reader reviews, then read two novels by the author ("The Josan And The Jee"and "Cleo")and decided to take a second look. I suspect the reviews I read expected a biography of Lenny, even though the title page says 'memoir.' I found it as interesting and as much a page turner as his novels, both of which I bought through Amazon.com. This is the only book about Lenny I've ever seen written by a personal friend and collaborator. As such I found it very intimate. If you're interested in the inner workings of creative minds, then I highly recommend this book.

Lenny Bruce never waited for the television censors to not be listening before he delivered his punchlines. Lenny Bruce was never afraid to improvise a skit where the characters were shallow one dimensional vehicles whose sole purpose was to give life to his punchline, much like Karl Marx who created characters of similar depth in his monumental work, "Das Kapital" characters who were used to breathe life into his economic examples. Lenny Bruce was a stand up comedian who traveled across the country from gig to gig with two suitcases, the first suitcase was packed full of paperback books, the second suitcase was packed full of newspapers and magazines. When Lenny came on stage he did so with a newspaper tucked under one arm, he would clutch the microphone with one free hand and hold a cigarette in the other hand. He looked like, "a late night existential detective who was solving one case while beginning to investigate a new one." Lenny bought black silk oversized "kleenex" suits for each night he had a gig, he hired fraternity house renegade jazz drummers who dropped out of college. He would ask the college renegades, "What were the most influential books you have ever read?" Lenny would then track these books down, read them and discuss them with the jazz drummers. It was not drugs or four letter words that made Lenny Bruce dangerous, it was his ability to not only be literate but to comprehend what he had read, but what makes the material of Lenny Bruce transcend the label "dangerous" and allows it to enter the realm of entertainment was his ability to sew it all together and aim it at the hypocracy of society or his audience, this is what makes the comic ability of Lenny Bruce a gift and not a gimmick, very few comics have come close but none will hit the mark the way Lenny Bruce did. If you, the reader, want to learn the truth about Lenny Bruce from the perspective of a man who was his friend in the final years of his life then buy and read this book, "Lenny Bruce: The Making of a Prophet" by William Karl Thomas. In conclusion I can only qoute from, "Constantly Risking Absurdity", by Lawerence Farlenghetti, "And he a little charleychaplin man."