Born Standing Up - Steve Martin

In paperback from Amazon.com - $10.20

Buy it if: You’re in the mood for an elegantly written memoir with a more-than-decent self-exploration slant

Don’t buy it if: You want to find out whether working with Martin Short gets annoying

Perhaps the oddest thing about reading an autobiography is the sense that you’re reading an unfinished story. Picking up a book like Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up makes me wary. They always remind me of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Greatest Hits’ or Howard Stern’s Private Parts, two works that seem to offer very good career retrospectives – except that Bruce and Howard each had major career milestones after their respective releases! ‘Greatest Hits’ is missing selections from the six studio albums that have followed hence and Stern hasn’t touched pen to paper since his move to satellite radio.

Steve Martin, no literary slouch, avoids these shortcomings by taking a cue from the Eagles, who cleverly labeled a multi-platinum monster ‘Their Greatest Hits 1971 – 1975.’ It covers a specified era, no more, no less. And it’s a much fairer retrospective assessment as a result.
Born Standing Up takes the same approach. Martin’s film career is mentioned in passing, but rarely with elaboration. Instead, he chooses to focus on the trajectory that led him to and through his surprisingly short and massively successful career in stand up comedy. From perfecting sleight-of-hand behind the counter of a Disneyland magic shop to sold out nights at the Nassau Coliseum, it’s a uniquely American story that is as tied to its era as it is the country.

These days celebrity memoirs seem to come out on a daily basis, as often driven by current events as they are a desire to understand the motivations and intricacies of their subjects. Lost of ton of weight? Write a memoir. (I’m talking to you Valerie Bertinelli) Achieve an athletic feat? Write a memoir. (Michael Phelps released his first tome after the 2004 Olympics) So it’s nice to see that Steve Martin appreciates the perspective one gains by letting some time elapse - in his case, over two decades’ worth. It lends the book a sense of considered analysis and the reading is well-served by his own patience.

And while it’s not to say that there aren’t funny bits in the writing – there are, and the humor is decidedly dry and Martin-esque when present – please don’t mistake this for a Seinlangugae-like collection of stand-up style pieces converted for the written page. Instead, what you get is a concise and quick-paced look at the motivations and tribulations of a hugely successful comedian, delivered with the objectivity a distantanced biographer might bring to such a project, but tempered with the unique first person perspective that only an autobiography can have… It’s really a wonderful combination that makes the style of the writing at least as compelling as the its subject.

Martin is psychologically experimenting on himself successfully and is very deliberate with attempts to neither sugar-coat his screw-ups nor downplay his successes. It’s a rare case of perspective that really shows a man giving a portion of his life candid consideration. While it’s very tempting to complain about the huge gaps where his personal life should be, we have to assume that these omissions were very intentional, and it only lends more validity to the subject matter he does tackle.

A fascinating narrative that delivers precisely because of its limited scope, Born Standing Up is a fast read that offers a rare analytical and warm take on the what can be a very confusing subject: oneself.