Last Words

(Paperback)

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Description

With 14 HBO specials, five Grammys, a critical Supreme Court victory over censorship and countless appearances on the international comedy circuit, George Carlin saw it all and made fun of most of it. Here, he spares no details describing his life and career, discussing his personal battle with substance abuse, his often turbulent relationships with the women in his life and the politics that informed his stand-up routines. From the highs to the lows, Last Words is told with the same brash, unblinking honesty that defined George Carlin's life as a comedian.

Reviews

."..frank and insightful..."

--"Time" magazine

."..what "Last Words" ultimately reveals is how Carlin became a political protester, slam poet, cynic, polemicist and performance artist whose messages were delivered under the veneer of humor."

--"Washington Post"

""Last Words", a posthumous autobiography from George Carlin, is a jazzy, inward-looking piece of work...as a chronicler of the working of his own mind, Carlin is terrific."

-- "The New York Times"

"["Last Words"] sounds as if he is still with us, rested and ready to ridicule the latest cultural hypocrisies."

--"The Washington Times

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"For comedy fans, this book is vital. It's easily worth its weight in gold for the biting observations on showbiz and its personalities."

--"San Francisco Chronicle"

"Seven particular words are associated with the late comedian George Carlin, and sentimental is not one of them. But that's the surprising portrait that emerges from "Last Words"."

--"Houston Chronicle"

"The book is at turns biting and touching, and often both, which is what you would expect from a man for whom the sacred was profane and the profane, sacred."

--"Entertainment Weekly"

"This is not a collection of setups and punch lines, but a candid, fearless accounting of his life and art..."Last Words" shows a comic master at the height of his storytelling powers and with no limit to what he had left to say."

--"L.A. Times

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Author Bio

Born in New York City in 1937, George Dennis Patrick Carlin was one of the greatest and most influential stand-up comedians of all time. He appeared on The Tonight Show more than 130 times, starred in an unprecedentedthirteen HBO Specials, hosted the first Saturday Night Live and penned three New York Times bestselling books.Of thetwenty-three solo albums recorded by Mr. Carlin,eleven were Grammy nominated and he took home the coveted statue five times including a 2001 Grammy win for Best Spoken Comedy Album for his reading of his best seller Brain Droppings.In 2002, Carlin was awarded the Freedom of Speech Award by the First Amendment Center in cooperation with the US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, and hewas the namedeleventh recipient of The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in June of 2008. George Carlin passed away at age seventy-one on June 22, 2008 in Santa Monica, California.


Tony Hendra was recently described by The Independent of London as one of the most brilliant comic talents of the post-war period He began his comedic career with Graham Chapman of Monty Python, appeared six times on the Ed Sullivan Show, was one of the original editors of National Lampoon, edited the classic parody Not The New York Times, starred in This Is Spinal Tap, and co-created and co-produced the long-running British satirical series Spitting Image for which he was nominated for a British Academy Award. He has written or edited dozens of books, most of them satirical, with the exception of two New York Times bestsellers: Brotherhood (2001) and Father Joe (2004). He is a senior member of the Board of the nation-wide story-telling community, The Moth.