The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 7 October 2005
by George Carlin
For forty years and more, George Carlin was a hilarious and iconoclastic comedian, who was perhaps most infamous for The Seven Words you Can't say on Television (which continues to make news). In his later days, he appeared most widely in HBO television specials, where he could say any of those seven words and many more. This book is a collection of many of his comedic routines, interspersed with rantings of all kinds. The main theme seems to be hypocrisy and the abuse of language in the name of politeness (or political correctness (and is correctness a word? How about political rectitude? (But that sounds like something emitted from an orifice))). The book is episodic, and sprinkled with one-liners, one-paragraphers, one-pagers, of sometimes snide and violent rants. One is left with a vague impression of Carlin's persona. Is this the same man who played a tiny train conductor on a children's television show? (And, if so, why would he do that?) One expects Carlin to have been a real no-bullshit kind of guy. Then there are long passages in which Carlin skewers polite language, the perversion of direct speech with evasive terms. Overall, the book reads a bit sharp and jarring. Carlin revels in violent imagery that gets a bit hard to read. What would help the reader is to know Carlin's style and delivery. Imagine his voice speaking these words and the humor quotient vastly increases. Without that, though, the comedy falls a bit flat. There remain, however, many incredibly sharp bits throughout the book, particularly when he turns his eye on the political and religious. Don't try to read the book in one sitting, don't be too uptight, and it will probably be an entertaining read. (From this book, one can imagine what Carlin might also have written about small-time, self-published internet book reviewers. Not a happy thought.)
Also by Carlin: [Last Words]