How to Be Funny - Softcover

Allen, Steve

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573922064 ISBN 13: 9781573922067

Publisher: Prometheus, 1998

Synopsis

No one knows more about comedy than Steve Allen. For more than five decades as a writer, performer, and keen observer of the social scene, he has looked into every aspect of who's funny, what's funny, and why. Allen shares his discoveries in How to Be Funny, the book designed to help everyone develop their special talent for funniness.Now reissued in paperback, How to Be Funny covers all the basics, including joke telling, ad-libbing, writing humorously, performing comedy, emceeing, and much more. Allen takes you inside the world of comedy, from the early writings of Mark Twain, to the more contemporary work of Rodney Dangerfield and Bill Maher. Allen even provides homework assignments for the budding comic!Yet How to Be Funny is far more than just a book for aspiring comedians it will help anyone who wants to be a more amusing conversationalist, a more effective public speaker, and everyone who just wants to be the life of the party.

About this title

About the Author:

Steve Allen (1921-2000) was known as television's renaissance man. He authored more than fifty books and composed over 8,500 songs. Allen was the creator and original host of the Tonight show and the award-winning PBS series Meeting of Minds. You can learn more about this legendary entertainer by visiting his offical Web site at SteveAllenonline.com.

Jane Wollman (New York, NY) is a journalist who has written regularly for The New York Times, Newsday, and USA Today.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

I was particularly honored when Steve Allen asked me to write this foreword--not just because Steve is one of my big influences and idols, but because, let's face it, nowadays people want a "name" to write their forewords. Like anything else Americans can give some b.s. cachet to, you don't want your foreword to be by Yahoo Serious. So I'm honored. At the same time, I don't want to really know if I was first choice for this assignment, or just two above Mr. Serious on the list.

This is a book about comedy by one of the world's great comedians. It follows precisely Aristotle's dictum re the purpose of art: it teaches and delights. Steve is one of those people--check that--he's the one guy who can't help but be funny when he speaks, no matter what the subject is. His books are funny because he dictates them into a tape recorder, so you can get his voice, literally; you can thus really hear Steve Allen talking to you when you read his work.

And that's a good thing. I have never encountered a single person in show business who was more identical offstage and on than Steve Allen. Some people are very cool customers when the camera is on, and they are essentially themselves on camera, but offstage, there still is a difference, the on-camera persona is a close approximation, but not a clone, of who they are offstage.

Not Steve. Steve's a clone. He's ground zero for comic sanity, and comics know this, and so have always felt it was appropriate that Steve be the one to "analyze" the rest of us, to be the chronicler of those peculiar minds that became comedians of our time. In FUNNY PEOPLE, MORE FUNNY PEOPLE, and MAKE 'EM LAUGH he has done this, and the tradition continues in grand form with this volume.

If you are interested at all in comedy and the comedy mind, you are in for a treat, because your guide is the best man for the job.

And if you're not, why have you read this far?

----Bill Maher

About this edition

• Publisher: Prometheus
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1573922064
• ISBN 13: 9781573922067
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 307