Life Sentences

Martin Mull’s Life Sentences is a characteristically clever, deftly funny, and acutely heartfelt collection of stories from one of America’s most beloved and original comedians, actors, and artists. 

Mull introduces us to a perky real estate agent who becomes an ailing bachelor’s best friend;  a father and son who battle over a phone and their newly discovered political difference; and an unlikely rockstar whose fall comes as quickly and unexpectedly as his rise to fame. A discontented  art teacher and middling painter finds inspiration in the striking face of a petty criminal who sets him on the path to fleeting success. With a short time to live, and a lot of living to do, a health nut goes on a hedonistic tear—he eats, he drinks, he lives, but he can’t escape his fate. 

Drawing from the well of his own wide-ranging experiences and from life’s most persistent contradictions, Mull has written a book that is at once clear-eyed and optimistic. Life Sentences is an homage to that part of ourselves that never stops asking questions, that part of ourselves that never grows old (even as we do). With his famously sharp wit and keen eye, Mull offers a portrait of the human spirit in its most vulnerable form. In a voice that is droll, compassionate, and unmistakably his own, Martin Mull’s stories introduce us to a cast of complex characters who—in turn—introduce us to deeper, more honest versions of ourselves. This is literature that feels like talking to a close (and hilarious) friend. It’s creative genius at its most intimate.

Martin Mull spent his boyhood in rural Ohio during the 1950s before earning an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. He then became a songwriter and performer, opening for Randy Newman, Frank Zappa, and Bruce Springsteen. His album Sex and Violins was nominated for a Grammy, and his 1985 mockumentary The History of White People in America won the ACE award for best comedy special. His film and television credits include acting roles in Mrs. Doubtfire, Clue, Arrested Development, and Veep as well as writing for The Tonight Show, Fernwood 2 Nite, and Roseanne. His artworks are featured in the collections of several prominent museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The final years of Mull’s creative life were dedicated to his work as a writer and a painter