I havent had your luck in seeing all these, Barry, but I absolutely
second the Bök & Four Horsemen as getting an audience to laugh out
loud while practicing extremely 'literary' breaks with what that term
'normally' means....
Doug
On 16-Oct-08, at 5:33 AM, Barry Alpert wrote:
> My father introduced me to stand-up via what he watched on early
> TV: Jackie Gleason,
> Art Carney, Sid Caesar, Red Skelton, & . . . Witnessing Hal
> Holbrook's simulation of Mark
> Twain at Ford's Theatre when I was 15 certainly contributed to my
> expectation that
> aspects of stand-up might manifest themselves within "literary
> performance". At
> Washington University in St. Louis I was lucky enough to witness a
> variety of
> performative moves (often quite outrageous) by the comic novelist
> Stanley Elkin. A
> reading of "Gunslinger" by Ed Dorn in Berkeley California ca. 1969
> both stunned me and
> had me laughing hysterically. Since then, I would cite Ed Sanders,
> Christian Bok, and The
> Four Horsemen for eliciting hysterical laughter via their formal
> "literary performances".
>
> Barry Alpert
Douglas Barbour
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It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.
Matt Taibi
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