George Carlin: The Last Words of America's Greatest Comedian

For half a century, somewhere in America, night in, night out, George Carlin stood on a stage, raging, berating, sniping, griping, purring questions, snarling answers, kicking holes in the polyester pants of hypocrisy, puking down the nice clean tux of conventional wisdom, convulsing audiences and never failing to do "this real moron thing I do: it's called THINKING!"

Thinking counts. The riled-up, curmudgeonly commentator he played to such hilarious effect onstage was shot through with an intelligence that, like no other, got under the skin of the American Dream. All his life he yanked the band-aids off that battered carcass, and poked with savage indignation at what he found underneath. And the longer he did it, the better he got.

"It's called The American Dream because to believe it, you have to be ASLEEP!"

Unlike many of his peers he died uncorrupted, uncompromised and not particularly wealthy. He was urban not suburban, his voice bristling with the energy of the Harlem streets from which he sprang, cutting through middle-class crap like a fine old bone-handled straight-razor. Because he did this live, often in lowbrow locales like blue-collar clubs and Vegas, the idea that George Carlin was a major artist may raise the hackles of the artist-ocracy. That would be their loss. In his maturity Carlin became a unique creative force, equal parts actor, philosopher, satirist, poet - a genuine man of the people, not a multi-millionaire charlatan hiding in a studio, an artist who sharpened his art with and for live human beings, not the anonymous zero of a camera lens.

For almost four decades he criss-crossed Flyover America as many as 200 times a year, largely uninterested in playing to the choir of coastal media except for brilliant biannual HBO specials, building a devoted following of millions a few thousand at a time. George demonstrated a simple, often overlooked principle: laughter like politics is always local. It happens between real people in real places and if you weren't there you didn't really get it. Laughter overheard on a piece of furniture is just a blurred facsimile in comparison.

In short, calling George Carlin a "comedian" describes his work as inadequately as "painter" describes Francis Bacon or "guitarist" BB King. No one understood better that comedy at its best is a dark and beautiful art.

OK! OK! The hecklers are getting restless. Ritchie Pryor was funnier! Robin Williams is wilder! Steve Martin's way weirder, Lily Tomlin's a genius. What about Chris Rock, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Sam Kinison, Bill Hicks, Dave Chappelle? (Do I hear a Dane Cook? No? Good).

I don't intend The Greatest claim to be at the expense of our other comic geniuses. The ability to induce laughter is as varied as it is mysterious. Saying George is our greatest comedian is a way to shorthand the range and depth of his comedy - though he was also a past-master of what he called 'micro' or observational comedy - and to set him apart to this extent: now that his work is complete, he's the one to beat.

A ninth-grade dropout, his mature pieces were essays, broadsides, jazz-like solos, based on omnivorous reading and a steely logic - e.g. The Planet is fine, The People are fucked (1992), Why we don't need Ten Commandments (2001) - but without a whiff of pretension. He had a genius for distilling a lot of information and complex issues into a few succinct and hilarious sentences. Abortion and the Sanctity of Life (1996) is the most incisive essay I know, on why right-to-lifers have not the slightest respect for life. Far more memorable and persuasive than any number of weighty studies or impassioned speeches. Consider just how much is going on in these lines:

"Conservatives want LIVE babies so they can raise them to be DEAD soldiers."

"If life is so sacred] how come when it's us it's an abortion but when it's a chicken it's an omelet?"

It was the big things George wanted to deal with - he had zero interest in celebrity and topical humor - especially the big things people didn't want comedians to deal with, like abortion, religion, God, rape, mass murder, patriotism, suicide, random disasters and of course, that sport of fat white business cocksuckers in cute little knickerbockers, golf.

"Ever watched golf on television? It's like watching flies fuck."

He expressed satanic glee at the very things most people desperately avoid thinking about. He told me once that discovering entropy was one of his greatest moments. Wonderful that the entire planet and every species on it, including us, would gradually cease to function, decay and die. And not just what we call life - the animal and the vegetable - but the mineral: stars, galaxies, dark matter, time-space, finity itself: all subject to same iron laws of decay and death. The very nature of the Universe met his fundamental comedic standard. It's fucked. So it's funny.

It's this breadth of vision that I believe will make him remembered and quoted as a major American artist. He's certainly in the pantheon that includes H.L. Mencken and Mark Twain (whose eponymous award for humor he won a few days before his death), along with the likes of Terry Southern and Nathaniel West. His savagery and coruscating language even bear comparison to Swift. But he was something else these men of letters were not: a born clown, fall-on-the-floor-funny, a master craftsman of the stage.

Around 15 years ago George asked me to help him write his story. Not the story of his life so much as the story of his art, how despite real and self-inflicted setbacks he arrived at the place he did. Working on it was a wild, hilarious, and fascinating ride during which a cordial acquaintance became a close friendship. For several reasons the book was never finished in his lifetime; in recent months with the blessing of his daughter Kelly and his executor (and longtime manager) Jerry Hamza, I edited and brought it to completion. It was published on Tuesday by Simon and Shuster. If it had come out on its original schedule in the 90s it would've been his first bona fide book - his first published words. Now it's his fourth book and his last published words. Which is where it gets its name. I hope you find Last Words as funny, moving and intriguing to read as it was for me to help create.

Joe bless you George.

 

Comments

[Sundialsvc4]

Tony, when your publisher calls you with the good news that "somebody BOUGHT your book!!!!" ... you can tell 'em, "it was me." Yep, I'm the one. (And the blankety-blanks at Border's wouldn't let me turn it back in, so I kept it.)

Good book. George would be proud. (Joe would be, too... Joe's got a great sense of humor, you see.) So, all of you other suckers out there, go out and buy lots of copies. Your parakeets will love you. ;-)

Seriously: two thumbs up. Good job. Good book. Merry Joe-mas.

[icec0rpse]

Carlin IS the greatest comedian.
He IMPROVED as he grew old.
Stop PRETENDING Pryor was better.
IMO, Pryor is BORING compared to Carlin.

Intelligent comedy should be hailed. THE ONLY REASON WHY CARLIN ISN'T CONSIDERED #1 BY THE MAJORITY: People are dense in their old, outdated, free-to-be-stupid attitudes.

Too many of these blue collars ( don't mean to be presumptious ) can't take a nickle's worth of truth before they pull out the defenses. Most of these "types" are still indoctrined to believe that this is a of democracy.

[UnknownSolider]

why does it have to be either or, and not both.

Pryor was a Genius, and Carlin was Genius, whats so hard about that.

we are a country of 300 million people and these two were two of the funniest, I think that's pretty good.

But let me CarlinIZE it for you.......... The Greeks developed the concepts of the greatest good and the greatestEvil, they then imparted these concepts into Christianity along with the later "J" so therefore the Greeks invented the words"Jew"­and"Jesus" to describe a people they did not know. So this concept of heavenAndHell are just like OlympusAndHades One on top and one on the bottom, and now you are doing the same thing with Carlin and Pryor.

[TAIsabel]

By the way, his idea for a new "reality show", as a parody to the malaise of our culture, of putting cameras on helmets of people who jump to their deaths....­brilliant.

It encapsulated the ingrained voyeurism, banality, sickness and deabuchery of our culture reflected on the ludicrous, revolting and inane "reality show" craze.

[TAIsabel]

Thank you!! I have been missing him quite a bit lately. Truly an amazing man, let alone comedian. In my book, very few come close except perhaps Richard Prior ( Dane Cook, are you kidding??? I don't think so!).

I still remeber his tirades on the nuns in Catholic school. Wish he was still with us!

[SeaBlood]

As a person who is interested in language, it occurs to me that it would be extremely useful for teachers of English as a foreign language to assign Carlin's rants to their students. They are filled with up-to-date neologisms as he was:
"a modern man,
A man for the millennium,
Digital and smoke free.

A diversified multicultural postmodern deconstructionist,
Politically anatomically and ecologically incorrect." etc. etc

What a great lesson for your students of English! Assign his books to your class!

[rich3324]

He use of language was masterful. He is missed.

[JimLarkin]

A Segovia , whose arpeggios on the common man and the rampant hypocrisy of our conservative nation exalts him unto the Pantheon of geniouses who motivate us all to reflect....with a smile.

[Jericho]

I'm a modern man" that is.

[Jericho]

Google Carlin's genius in "I'm a moderate man"

[slimcat]

Thought provoking humor is best when it kicks what people hold most dear right square in the nuts. George was, and still is, the Grand Master of this.

[research]

Yes, Joe bless you Carlin!

He was also a lesson, like Twain, to avoid letting the darkness of life sour your pleasure in the world.

The both became bitter in their old age. It hurts to hear But it's true.

So why do we struggle in vain?

Because it's the right thing to do,

and the only way to really live.

[LMPE]

There will never be another George Dennis Carlin!

[BulwerLytton]

I'm glad you're here, Kelly. This is the first fan letter I've ever written. Another poster here aptly mentions Vonnegut. I flatter myself by remarking to others that I am a part of George Carlin's granfalloon.

Like your father, I was a public information specialist in the Air Force. Low-ranking airmen in that career field conduct public tours of base facilities and aircraft. Throughout the mid-1970s, I regaled thousands of tourists with the tale of my tenuous brotherhood with George Carlin, always ending with the line, "Though George and the Air Force have "parted ways", I'm sure your tour today would have been much more entertaining had they not." Although it always got a laugh, it also explains why your dad became the voice of a generation instead of me!

On the few occasions when I've actually considered writing a fan letter, it was always in the context of sharing that ironic anecdote with him. I wish I'd done it while he was still alive. He'd have liked it.

To those who would dismiss your father as "bitter" or "mean": as you say, truth sometimes hurts.

After listening to George Carlin's truth for the better part of a half-century, I believe myself a better man for it. He has earned my respect and my love. And I miss him.
--Steven D. Holmes
--FAN

[realitytrumpsbull]

I just always enjoyed the delivery. Comedy, I think, is at least in part, about the delivery. George was the kind of guy, that just to watch him talk, regardless of what he was talking about, was in and of itself, sort of entertaining. He was an animated guy. His eyebrows moved. His eyes did not stare dully ahead, his voice was not a monotone. He may have been a 9th grade dropout, but his diction and elocution were well-considered, and above and beyond the level of most college graduates. If we were all as conversant and well-read as Mr. Carlin was, this would be a more interesting place to live in.

George got pretty heavy into his scathing social commentaries, from time to time, a little 'over the top' in terms of the content still being just entertainment, but that was also one of this trademarks, that he would go on a rant, illustrate his point of view in thorough and unrelenting fashion, and give the world (as he saw it) a thorough butt-chewing, and a slap on the back of the head for good measure. People loved it, and there was some wisdom in those words, and I think the world is a better place for having had a George Carlin, and maybe he helped wake some people UP. Watch out for cross-eyed nuns...

[llovejim]

He had some very funny observations....the football to baseball analogy was fantastic, for example. probably some others..his last attempts weren't that funny, but like most artists, their genius tends to fade with time.....