Pure Drivel - Hardcover

Martin, Steve

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786864672 ISBN 13: 9780786864676

Publisher: Hyperion, 1998

Synopsis

In this ingeniously funny collection of humorous riffs, those who thought Steve Martin's gifts were confined to the screen will discover what readers of The New Yorker magazine already know: that Martin is a master of the written word. From a piece sending up the logistics of celebrity ("The Nature of Matter and Its Antecedents") to a story that is half love letter to Los Angeles and half satiric portrait of a New York writer writing about L. A. ("Hissy Fit"), the book's pieces, some of which first appeared in The New Yorker, are both hilariously funny and intelligent in their skewering of the topic at hand. With unparalleled literary ventriloquism. Martin imagines what Walter Matthau's face could tell about how we reveal ourselves to the world, who Lolita might be now, and what goes through the head of a "bad dog." In perhaps the funniest and most quintessentially Steve Martin piece, "Writing Is Easy, " Martin explains, among other things, how writers in Czechoslovakia might come up with more depressing material than L.A. writers.

About this title

Review:

"Like the fuzzy little puff of marabou on the instep of a coquette's satin bedroom slipper . . . Martin's book of diminutive, often hilarious essays [is] . . . effortless and silly even as it's subtly erudite."--Salon

"Martin is a gorgeous writer capable of being at once melancholy and tart, achingly innocent and astonishingly ironic. He is a master at revealing the surreal poetry in pure drivel."--Elle

From the Author:

I have re-read my book and think I am psychotic
Hi Readers,

First, I'm happy to be here on Amazon.com, or any dot com come to think of it. Sometimes, when I'm walking around town, I realize I'm not on a dot com, but rather on a dot street. This makes me very unhappy.

However, now that I'm on a dot com, I want to express my hopes that you enjoy my book, which is a collection of comic essays, some of which have appeared in the New Yorker, and the New York times (I was published in the York Times, and when the New one came along, I was very excited). The book has also received many glowing reviews, despite the lousy one a customer has written. This is because that particular reader, I have discovered, read the book upside down. This was a mistake on the reader's part. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the book.

Regards,

Steve Martin

About this edition

• Publisher: Hyperion
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0786864672
• ISBN 13: 9780786864676
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 116