This is q fascinating read as told by the fascinating people that were present throughout the legendary Comedy Celler's history.n Written as a series of vignettes related by some of the greats in comedy we witness the birth of more than just a venue. Some may find the use of these individual transcripts off-putting, to me they made the story come alive. ( )

This is an interesting and timely book, told in a curious backwards fashion. It's really fascinating to hear all these different stories related to the Comedy Cellar, with so many different comedians and other people connected to the club interviewed, and the backwards timeline kind of works as it starts from recent history that's been in the news relatively recently (Louis CK primarily) and works back to things that led up to that, and other things I knew nothing about. It's a world I'm not really familiar with, but found this book extremely readable and thought provoking. ( )

An in-depth look at the famous New York club The Comedy Cellar, specifically during the period of the Louis CK scandal. The book works backwards, observing the story as it broke in the news and how it affected other comics, some of the women involved, and the comedy club owner who had a close relationship with the comic.
The book looks at comics and the connections that are formed among themselves, and what it's like to manage a club that employs comics, a group of people who say unexpected things, and sometimes offend the customers and their employers. Which leads to a discussion of the change in audiences as people have become more confrontational, and the difficulty of being a comic in the time of cancel culture.
The author interviews a lot of well-known stand-ups and the owner and employees of The Comedy Cellar. An interesting inside perspective of the industry. ( )

Don't Applaud. Either Laugh or Don't. by Andrew Hankinson is an interesting but disjointed work that is part history and part social commentary.
While I am not in the same camp as Hankinson about anything and everything being fair game just because someone calls it comedy, I am also not overly concerned with topics available. I am one of those who is more concerned with delivery, namely, is the joke or humor making people laugh at the absurd situation or the person or group attached to that situation. To take it to an extreme to illustrate my point, if you fill a room with all open and proud racists then have someone stand up and describe the brutal treatment and deaths of the group they hate, people there will laugh. But calling that comedy does not make that comedy and more than claiming to be pro-life while supporting the death penalty makes one actually pro-life.
Having said that, there are some interesting stories here and the people who are willing to accept that freedom of speech, even in comedy, carries responsibilities and isn't simply an excuse to be hateful make some good nuanced arguments against some of the over-reactions that have taken place.
I would recommend this to readers interested in the debate about where to draw the line in free speech, especially in the entertainment industry. With the understanding that the book is slanted it also stops just barely short of being insanely pro anything-goes. If a reader wants a more balanced and a more informed account, there are a lot of books that aren't written with an eye toward continuing to make a buck of people's inhumanity to other people.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via LibraryThing Early Reviewers.



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Interesting, but oddly told, history of the Comedy Cellar, one of the better known comedy clubs in New York. I was taken with the discussion of comedy and how it can offend, with owner Noam Dworman’s attempt to be fair and open in the comedy he books, and with how deals with those who think the comedians should be censored. Unfortunately, the reverse chronological storytelling got tedious after a while and spoiled it for me. ( )