Steve Martin | Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life with An Object of Beauty | Song of Perfect Spaces

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin / An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

Published by  Simon & Schuster Audio, Nov. 1, 2007 / Hachette Audio, Nov. 23, 2010

Genre: Bio / Fiction

Format: I audiobooked these one via Libby

A glimpse of an artist.

Maybe the most perfect space for a deeply creative person is the place with enough room to work hard in pursuit of perfecting a craft. Steve Martin has spent his life perfecting a few. Listen to Martin's Song of Perfect Spaces.

 Line, shape, texture, form, space, color value.  Dynamics, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, texture, timbre and tonality. Surprise, incongruity, conflict, repetition, irony. The practices of fine arts, music, comedy, and writing have so much in common. After reading Martin's bio and a bit of his fiction, I see Steve Martin as a consummate artist, a determined one-man band and lifelong student of what works in art. Ultimately, I think he finds that with years of practice, he has mastered enough of each to stay busy and maybe even get bored.

Born Standing Up is just over four hours long, so there's only room for a snapshot of Martin's life. Martin calls the memoir his look at his short life as a comic. He considers his own comic lifespan finished. Raised by TV and radio comedians  Laurel and Hardy, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Wally Boag, Carl Ballantine, Martin began working at Disney Land starting at age 10 and became a comedy apprentice soon after. Martin has certainly devoted a lifetime to comedy. It's fun to read about the wild streets of San Francisco before the tech boom and the norms of seedy comic clubs. 

His book An Object of Beauty is narrator Daniel Franks and his omniscient narration of and interactions with Lacey Yeager, an ambitious Sotheby's art gallery worker, who navigates the New York City art world like Charlotte from Sex in the City. Martin's comedic worldview comes through in his descriptions. For example, in the lovely bit below, Martin via the narrator compares the museum guards to stubby babushkas. 

The book is full of art tidbits from the 1990s through the early 2010s. Why are certain paintings selling at auction now and not later? Where does value come from when it comes to paintings? What are the intricacies of art loopholes? By all means, do not have a courier deliver the painting to me in New Jersey when if the gallery mails the painting, I save in sales tax. Why is this art considered beautiful and thus valuable? What happens when a woman with skin "[blooming] like roses" ages out of a job in an industry built on the foundation of beauty? 

Critics reading this book from a gender lens have noticed the narrator's relationship with Lacey. She is Daisy. He is Tom, a friend, but a friend holding an arm's length. Maybe Lacey is the ultimate object of beauty here.

Some critics say this book deviates quite a bit from Martin's Shopgirl and The Pleasure of my Company and recommend those instead. I'll put them on the reading list.

LOVELY BIT

"The tour was punctuated by the appearance of babushkas, stubby little women who served as museum guards and whose word was law. They stood like garden gnomes, wearing head scarves and peasant dresses, and they lurked in the corner of your eye, giving the feeling that if you looked at them, they would vanish into a hidden passage moving as if on clockwork rollers. They came into a large hall: tall, wide, and supremely ornate, with glass vitrines extending the length of the room, containing a vast collection of bejeweled clocks and golden boxes, the result of intense craftsmanship applied to useless loot." --An Object of Beauty

RATING

We see comedians as instant successes, but Steve Martin shows that the few minutes on stage are the result of a lifetime of preparation for showmanship. "I know what you're thinking: this is just another banjo magic act." Haha. There is no other banjo magic act. Well done, Steve Martin.

Just about four hours long.