On Pure Drivel written and read by Steve Martin (1998)

I have been holding out on you, gentle reader. And by “holding out on you,” I mean “have been lazy.” I actually listened to this audiobook the last weekend of October on the way to my boys’ last marching band festival of the year and have only gotten around to writing about it now. Which means I will have forgotten anything I really want to say about it. Actually, I don’t know if I had anything in particular I wanted to say–it’s hard to put a little sticky note into the pages of an audiobook when you’re driving 80 miles an hour down the highway.

At any rate, this is a collection that includes numerous essays that Martin wrote for The New Yorker in the middle 1990s. You can see a chapter listing on Wikipedia here and can see the first two chapters here.

The writing is wry, not (often) crass, and is topical, kind of like humor would have been in those days, not mocking, and amusing. The audio book was read by Martin as well, so he phrased it just as he intended. Which hopefully was reflected in the writing.

It’s been sixteen years since I read Shopgirl, and it won’t be sixteen years until I read another book by Steve Martin (no bets, as I’ve actually started it). I think I might actually have Pure Drivel here in print form, and I’ll actually read the book if I find it. Martin is one of the comedians I’d like to see live, and I hope that someday he and Martin Short come near enough to Springfield that I can see them.

So let that be my recommendation. I’ve heard it, and I’d like to read it. Maybe I will listen to it again. It is certainly more ageless than most comedy albums I listen to on road trips.