At one point in Chris Smith's capacious oral history of The
Daily Show, Jon Stewart -- recalling the short-lived
agreement among late-night TV's top hosts to go dark during a
2007–8 writers' strike -- jokingly calls Jay Leno, David
Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O'Brien, and himself "the five
families," as in The Godfather 's Mafia clans. It was
tongue-in-cheek, but also a rare and interesting slip. As a rule,
few things make Stewart squirm like conceding that he's got
any sort of power.
So far as I can tell, he's the one who instigated the move, then
convinced the others to join in. That shouldn't only remind us
that Stewart works overtime to be one of the good guys; it also
underlines his clout. Except to Comedy Central's audience of
"slackers and stoners," as Bill O'Reilly huffily miscalled them,
The Daily Show had barely been on anybody's radar when
Stewart took over from original host Craig Kilborn in 1998.
Less than a decade later, broadcast TV's late-night big
enchiladas -- all with much larger audiences than his -- treated
him as not only their peer but a moral compass.
Don't blame me if I got entranced with picturing Stewart as
Michael Corleone: the nebbishy college kid who somehow
ended up as capo di tutti capi . True, this means
imagining a Michael Corleone who is a) Jewish, b) impish, and
c) on the side of the angels, three improbable new wrinkles.
But Stewart's ascent from a gadfly comic on a cheesy cable
network to Generation X's version of Walter Cronkite was
fairly improbable too. No one would have bet on him to end up
as the first late-night TV star since Johnny Carson to invent an
original cultural role -- one that, like Carson's, is now the
template his multiple successors try to emulate.
Unsurprisingly, he comes off awfully well in Smith's cast-of-
dozens chronicle. He has a few bad moments, true -- including
his eventual return to the air during that same strike, which
some of his writers apparently never forgave him for. But he's
often the one who beats up on himself the most in these pages.
With a few disgruntled exceptions, practically everybody who
ever worked for The Daily Show -- and Smith seems to
have talked to almost all of them -- lauds his decency, creative
smarts, and constant drive to bring out the best they had on
tap. One word that comes up an awful lot is mensch .
It's easy to forget that Stewart's takeover of Kilborn's slot was
on the bumpy side. Thinking they had a pretty good thing going
without his creative input, the team he'd inherited balked at
Stewart's determination to reboot the show's priorities from
random spoofery to satire with a distinctive point of view --
his. "What I needed most," he says, "were accomplices."
He found them soon enough, especially in the hires of writer-
producers Ben Karlin and David Javerbaum. But the most
prominent turned out to be Kilborn-era holdover Stephen
Colbert, who took to the new regime like a duck to water.
Considering that Stewart was an untested quantity who'd
never been the boss of much of anything up to then, his sure-
footed resolve seems remarkable, especially since Comedy
Central execs were a long way from convinced their newbie
was on the right track. The stakes just weren't high enough
back then for them to hit the panic button.
Thanks partly to then-correspondent Steve Carell's antic
pursuit of candidate John McCain in New Hampshire, the 2000
election (a.k.a. "Indecision 2000") was the making of the new
Daily Show -- the moment when people outside
Comedy Central's target audience began to sit up and take
notice, from New York's sherpas of chic to D.C.'s own movers
and shakers. Then 9/11 was almost its unmaking, or so it
seemed at the time. "I don't even know if we have a show
anymore," one staffer recalls DS co-creator Madeleine
Smithberg saying.
Stewart didn't go back on the air for over a week. When he did,
his tearful monologue about his old view of the WTC towers
being replaced by a view of the Statue of Liberty struck many
people, me included, as, well . . . sweet, but not what we wanted
from Jon Stewart.
Wrong again. From then on, his comic persona -- aggrieved,
disbelieving, roguishly sassy -- was merely one facet of how
Stewart manifested in public. That was what made him the
most engagingly human of guides to the Bush era's iniquities
along with one of the shrewdest, but only The Daily
Show 's puckishness kept his moral seriousness in balance.
When he tried to convert his dandy cockpit into a bully pulpit
and did so without the protection of the show's mordantly
ironic context, he floundered.
That was the case when he went on Crossfire in 2004 to
upbraid Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala for "hurting America"
with their reductionist sparring. Widely admired at the time,
this Mr. Stewart Goes to Washington moment hasn't
aged all that well; an America that could be damaged by
Crossfire deserves to die of the common cold. On the
other hand, Crossfire did get canceled just months
later, and every little bit helps.
Six years later, a more ambitious attempt by Stewart to put his
influence to concrete use -- the "Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or
Fear" that he and Colbert staged on the Mall before the 2010
midterms, simultaneously burlesquing Glenn Beck's Tea Party
rallies and hoping to peddle a rational alternative to the
politics of hysteria -- was an unmistakable misfire.
Uncharacteristically for him, its goals just didn't seem well
thought out, leaving an unwelcome impression of vainglory. "I
feel like it stood against everything we thought -- we never
thought we were anything but a TV show," says executive
producer Rory Albanese, who begged Stewart in vain to
reconsider.
All the same, it's hard to imagine either Dubya's or Obama's
presidencies without Stewart and The Daily Show 's
invaluable palliative. Sure, in a sense, he and it were preaching
to the converted. But putting it that reductively misses the
point. For one thing, there are limits to what satire can do, and
helping people cope with lunacy is one job that's inside satire's
wheelhouse. For another, like most good pop culture -- not just
the political kind -- DS didn't cater to an established
community so much as it created one.
Attitudes that might have stayed amorphous and private
otherwise got crystallized once Stewart defined how to express
them, and knowing you were part of an audience of kindred
spirits was exhilarating.
Colbert's 2005 departure for The Colbert Report, along
with Ed Helms's and Rob Corddry's exits the following year, led
to another bumpy transition. But that may have been a blessing
in disguise -- by providing a bigger platform for Samantha
Bee's talents, just to start with. Then a formula that might have
gone stale otherwise got refreshed by new hires, from Larry
Wilmore to The Daily Show 's latter-day MVP, John
Oliver. Predictably, Oliver -- who was on track to be Stewart's
successor until Comedy Central let him slip away to HBO -- is
the most entertaining contributor to Smith's collage: "I'm
English," he moans of his emotional farewell to DS . "I'm
dead inside. I don't have any echoes of feelings. What I have
might be from ancestors centuries ago."
The ultimate measure of The Daily Show 's beneficial
impact, of course, is how many of its onetime correspondents
went on to front shows of their own -- each with its own
distinctive character but nonetheless all originating in a shared
sensibility that was barely aware of itself as such before
Stewart came along. DS was so obviously the signature
TV series of its generation that this book's rare carping voices
are almost a relief, in that keeping-things-honest way. If damn
near everyone else sounds a bit in awe of what their unlikely
Godfather wrought, no wonder. A two-time
National Magazine Award winner during his stint as
Esquire's "Screen" columnist, Tom Carson is currently a
columnist at GQ. He is the author of Gilligan's
Wake (2003), a novel .
EAN: 9781101870228
Reviewer: McAlpin, Heller
Short description:
An entire book devoted to a pedantic literary tiff that flared
fifty years ago? Fear not. The Feud, Alex Beam's lively
post-mortem on the friendship between two titans of
twentieth-century literature -- Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund
Wilson -- is a deliciously smart read.
Long description:
An entire book devoted to a pedantic literary tiff that flared
fifty years ago? Fear not. The Feud, Alex Beam's lively
post-mortem on the friendship between two titans of
twentieth-century literature -- Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund
Wilson -- is a deliciously smart read. Yes, Beam has plenty to
say about literature and the passions it arouses. But The
Feud is also a spellbinding -- and sobering -- cautionary
tale about how ego and envy can destroy even the most
brilliant friendship.
Beam confesses that he burst out laughing when he first heard
that Nabokov and Wilson's quarter-century relationship ran off
the rails because of a disagreement over Nabokov's translation
of Alexander Pushkin's great novel in verse, Eugene
Onegin . But, he writes, "Several years into this project, I
laugh less now." The implosion, he soon learned, was about far
more than Wilson's very public takedown of dear Volodya's
colossal, fourteen-year Pushkin project.
The two men met in 1940, when the émigré
composer Nicolas Nabokov wrote Wilson to ask if he could
help his writer cousin, Vladimir, who, newly arrived from Paris
with his Jewish-born wife and son after fleeing the Nazis, was
in dire straits. At forty, Nabokov had spent the past twenty
years in exile in England, Berlin, Prague, and Paris after his
aristocratic Russian family fled the Bolsheviks in 1919. Writing
in Russian under the pen name Vladimir Sirin, he had produced
nine novels in twelve years.
At forty-five, Wilson was a distinguished literary critic best
known for his 1931 collection of essays, Axel's Castle,
in which he championed modernist writers, including James
Joyce. He obligingly commissioned reviews from Nabokov at
the New Republic, arranged fruitful contacts with
editors at The New Yorker and elsewhere, and
provided a flattering blurb ("absolutely enchanting") for
Nabokov's first novel published in English, The Real Life of
Sebastian Knight.
The two men delighted in each other's company, and when
they were apart, a legendary, "unashamedly intimate"
correspondence flourished between them for two decades.
"For many years Wilson and Nabokov could ask each other
almost anything," Beam writes.
They had many similarities: Both were superbly educated, sons
of "prominent jurists," and ladies' men. Both shared a disdain
for academics and Freud. Neither could drive. Both liked magic
tricks and loved discussing matters of prosody. Both not only
went bald but wrote baldly about sex, for which they faced
censorship.
Early on, they were able to "cheerfully disagree" over little
things like the pronunciation of nihilist (NIE-hilist versus NEE-
hilist) and even big things like Wilson's infatuation with Lenin
and slowness at renouncing Stalin. But the gulf between them
widened, especially when Nabokov's literary star rose after the
1954 publication of Lolita, while Wilson's fortunes
sank. Wilson, who did not share Nabokov's fondness for puns,
found his writing cold and too full of tricks, and declined to
review his novels. He loved Nabokov's memoir, Speak,
Memory, but said he couldn't even finish Lolita.
It didn't help their relationship when Wilson extolled Boris
Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, which Nabokov scorned.
Nabokov repeatedly questioned Wilson's knowledge of both
Russian language and literature, eventually calling him "a
hapless flounderer in the language of Pushkin." The two split
further on the great Cold War divide: Nabokov was virulently,
unequivocally against Khrushchev's Soviet Union. Wilson,
although he never joined the Communist Party, leaned
decidedly Left.
Beam deftly rounds up all the ammunition for their eventual
shootout. Nabokov, firing with anything but neutrality from
Switzerland, where he retreated after the success of
Lolita, does not come off well. He assassinated scores of
writers, dead and alive: Dostoyevsky was "third rate," Henry
James "that pale porpoise," whom he viewed "as a warmed
over Turgenev manqué." His attacks on translators of
Russian literature were even harsher. After suffering through
several of Nabokov's anti-Zhivago rants on the
telephone, Wilson complained to a mutual friend, "He wants to
be the only Russian novelist in existence."
Although not a Russian scholar, Beam, a columnist and former
Moscow correspondent for The Boston Globe,
understands Pushkin's primacy in Russian culture: "To
educated Russians, Onegin is simply everything, as if all
of Shakespeare's comedies and tragedies were supercollided
into a narrative poem of 5000-plus lines, which many of them
can quote at extraordinary length," he writes. His analysis of
this "peripatetic tale," which follows eighteen months in the
life of a "spoiled society rake," and his explication of the
complicated rhyme scheme and iambic tetrameter metrical
system Pushkin created for the work -- since dubbed the
Onegin stanza -- are remarkably succinct and clear. (He
illustrates his points with Charles Johnston's 1977 rhyming
translation, my personal favorite.) And while he concedes that
"Onegin does not sing in translation," he adds that the
English translations "aren't as awful as Nabokov insisted they
were."
Which brings us to Nabokov's magnum, madman opus -- a
hyper-literal, non-rhyming verse translation of Onegin
followed by 930 pages of commentary, published by Bollingen
in 1964. Spoiler alert: Beam sides with Wilson. "Nota
bene, " he warns. "Edmund Wilson knew something about
Alexander Pushkin, and about his poetry." But summing up
Wilson's 6,600-word review, "The Strange Case of Pushkin and
Nabokov," which appeared in the July, 1965 issue o The
New York Review of Books, Beam writes, "It remains a
classic of its genre, the genre being an overlong, spiteful,
stochastically accurate, generally useless but unfailingly
amusing hatchet job."
Beam observes that "the ensuing seven-plus years of malicious
rhetoric" -- which he tracks doggedly, though never to the
point of tedium -- followed balletic, duel-like rules and made
for good "knocking copy." Although his own extensive
vocabulary includes words like pasquinading and
autarky, he agrees with complaints about Nabokov's
"off-putting vocabulary," including curvate instead of
curved, rememorate for remember, and
sapajou instead of monkey . He also agrees with
Wilson (and others) on another bone of contention, that
Pushkin knew enough English to have read -- and been directly
influenced by -- Byron in the original.
Beam, a witty, concise writer with a nose for sharp zingers and
an ability to extract highlights without compromising
substance, addresses his reader genially. "Are we done? Not
quite," he writes before turning to Nabokov's most incisive
critic, Harvard professor and fellow Russian
émigré Alexander Gerschenkron, who lambasted
Nabokov in a 10,000-word salvo in Modern Philology
for his "inexcusable arrogance" and "lack of generosity."
Nabokov eventually exacted his revenge with thinly disguised
versions of his attackers in his novel Ada -- a bestseller
in its day, though it failed to achieve anything like the impact of
Lolita.
Citing "an infectious tendency to 'go Nabokovian' when writing
about the late, great novelist," Beam has fun with all this. His
book is enlivened by several classic Nabokov puns -- "Day Day"
for Doubleday, "The Waistline" for T. S. Eliot's famous
poem -- and by Wilson biographer Jeffrey Myers's irresistible
quip about the feud: "when Pushkin came to shovekin." Beam
cleverly refers to Wilson's problems with the IRS as the
"sapajou" on his back.
In the end, The Feud acknowledges that Wilson
provoked the quarrel with his scathing review but
demonstrates that it had been simmering for years. Wilson
"discerned a chilly soullessness" in his suddenly successful
friend, who belittled him where it hurt most, by questioning his
critical chops. The loss of a friendship that had "fed on the
oxygen of intellectual discourse" was sad enough; lamentably,
the dispute continued past Wilson's and Nabokov's deaths, in
1972 and 1977, respectively. Considering which of the two
writers is still widely read, you might say that Wilson won the
battle, but Nabokov won the war.Heller
McAlpin is a New York–based critic who reviews books
for NPR.org, The Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San
Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, and other
publications.
Reviewer: Tom Carson
The Barnes & Noble Review
"Zippy, smart."—New York (magazine) "Readers of this compelling history will appreciate the sweat behind every joke."—Washington Post "Mr. Smith's book feels like a visit to a distant time."—New York Times "[A] substantial, many-faceted oral history....This superbly well-edited choral work illuminates the enormous effort, creativity, collaboration, and hustle required for producing a hilarious, news-focused, four-times-a-week comedy show and the chutzpah necessary for taking on the powers-that-be."—Booklist "Sometimes our book dreams get answered....If you ever longed to be in the room for epic moments like Stewart's post-9/11 on-air address, his grudge matches with Fox News, the famous Indecision presidential election coverage and more, this is your printed word moment of zen.—Detroit Free Press "Deftly recount[s] the way Stewart's sensibilities, political realities (and unrealities), defining events like 9/11, advances in technology and changes in the television news landscape moved the show from spectator to player."—USA Today "Smith digs deep into the show's ascendance and cultural influence as if he was one of the show's meticulous fact-checking news-tape researchers...Smith lets the show's stars, crew, and guests tell the show's unvarnished history. Fortunately, most every one interviewed-from Stephen Colbert to longtime showrunner Ben Karlin to Sen. John McCain-possesses an A-plus wit...it doesn't flinch from digging into the show's most contentious moments... in the Age of Trump, the time has never been better to delve into the minds of the masters who became a vital part of our democracy."—Entertainment Weekly "Smith gives readers sound bites from some smart, funny and self-aware people waxing rhapsodic about their 'let's put on a show' adventures...the seeming candor of Stewart in particular gives the book a refreshing amount of depth, particularly regarding backstage drama...the real measure of the show and the book that bears its name is, did it have a point, and, moreso, was it funny in making it. The answer, on both counts, is a resounding, laugh-out-loud 'yes.'"—Chicago Tribune "Comedy Central's The Daily Show was a cultural phenomenon, and now it gets the oral history it deserves...Smith tells the show's story through artfully arranged first-person recollections. ..it is more than a collection of famous moments, but rather a work of distinctive, original social commentary."—The National Book Review "There is solace in this chatty and highly informative tome....THE DAILY SHOW (THE BOOK) is like eating popcorn, in that it's light and fun and easy to consume....the book is a love letter to the people that built The Daily Show and make it work night after night."—Vulture "Lively... Smith deftly combines narrative with the recollections of people involved with the show at every level, ranging from boldface names like John McCain to correspondents like Stephen Colbert and Ed Helms....An intimate and entertaining look at a fake-news program whose caustic, witty alchemy remains missed by many."—Kirkus Reviews "This is a fascinating history of a cultural phenomenon and the people who powered it. Be aware that, like the show, there is plenty of cursing in this book."—Provo City Library Staff Reviews "A must-read for the show's fans and those aspiring to a career in comedy or television."—Library Journal "Wonderfully compiled...Certainly if you are a fan of the show you must read THE DAILY SHOW (THE BOOK)...it is a sincere blast to relive its finest moments and understand how it was achieved and more importantly remember how much it was a major part of the democratic process...Bravo, Mr. Smith."—Reality Check News & Information Desk "The Daily Show was so obviously the signature TV series of its generation that this book's rare carping voices are almost a relief, in that keeping-things-honest way. If damn near everyone else sounds a bit in awe of what their unlikely Godfather wrought, no wonder."—Barnes & Noble Review "Stewart even contributed the introduction. But this isn't a sanitized history. There's plenty of warts and all (and some fun hijinks as well). It's also a smart look at the business of TV and how 24-hour news channels and the rise of conservative media have changed our political culture."—Hollywood Reporter
01/01/2017 The Daily Show evolved from a fledgling late-night talk show hosted by Craig Kilborn on Comedy Central to a culturally significant political satire and news commentary program under the helm of Jon Stewart. New York magazine contributing editor Smith traces the history of the show from its inception in 1996 to its takeover by Trevor Noah when Stewart retired in 2015 after 16 years. He records a series of quotes in chronological order garnered from interviews with the hosts, correspondents, writers, crew, and guests. The author frames the narrative with comments about each of the major news stories that drove the content of the show. The 2000 election, 9/11, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and the subsequent recession, as well as politicians and the media itself, were all deconstructed via the lens of comedy. Stewart and company brought to light many of the lies and inconsistencies in government and media, with some stories even helping to change policy. VERDICT This "oral history" of a show that won 23 Emmys and launched the careers of such notables as Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, and John Oliver is a must-read for the show's fans and those aspiring to a career in comedy or television. [See Prepub Alert, 4/25/16.]—Donna Marie Smith, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., FL
On January 11, 1999, comedian Jon Stewart took over the helm of Comedy Central’s “Daily Show.” For the next 16 years, the team proceeded to mix news, satire, and pop culture into a unique blend of award-winning, groundbreaking entertainment. This in-depth oral history, read by a bevy of topflight audiobook narrators, takes the listener behind the scenes to hear from the writers, producers, and comics who brought the show to life. Reenactments of some of the best-known bits are included. Although the comments and opinions of such recognizable talents as Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Samantha Bee are prominent throughout, it seems like a missed opportunity that their iconic voices were not included in this production. Still, this is a must-listen for the true fan. B.P. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
FEBRUARY 2017 - AudioFile
2016-10-31 A lively oral history of The Daily Show focused on Jon Stewart's improbable transformation from basic-cable comic to progressive conscience.New York magazine contributing editor Smith deftly combines narrative with the recollections of people involved with the show at every level, ranging from boldface names like John McCain to correspondents like Stephen Colbert and Ed Helms. Stewart contributes the foreword, concurring with Smith that the show's popularity resulted from its gradual development of an ethical center: "We never forgot what a privilege it was to have a platform." Yet the show's cultural impact was unforeseen when the fledgling Comedy Central network determined to create a parody news show to follow the show's previous Craig Kilborn-hosted iteration, which "could be mean-spirited." When Stewart took over in 1998, he ruffled feathers by trading the snarky persona for a political bent that "punched up" at powerful targets. As correspondent Mo Rocca recalls, "[Jon] had resolved that the show needed to have a point of view and couldn't just be the kid at the back of the classroom throwing spitballs." Following this backstage drama, the show found its voice during the 1999-2000 presidential contest, during which correspondents like Steve Carell and key writers like Ben Karlin added memorable guerrilla theater-style ambushes to both the torpid campaign and the ensuing tense deadlock. The election of George W. Bush and the horror of 9/11 and the increasingly absurd terror wars that followed set the tone for the show's dark intensity and explosive popularity over the next decade. As John Oliver recalls about the show's creative rigor, "Jon's saying is, ‘If you take your foot off the throat of the show for a second, it will just get up and walk away.' " Smith effectively combines these reminiscences with an overall arc covering the show's technical innovations, high-stakes internal negotiations (including spinoffs like The Colbert Report), and staffers' contentious relationships, friendships, and shenanigans. An intimate and entertaining look at a fake-news program whose caustic, witty alchemy remains missed by many.