Comedian Sarah Silverman’s first book was a letdown.
The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption and Pee is ostensibly the boundary-pushing comic’s memoir but it’s actually a collection of random anecdotes and a lot of filler. Silverman can be very, very funny. I follow her on Twitter and her 140-or-less character updates almost always make me laugh aloud. She’s absurd and she’s witty but she’s also juvenile and occasionally just plain disgusting. I’m about 1/3 of a fan, I suppose.
The book describes her childhood (she was, indeed, a serious bedwetter) with a lot of mild kvetching about growing up Jewish. She describes the launch of her career but the details are spotty and it makes one wonder what she left out. One big omission was that there was no more than a passing mention of her five year relationship with late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. Her defence against charges of racism is rather fascinating. Silverman is not meek! She also goes behind the scenes of her freshly cancelled show, The Sarah Silverman program – interesting stuff.
Overall though the book was as pointless as a tweet. Still, the first fan of Ms. Silverman or curiousity seeker who sends me their mailing address to lisabrandt@rogers.com will receive in the mail, absolutely free, via slow and cheap service, my copy of The Bedwetter. I don’t normally go for book sharing. Having been an author I know how important it is to have people actually BUY your book. But I think the Bedwetter was tremendously overpriced and worth perhaps about half what I paid for it. Therefore, if I bequeath it to someone else, it seems only fair to us and to the author. There are some incidents described in the book that are truly graphic (albiet brief!) and of a very adult nature. You’ve been warned!
12 Noon: That didn’t take long! Curt, your book will be winging its way to you slowly, starting Monday. Enjoy!