Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=thesheivari-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1416553657\")
<\/i>) and it was one of my favorite books from 2007. Just fantastic. The consciousness<\/i> he had about what he was trying to do … the different elements that converged (magic tricks, banjo, why he wore the white suit) – and also how PLANNED it all was. Much of it did come to him by accident, or were just evidence of his proclivities (he loved magic tricks, worked in a magic, shop as a teenager, etc.) – but how he put it all together, clipping, honing, deciding – was all a matter of conscious choice. This wasn’t just a happy accident. It was Steve Martin’s intellectual rigor – asking himself, “Does this work? Why does it not? Let me make it work. Okay, it doesn’t work. Let me drop it then …” It’s a fascinating book, one of the best I have ever read about a particular artist’s creative process – and one that is quite singular, I think. He walked away! After playing stadiums – he walked away. He wasn’t an honest<\/i> stand-up, meaning – he did not upend his personal life for the amusement of the crowds. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Jesus – don’t take the comparison as me saying one is better than the other. There was a persona – the guy in the white suit, with the arrow thru his head … He said he wanted to look like a refugee “from the straight world”. Ironically, Steve Martin never did drugs. Or, he did drugs one night – had a horrifying experience where he thought he was going to die – and never did them again. Which is incredible when you think about the appeal of his stand-up and how so much of it was aimed at totally STONED people … but Martin was never stoned. He is, in a way, a very straight-and-narrow guy. There’s something very sympathetic about him. At least for someone like me, who often (99% of the time) leads with her brain. I am not an intuitive person. Or, i can be – but it’s the brain that is always paramount. It causes a lot of problems. It makes me the rigid (ie: fragile) person that I am. But it also is what makes me interesting, creative, and voracious. It’s a tough balance. It has given me a lot of grief. People see intellectual passion and assume all kinds of things about you … and they are bound to be disappointed. At least that has been my experience. I could be a very loving open warm person, and to my friends I am that, etc. – but when I feel insecure, threatened, out of my depth, or just bored – I am armored up in the brainiac’s defense. It is second nature. Steve Martin seems to have a similar thing going on – and maybe that’s why I have always responded to him. I loved him when I was a kid, when half of his jokes went over my head … and I’m not wacky about him when he tries to be “cuddly” and takes on “pater familias” roles – to me, he’s not convincing in them.<\/p>\nBut let me bring it back to Shopgirl<\/i> and now mention the film that was made of his book: when Steve Martin plays someone isolated, and kind of cold – like the Ray Porter character – he is fantastic<\/i>. I thought he was fantastic<\/i> in the part. I don’t know who Steve Martin is. I know (from his book) that he has a crowd of lifelong friends – people he feels in debt to … he knows the help he has gotten to get to his position, and he is grateful, and still kind of in awe about how the whole thing happened. But when he steps into Ray Porter – the chilly 50-something bachelor – who sees “something” in Mirabelle, the young woman behind the glove counter – you can’t imagine anyone else in the role. Steve Martin is, at heart, an isolated<\/i> guy. Think of him all alone on those massive stadium stages, in his white suit, making balloon “animals”. I am not convinced by him in ensemble pieces – but in Shopgirl<\/i> he was wonderful – I think it’s his best performance yet. Well worth seeing, if you haven’t.<\/p>\n
But now let me talk about his writing, because I don’t want the movie to take away from the book. It’s a slim novel, and the writing is spare, almost elegant. He does not go off into flights of description, he stays on point. There are three main characters: Mirabelle, a depressive artist who lives in LA, and works behind the glove counter at Sak’s. Ray Porter, a successful businessman who shuttles between Seattle and LA, and who pursues Mirabelle. Jeremy – the young messy anarchic font-designer who also pursues Mirabelle. Mirabelle is a quiet serious woman, who lives a quiet lonely life (and Martin so GETS that kind of quietness – it is the type of quiet that could describe my life as well). I read the book and not only enjoyed it – but felt named<\/i> by it. I felt recognized<\/i>. Mirabelle is not ‘swept away’ by Ray Porter – he’s in his 50s, totally inappropriate for her – but he, in all his chilly isolation, does “see” her. And it is a powerful experience, being seen. It can be dangerous. At least it can for me. Because “being seen” doesn’t mean anything other than someone else really ‘sees’ you – for who you are, maybe even sees things you don’t see. But to place an expectation of a specific RESULT on “being seen” – is what is dangerous. That is what has broken my heart time and time again. Being seen is so powerful that it seems like it MUST, it HAS TO, lead to something “more”. It must, right? It can’t be otherwise! And when you are lonely, it becomes even more acute. It seems like being seen will also SAVE you. This is what Mirabelle experiences when she is with Ray. They do have sex, and all that – but for Mirabelle, what is going on with him, is profound. It’s profound for Ray, too – but he is in a different place, and in a way – he doesn’t realize how dangerous the situation is. He thinks Mirabelle understands the situation, he thinks they have an understanding: of course the relationship won’t “go” anywhere … but for now, it is lovely, right? Ray is not a cad, though – he really isn’t. He is a lonely intellectual-minded man, who flies around in private jets, eats in the kitchen standing up – and finds Mirabelle’s innocence completely captivating. He feels guilty, though – she is a young woman, after all … so he buys her expensive gifts – things that overwhelm her. Shoes, purses, etc. He has exquisite taste. Lonely quiet Mirabelle, on antidepressants, begins to blossom. Again, Ray doesn’t realize how dangerous it is to be the agent of someone’s blossoming – if you don’t expect to stick around. On the flipside, there is Jeremy – a young guy, who can barely do his own laundry – who orates at Mirabelle about the nature of the music business, and fonts, and his ambition … who struggles with condoms, who is, in general, a big man-boy. But again: he sees something in Mirabelle. Jeremy’s journey in Shopgirl<\/i> is almost my favorite of the whole book. I don’t want to write more about it – because I’m making it sound conventional and maybe even a little bit preachy – and it is neither of those things. The way it is written is what is unconventional about it. The “voice” of the book (and that whole “voice” concept will come up again and again in the book – you’ll even see it in the excerpt below) struck me right away. This is not a casual in-the-moment voice. Of course not. It’s Steve Martin. Steve Martin’s genius had to do with his distance from things – hard to explain (but he does a great job of it in his memoir). He is not in the thick-and-thin of life … he stands slightly to the side. That’s what the voice of this delicate little book sounds like. I loved the voice. It is (not to give anything more away) completely omniscent<\/i> – which might seen a bit heavy-handed for such a tiny little love story. But Martin uses it very consciously. It is how the story NEEDS to be told. I love the sound<\/i> of the book. There are times in the thick-and-thin of life, the unfairness of events, the up and down of fortune … when I also yearn for an omniscent voice. It’s just great how Martin sets it all up.<\/p>\n
Here’s an excerpt. It’s one of those times in the book when I feel recognized<\/i> by the prose. The beginning of it stays quite matter-of-fact … the voice is calmly telling us what it is like for Mirabelle. But then at the end of the excerpt – watch how it shifts. Great stuff. Because when we are consumed with self, we often cannot see ourselves. And sometimes it takes an observer<\/i> to tell us who we are. Kind of like Jack Nicholson does to Diane Keaton in the pancake-making scene in the middle of the night in Something’s Gotta Give<\/i>. They have known each other for 24 hours – and he says a couple of pointed things to her and she says, “I can’t decide if you hate me … or if you’re the only person who’s ever gotten me.”<\/p>\n
That’s what is going on in this book. It’s a lonely book. Loneliness can change your personality. It can warp (permanently) what once was straight and sure. Loneliness is a condition, and it has long-term effects. After a certain amount of time, being in relation with your fellow man begins to feel stressful<\/i>, even though you desire it. Loneliness warps. Mirabelle is on that path.<\/p>\n
\nEXCERPT FROM Shopgirl: A Novella<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=thesheivari-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0786885688\")
by Steve Martin<\/b><\/p>\nthe weekend<\/h3>\n
It is 9 a.m., and for the second time that morning Mirabelle is awake. The first time was two hours earlier when Jeremy slipped out, giving her a kiss good-bye that was so formal it might as well have been wearing a tuxedo. She didn’t take it badly because, well, she couldn’t afford to. She also is glad he’s gone, not looking forward to the awkward task of getting to know a man she’s already slept with. A little eye of sunlight forms on her bed and inches its way across her bedspread. She gets up, mixes her Serzone into a glass of orange juice, and drinks it down as though it were a quick vodka tonic, fortifying herself for the weekend.<\/p>\n
Weekends can be dangerous for someone of Mirabelle’s fragility. One little slipup in scheduling and she can end up staring at eighteen hours of television. That’s why she joined a volunteer organization that goes out and builds and repairs houses for the disadvantaged, a kind of community cleanup operation, called Habitat for Humanity. This takes care of the day. Saturday night usually offers a spontaneous get-together with the other Habitat workers in a nearby bar. If that doesn’t happen, which this night it doesn’t, Mirabelle is not afraid to go to a local bar alone, which this night she does, where she might run into someone she knows or nurse a drink and listen to the local band. As she sits in a booth and checks the amplifiers for Jeremy’s signature stencil, it never occurs to Mirabelle to observe herself, and thus she is spared the image of a shy girl sitting alone in a bar on Saturday night. A girl who is willing to give every ounce of herself to someone, who could never betray her lover, who never suspects maliciousness of anyone, and whose sexuality sleeps in her, waiting to be stirred. She never feels sorry for herself, except when the overpowering chemistry of depression inundates her and leaves her helpless. She moved from Vermont hoping to begin her life, and now she is stranded in the vast openness of L.A. She keeps working to make connections, but the pile of near misses is starting to overwhelm her. What Mirabelle needs is some omniscent voice to illuminate and spotlight her, and to inform everyone that this one has value, this one over here, the one sitting in the bar by herself, and then to find her counterpart and bring him to her.<\/p>\n
But that night, the voice does not come, and she quietly folds herself up and leaves the bar.<\/p>\n
The voice is to come on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
![\"shopgirl.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/shopgirl.jpg\")
I have great fondness for this lovely and piercing short book. Steve Martin, as a writer (his plays, his essays in The New Yorker<\/i>, his stories) has always touched me. This is the dude who wore an arrow through his head and played the banjo? Yes, it is. That’s one of the things that I have always loved about Steve Martin, and what set him apart, in my opinion, from other comedians. There was always something very “heady” about Steve Martin’s comedy – even though it LOOKED crazy and chaotic and he roller-skated around on The Tonight Show<\/i> dressed up as a pharaoah. There was still something extremely intellectual<\/i> about it.<\/p>\n![\"SteveMartin-L5.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/SteveMartin-L5.jpg\")
<\/p>\n