How to Talk Dirty and Influence People

Bruce was arrested more than a dozen times for obscenity, banned from performing in New York and other major cities, had his venues shut down, his liquor licenses pulled, and was prosecuted by the state of New York in a trial that became a landmark free speech case. He died of a morphine overdose in 1966 at 40, still awaiting the verdict. His crime was saying true things in public — about race, religion, sex, drugs, and the hypocrisy of American institutional life — in language that courts decided was criminal and audiences decided was the most honest thing they had ever heard from a stage. This autobiography, written with Paul Krassner, is the primary source document for understanding comedy as a political act in America — the origin story of everything from Richard Pryor to George Carlin to the Daily Show tradition to every comedian on this shelf who uses laughter to say what earnestness cannot. The state destroyed him for doing exactly what P&P was built to do: tell the truth without permission, without apology, and without softening it for the people it makes uncomfortable.