{"id":139956,"date":"2017-05-03T10:00:24","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T14:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/?p=139956"},"modified":"2017-04-24T10:23:12","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T14:23:12","slug":"jen-recommends-letterman-the-last-giant-of-late-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/?p=139956","title":{"rendered":"Jen Recommends: Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"“In a career spanning more than thirty years, David Letterman redefined the modern talk show with an ironic comic style that transcended traditional television. While he remains one of the most famous stars in America, he is a remote, even reclusive, figure whose career is widely misunderstood. In Letterman, Jason Zinoman, the first comedy critic in the history of the New York Times<\/em>, mixes groundbreaking reporting with unprecedented access and probing critical analysis to explain the unique entertainer\u2019s titanic legacy. Moving from his early days in Indiana to his retirement, Zinoman goes behind the scenes of Letterman\u2019s television career to illuminate the origins of his revolutionary comedy, its overlooked influences, and how his work intersects with and reveals his famously eccentric personality.<\/p>\n

Zinoman argues that Letterman had three great artistic periods, each distinct and part of his evolution. As he examines key broadcasting moments\u2014”Stupid Pet Tricks” and other captivating segments that defined Late Night with David Letterman<\/em>\u2014he illuminates Letterman\u2019s relationship to his writers, and in particular, the show\u2019s co-creator, Merrill Markoe, with whom Letterman shared a long professional and personal connection.<\/p>\n

To understand popular culture today, it\u2019s necessary to understand David Letterman. With this revealing biography, Zinoman offers a perceptive analysis of the man and the artist whose ironic voice and caustic meta-humor was critical to an entire generation of comedians and viewers\u2014and whose singular style ushered in new tropes that have become clich\u00e9s in comedy today.”<\/p>\n

Jen’s comment:\u00a0I am a David Letterman fanatic having watched every show for decades, seen him live several times and read almost everything there is about him so I was skeptical that I would learn anything from this new biography. Wrong!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“In a career spanning more than thirty years, David Letterman redefined the modern talk show with an ironic comic style that transcended traditional television. While he remains one of the most famous stars in America, he is a remote, even reclusive, figure whose career is widely misunderstood. In Letterman, Jason Zinoman, the first comedy critic…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":139957,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jen-recommends"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Letterman.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6V6sR-Apm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=139956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139958,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139956\/revisions\/139958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/139957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=139956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=139956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=139956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}