| Title | : | Cruel Shoes |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0399123040 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780399123047 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 128 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1977 |
Cruel Shoes Reviews
-
At work I have the task of reviewing books and then writing short, pithy reviews that normally say nothing more than what a book is about or why I liked or disliked it. The parameters of my reviews are tight; limited in such a way that I never get to say what I really want to express because of fears something might be said that offends a patron. I understand; I really do. But when did we get so cloistered in our thinking? When did it become wrong to review a book in a manner that truly reflects what the book did (or didn’t do) for the reader?
Steve Martin’s 1977 comedic, absurd romp, CRUEL SHOES, has got me thinking about all this. Why would I review a book older than me that has long been out of print? The answer is simple: We have forgotten how to laugh.
Life has gotten awfully serious as of late: wars; the economy; natural disasters all over the world; and even the obsession of the Big Three (in Miami) has worn thin. We never stop and flip to the funnies anymore. Why? Laughter is the one constant throughout any tumultuous time period.
Okay, to the book. Yes, it is dated. Yes, some of the vignettes are so convoluted and abstract that it is hard to understand some of the points, but every one of the episodes has a flavor to it. If you’ve every read Barry Yourgrau’s A MAN JUMPS OUT OF AN AIRPLANE, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Nevertheless, each abstract thought lends something to the reader. Reading this book is almost like watching Seinfeld. Sometimes it really is about nothing at all; sometimes it’s overtly funny. Look hard enough, and the moral-lesson-thought presents itself.
Basically, it’s about laughing. At yourself. At life. And at life’s impractical unpredictability.
I leave you with this:
The Gift of the Magi Indian Giver
Carolyn wanted so much to give Roger something nice for Christmas, but they didn’t have much money, and they had to spend every last cent on candy for the baby. She walked down icy streets and peered in the shop widows.
“Roger is so proud of his shinbones. If only I could find some way to get money to buy shinbone polish.”
Just then, a sign caught her eye. “Cuticles bought and sold.” Many people had told Carolyn of her beautiful cuticles, and Roger was especially proud of them, but she thought, “This is the way I could buy Roger the shinbone polish!” And she rushed into the store.
Later at home, she waited anxiously as Roger came up the steps of their flat. He opened the door and wobbled over to the fireplace, suspiciously holding one arm behind his back.
“Merry Christmas!” they both said, almost simultaneously.
Roger spoke. “Hey, Nutsy, I got you a little something for Christmas.”
“Me, too,” said Carolyn, and they exchanged packages.
Carolyn hurriedly opened her package, staring in disbelief. “Cuticle frames?! But Roger, I sold my cuticles so I could afford to buy you some shinbone!”
“Shinbone polish!” Roger said, “I sold my shinbones to buy you the cuticle frames!” Roger wobbled over to her.
“Well, I’ll be hog-tied,” Carolyn said.
“You will? Oh, boy!” Roger said.
And it turned out to be a great Christmas after all.
Laughter, my friends, laughter. -
some folks reviewing this, seem to not get this book at all.
unfortunately, steve martin's knack for making some pretty droll movies the past 15-20 years makes it pretty difficult for a reader today to read this without already expecting something else entirely.
i haven't gone back to this book in years, but as a teenager, and even into my twenties, i would come back to this book again and again and it always slayed me.
this is quite simply absurdist humor of the highest order. some of it is more successful than others, but i've never seen anyone do quite what martin is doing here, and to be honest, i'm not so sure that anyone could.
is it art? i don't know. some of it i believe reaches the level of art. but all of it makes me laugh, and is timeless -- way more so than, say, a george carlin book, or any other writings you get from stand-up comedians. take it for what it is, and it's amazingly ridiculous and incredibly funny. -
A strange little book. Funny. Utterly absurd. At times hard to follow. Full of photos of Steve Martin. Weird little poems. Reminded me of Richard Brautigan, in places.
When I was finished with it, I rolled the book up and sucked it into my lungs. -
Note to self: examine why I have waited this long to create a bookshelf on GR for comedy.
Steve Martin's comedy formed a big part of my sense of humor as a teenager. I read this when it first came out in 1977 and thought it was a total scream. I still do. Instead of a review, I'll just drop this story from the book on you. It you don't think this is hilarious, when can't be friends. I just picked up a book on the bombing of Dresden in 1945 which made me think of this story.
DEMOLITION OF THE CATHEDRAL AT CHARTRES
by Steve Martin
MR. RIVERS WAS raised in the city of New York, had become involved in construction and slowly advanced himself to the level of crane operator for a demolition company. The firm had grown enormously, and he was shipped off to France for a special job. He started work early on a Friday and, due to a poorly drawn map, at six-thirty one morning in February began the demolition of the Cathedral at Chartres.
The first swing of the ball knifed an arc so deadly that it tore down nearly a third of a wall and the glass shattered almost in tones, and it seemed to scream over the noise of the engine as the fuel was pumped in the long neck of the crane that threw the ball through a window of the Cathedral at Chartres.
The aftermath was complex and chaotic, and Rivers was allowed to go home to New York, and he opened up books on the Cathedral and read about it and thought to himself how lucky he was to have seen it before it was destroyed. -
Steve Martin's first book, the long-out-of-print "Cruel Shoes" from 1979, reads today as something of a cross between the more absurd parts of his comedy albums from the same era (some jokes from those records are repeated almost verbatim here) and his later Shouts and Murmurs columns from The New Yorker, collected in his 1998 book "Pure Drivel."
This book isn't as consistently funny as that one -- and neither one is nearly as brilliant as his 1977 album "Let's Get Small," perhaps the funniest live comedy recording ever -- but it does have its standout pieces. Highlights include "The Smokers" and "The Complete Works of Alfredo Francesi," which bear the same relation to conventional humor writing that Martin's on-stage routines had to traditional stand-up comedy. And who can deny the brilliance of Martin's instructions for folding soup?"First prepare the soup of your choice and pour it into a bowl. Then, take the bowl and quickly turn it upside down on a cookie tray. Lift the bowl ever so gently so that the soup retains the shape of the bowl. Gently is the key word here. Then, with a knife cut the soup down the middle into halves, then quarters, and gently reassemble the soup into a cube. Some of the soup will have run off onto the cookie tray. Lift this soup up by the corners and fold slowly into a cylindrical soup staff. Square off the cube by stuffing the cracks with this cylindrical soup staff. Place the little packet in your purse or inside coat pocket, and pack off to work. When that lunch bell chimes, impress your friends by forming the soup back into a bowl shape, and enjoy!"
"Cruel Shoes" is not quite a lost classic, but it is worth having around for the occasional chuckle. -
My wife warned me away from this book. "It isn't funny," she said, after briefly perusing it. I had purchased it for her at the library bookstore because I know she is a Steve Martin fan, and so to hear her say it wasn't funny was pretty significant. Of course, when my wife throws down that sort of gauntlet I am compelled to rise to the challenge, and so I decided to read this slim volume, if only to prove to her that it was funny and that she just didn't get it. As is usual in such cases, she was right. It isn't very funny. At all. Maybe two of the 30 or so vignettes made me laugh. At all. And I love comedy. I love Steve Martin. I love laughing. But this book just wasn't funny. At all. Absurd? Yes. Quirky? Definitely. But funny? Not so much.
I have a hypothesis about why this book was so popular, and it also explains much of the book's absurd tone (like putting an atomic bomb in your nose for the sake of a prank). The original publication date for this book was 1977. Polyester, disco, and cocaine were all pretty popular in 1977. Especially cocaine. Reading this book, I couldn't help imagining Martin typing furiously, his upper lip encrusted in Colombian marching powder, laughing riotously at every turn of phrase, seeing himself as the 20th Century's—nay, all of history's—wildest and craziest guy. I also envision his audience at the time, howling uproariously at each vignette, pausing between chapters to insufflate Bolivian snow from the teeny spoons dangling from chains around their necks. The image on page 123 sums up my opinion of this book: Martin, surrounded by empty wine bottles, pitches his typewriter into the trashcan. Too bad he didn't do that before he wrote this book. -
My husband bought this book for me at a used book store. I was about three-fourths of the way through it when I decided to stop reading - a handful of the short, absurd humor pieces were enjoyable, but, look, you can only take so much Steve Martin.
As I closed the book, a makeshift bookmark fell out from just a page beyond where I had reached. It was ostensibly left behind by the book's owner before me. It said:
"Look, you can only take so much Steve Martin."
In conclusion, Cruel Shoes is interesting but, look, you can only take so much Steve Martin. -
Big fan of Steve Martin...liked this book because it really shows that there are lots of creative paths he can still go down because he is so multi-dimensional as far as creative intuition.
-
What a letdown. I was so giddy to find this book in a bookstore, a crumpled, coffee stained original edition from the 70's, obviously well-worn and loved. Surely this must be a sign of awesomeness, and considering I have Martin's LET'S GET SMALL album memorized and PURE DRIVEL is my favorite short story collection of all time, I practically floated home from the bookstore. What I found unfortunately was a book with two good stories out of almost 30. Not only did they not make me laugh but they barely made me smile (with the exception of the gift of the magi parody, and of course, the legendary "how to fold soup"). It almost seemed like he was attempting to hit the reader over the head with morals without yet having mastered the grace of words on the page. Sure maybe some of these would have worked out as super funny bits on stage, but without his delivery it was PAINFUL to get through.
Also painful was the original book design. I haven't had a reading experience that hindered by design ever. The text was 14+ pt and the words were thrown into the gutter, forcing you to break the spine to even read them. Meanwhile there was an inch and a half of white space on the sides of the page. B&W photographs of Martin performing on stage MIGHT have been interesting if they weren't thrown in the middle of stories. These are three page stories, surely someone would realize it a picture had nothing to do with the text interrupting a paragraph with it wasn't a good idea and they could wait a single page to put it in. Right? *Sigh.* -
This may be the fastest reading adult book I have ever read; 30 to 45 minutes is all it took to go cover to cover.
The random thoughts, half baked stories and tongue-in-cheek poems from the chaotic, maniac, and avant-garde stage performer. A memorable example is "the last thing you were thinking about." Well once you start thinking about the last thing you thought about, you begin to think of previous thoughts, and those in turn become the "last thing" you thought about. Steve also pokes fun at poets by writing a prose poem.
Having read {book: Pure Drivel] previously, I can definitely see this book as the seed for his later off-beat writing.
The little stories are so mind bending and oblique, I'm surprised it didn't win an academic literary award because the pinhead professors couldn't wrap their heads around the non-plots. -
i remember finding this book in a friend's house in 1979. i was 8 and it was very confusing. it was much much better this time around. the book reminds me of woody allen's early stories, only more absurdist and experimental. not all the pieces really work, but even when they don't, they sparkle. my favorites were "demolition of the cathedral at chartres" (which is actually kind of heartbreaking), "the bohemians" (which is just genius), "dynamite king," "how to fold soup," and "the day the dopes came over."
I was sitting at home, peeking through the blinds at my neighbor's wife, minding my own business, when my doorbell rang. "Who's there?" I shouted. "We don't know," came the reply. I immediately knew the dopes had come over. -
Martin serves up absurdity with fast-food dispatch in this very short book. The tiny stories constitute a mixed bag, but I laughed pretty much the whole way.
From bland suburban "bohemians" to dogs with serious literary tastes to the painful masochistic pleasures of the infamous "cruel shoes," Martin plays with everyday cliches and sets up expectations that he dashes with complete impertinence. This is my kind of humor.
The whole book is posted online by some guy who apparently dashed it off with a slew of typos at:
http://www.geocities.ws/humorbynutty/...
(KevinR@Ky, corrected and amended in 2016) -
I borrowed this book several times from the library whilst in high school, and memorized a few of the poems, even. Steve Martin is my hero.
O pointy birds, o pointy pointy, anoint my head, anointy nointy!
It's just typical (seventies) Steve Martin. Dry and absurd. -
I was going to give this book 3 stars, because I remember how some of these stories/jokes were terrrrible, but 30 years later and parts of this book still haunt me so I admit he's done something impressive, and at times comically beautiful.
-
I hate to feel this way, because I love Steve Martin, but this book is just nothing. It’s sort of like… comedic poetry? That isn’t funny? 😬 I enjoy his fiction. And his memoir is amazing! Read that and let’s pretend this never happened.
-
This was supposed to be my 100th, and final, book of the year, per recommendation from my lovely father, but dear God, I couldn't let a sour year end on a sour book. There are a few funny stories, sure. And I'm sure his delivery would make it better, but it shows just that-- he is a comic whose strengths lie in delivery, NOT in writing. Most of these are funny to, dare I say, "boomers" simply because they love Martin, and think affectionately toward how random and pointless his quips can be. I can't say the same.
-
I will take my love of Steve Martin's early comedic works to my grave, but even a life-longer like me felt challenged by the utterly bizarre Cruel Shoes. It's a slim collection of very short musings, stories, and poetry with no apparent connection between any of them other than sheer absurdity. I'm not familiar with everything Steve Martin did on stage as a stand-up comic, but I love his albums from that era, and I'm pretty sure none of the stuff in this book appears on either one of those records. It really is just a random smattering of weird shit Steve Martin wrote down for some reason, maybe because he was bored, or keeping a journal or something. I certainly don't think he wrote this stuff with the intention to publish it, if only because there's no hint of an overlying concept to the book. But then, Martin's comedic act wasn't exactly the epitome of continuity either... A quick wikipedia check (what other kind of research is there anymore?) reveals Cruel Shoes was first printed in 1977, a tiny run of 750 handmade copies, signed by the author, and probably for sale at his shows or something, like special LPs musicians put out when going on tour. At the time of its initial run Martin was pretty damn popular, and I can't see any reason why he would release something like this other than capitalizing a little more on his huge marketability at that time. Even then, it seems like the money he would have made off such an endeavor would be a relative pittance—I mean, his comedy albums alone sold millions of copies. I just find the whole existence of this book an oddity. Most of it feels like outtakes from his live comedy journal that he might have scribbled down, then discarded. Thing is, it wasn't his writing that made him famous as stand-up; it was his incredible commitment to being completely weird on-stage. Delivery was everything. This book has no delivery. There's nothing to it. It feels silly to the point of trivial, like reading a book of really surreal jokes. That said, some of the "jokes" are pretty awesome. Martin has a way of phrasing things that I love, even when he makes no sense, and if you're as huge a fan of his as I am, you will get at least some enjoyment out of Cruel Shoes. I don't know where you can buy it anymore. I'd never heard of it until I found it on the stoop outside my house one day. Maybe it's worth millions!
-
I write a lot of flash fiction. Like a lot. Okay, like I'm not actually writing any at the moment (neither this exact moment, of course, nor the larger meta-moment), but you know, look, trust me that in the larger meta-moment beyond THAT, say, the tertiary field of moments within which one exists, that yeah, I write a lot of it.
(Flash fiction.)
And for some reason, although I don't read a lot of flash fiction other than the copious amount that I write myself, on the odd occasion that I wander outside my own output into the world of Other People's Work, I usually end up feeling like I'm Doing It Wrong.
Which is pretty much okay, I guess -- but I've often wondered where I learned how to write flash fiction and, moreover, where I learned to do it wrong, seeing as I seem to be pretty stubborn about the school of thought I'm from, which apparently is the School of Doing It The Wrong Way.
Then, today, it occurred to me that I should go on Goodreads to talk about how much I like Cruel Shoes, and on my journey to the book's page I anticipated how many glowing reviews it would already have, how many people would talk about it being a hidden, magical gem of a book; I even wondered briefly if I had already posted such a review myself, and prepared to be disappointed that I wouldn't be able to do so a second time.
But yeah. Um. No. I mean sure, there are some positive reviews like, way down the page (if you're some sort of nerd who scrolls Goodreads pages) but mostly not so much.
And then I realized that I think I kind of learned about flash fiction from Cruel Shoes, a book that's neither funny nor unfunny, pleasant nor unpleasant, just sort of in-the-middle and twitchy and awkward and, I dunno, very open-facedly itself. It's so insistent in its neither-here-nor-thereness as to make one wonder why there isn't any larger point -- and I guess that's what I always found beautiful about it. It doesn't fall into any one category or another; it refuses to tell you what it is; it refuses to even tell you whether or not it's good, or possibly just wasting your time.
I find its unaccountability oddly comforting, even if it taught me How To Write Flash Fiction Horribly Wrong, and With Too Many Capitals. -
I felt I needed to put this book somewhere on my list. It was the first gift I ever gave to my husband. He would, like, talk about this book all the time, and then I found it at The Crow used bookstore in Vermont, and well...it became his Christmas gift.
-
Possibly one of the great classics of English literature. These are some of the most hilarious short pieces written in the second half of the twentieth century. Hyperbolic? Ante up with something better.
-
I got a paperback copy of this book the Christmas I was 13 years old. I have read it several times over the years
-
Read this one after standing on my feet all day at a trade show. I thought the title matched the venue.
-
I love Steve Martin. His autobiography is one of the few books that made me shed a tear. His fiction is fantastic. His standup comedy is brilliant and his musical prowess is just plain impressive. However, this book of comedic “stories” was just not all that funny. Some of that might’ve been a temporal removal from the subject (it was published in the 70s),but sum it up to say, I chuckled, twice.
-
Back before he was a more serious comedian, Steve Martin was the king of the absurd. He would work hard to be serious about a subject, then set you up for the funniest thing possible out of that situation.
"My cat ran up my credit cards...and you can't return used pet toys, they have spittle on them!" is a perfect example of this. (I may have the exact routine quote wrong, but you get the idea.) If that's funny to you, then you'll howl like I did at this short, pithy collection of shorts that work amazingly well on the printed page, with Martin's voice giving you the mental picture. Martin's standup and his initial forays into the printed page are very similar. In other words, don't expect Shop Girl. If you're a fan of the more refined Martin style, you probably won't enjoy this one.
But man, if you are into the strange and funny because it's so ridiculous, it's 100 pages of comedy gold.
Try these titles on for size:
"The Boring Leading the Bored"
"Serious Dogs"
"Morse and the Naughty Magnets"
"Cows in Trouble"
"The Morning I Got Out of Bed"
and my personal favorite, "How to Fold Soup"
Perhaps you need the advice of a good comedian, and can find such helpful hints in "What to Say When the Ducks Show Up" or "Review of the Winslow Homer Show at L.A. County Art Museum."
Now, anyone can write funny titles, but let's sample the text. Here is "She Had the Jugs" in its entirety:
"Yes, she was witty; she was intelligent. She was born of high station. She spoke and walked proudly. She was the kind who displayed nobility, who showed style and class. But above all, she had the jugs.
"Many people called her by her last name; some closer friends had a confidence with her and shared the intimacy of her first name. But to me, she was always 'Lady jugs-a-plenty.'
"It is true. She was clever and she was charming, but above all, she had the jugs."
That's great literary satire right there. Nothing like tossing boobs at Victorian stylings to make the English Major roll on the floor laughing. Speaking of which, the end pieces, a set of linked pretentious poetry, while not as overtly funny is still comedy gold.
Prefer social parody? Learn the pain of the Turds, from little-known Turdsmania. Clearly oppressed, with "most boarding houses had a sign on the front, 'No Turds!'" Or learn the tragedy of the Smoking family, who meet the worst kind of doom Mick Jagger could think of in his nightmares.
Whether it's tweaking his art collection or combining things which should never meet--Bohemian artists in a planned housing community, anyone?--this is a set of tales that make no sense whatsoever. And that's why it's so very good. (Library, 06/08) -
Cruel Shoes is no joke. Steve Martin is a known funny man, especially when this quick read hit the scene. In the late 1970s, everybody knew who he was thanks to the help of SNL and his critically acclaimed show. But, this ditty is classic Martin, more wit and nonsense then jokes. Only one of these had me literally laughing out loud, the profoundly silly "Society in Aspen". But like his act, the pieces here have little meaning and instead cleverly find a way to mesh the most unrelated things you can think of into a sort of cant-help-but laugh silliness all while hiding a much deeper meaning. The bottom line is when you craft a piece of fiction that is about three paragraphs long it takes great skill to then attribute any kind of emotion to it (like Brautigan's melancholy ultra-shorts) and although these are not knee-slappers every time, it was never their intention. These are wonderful creations of thought and wit and occasional laughter.
I managed to read this in the span of a bus ride home. The pieces and vignettes are short but challenging for no other reason then the seeming nonsense of it all. Many of these work off the foolishness of language such as the closing "Last Thing on My Mind" or "The Undertakers". Others operate upon a careful crafting which on the surface appear to be a joke without a punchline. But for these stories, the ingenuity lies in the part not said, such as "Sex Crazed Love Goddess" or "Dynamite King". There are many nuances to the pieces sculpted here from critical self-effacement (The Stephen Martin Collection of American Art: The Man Behind the Genius, The Children Called Him Big Nose) to cultural critique (Demolition of the Cathedral at Chartres, Cruel Shoes, The Gift of the Magi Indian Giver). To some extent, embedded in almost of these is some critique of the ridiculous nature to social life. But these critiques are so hidden, so unassuming, as to truly be genius.
Steve Martin clearly shows talent in this short, but complex collection. A talent that has not ceased in his works from book, to movie, to performance. If you really want to get to the heart of Steve Martin at least in the context of this book, if not perhaps something deeper, I suspect the pieces entitled "The Complete Works of Alfredo Francesi" might hold a clue. This piece talks about "a man of few words" whose work "are a sequence of rambling sentences that only occasionally find ideas to which to attach themselves." What follows are a dialogue between four people who are not talking to each other and two notes to his wife saying he went to the market and shall return soon. -
I have no idea what I think or feel about this book, but there were words on a page, and I read them.
-
"When I woke up that morning, it didn't take me long to realize there were dogs in my nose."
Cruel Shoes by Steve Martin. Before becoming a big box office movie star Steve Martin rose to the top of the stand-up comic ranks. He was a frequent guest host for the original cast Saturday Night Live, often he would be the first host of a new season, which is why some people mistakenly think he was the first to ever host SNL. That honor my friends goes to George Carlin. Anyway it was during this time (late 1970s) that Steve wrote this book, which is just a hodge podge collection of strange, weird and often funny stories and ideas. Some of them are quick one-liners while others run a page or two very few are more than two pages long. Some of the bits, all of which have titles and are listed under the table of contents, get to the point of the joke right away, while some take sometime and make you scratch your head and wonder what the point is. Then there are the totally absurd bits like "How To Fold Soup".
It is a quick and easy read as there are only 120 some pages with many of those having black and white photos from Steve on stage doing his stand up. The humor ranges from slightly humorous and only worth a slight smile to outrageously hilarious. I took about a week to read this as I would read one or two bits and then put it down, but it can be read in a very short period of time depending on your reading speed and length of laugh breaks. Fun and very silly book. -
Way back when I was a high school sophomore, my English teacher read selections from Cruel Shoes to our class. Among the selections was the famous "Folding Soup" story. When it was over, a classmate of mine leaned over and said to me that he could imagine me folding soup in the way Martin describes. I'm not sure exactly what he meant, but I've always liked that memory.
So now, lo these many years later, I finally got around the reading the book in its entirety. It doesn't disappoint.
These very short stories (they are almost prose poems) are pithy, weird, and funny. It's classic Martin--the Steve Martin of the seventies and early eighties, not the Cheaper By the Dozen 2 Steve Martin--and much more obtuse and challenging than virtually any book by a popular comedian. It's no sitcom.
Not every story is a winner, but Martin hits a lot more than he misses, and they are so short that if you don't like a story, it's over in a page or two anyway. This is a book that I envision being picked back up on a regular basis. -
This is an old book. It was originally published in 1977, as the first book by Martin.
It is definitely NOT Shopgirl.
In fact, I'm not actually sure WHAT I can use to describe this book.
It's micro-fiction meets one-liners meets surreality meets poetry meets brain vomit.
I laughed a few times, and there were a few places that I could so clearly hear Steve Martin saying the words that it was enjoyable.
Mostly, I just thought it was dated and not terribly entertaining. There were lots of pictures of Martin doing stand up and I kept thinking, "Gosh, I wish I were watching a recording of him doing stand up instead of reading this book." -
I found this book on my Dad's shelf and gave it a go. Quirky is the best adjective I can think of for this.
I was expecting a "Seinlanguage" type of book, a verbatim book of his stand up comedy. Instead it's little short stories about a page or two long and poems.
They are mostly kind've dumb and not that funny, but it gets 4 stars because a handful of them are genius, just brilliant.
My favorite is a Gift of the Magi parody.
This is a very quick read - I got through it in about half an hour.
