Category: Non-Fiction/Biography/Performing Arts – Paperback: 352 pages – Publisher: Constable
First Published: 2004

Blurb: ‘I don’t mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that’s how it comes out’ Bill Hicks could have been on all the chat shows. He could have had his own show on prime time. He could have got rich and fat and frightened. But Hicks didn’t go the easy way. He turned down the offers Satan made him. Instead he figured out his best shot at truth and then he said it. He attacked the lies that justified and prettified the carnage of the First Gulf War. He attacked the easy surrender of art to commerce, the demeaning cynicism of the marketing culture and the preposterous power of the mainstream media to confuse and corrupt. This is the first collection of all his stand-up routines, with extracts from his diaries, notebooks, letters and final writings. It reveals Hicks’ work as both brilliant conventional stand-up comedy and as more interesting and dangerous: an invitation to a life lived without fear.

My Thoughts: Bill Hicks died in 1994 at just thirty two years old. I was thirteen and never saw or heard one of his political comedy routines until I was sixteen.

I remember the first time I heard his voice, a friend played a CD of his Arizona Bay show and it took about five minutes to get into the rhythm and see where he was going and then BOOM, I was addicted. Since then I have listened and watched everything about his work that I could find. Pro-sex, anti-war, anti-globalization and undiscovered until his death – Hicks was a great role model for a kid with strong but unorthodox ethics struggling to understand why the world seemed so broken and unrelentingly corporate.

It came as no surprise to friends that I bought this book this week, the day it went on sale. The collection here is a wonderful showcase of Hicks at his best, worst and every mood in between. Underneath it all is the trademark clarity and anger, the mischievous ‘what if’ suggestions and the honest ability to ask awkward, difficult, political questions. It’s ten years since Hicks died and since I discovered his work I’ve often found myself wishing that I could turn on the TV and hear his summary of current events: the shenanigans of George W Bush or Gulf War II and the worldwide protest marches against it.

I have an odd, ramshackle set of heroes but Hicks is definitely one of them and I *fiercely* wish that just once I had seen him perform live.

Rating: 10/10
(My Book Review Scale)

Source: Bought new.

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