This is not a literary masterpiece. It is the antithesis of a literary masterpiece and I don’t think George Carlin would want it any other way. Reviewing this work won’t involve discussions about magnificent prose, structure or any other devices normally associated with a literary masterpiece. This book is a conversation between George and his biographer Tony Hendra. It started in 1992 and continued on and off for over a decade.

You’ve probably heard this enquiry before: name (a number of) people living or deceased that you’d like to meet and hang out with. If George Carlin is one of those people then you’ll love Last Words because that’s exactly what it is. It’s George Carlin sitting down and telling a friend about his family and friends, his childhood, his career and his influences and how and why his art took the directions they did.

For most of his fans, George will always be remembered best for the, ‘seven words you can’t say on TV.’ That was his break-out bit from his 1973 album ‘Class Clown’. He followed that up with Occupation Fool and FM & AM. All three albums went gold and henceforth so did the next four decades of his career: 130 Tonight Show appearances, 23 comedy albums, (five of which received Grammys), 14 HBO specials, hosted the first Saturday Night Live show, three New York Times best sellers and how many comedians do you know of who owned their own jet? And yet behind all the fame and fortune lived a man who lived in a constant state of self doubt. This is a memoir of a man who struggled for most of his life to find his identity. It seemed the very characters and personas that defined his act left him wondering how to define himself. Who was George Carlin? His identity crisis led his detractors to label Carlin, ‘a poser’ but then they didn’t know him very well.

While doing his patriotic duty in the military George became a radio announcer. After being discharged he moved on to stand-up in a comedy team with another radio personality, Jack Burns. Their style was typical of Martin and Lewis who at the time were the guys to beat. Martin and Lewis didn’t last though and neither did Burns and Carlin. The split worked out well for George who in a short while made it into television doing spots on all the big talk and variety shows of that era. Again his style was fairly conservative and safe.

He was making great money and his popularity was soaring but deep down he hated his act because it wasn’t him. He was pandering to the types of people who filled the nice clubs because they paid the bills but that’s not who he was. In the late fifties and early sixties there wasn’t a demand for left wing, radical hippy comedians. Lenny Bruce was the forerunner, the trial blazer. He was doing stuff that no one dared to do before and with good reason. Remember this period was shortly after the McCarthy era, a time when even the slightest hint of anything anti American could get a person executed for treason. Yes, McCarthy was out of the picture but middle of the road America wasn’t ready for this kind of comedy yet. Lenny Bruce had been arrested so many times that towards the end of his career he didn’t even bother to take his coat off during his shows. But this didn’t dissuade Carlin. When Carlin met Lenny Bruce he was blown away. He saw in Bruce’s act everything he wanted to do and his transformation began. And all that ‘stuff’ that was brewing inside of George came out, starting with his hair. He went from straight laced and safe to complete freak. It paid off huge but it wasn’t to last.

At some point in the late eighties, early nineties all -- or most -- of the hippies grew up, got real jobs, mortgages and mini vans and George’s popularity began to wane. Also during this period he and his wife Brenda began to realize they were out of control drug addicts. Brenda cleaned up first. George followed real, real slowly after. Clean and sober, pushing fifty and watching his countries socio-political horizon getting ever more grim, left Carlin bitter and angry. Not a good place for comedy to emerge or so he thought until he saw Sam Kinison unleash the beast. George realized that where Sam was at, was pretty darn close to what he was going through himself. There was a whole untapped mine of anger just sitting there waiting. He soon found that not only was losing his mind in front of an audience very lucrative but the therapeutic properties of such an exercise became fundamental in helping him stay sober.

The paradox with changing his persona again and again and still incorporating his multiple characters is that while the genius of it all propelled him ever forward in the public eye, his personal identity became ever more blurred.

His last project, his magnum opus, a one man Broadway show was going to resolve those issues. It was to be called…