“Inside Comedy: The Soul, Wit, and Bite of Comedy and Comedians of the Last Five Decades” by David Steinberg. New York: Knopf, 2021. 338 pages. $30.

As someone who grew up in what David Steinberg calls “the golden age of stand-up comedy,” I really wanted to like this book. But, to borrow a cheesy one-liner, I found it something like a pizza: on the upside, it has a lot of good toppings; on the downside, it doesn’t.

First, the upside. Steinberg knows the comedy business inside out. He’s achingly familiar with performance jitters, failed appearances and rowdy, unreachable audiences, all of which he classifies as painful but necessary learning experiences for would-be comics, a tribe often driven by quirky personalities. “Insecurity combined with arrogance is good DNA for a comedian,” he writes. “If you’ve had a great life and a wonderful bar mitzvah and you’ve been given a lot of money, you’d make a lousy comedian. You’re better off being the comedian’s lawyer.”

The book is loosely organized as an autobiography, stretching from the author’s early days in Canada, to a 30-year career in stand-up and his later work as writer and director of hit shows like “Seinfeld,” “The Golden Girls” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Steinberg also hosted a long-running interview series, also called Inside Comedy, featuring conversations with other performers often reflected in this book. Along the way, he became a six-year regular with Chicago’s Second City improv company and a featured performer on “Saturday Night Live.” He is particularly proud of his work with Johnny Carson, mentioning more than once that he appeared on Carson’s “Tonight Show” 130 times – more often than anyone but Bob Hope.

As you would expect, the book is full of familiar figures. The 15-page index brims with household names – from Bud Abbot to Warren Zevon – all people Steinberg knows, has worked with, has interviewed or all three. He has fond, sometimes compassionate, words for nearly every one of them. The only comics he doesn’t love are self-aggrandizing Milton Berle, imperious Bea Arthur and Hope, his “Tonight Show” rival.

Among the eye-openers was Steinberg’s account of how closely comics cooperate and socialize with one another. Most of the stars he includes amuse one another, write for one another and direct or produce each other’s shows over extended careers, forming a distinct show-business community. What we see on stage is just the tip of the iceberg, and Steinberg does a good job of filling in the off-stage part.

The book is also good on comedy’s transition from one-liners (“My wife dresses to kill. She cooks the same way.”) to topical satire. Steinberg recalls what most of us may have forgotten, the role of long-playing comedy records and shows like “The Smothers Brothers” that bravely got themselves canceled by including political and in Steinberg’s case religious satire.

The downside? This comes in two parts: the book’s editing, and the author himself. From the beginning, where page one is followed by misnumbered page four, the book shows signs of editorial carelessness. On several occasions, passages and comments are repeated almost verbatim. Page 190 says Jerry Seinfeld’s comedy is “impeccable.” “He’ll make you laugh no matter what age you are or how smart you are. He’s so at home in front of an audience.” A page later: “Jerry’s comedy is just impeccable. It’ll make you laugh no matter what age, no matter your life experience or the knowledge you have. He’s so at home in front of an audience.” Examples could be multiplied.

Some passages are clearly out of place, like a tribute to Ed Sullivan in the middle of a story about Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas. Others are simply incoherent, like a section of stories about Carson interrupted by 34 off-topic lines describing the author’s lunches with Orson Welles.

Even more irritating is Steinberg’s gushy show-biz chatter, the equivalent of air kisses all around. Every comic he takes up is incredibly talented, transcendently funny, unconditionally fearless – but specifics are sadly lacking, leading to sentences like this one about Helen Hunt: “Helen’s comedy was instilled with elegance, a translucent aura that – and it was usually suddenly – would make you laugh so hard as to hold your sides.” I, for one, would like an example or two here and elsewhere.

For someone who says he doesn’t value awards highly, Steinberg seems hyper-aware of them, listing not only his own but everyone else’s Golden Globes, Oscars, Tonys and the like. And it’s hard not to be nettled at his insistent self-praise and name-dropping. Once again from page one: “There are things I’m too modest to tell you – that I may be the only comedian to have made Elie Wiesel laugh; that I was admired by the great New Yorker writer S.J. (Sid) Perelman and by Philip Roth, Kenneth Tynan and Harold Pinter. And that I was virtually adopted by Groucho Marx …” and so on.

In short, the book has its defects, but for me at least they aren’t game-breakers. Steinberg is uniquely positioned to tell the story of comedy over the last half-century, and I enjoyed getting a glimpse at that world as he knew it.

– Reviewed by Joe Glaser, Western Kentucky University English Department.