You can tell that Sarah Silverman’s new memoir, The Bedwetter, was written with no blueprint, said Will Leitch in New York. An “odd, shambling, and funny” work, it reveals the tender side of a comedian whose provocative humor often offends a viewer or two. The title is part true-confession: Three years before she quit New York University, at 19, to start doing stand-up, Silverman was still wetting beds. At one point during adolescence, she suffered from depression so severely that she took 16 Xanax a day and dropped out of high school for a year. “Everyone has sad stories,” she says. The first 75 pages of her book mostly pay tribute to her mother and three sisters.
The book’s afterword is ostensibly written by God, said Jordan Foster in Publishers Weekly. How did the author manage such a coup? “This is so trite but … sex,” she says. Those closing pages, supposedly written after Silverman’s death in old age, suggest that the Silverman of 2010 might be worried that she has hit a career crossroads. At 39, she fears that she can’t long sustain her persona as the seeming innocent with the ugly heart. “I can’t be in my 40s in pigtails and a football jersey,” Silverman says. She also claims to be weary of controversy. “I don’t want to be the comic who talks about race all the time.” For now, while she works to reinvent her act, she’s giving God the last word. In Bedwetter, he reports that Silverman was banned from TV in 2018 for the crime of not being cute anymore.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Today's political cartoons - May 9, 2024Cartoons Thursday's cartoons - double standards, red lines, and more
-
Marjorie Taylor Greene fails in bid to oust JohnsonSpeed Read The House swiftly killed Greene's effort
-
Kim Kardashian's Met Gala corset: designed for drama but a step too far?In The Spotlight Reality TV star shocks with 'impossibly tiny waist' at this year's fashion event, echoing controversies from previous outfits
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”