At least it was a quick read now I can go out and threaten artwork with a razor blade while shouting ding-dong. ( )

More hit than miss, like his stand up, and delightfully '70s in tone. ( )

About half of this is really, really bad. The other half is great though. ( )

Excellent short book of parables, stories, fragments, and literary absurdities from Actor, Comic and Musician Steve Martin. I am happy to have had time to read this now as I think it was well done. It probably couldn't be written now due to Sexism (Chapter titled, She Had the Jugs) and violence (suggestion to destroy works of art in Comedy Events You Can Do).
This book seems modeled on Jonathan Livingston Seagull's wisdom-on-every-page parable. The book design mimics the popular edition of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. It also seems modeled on Alice in Wonderland's logical non-sequiturs for its dry humor (for example The Complete Works of Alredo Francesi). Martin has written other works which since this aspire to higher seriousness, but this is short and still worth reading even now.
B&W Photos. ( )

A collection of short stories so short that they would be called “flash fiction” today, Cruel Shoes highlights Martin’s absurdist sense of humor. The title story involves a shoe store clerk offering every pair of shoes in the store to a client and then saying “you’ve tried everything except for the cruel shoes,” which turn out to have non-Euclidean twists and turns and the client thinks they’re perfect. I’ll be honest, most of the stories make very little sense, but somehow they are still entertaining. Also, Steve Martin looks like a total badass on the cover. It’s a really quick read and I imagine any Steve Martin aficionado will enjoy it. ( )