Böcker av Barry Friedman

My father, Jack Friedman, CPA (even if he made the diploma himself), and Purple Heart recipient (even if lifted it from the guy in the bed next to him in a Tokyo Army hospital), moved to Las Vegas from Atlantic City when he was 78.He bought a house at 84. The bank gave him a thirty-year mortgage.This is that story. The early years-and by early, I mean his 80s. I spent more time with him at this point in his life than any other. I am a comedian. I had time.This is the first volume of my conversations, arguments, buffets, and philosophical musings with my father from the years 2004-2014. There was "The Mob," the survivor's group of those who buried their spouses, the bowling, the possible death of Bernie, the coupons, the long-suffering Jeannette "who buried two husbands. Did you ever? Two!" And always the toupees, many kept in boxes in the bedroom, garage, and sometimes out on the dinner table. My father, though in his 80s, thought he looked 40, and had the energy of a twenty-year-old."I was 16 two weeks ago, Ba. Where did it all go?"As he entered his eighth and ninth decades, he couldn't hear, didn't listen, had no short-term memory, and mostly didn't care.It was the perfect scenario for a son trying to understand his father.As my sister, whose name he couldn't always remember, once said about his approach to life, "He's been like that for as long as I've known him."I should have started this book sooner.

One couple. Two stories. One truth. Sort of. Jacob Fishman is miserable. His wife, Cindi, is miserable.  His editor wants him to write another book. Suffocating in his own self-consciousness, Jacob decides to explore the frailties, fears, and deficiencies of his life with Cindi including, most tellingly, her desire to have a baby-and his desire not to. He creates Fishman doppelg├ñngers, literary avatars, to see if their lives can be better than his. He wills himself to the intersection of truth, verisimilitude, and fantasy and finds himself paralyzed once there, no longer sure which events unfold in real life and which exist only in his book. Cindi, watching her life being laid bare, sees her husband as a megalomaniacal provocateur and chafes at his cherry-picking of their marriage and identities.  Set in and around the University of Nevada, Reno, Jacob Fishman''s Marriages is the story of an author''s conceit and what the creation of art excuses. It is the story of a husband and a wife and a husband and a wife-the same husband and wife. Sort of.Praise for Barry Friedman:"This masterpiece would blow away the competition, if there were competition for such a masterpiece, which there is not."-Shane Gericke, bestselling author of The Fury "I haven''t been able to get five pages in without having to catch my breath. You''re a brave writer, my brother."-Charles P. Pierce, Esquire "Barry Friedman has written a raw, gut-wrenching book about the game-playing side of a marriage gone wrong. But this ain''t a fairy tale. This is a brilliant look at a walk on the dark side of life."-Jerry Izenberg, Red Smith Award-wining author of Once There Were Giants and After the Fire: Love and Hate in the Ashes of 1967 "Seeing the broken yet still beautiful world through his eyes is cathartic."- Jennifer Taub, author of Big Dirty Money 

Barry Friedman, a veteran of 30 years on the comedy road, delivers another punchline on standup. Filled with garden-variety kleptomaniacs, large, rum-drinking Bahamians, bitter, glorious, troubled, and sex-addicted women with ankle monitors, loquacious drug addicts, first-time Vegas lesbians, and tall, neurotic Jews in sweaters- and these are the sane people-The Joke Was On Me is the story, his story, of laughs and love and almost fame. It''s all true-as much as comedy will allow anyway.∩╗┐"You can''t go on the road with standup comedian Barry Friedman, which is probably good for your health and sanity. But you can feel what it felt like, through this funny, gritty, wondrously detailed, and scarily honest book."Dave Barry"Barry writes so beautifully he actually made me miss shitty one nighters. Thanks A LOT Barry."Carole Montgomery, Host of Funny Women of a Certain Age"He''s written a book with all the wisdom and humanity of Alexis de Tocqueville''s Democracy in America, but with way better jokes and twice as many clitoral piercings."John H. Richardson"I can neither confirm nor deny that I laughed out loud instead of clutching my pearls while reading the racy bits in Barry Friedman''s new book, The Joke Was on Me. Confessions aside, seeing the broken yet still beautiful world through his eyes is cathartic."Jennifer Taub, author of Big Dirty Money