Volume 21, Number 11 · June 27, 1974
A Tale of Long Ago
By Jack Richardson
Ladies and Gentlemen—Lenny Bruce!!
by Albert Goldman from the journalism of Lawrence Schiller
Random House, 565 pp., $10.00
Who would have thought that there would ever be a time when Lenny Bruce and Richard Nixon might be linked together, not as implacable adversaries, but as victims of our society's verbal taboos? Yet while I was reading Albert Goldman's description of one of the comedian's trials in his book Ladies and Gentlemen—Lenny Bruce!!, a trial that turned on the question of whether 'cocksucker' was a word to be uttered in a public performance, I heard a television commentator solemnly informing the country that there could be no doubt that one of the deleted expletives uttered by the President referred to a 'biological function.'
Review, 2279 words
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