“John Limon’s book opens up exciting new possibilities in cultural studies. Stand-up comedy—manic, smutty, abusive, improvisatory—has up to now evaded academic critics, as if its pleasures were too volatile for examination. Limon carries off the feat—rarely achieved by analysts of humour—of taking comedy seriously without spoiling the jokes.”—Maud Ellmann, University of Cambridge “Limon’s close readings of specific comic performances are ... Read moremasterful, making vivid and compelling his larger and more abstract arguments about the ways that comedy allows us to deal with the process of cultural abjection. Speaking as someone who has taught and written about the American comic tradition for more than a decade, I can honestly say I learned something significant about each of the performers he examines.”—Henry Jenkins, author of Classical Hollywood Comedy Show Less