Lenny Bruce Is Dead: A Novel Horror Book Review

“Jonathan Goldstein is one of the funniest and most original writers I can think of. Anything by him is better than anything by just about anyone else.” (David Sedaris)

  This startlingly original debut from This American Life contributor Jonathan Goldstein is, according to a Vice magazine reviewer, “the cleanest dirty book I’ve ever read.” It’s a snapshot of the mind of Josh, a rather confused young man who must cope with his father’s listlessness and his own overwhelming lust, not to mention the arrival of the Moschiach, inventor of the infamous Love Lotion.

  Lenny Bruce Is Dead walks a tightrope between the searingly funny and the poignant. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll long for some Love Lotion of your own. And you won’t forget Josh-ineptitude, scatological neuroses, urban angst, self-deprecating humor and all.

  “The embarrassing, penetrating and I’ve-neverseen- this-before-on-paper secrets that Jonathan Goldstein carefully accumulates eventually all add up to something much more painful and probing than one would expect from such a readable, hilarious book-leaving one with the nagging impression that the writer’s real concern is telling the truth, and in a deeply personal and original way.” (Chris Ware)