I remember a copy of Cruel Shoes that belonged to my father sitting on the bookshelf and feeling compelled to read it–in large part because my father hates Comedians. My father does not trade in Comedy, that’s my mother’s sole business, so it always struck me that Steve Martin must be somehow special.

I remember Cruel Shoes very vaguely because I was a lot younger when I read it and I remember it as sort of a sparse humorous collection of jokes or bits. It wasn’t very memorable for me, I’m sorry to say, more memorable that my father owned it.

Given my partner’s own predilection for Steve Martin, and this errant book on the shelf, I always sort of assume some mythic quality to Steve Martin. Reading Born Standing Up it is a much more genuine look at him, his career, and what informs his choices—not just throwing up jokes as a deflection. At one point after discussing his father Martin notes that if you’re required to experience pain and abuse in order to get into comedy as a business, you need not worry about his qualifications.

The book was very somber and honest, detailing how ideas were developed as well as panic attacks and hypochondria, not lingering on any one problem but always moving forward to the next thing, the next bit, which I’ve found to be a pattern in the memoirs of funny people.

I think that’s the real lesson to come away from an honest, relatively short blip of a book. Steve Martin knows his limits and what could drag him down, then turns and walks in the opposite direction.