What Kaufman does show is that when men like Twain and Bruce became
increasingly conscious socially, they were punished for it. He
seems to blame them for the woes they found as a result. Why
couldn't Prozac have been invented earlier, he seems to ask. Then
Twain never would've written his Letters from the Earth, and Lenny
Bruce would still be alive. In fact, he'd probably be playing the
grumpy coffee-shop owner on Friends.
-- A. S. Hamrah, "The Academic as Apologist"
review of
The Comedian as Confidence Man: Studies in Irony Fatigue
by Will Kaufman (Wayne State University Press, 1997).
Hermenaut no.14
http://www.hermenaut.com/a46.shtml