Quick Shots of False Hope: A Rejection Collection

Comedienne Laura Kightlinger's disjointed early memoirs place her in a tradition of sad clowns as she describes the sometimes funny, but usually painfully humiliating, growing pains of a performer. Remembering her adolescence as an illegitimate child in a small town (from which she and her mother were occasionally spirited away for secret vacations with her married father, who lived in the same town), Kightlinger lingers over the ""lower-middle-class comfort"" she shared with her mother. As the narrative moves leisurely through junior high and high school (a waitressing job at an all-you-can-eat restaurant, an exchange-student trip to Spain), Kightlinger relates how she found herself making people laugh, often inadvertently, and found her true calling in a college comedy troupe. She recounts unsuccessful attempts at acting, various stand-up gigs, a happy stint as a writer for Roseanne and her miserable tenure on Saturday Night Live. Amid the blurred sequence of impressions with which Kightlinger chronicles her own fear and anxiety is a horrific and confusing scene in which she is beaten and raped by three hecklers she embarrassed during one of her shows. Luckily, that horror turns out to have been a fantasy. In the dark and funny final sequences, Kightlinger returns to her family and discusses their underlying pain with her mother. Although this is not a writerly account, it provides insight into the single-minded impulses that can drive a performance artist's life, as well as a glimpse of the camaraderie and professionalism that exists among comedians. (Oct.)