Ever since Aug. 3, 1966, when he sat on the toilet, his favorite place in the world, about to be sent to four months of jail with hard labor, the foreclosure notice on his house having just arrived, and he shot up for the last time, the culture has been trying to figure out Lenny Bruce. Even at his funeral was a sense of uncertainty. “We were on our way to celebrate the short life of a guy we didn’t know much about except for the indisputable fact that he’d been very, very HIP,” writes Pamela des Barres in her groupie memoir I’m With the Band. She saw Frank Zappa, mourning in his flowered bell-bottoms and sneakers. “Lenny was a saint,” he said.
Lenny Bruce Everywhere
Acknowledging the comic’s gift to Zappa, Mailer, Roth, and the other macho titans of eccentric 1960s pop
Jonathan Poletti
