monday, September 10, 1979
daily nebraskan
page 9
Cruel Shoes9 is disappointie
gnewM
artin effort
By Deb Shanahan
Cruel Shoes is Just another Steve Martin joke.
The joke may be simply that a comedian's book is able
to make the New York Times list of best-selling non-fiction.
n i
Or maybe the joke is on the person who pays $6.95 for
the book, expecting a laugh a line and the Saturday Night
Live craziness, for this is Steve Martin as you have never
known him.
The man who grabbed national prominence on tele
vision and has sold millions of record albums with his
unique brand of humor now has branched out into the lit
erary world, perhaps sacrificing some of the elements of
his success in the process.
In Shoes, the rabbit ears, balloons, arrow-through-the-
Wille Nelson . . .
Continued from Page 8
"I've worked hard with it (the guitar) to get it in the
condition that it's in now," Willie said.
Willie said he had a movie, Song ForYou, coming out
this month with Jtis band and Dyan Cannon. The movie is
about a traveling band, he said.
When Willie does take a few days to relax, he said he
has homes in Texas, Tennessee and Colorado.
After Friday night's performance, Willie and the band
headed for Colorado.
ACCORDING TO SNAKE, Willie has no problems tra
veling and recording albums. He explained that most of
Willie's albums are recorded in a matter of hours.
"The band is good and after, three practices if the song
isn't right it's thrown out," Snake said.
Willie and the Family was recorded live during a show
at Lake Tahoe, Snake said.
head and facial contortions are absent.
Present are 52 short pieces-the book is 128 pages of
psfi type, pictures and white space-on topics ranging
from "Serious Dogs" and "How to Fold Soup," to "The
Year Winter Lasted Nine Minutes."
All the pieces are unrelated and unpredictable. Some
are poems. Some are written in the first person. Some
have animals as the main characters. A diet, a list of
Things Not to Be and excerpts from a diary also are in
cluded. But they all have one thing in common: each in
the array of topics is presented in a different light than
ever before.
The variety keeps the reader off guard, without a con
text, and searching to make sense of it all.
For example, in the title piece, the man who defined
"happy feet" has Anna trying on every pair of shoes in
the store. Still not satisfied, she asks for more and begs to
try on the "cruel shoes:"
. . not an ordinary pair of black and white pumps;
both were left feet, one had a right angle turn with separ
ate compartments that pointed the toes in impossible
directions.
"The other shoe was six inches long and was curved
inward like a rocking chair with a vise and razor blades to
hold the foot in place."
Anna tries them on and likes them.
Absurd, right? But maybe it is a Martin-esque way of
pointing out, how foolishly people endure discomfort for
fashion.
That is the key, to Sioei-reading it once to laugh at
the absurdity, then re-reading it to find what it is he is
satirizing.
That also is the key to why this form of Martin can be
a disappointment. We have been spoiled by on-screen
appearances of the man in white. We laugh as much at the
props, waving arms, body contortions and calculated
pauses as at the words.
Although Shoes is promoted as proof that "his humor
more than translates to the written page: it excells there,"
the extra effort required to fully appreciate the book may
not be worthwhile for part-time fans. But the most dedi
cated will be anxioUs to explore this new face of Steve
Martin.
He added that One For the Road, with Leon Russell,
was recorded in the five days at Leon's north Hollywood
home. The recording session, for One For the Road, was
video taped and Snake said the tapes made will be used on
television specials.
Willie's fans can expect a new album next month.
Snake said Willie recorded the album with Kris Kristoffer
son. Hank Cochran, a man who has been in the music bus
iness as long as Willie, if not longer, opened the show.
Although not the main attraction, Cochran did a good
job of performing songs that he wrote but received his
fame with others' hits, such as "Make the World Go
Away."
As in Willie's last Lincoln performance, Don Bowman
also performed. They "send out the clown" to check out
the sound, Bowman said, who definitely does just that.
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