As a monologist, Martin is no Richard Pryor or Lily Tomlin (to name the two great stand-up comedians since W. C. Fields) or Lenny Bruce or Randy Newman or Bob or Ray. The best thing about his TV special last season was The New York Times's preview of it. To read in the newspaper of record that a man was to deliver on prime time network television a long sketch about turtle wrangling was gratifying; the sketch itself, one felt, was long. On his big-selling live album [A Wild and Crazy Guy], Martin performs worn material rather perfunctorily for an audience that seems intent on getting hysterical without grounds. His appeal to the young borders on the bubble gummy.

But Martin has done wonderful things: the original Saturday Night version of his "King Tut" song and dance (though if "Born in Arizona,/Moved to Babylonia" were the other way around, it would sound just as silly and yet have a point), his swinging-immigrant-guy character (though Dan Aykroyd is even more impressive as the brother), and various transcendent appearances on the [Johnny] Carson show….

Prose, on the evidence of Cruel Shoes, is not Martin's element: "I decided to secretly follow this dog. I laid about a hundred yards back and watched him…. As I approached, I could hear the sounds of other dogs moving lightly…. I remember throwing them bones now and then, and I could recall several of the dogs seemingly analyze it before accepting it." The syntax is not that bad throughout, but only one bit ("The Nervous Father") in Cruel Shoes has what could be called happy feet. (p. 20)

Writing is something many a book has done without. Cruel Shoes, however, lacks not only style but also character. Fields, Groucho Marx, and Fred Allen all spoke with decidedly less timbre and snap in print than orally, but each of them produced a readable book or two that at least evoke—if they fail quite to render—the author's voice. Precious little from Martin's slim volume would be funny, let alone original, even if fleshed out by Martin's bunny-ear apparatus and fine awful smile.

One chapter is called "Dogs in My Nose." It is three paragraphs long and seems to go on and on and on. Further nasal whimsy appears under the heading "Comedy Events You Can Do": "Put an atom bomb in your nose, go to a party and take out your handkerchief. Then pretend to blow your nose, simultaneously triggering the bomb." The reader who does not know five fourth graders with better nose jokes than that is not traveling in a fast enough crowd.

Now, drolleries that do not quite come off may yet be estimable; sometimes not quite coming off is the better part of coming off. But some of these brief sketches suggest Richard Brautigan on a particularly languid day. There are several apparently straight, though furtive (but not furtive enough), poems. There are jibes at leaden philosophers that—although or because Martin was once a serious student of philosophy himself—are leaden (though thin). "Cows in Trouble" and "The Day the Buffalo Danced" are topics worth developing, but what Martin gives us is surely not the way discontented cows would act and definitely not how buffalo would dance.

An item about a nationality called Turds approaches risible flatness, but why "Turdsmania" for the country's name? Turdsey, perhaps. Turdwana. There is something to be said for this sentence from "Poodles … Great Eating!": "The dog-eating experience began in Arkansas, August, 1959, when Earl Tauntree, looking for something to do said, 'Let's cook the dog.'" But "experience" is not quite the word, the town in Arkansas should be given, there ought to be a comma after "do," and "Tauntree" is not a funny name.

In this reviewer's estimation. Which is not to deny that one would perhaps give up all one's estimation for the abililty to tie a balloon buffalo. And make it dance. Like a buffalo. (pp. 20,22)