A Carlin Home Companion: Growing Up with George

Kelly Carlin's book is her life story, her history. Coming of age with a famous parent and a beautiful, brilliant mother, Kelly describes the rocky road of growing up while her family sacrifices to realize George's dream and also keep a family together during the journey. Today people love to demonize people who use recreational drugs or alcohol or suffer from addiction. Kelly doesn't demonize her parents, but looks at their use and addictions with the maturity and perspective not of a bitter woman, but as a child does with two wonderful parents, and the people they turned into when they used. The Three Musketeers--her family (and mine!) is what they called themselves. Kelly and I are only 9 years apart, and it amazed me how we shared so many experiences. We love our parents and give them credit for their great qualities. There are HURRAY moments where George shares his humor, kindness, his music, sends her flowers after she's in a musical. You just grow to love him along with Kelly, and you also see her pain as she misses him when he's on the road. Mom Brenda drank, and that also pulls the foundation of your security of a child out from under you. You compose a life as an adult where you look back and take the bad times that made you sharp, smart, but also where you learned to be afraid and how that breaks you and builds you stronger. You love the good times more. You adore the sober parent and how fabulous they were. You mourn them when they become that Other person. She doesn't resort to demonizing them. To be healthy and compose a life, you must compose your history. She loves them for their merits and the great people they were. She also works through the problems they had and grows into a smart, strong, fiercely witty, brilliant adult with a new foundation. Children of addiction like me understand this. You take the story of your life, celebrate the beauty, the good times, the love and you give meaning to the hardship and you rebuild your life and your story without bitterness. The realization that her father was a lot like my mother. My father was a lot like Brenda Carlin. My childhood was so much like her's, and somehow, we both became adults with perspective, stronger for the experience, but still mourning the time that was lost to addiction. But you grow and you cherish your life for the greatness and the lessons. And you just love them. We write, we go on, and we become the author of our own story. There's power in this, and also in knowing that Kelly Carlin did it. (So I can, too!) Her story is a victory, with sadness and courage and some of the most observant and witty humor mixed in. I look forward to more of her work in the future, and I'm grateful that she gave us this glimpse of her life with George. All life is messy, sad, tragic, wonderful and a bit crazy. But to compose a book like this is to heal, find closure, and celebrate the love and the life of her family. She's an amazing person with an original voice and I can't wait to read more--I hope she continues to write. Rock on Kelly. You have a gift that speaks to children of addiction, and also people who appreciate sharp wit. Keep on composing your life. We can't wait to read more!

Well done, Kelly! An honest, if not understandably favorably biased account of growing up in the Carlin household by the only person left to tell it. She delivered on the kind of book I expected it to be. At an early age, she was "raised" by absentee, fall-down-drunk, and coke-devouring parents. By her teens she was placated with riding horses, daddy's extra joints, and a BMW - which she totaled, only to have replaced. To me, the most revelatory scene she recounted about the essence of her father, was when he was standing in his driveway in an elite suburb of Los Angeles, screaming obscenities at his rich neighbors, just because they were rich coc****kers. He truly hated them. There he was, living in the same neighborhood, just as rich as they were, spoiling his own child like they were theirs, just as self-indulgent as they were - but no doubt, ingesting way more drugs than they did - and he was enraged at them for . . . . ? For being like him, except with a coat and tie. And for that reason, George was eternally convinced that he was both morally and socially superior to anyone who had a 9 to 5 job, which, of course, is most people. Another (understandable) blind spot in her description of her father, was her delusion, mirroring his own, that as he got older, he got better at comedy. That reminded me of hearing David Crosby say, not too long ago, that he's writing the best music of his life right now. What?!?! Not even close. George got exponentially darker, misanthropic, and way less funny as he got older. As a tribute to her dad, she peppered her remarks at his memorial service with the F-bomb, and other vulgarities. How dignified. Sadly, George would have thought that was funny. To her credit, she's managed to find a measure of stability in life after her own bouts with addiction, panic attacks, dysfunctional relationships and all the other predictable byproducts of growing up a Carlin. Unlike her father, she's been able to make peace with her deceased parents and the chaotic upbringing they remanded her to. He, on the other hand, couldn't ford that river and died a broken and angry rebel. Keep at it Kelly.

What's it like to be George Carlin's daughter? That's a question for comedy nerds like me, especially since I'm a boy. Yes I've seen at least two stand-up specials from everyone quoted on the jacket of this memoir, but George is special for me. He was a transforming artist. In my intellectual journey there was before Jammin' and after Jammin'. No other comic transformed my molecules like that. Only musicians and writers. There was Twain, Whitman, Jimi Hendrix, and George Carlin for me. Early in the book Kelly Carlin describes things that would kind of be recognizable to a fan, his pot smoking (cool dad!), his "teaching moments" (I recognize those from his stand up!), going on the road with her mom and dad (!), and mouthing off to squares (holy s***..My dad mouthed off to Reagan on the TV but to see him do it live to their faces!). And it's at that latter bit, the mouthing off to the squares, where Kelly pulled me down to earth. "Dad was now saying stuff out loud often to people's faces, and it made me want to disappear." Thus her childhood becomes a whirlwind of fights and drug use from her parents, having to be the adult as a child, having to hide drugs and alcohol and settle disputes between them, and losing herself in the process. And it's that searching for the self that makes this book special. It's a spiritual journey. An honest account of the daughter of a very famous man, Kelly doesn't hide the fact that she had money, was taken care of and often supported as an adult by her dad. And I suspect that aspect of the book is hard to deal with for some people who were raised middle class and with the promise of the American dream, the blaring obviousness that money with all its advantages doesn't buy your way out of problems, and suffering, and sadness, and losing oneself. The most infuriating thing about someone who grew up with wealthy parents is their seeming ignorance of it, which Kelly shows none of. It's part of who she is, and she acknowledges it, along with her own bad choices, mistakes, and flaws. I found this book amazingly ballsy in a lot of ways. Also I like Kelly's husband Bob, who becomes her rock, her guide out of codependency. When they first hook up and spend a weekend together, Bob leaves to meet up with his friends who he had plans with. Kelly asks if she can come to, and he says No, flat out, without meanness. That's the dude I wish I was when I was a lot younger. This is definitely a book for anyone who's had a hard time figuring out their path in life. Definitely a great book for me, since I've been floating around pretty much aimlessly in the past 4 years since I've had a divorce which also ended a business I was in for 7 years. And anyone who has an artistic and creative mind trying to figure out how it functions in a world that casts those types of minds out. I've listened to a lot of Kelly Carlin's interviews and her one-woman show, and I expect great things to come.

It took me several months to finish this book due to the weight of the emotional revelations generated by Kelly’s reflection of her life. Radical changes have been made to my perception of fame and my own un-famous perspective. Kelly is impressive not because of her famous name, but because we are so alike. It’s very possible that Kelly and I are not-too-distant cousins, our Irish New Yorker lineage sharing the surname “Grady”, her stubborn branch refusing to give up the “O’” makes sense. Her memoirs are full of all too familiar struggles with codependence, raised by alcoholics, living in the shadow of her father, finding herself through understanding the mind… every step a loving tribute to life lessons learned the hard way. Kelly’s honesty about past relationship problems and years spent prioritizing the needs of others over her own, made me feel less alone in similar experiences. Her master’s in Jungian Psychology shows through her deeply self-reflective omnipresence of the shadow. She tells us how she feels in each memory in a way that we sympathize with her state of mind at the time. I very rarely weep while reading a book, but I straight-up ugly cried at several points in this memoir. The deaths of her parents, separated by eleven years (same length as her first marriage… hmm) instills the primal tension we all feel from birth. The loss of security, the relief of finality, and the desolate emptiness of grief are expressed in such a cathartic, therapeutic way. When I finished this book, I felt cleansed… relieved of pain and tension I didn’t realize I was carrying around. Kelly was brave enough to expose her deepest, darkest thoughts and Carlin-enough to give the reader a few hard belly laughs every few paragraphs. Behavioral psychologists could study the evolution of Kelly’s writing out from under the all-consuming Carlin light and still never conclude a winner in nature vs. nurture. Did Kelly inherit the genius acerbic wit of her father or did she have to work that much harder to distinguish herself from everyone’s favorite Comedy Daddy? Maybe it was a little of both? I enjoyed learning about Kelly’s life, thus gaining plenty of self-reflective perspective. I wouldn’t say this memoir is an “easy read”, but Kelly is an easy person. She expresses herself with the friendly openness of a good friend and a compassionate human, bringing people in while she heals them. Her writing displays these qualities like brilliantly colored vintage photographs under glossy pages in an album. The warm, gooey nostalgia of memories encased in time. Kelly makes me want to listen to everything she has to say because I know I’m going to learn something. Her writing somehow makes me feel both at home and homesick. I’m grateful to her for giving so much of herself so that this book can exist. It’s medicinal.

Enjoyed the book as far as insight to George, wife and family life. Found myself skimming later sections all about Kelly Carlin. Found her using "do you know who I am?" far too often. Her own story seemed self absorbed. All the shaman and new age references left me cold.

As anyone who loves comedy and watches comedians like George will know, George talked very little about his family or inner life on stage or in interviews. I read George's sortabiography Last Words just before this, and I loved seeing the humor and the formation of a comic who was so enthusiastic about his work and his family. But it also dealt bluntly and guiltily with addiction and with his family troubles, though at times from a detached or distant view. It's personal and fun, but somewhat distant. This book is very personal! Jon Stewart is right that this is the next best thing to getting to talk to George again. We get an inside view of many of Kelly's personal memories of her family, and what it was like to be around them. Not the cakewalk I sort of assumed from George's silence about it and the workaholic career of a genius wordsmith. George was flawed, but warm, loving, funny, and we get poignant memories of Kelly's moments around him. And as a therapist, Kelly shows us those snapshots through a very understanding eye. We also get to meet Kelly. Growing up in such a man's shadow may have become financially easy, but emotionally and psychologically fraught with problems. It's hard and heartbreaking to view all of the things Kelly goes through, but it's beautiful to see the astute, wise, and sensitive person she eventually becomes, and the struggles she undergoes to reach that point. For a lover of Carlin's work or of comedians, this is essential reading. For anyone, especially anyone with personal struggles in a family and in coming into their own skin, it's great and very touching reading. Highly recommended!

This intimate and revealing memoir takes you inside the tight nuclear family life of comedy genius George Carlin. As they navigate the post war changes of 20th Century American life, George and his family both exemplified and transcended their tumultuous era, with George in many ways leading the charge and making us a more honest and better society. Kelly is funny, smart, and charming and a fine storyteller. Wonder where she gets that from?

When one has ADHD, it's hard to get motivated to crack open a book, let alone finish one, and Kelly Carlin made it hard for me to put my iPad down once I began reading this touching memoir. While this certainly is a memoir that every George Carlin fan should pick up, it is definitely Kelly's life, her words, her story. It explores her relationships with both her parents, in a frank and loving way that pulls no punches - something you would come to expect from someone with the surname 'Carlin'. As a Cancer survivor, currently dealing with the disease in my liver, reading about her mother's fight against liver cancer was very real and hit close to home. And reading about her father's passing warped me back to that Monday morning in a hotel room in Utah when I heard that one of my intellectual heroes had died - bringing back all the feelings, the sadness, the mourning and the need to play everything I had of George's on my iPod as I drove back to Denver. Finding one's place in the world is tough - but reading about Kelly's journeys have made me feel much better about my personal journeys, and her writing is absolutely stunning - it's as if she's sitting in the room with you, telling her life story, and her recollections of an amazing comedian and intellect. It's easy to see that she got the best of both from both of her parents. I look forward to reading this again - something I NEVER personally do. And, thanks to Kelly, certain routines of her father's, and certain music she talks about take on new meaning when I hear them, now. Tom Petty's "Damn The Torpedoes" will always remind me of her, now.

A story of a family and growing up in that family with currents of chaos , gales of laughter, scariness, recovery, change and an enduring and multi dimensional love. A must read for anyone who is interested in how an articulate and thoughtful adult emerges from that bubbling stew of love and family life, particularly when that story involves a person, George Carlin, who is one of the most powerful and influential comedians and comedic philosophers of our time.

It was a gift for a friend! It was perfect :)

laughed and cried. great read for me.

Great book from George's daughter, Kelly.

Great novel!